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jeontaehui · 4 years ago

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TAEHEE WITH SUPERM

baekhyun baekhee

there was this tension at the start. you wouldn’t notice it at first glance but when you really pay attention to how the both of them act around each other ,,, you’ll just wonder how they are off-cam.

taehee mentioned during wgu era baekhyun was one of her role models when it came to the entertainment industry ,, so some fans wondered maybe there was still this senior-junior relationship between them while the rest were getting close with her.

but baekhyun hates awkward. luckily, they were roommates when they came to the states for their debut.

he figured he could get closer to taehee by making her laugh a lot, and he succeeded !!! it was easy since they basically shared the same humor.

he also took her out to eat when they came back to korea ,, discovered her love for playing video games and that they had a lot more in common

taehee enjoys playing hard to get when it comes to baekhyun.

(superm midterm exam ep. 1) “but you said i was your role model!!!” “when it came to being funny, yes...?” “W H A T !!!!”

as much as possible, baekhyun wants taehee to show off or be given attention to. whether that came to lines on the script or bragging about what she can do, not only does he do this as a leader but as someone who wants to show that taehee is as capable as them.

(200913 vlive) taehee comes up to the camera and nervously laughs, “yah, how do i do this?!” she turns around to face the rest of the boys who have challenged her into doing taemin’s killing part in the ‘criminal’ mv. “just do it like you would usually do!” baekhyun encourages cheerfully. “don’t act shy! you know you can do it.”

iconic moment (mtopia ep. 11-2) "whoever competes with baekhyun hyung is likely to lose,” kai says, watching as the eldest prep himself for the game. hearing this, taehee instantly shot up from her seat and moved to the red square opposite of baekhyun. though determined, she lets out a casual remark, “i’ll fight him,” and the others laugh.

ever since the first game of the night, baekhyun and taehee teased each other back and forth, trying to get the other off their game. the scoreboard between the two of them was currently 2:1, with taehee having won the paper cup game and the team game with mark and the others. baekhyun glances to the side nervously, until an idea pops in his head.

he lights up her candle shortly and hands it to her, “here.” taehee accepts the candle without protest as she sat down, until kai says, “he gave you the weaker candle.” her head snaps up to see baekhyun dead set on making his flame stronger than hers, his fierce expression making all of them crack up. “oppa!” taehee complains but she laughs. “yah, baekhyun hyung, that’s unfair!” taeyong backs the maknae up, well aware of the feeling of losing quickly to their leader. “jeon taehee, you better win this,” taeyong tells her, his tone was laced with seriousness yet his pout said otherwise. “avenge me,” and taehee gives him a salute and a wink in return.

not sooner than later, their match begins. their hot battle keeping the members on their toes, they too were aware of their rivalry from earlier. “jeon taehee, let’s go!” mark cheers. although taehee could barely see with the water getting in her eyes and hair, she moved her candle in all directions in defense to her opponent’s shooting (at this point, taehee figured baekhyun was just trying to shoot at her face but she’s not complaining... that much). with a sharp aim, taehee was able to distinguish baekhyun’s candle in just less than a minute.

“i think water went into my nose,” taehee giggles as she lowers her candle down, removing any excess water from her eyes once her other hand was free. meanwhile baekhyun looked shell-shocked, taemin and the others laughing more at the result. “hyung, you looked like you won!” kai teases him further. “i won,” baekhyun jokingly seethes, “I WON!”

taehee laughs, “알았어, loser.” the team breaks off into a louder fit while baekhyun smiles in disbelief. taehee sure was different.

song falling by trevor daniel

taemin 2tae

despite both of them being the most quiet during the first meeting, the both of them got closer the quickest !!!!

first day they were like ‘hi hello annyeong’. next day, they’re sharing recipes, having inside jokes, mini-handshake (courtesy of taehee), play-fighting, making funny faces at each other whenever they make eye contact during dance practices ....

dance prodigies !!! amazing, talented, remarkable dance prodigies !!! aces at everything !!!! their stage presence !!!!

(superm reveal which member has the best hair and who is the funniest of the group | billboard) “these two,” taeyong gestures to taehee and to taemin, “how do i say this? they look immoral on stage.” the others chuckle at his bluntness, “i think that would be the best term for it.”

taehee finds taemin very cute and would willingly watch his aegyo.

(’one’ dance practice behind) “hyung, you are honestly so cute,” taehee centers the camera to taemin, “times like these, i wish you were my younger brother.” he laughs.

meanwhile, taemin finds himself laughing at taehee’s antics most of the time (totally didn’t expect the chaotic energy coming from this one).

taehee always manages to find her place next to taemin somehow, and when taemin turns to find out she was beside him this whole time, he’d smile at her and pat the top of her head.

taemin became one of taehee’s comfort people !!!! from having a senior-junior relationship to being one of taehee’s most trusted friends, they grew really close after time and related well with each other.

iconic moment (’one’ dance practice behind) “woah, oppa you look really pretty from this angle,” taehee tilts the camera to the sides until taemin starts doing aegyo, causing laughter to bubble from the girl. “hey! hyung, why are you seriously so cute?”

taemin recalls the other day he and taehee hung out together, and he sits up straight before telling the story. “you know what taehee did the other day?” his lips break into a wide smile, his tone piquing interest from ten and mark. “what did she say?” mark said.

“she said, ‘hyung, it think it would be nice if you were my dongsaeng.’ and i haven’t said anything yet and she said, ‘yaja time? start. taeminnie, what do you want to do?’”

mark and ten burst out laughing, taehee feigns ignorance. “what? when was that? i don’t remember that.”

taemin chuckles, “taehee is really so precious.”

song it’s tricky by run d.m.c

kai kaihee

kai was a bit awkward with taehee too at first.

he was very cautious around her, even if it was just standing close to her during photoshoots.

kai, keeping his distance: “is this okay?”

director: “closer!!!!”

kai: fuck

but now he teases the hell out of her you’d probably mistake them for being friends for a long time.

(superm on knowing bros) “baekhyun hyung? baekhyun . hyung???? you seriously find him the most attractive out of all of us?????” “BEAUTY IS IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER!!!!!!” “YOU NEED TO GET YOUR EYES CHECKED THEN”

he makes fun of her accent (jokingly ofc) but also loves it.

“how do you say ‘귤’ in english?” “tangerine” “ahh you are so cute !!!!!!”

also teases her by wrapping his arm around her shoulders and proceeding to shake her aggressively.

before superm, kai already found taehee super cool .... he was probably intimidated by her.

when kai is not teasing taehee, they’re both teasing mark.

in the end, there is an i-will-tease-the-heck-out-of-you-until-your-ears-turn-red kai and a im-her-father-no-one-touch-her kai

iconic moment (mtopia ep. 11-1) “i feel like taehee would get this though,” baekhyun says and the others agree with him, taehee’s agile. they all watch as she puts her hands on each side of the toaster, preparing herself by biting on thin air. “okay, i’ll start now!”

using her left thumb, she pushed the press handle down and released. but instead of catching the piece of bread, she caught her tongue in between her teeth. she immediately pulled back and brought her hands to her mouth, walking away the pain as the members pointed out she wasn’t able to succeed. kai was the first to notice her, “what’s wrong, taehee?”

“i bit my tongue and it hurts so much,” she winces. kai cackles, “바보! taehee!”

“it was an accident!” she exclaims. “i know but you don’t put your tongue out like that!”

taehee grumbles at kai’s remark as she sat beside him. the latter pulls her close by the shoulder and ruffles her hair, laughing as she poked her cheek. “you want to eat bread?” kai smiles at her, already reaching out for the plate of extras.

“i’m gonna eat bread.”

song mambo no. 5 (a little bit of ....) by lou bega

taeyong yonghee

taehee’s all up for the ‘taeyong babie’ agenda since it’s so cute to see the older members tease and baby taeyong.

knowing that baekhyun likes to poke the fun out of these two, taeyong and taehee would team up against him.

(superm mtopia ep. 1) “taehee, let’s make baekhyun hyung out,” taeyong tells her, taehee mirroring the determined look on his face. “we got this.”

taeyong hypes taehee up like a stage dad or something lol he’d go like, “WOOOO!!! THAT’S MY BABY,” and taehee would find herself smiling before resuming to whatever she was doing.

taehee had to stop herself from clowning taeyong when they went surfing for mtopia and instead gave him tips and all. of course, she tries to bite her lip from laughing while doing so.

(mtopia ep. 3) taehee goes to sit beside a nervous taeyong on the dock as he waits for his turn. chuckling, she says, “hyung, just pace yourself, alright? don’t rush—“ but then kai cuts her off, also noticing the scared look on the rapper’s expression, “you won’t die anyways.” taehee whips her head back to glare at kai, though it was clear she was trying to hold in her laughs. “HEY!”

iconic moment (mtopia ep. 2) taehee was the first to pick out of the eight of them. whether she’ll start shedding tears or not, her fate relies on the fifth sushi she had chosen, hoping that it wasn’t the one with wasabi. “it’s the one. she lost it,” baekhyun says as he tries to throw taehee off guard. “it’s not,” she replies, though her eyes said otherwise.

once she grabs the piece of sushi in between her chopsticks, she takes a tentative glance towards the staff and keeps her eyes on them as she took it in whole. taehee knew she was doomed on the first chew, the spiciness of the paste burns her tongue and brings tears to her face. she laughs dryly as a few tears slipped down her face and sniffs, “i never knew wasabi was this spicy.” the boys behind her laugh at the crack in her voice, the staff handing her a tissue as she staggered back to her place beside taeyong who immediately wrapped his arms around her to comfort her. “taehee can’t handle spicy foods well,” taeyong chuckles, “are you okay?”

“yeah, my mouth just feels like it’s burning!,” taehee exclaims, her wild gestures adding humor to her expression. taeyong lets out a hearty laugh as he gave her water, “have this.” he watches her down the water in one go, though there were still tears in her eyes, “taehee, you are too cute. i’m serious.” taehee laughs as she wiped her eyes, and they continue with the game.

song train wreck by james arthur

ten tnt

they are literal geniuses !!!! but... they have their moments.

(200930 live) “he’s the main character in ‘aladdin’, right?,” and with knowing smiles, the others nod at ten’s question. clueless, ten decides to ask more, “what was his name? a whole new world~” and baekhyun and mark tell him he’s right, but ten has literally no clue. chuckling at his cuteness, taehee speaks up, “hyung! he’s the main character in ‘aladdin’! aladdin!” mark and kai laugh loudly at her hint, she was already giving him an answer. kai notices that, like ten, taehee hadn’t got her question correct yet with all the obvious hints they were giving her, and so he laughs harder. “taehee! don’t act like you’ve got you’re question correct!,” the said girl shrugs exaggeratedly, bringing her hands up in the air as if to question the heavens. “you told me he was powerful! so is he like a superhero or something? thor?,” she exclaims, and the others began laughing at her guess, the maknae unaware of the large ‘LEE SOOMAN�� on her cap. “who is it?!”

their banter that goes back and forth are one of the things that make the members’ stomachs hurt from laughing.

(superm: ready to fly in la) “the three maknaes are my babies,” ten tells the camera, tilting his head to look taehee into the eye before continuing, “but then you’d be my least favorite.”

taehee knows that ten secretly has her as the favorite loves her too, so she always makes it a point to call him cute or something to throw him off guard.

iconic moment (superm as we wish ep. 1) it was very obvious how taehee felt about ten’s drama. she tried to hold back her smiles but ten was just too cute, it made her heart run in circles. when his drama ended, the boys praised ten’s performance, but baekhyun noticed how much taehee liked it. he calls her out, “taehee-ssi, you seem to like this very much.”

a surprised ‘really?’ comes from ten while taehee spoke. “ten oppa just looked so.... natural while doing it,” taehee says, her words and expressions assuring ten he really did a great job. “my heart is doing flips right now?”

the boys laughed, “did you fall for him?” and before taehee got to answer their leader’s question, ten said, “i’ll date you based on your performance.”

“i didn’t even say yes!”

song positions by ariana grande

lucas luhee

lucas took one look at him, mark, and taehee and just went, “you know if someone took a look at us, they’d think taehee was the oldest.” (taehee had punched him on the shoulder while mark hit the table, laughing)

but then he clarified that it was just because taehee had this motherly aura around her and that she takes care of him and mark really well.

from then on, lucas would accidentally call taehee ‘noona’; sometimes, he would call her that intentionally when asking for the snacks that were kept in her bag, or teasing her.

(superm as we wish ep. 2) “unnie,” they hear taehee say from the monitor. while the boys accompanied each other in different work environments, taehee went alone to a little café to try out the experience herself. she found herself well acquainted with one of the staff members that had showed her around, and she found herself asking, “how old are you?” the boys erupted into choruses of ‘ooh’s’ when they heard her, baekhyun jokingly asking if she was there to find a date. taehee shakes her head shyly, but she busts out laughing when lucas shouts, “NOONA, FIGHTING!”

we see more of taehee being a baby with lucas in superm :(

he’d give her piggyback rides or ask her if she’s eaten yet, and if she says no, lucas would be like, “come on, man! the last time i saw you eat was breakfast but you only ate a sandwich. wait for me here, i’ll get you a plate.”

iconic moment (mtopia ep. 11-2) as mark and kai shoot each other’s candles out with their water guns, taehee leans into lucas’ side as she laughs with her head buried into his shoulder. it was an endearing sight to see them comparing hand sizes, both of their eyes widening at the size difference. “you’re hand is so small!,” lucas says. “well, duh. your hand is like the size of my face!”

song rather be by clean bandit (ft. jess glynne)

mark markhee

taehee knows so well that superm mark lee is a different breed

(the story of ‘jopping’) “you look so handsome these days,” taehee said to mark as she took in his appearance, causing the latter to become shy and flustered, “really?”

but mark caught onto it this year and ‘complained’ that taehee had favoritism .... to superm mark

“you’re cute in 127 and dream!!!! you’re different here, what’s wrong with that?”

taehee LOVED ‘talk about’. she posted a video of her jamming to it in her manager’s car on twitter.

in mtopia, taehee literally took a glance at mark’s quiz in the first episode and said, “ahh you should get this one the first try, it’s easy.” cue a pouty mark

during games, mark knows taehee in and out so it comes off as an advantage to him and a disadvantage to her.

(mtopia ep. 6) “it’s taehee. taehee is the liar.”

mark and taehee are roommates most of the time and their nightly routines just consist of putting face masks on each other and listening to music while waiting!

iconic moment (mtopia ep. 11-2) “sleepover!!!!,” taehee says excitedly as she sat on the bed with mark. she had just finished brushing her teeth while mark brought out facemasks from his bag. “you wanna put them on each other?,” mark asks, tearing one of the packets open already.

he turns his head to his right and giggles. taehee had her bangs tied up in a short ponytail, her eyebrows arched in a cheery smile. “you look like 뚱이!,” mark laughs, “dude, seriously. you’re so cute.”

“whatever, just put it on,” taehee rolls her eyes playfully as she hit mark’s shoulder. she closes her eyes but hears mark chuckle again. opening only her left eye, she says, “what’s wrong?”

“you’re really cute,” mark repeats, both of taehee’s eyes now wide open at his compliment. she goes to say something but chooses against it, closing her eyes back again when mark begins putting the mask on her face.

song until the last falling star by matthew perryman jones

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willowbird · 4 years ago

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If you're still doing these, could you please do 34 and 22 for pynch? Because you know, hand kink is canon XD

*big ole’ heart eyes*

Kisses that start on the fingertips and travel to the lips, leading to more -- but then they’re DUH DUH DUH interrupted! Featuring Pynch <3

------

Warmth had a weight. There was a physicality to the pressure of a heat that wasn’t hot, a touch that was a hold but wasn’t a grip. Not stifling, not restricting -- but secure and comforting. It was the difference between a blanket and a thick coat: both will keep out the chill, sure, but no one wants to snuggle up and sleep in a coat.

Ronan wanted to snuggle up and sleep in Adam, though. When Adam touched him, when he sat beside him with no real space between them, pressing ever so slightly against his arm. When he took his hand and just... held it in his, just because he could, just because he wanted to. There was fire in his blood when he touched Adam, of course; when he looked at him, when he kissed him and tasted the sharpness of his tongue -- but there was also this... warmth that never went away and that Ronan never failed to notice.

Then again, the day that Ronan Lynch failed to notice Adam Parrish was the day even his ghost had been expunged from this world and the next.

Even now, lounging on the couch at Monmouth Manufacturing as they each did their separate things, Ronan was viscerally aware of all things Adam Parrish. He had his head pillowed on Adam’s thigh as he watched drunk history videos on the laptop while Adam worked on whatever reading assignment for their shared English class that Ronan sure as fuck wasn’t going to bother doing. He was genuinely engrossed in the video he was watching (learning plus booze, it was a win/win), and yet his hand lifted automatically to catch Adam’s hand the second his Parrish Senses subconsciously registered the other boy chewing on his poor damaged nailbeds. Without ever looking away from the screen, he just reached up, captured Adam’s wrist, then gently tugged it down to cradle against his chest.

He felt Adam pause, then the satisfying weight of his attention. Ronan continued to watch his video as he said, "Leave your hands alone. What did they ever do to you?"

"I wasn't doing anything," Adam grumbled. Adam grumbled a lot around Ronan. He always had and he probably always would. When they had first met, Ronan had found this amusing and annoyingly attractive. Now that they were (finally) together, Ronan could forgive how attractive it was but that was really all that had changed. He had noticed a slight shift in the tone of Adam's grumblings, though. What used to be just annoyed was now affectionately annoyed and Ronan had to admit he appreciated the upgrade. Even though he couldn't see it, he could hear the slight pull of a smile at the corner of Adam's mouth reflected in his affectionate grumbling.

"Mhm," Ronan agreed, so much skepticism in those two hummed syllables that Adam scoffed as he went back to his reading.

But he didn't pull his hand away.

Ronan smirked, because that was basically a win, and clicked on the next video. As it started up, he allowed his fingers to loosen on Adam's wrist without fully letting him go. When Adam turned his hand slightly, Ronan adjusted his grip to be able to tangle their fingers instead. He allowed his thumb to brush against Adam's palm, then down over the rough heel of his hand, calloused from work and dry with the season, to his wrist. He traced the soft protrusions of his veins, soft and pronounced against the pad of his thumb, then around to that pronounced bump right on his wrist. It was one of Ronan's favorite spots to kiss, that bump, and so that's what he did.

He'd stopped paying attention to the video at this point anyway, so he closed his eyes and sighed softly against Adam's wrist as he rubbed his nose over those soft veins and kissed a path from that artistic bump across and up to his palm. From there, he kissed his way to each finger, starting with the abused thumb, like he could soothe away the distress etched into the skin there.

Above him, Adam said, "Ronan."

Whenever Adam said his name it held a weight and a meaning to it that was like but not like the way his father used to say his name. When Ronan's father had said his name he'd made it sound like something sharp and powerful, like maybe he'd meant to say knife instead. When Adam said his name it didn't sound like he wanted to say another word -- it only sounded like Ronan, but with this physical, aching, perfect warmth to it that made Ronan want to wrap the both of them up in the sound and shut out the rest of the world.

Ronan opened his eyes and looked up without pulling his mouth away from Adam's hand. He held the other boy's stare as he kissed his way back to his wrist, taking his time with slower, open-mouthed kisses so he could taste the shiver on his skin and, when he got there, was able to feel the rushing of Adam's pulse against his lips. That was incredibly satisfying, and Ronan wanted more of it, so he grazed his teeth lightly and pressed his tongue to the thrum of Adam's heartbeat, unable to stop the pleased sound that escaped him when it jumped again. Since he was watching Adam, he got to see the way his breath caught, and how his eyes darkened.

Ronan pressed another nipping kiss there, then another a little higher on his wrist, follow e by another, steadily working his way up. It didn't take long before Adam grew impatient and Ronan loved it when Adam was impatient. Long, artistic fingers curled along his jaw and slid up the side of his cheek, and Ronan couldn't help but turn into the touch, pressing another kiss to his palm. Adam's hand cradled his face, then guided him up -- and Ronan went willingly, following that ascent to find Adam's mouth.

If kisses with Adam Parrish could be bottled up and sold they'd easily destroy the caffeine industry -- fucking overnight. Citrus lightning, a mouth full of summer that left firework imprints on the roof of his mouth and stole his breath in a galestorm. Kisses with Adam Parrish were lethal, and Ronan couldn't get enough of them.

He leaned up into that kiss, pushing up to his elbows. Adam helped him sit up fully without ever pulling their mouths apart - though whether that was because he just couldn't pull away or because Ronan kept following the path of his mouth was difficult to say. Adam's hands cupped Ronan's face and Ronan's hands clutched lightly at the other boy's bony wrists, and neither of them seemed likely to let go anytime soon which suited Ronan just fine. This broke only for an instant when Ronan dropped one hand to shove the laptop off his knees and onto the couch beside them. He didn't care if the thing crashed to the floor, didn't care of it broke -- he could always get a new one. What he did care about was that he had the space available.

Adam seemed to read his intentions because it only took a small tug and the other boy pivoted, moving to straddle his lap. Mouth on mouth, hands on hands, Ronan caught his breath and let it out in a quiet groan against Adam's lips. Fuck. Fuck, he would never get used to this. It was going to take him by surprise each and every fucking time Adam kissed him, every time he touched him.

"Adam," he heard himself gasp, his voice sounding rough and wrecked.

"Ronan," Adam sighed into his lips and fuck... Fuck.

Adam's mouth left his but didn't go far, his lips tracing a path down his jaw to his neck as Ronan's hands began their own exploration across Adam's broad, strong shoulders and down his arms. He palmed the heat of his back, down to his waist, and then, fucking gloriously, under his shirt to feel the smooth heat of his skin.

A sound lodged in Ronan's throat, but Adam dislodged it with the way his mouth was playing right at his pulse. Ronan tilted his head back and groaned and he felt Adam's pleased smile against his skin. Fucking brat. Bastard.

"You--" he started to say, only to get cut off as the door slammed open so loudly that they both jumped. Adam jerked back violently enough that he almost fell off Ronan's lap, saved only by the fact that Ronan was still gripping him about the waist under his shirt.

"Oh shiii-"

"Gansey, what?"

And there they fucking were. Gansey had frozen like a statue in the doorway and Blue was elbowing her way past him. Ronan glared viciously at the both of them as Adam hurriedly scrabbled off his lap.

"I fucking hate you. Both of you. You suck," he informed them with as dry an inflection as possible. "You are both dead to me."

Adam shoved his shoulder and rolled his eyes as he settled back in his previous spot on the couch, the effect ruined by how flushed he still was and the bruised look of his lips. "Don't be an asshole. Hi Gansey, hi Blue."

Blue narrowed her eyes at them suspiciously. "Were you two..?"

"Yes," Ronan accused.

At the same time, Adam and Gansey both said, "No!" in competitively unconvincing tones of alarm.

Blue looked from Gansey to Adam with a level of skepticism that almost made Ronan inclined to forgive her. Almost.

That's alright. Ronan would get his revenge.

#trc #trc fanfiction #ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #pynch fanfic #asks #anon #kisses!

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extremelyblackandwhite · 5 years ago

Text

handmaid - 05

PAIRING: mob!sebastian stan x ingenue!reader

WARNINGS: age gap

A/N: sorry for the delay, i’ve been having a bit of a writer’s block recently and started getting out of it now. thank you so much for the support so far, hope you enjoy this one xx

NEXT CHAPTER

Sebastian was very much a powerful man in the way he carried himself to the way he spoke. She mostly stood by his side, basking in the glorious power he seemed to so easily hold over everyone who spoke to him. They spoke to him as if he were a king and, somehow, he was. After all, he managed to keep his family’s mob name still on top of any other and somehow even improved it, at least she heard from rumours on the street. All but one single guest had been polite, probably due to the fear he irradiated, that one being a guy named Thompson Williams. Mr. Williams was what Mr. Forrest called a mob rat, feeding on the wealth of those who had built it themselves without dirtying a single finger. His voice was mellow like snake’s venom, the politeness the fakest she’d ever heard, even Sebastian seemed to rush the conversation.

In order to do so, he had decided to finally dance with his fiancée, pulling her away from a pretty blonde haired guy she has been flirting with. Unhappily, Gwen put on a forced smile as he twirled her around the dance floor surrounded by other mob bosses and their wives. Seeing couples always brought a tinge of sadness to her. If there was something she knew is that she had to constantly be by Gwen’s side no matter her status which didn’t give her enough time to fin someone and if she did, she didn’t exactly think they would be happy to live with another couple. Besides, she was already in her early twenties and still to have a significant relationship with someone, the only one getting close being a guy she had met in private school who had taken her first kiss but other than that she just watched everyone fall in love while she waited in the wings.

Soon enough, Gwen was pulling her onto the dance floor, sending her off dancing with several men whose hands would constantly need to be watched fear they went lower than before. Whenever she thought she could step out of the dance floor and go stand, someone else was grabbing her hand to dance or Gwen was pulling her back in. As the seventh song finished, she managed to rush to the side, hiding behind one of Sebastian’s bodyguards before they could pull her back on the dance floor. She leaned against one of the table, soothing her very tired feet due to the unbelievably high heels he was using.

- Are you hiding, Y/N? - Sebastian came up from behind her, making her squeak ever so slightly due to the surprise.

- My feet really hurt. - she ever so slightly raised her feet. - I think Mr. Garret stepped on me a couple of times too.

- Mr. Garret is one for the wines. I wouldn’t put it against him as doing it on purpose.

- You and Gwen make a beautiful couple. - she gave him a warm feeling, not entirely sure why she felt sadness whenever she said so. Maybe it was because none of them really wanted to be in that relationship despite how great they looked together. - Although I must say, I didn’t pen you for dancing.

- Well, I was gonna ask you for a dance considering you’ve danced with every single man here but me. - he extended his hand towards her and despite the numbing sensation of her feet, she could find it within herself to deny him. She placed her hand upon his, tiptoeing a bit towards the dance floor.

Y/N considered herself a good dancer, at least a nice one to lead with but with Sebastian, things were slightly different. Her small squeak escaped her lips as he put his hands on her waist. She could almost feel the texture of his fingers through the thin beige lace fabric and suddenly she wished she had picked a thicker fabric. He was much more skilled at it than her, or maybe he was better at hiding how nervous he was. The latter was definitely true as he found it harder to control the grin that was trying to escape his polite stoic face as he felt her warm skin against his hand.

She turned her face looking at the people who were staring at him. She guessed that being that powerful had the disadvantage of the constant gaze of those trying to usurp his place. However, there was a sort of hiding kindness in his baby blue eyes, light, bright eyes contrasted to the darkness that followed him around. No, there was some sort of happiness in those eyes, a remnant of the child he once was.

- Everyone is staring at you. - she spoke for the first time ever they had started to dance, her eyes moving up to stare at his, the familiar nervousness starting to brew up and manifest itself in the heat up of her cheeks, warmer than the several candles displayed around the room.

- Trust me, angel, it is not me they’re staring at. - he twirled her around, pushing her a bit more towards his chest once she returned to her initial position. Y/N could feel every single cell on her body electrify and heat up.

- Maybe ... maybe you should return to dancing with Gwen. - appearances once again were important and Y/N knew it wouldn’t look good for the couple being celebrated being on two opposite ends of the room. She was the one to step away, half bowing to him and clapping as the song ended. Before Sebastian could even process her words, she had already departed to the sidelines of the dance floor, tapping Gwen’s shoulder and sending her straight to her fiancé.

It was still a harsh truth for her brain to process. As an English graduate, she was, as most graduates of the same course, an incurable romantic adoring the idea of kissing in the rain and small gestures that prove complete knowledge over your loved one. Here there were no hidden love, no unrequited affection, they were just getting married to form an alliance, to follow a contract set way before Gwen was born. Y/N understood her friend’s side and unwillingness to bend to the rules expected from her, she had always been a wild spirit who enjoyed relishing on her youth. However, she wasn’t one to agree with the constant petty remarks towards Sebastian.

- A remarkable party, isn’t it Miss Y/N? - Y/N sighed, watching Mr. Williams walk up to her side, a glass of red wine in hand.

- I would say so. - she replied politely.

- That is a very particular necklace you have there. - Thompson pointed at the necklace nested in the middle of her collarbones. - A gift from Mr. Stan, I would guess.

- No, I’ve had this necklace since I was born. However, with all due respect Mr. Williams, I don’t feel comfortable enough to discuss my personal life with you.

- You seem rather comfortable with Mr. Stan. - Y/N didn’t enjoy the undertones in his voice, taking a few steps behind and going onto a protective state. - Miss Y/N, you can trust me. Whenever you need anything, I’m here.

- I appreciate the gesture, Mr. Williams. I’ll keep it in mind.

- You’ll keep what in mind? - never once had Y/N been so happy to hear Sebastian’s voice and feel him looming presence behind her. Mr. Williams, however, seemed to keep his composure, merely raising his glass as a curtesy to the mob boss.

- I was just paying your new employee my respects, Stan. Offering my aid if ever in need.

- She won’t need your help. - he scoffed at the idea of a lower rank mobster being ever able to provide Y/N with someone he couldn’t. If Y/N ever needed something she was to come to him not to a rat like Thompson Williams who had made a small empire by screwing others over. No, Y/N would never need help from someone like him, if it was up to Sebastian’s will. Gwen too did not enjoy to see her friend speak with guys like Thompson, and like a spy was standing a few feet apart from the three, glass in hand, watching with a few bodyguards in hand if needed. - If you excuse me, my fiancée and I are retiring for tonight.

- Have a nice night, Mr. Stan, Miss Y/N. - she didn’t know how to explain it but her name felt wrong in that tongue. Like it shouldn’t be said and before she could politely reply as she had been taught, Sebastian already had a hold on her wrist, pushing her towards Genevieve who was willingly waiting to make sure her friend was alright.

- We are going home, right now. - Sebastian muttered to one of his bodyguards, ready to end the parade of his personal life. On the other hand, Gwen had other plans not exactly agreeing with leaving a party thrown in her honour that early. Y/N noticed her change in attitude, fully knowing exactly how her friend behaved whenever she didn’t agree with something. - Now means now, Genevieve.

- I’m staying, you can go. - Gwen looked at Y/N, her eyes begging for her to plead with Sebastian so she could stay over. Should she do it? No. Was she gonna do it? Well, it was Gwen, her oldest friend, so with a sight, Y/N turned on her heel to face the mob boss.

- We could go now and maybe let Gwen stay here with the bodyguards. For appearances. - she suggested and Sebastian seemed to pounder it. It was rather clear to him what Y/N was trying to achieve, she wasn’t that sneaky, however, he also did not want to have a fight with his fiancée for everyone to see. - I could stay too.

- No, Y/N, you can go. - Gwen definitely did not want to have a babysitter following her around and telling her to be mindful of her role, despite that being Y/N’s job since they were children. - I know you don’t like these functions anyway.

Sebastian did not reply, instead bolting out of the room followed by one of his bodyguards. Y/N gave Gwen a “be careful” look before rushing after him the best she could in her heels until she reached him, stopping him by grabbing onto the sleeve of his suit. The mob boss stopped, glancing for a few seconds at Y/N before sighing, placing his hand on the small of her back and leading her towards the limo. He couldn’t be mad at her for defending her friends, however, he could be mad at both of them not to follow orders, specially his orders. Sebastian was not one to have his control tested yet Y/N unknowingly did it.

- Do not disobey me next time. - he almost growled at her, watching as Y/N moved away from him, her innocent nature returning on full display.

- I’m sorry, Mr. Stan. - she bit on her lip, leaning against the limo’s window.

- I understand your loyalty towards Genevieve but I’ve been in this environment much longer than you and her have been. I know better.

- She’s young, marriage isn’t exactly what she wanted specially to someone like you?

- Someone like me? - she briefly looked to the side and even though she was in the dark of the night inside the limo, she was met by clean white teeth gritted down at her as well as a deep dark angry glared directed at her, of course. - Care to explain?

- A stranger. - she stated, playing with the fabric of her dress as not to look him in the eye.

- No, angel, that’s not what you meant. - he knew when someone was lying, his profession, if that could be said, called for that ability and she was lying. If not, she was at least trying to be kind. - What did you mean by someone like me?

- Well ... your ... your reputation follows you.

- You should know your friend’s reputation follows her too, she isn’t exactly the type of woman I would enjoy to marry.

The atmosphere was heavy and none of them really knew how to break the ice. Every once in a while she would look at him, briefly trying to see if his posture had relaxed but he kept on with his statue like posture which continued even as they rode the lift back to the penthouse. He took back to his office while Y/N stood at the entrance of the penthouse. Sighing, she took her shoes off and walked to the kitchen, grabbing a cup of iced water. Just like she used to do back in her old home, she stripped off her dress standing in a corset and petit coat that gave volume to the dress and sat on the balcony, drinking her glass of iced water.

Y/N knew better not to annoy Gwen or Sebastian, however, it feared her more to disobey Sebastian. He had enough power and men to dispose of her and make it look like an accident, however it wasn’t that which made her not want to disappoint him. It was something else.

She climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

It had been a long day.

tag list: @sideeffectsofyou @lilya-petrichor @xoxohannahlee @irespostthingsiwanttoseelater

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan/reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan/you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan/y/n #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan AU #mob!sebastian stan #mob boss!sebastian stan

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rpd-rookie · 5 years ago

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What Does The ‘S’ Stand For ? - Leon S. Kennedy x Reader

Summary: When you learn that Leon got the job you desperately wanted you decide to pay him a visit to congratulate him and finally put an end to the competition between the two of you in favour of some cooperation. Turns out, cooperation sometimes involve taking your clothes off.

Author’s Note: Some one-shot involving (pre) RE2 Remake Leon, a very sassy reader and some smut. I haven't written that genre in a while though. Hope I'm not too rusty. And by the way, if you notice some terrible grammatical mistakes please let me know (English is not my mother tongue). Anyway, I wish you'll like this story and as usual don't forget to like/reblog and tell me what you think about it.

Warning: SMUT and Language. You can also expect some humour and some fluff.

Also available on AO3

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” Wise words. But clearly Roosevelt never had to compete with Kennedy, and by Kennedy you didn’t mean John F. Kennedy but another Kennedy, one with less charisma yet better hair (hell, got to render unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s), Leon S. Kennedy - ‘S’ probably standing for “sucker” or “saint” in your opinion. After all, the guy was such a goody two-shoes. Teacher’s favourite. Neat and tidy top student. Perfect arbiter of right and wrong. And certainly, the only guy in the academy who didn’t stick his cock in Barbara Johnson’s pussy. Weird since she also had a president’s name just like him. Could have been the perfect opportunity for a horizontal presidential debate.

If it wasn’t clear already, you didn’t like Kennedy very much. But it was not for the reasons mentioned above. No, you could tolerate the fact that he was the embodiment of virtue and morals. What you could not tolerate though, was that he was better than you at everything. At fundamentals, at crime prevention and analysis, at counterintelligence, at physical agility, at shooting, at… well, you get the point. It infuriated you. He infuriated you. You never had the chance to beat him. Never. He was always top of your class and you were always close second. So of course, when you received the letter from the Raccoon City Police Department informing you that your application had been rejected and that the position had been given to someone else, you did the math. Only Kennedy could have taken that job away from you. After all, you had heard him talking about Raccoon City at lunch break quite a few times in the past weeks and each time he had sounded so excited – well, as excited as cannibalistic murders can make you of course. Truth is, you had also shown interest in this city the moment its terrible crimes hit the first page of the newspapers alongside the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, collecting every tiny article about it and telling your classmates what a thrilling experience it would be to work on that case. You had even imagined yourself wearing the blue uniform, RPD largely written on your chest, making a report about the rotting body of a camper found in the Arklay mountains.

You sighed, disappointment hitting you hard again. And with a hesitant hand, you knocked at the door in front of you somewhat ready to let go of the competition in favour of some cooperation. You barely waited a couple of seconds before Kennedy opened the door, a cordless telephone against his ear. He appeared genuinely surprised to see you there. “Call you back later, mom.” He said before hanging up the phone, still staring at you with astonished eyes. “Y/N.”

“Telling your mommy about the amazing job you just got?” Your question had sounded more barbed and curter than indented. Bitterness probably. Leon sighed. He knew exactly what you meant. “Look, if it is about Raccoon City…” “Of course it is about Raccoon City. Why do you think I’m here? To discuss fashion?” You entered his bedsit without asking and looked around you. So well organized and tidy, so military. Pff. Where were the greasy pizza boxes, the nasty underwear on the floor and the bin filled with used tissues all the other guys usually had?

You turned around to face him with a stone cold expression. “I’m guessing you knew I wanted that post.” “Yeah but…” You cut him off. You couldn’t care less about the thing he wanted to say. “I don’t blame you. Had I been in your place I would have apply for it too. Damn, I even applied without being in your place, so … The point is, I wanted to congratulate you – even if it hurts me to do so – and tell you that I’m glad this competition between the two of us is finally coming to end.” Leon briefly chuckled and kept an amused smile on his face. This wasn’t the kind of words he had expected from you. “Well, thanks I guess.” “You’re welcome” You dramatically put a hand over your heart “Gosh, it kills me to be so polite to you, Kennedy.” He retained a laugh and you approached him to slam a heavy blue binder against his - surprisingly strong - chest. Wow, muscles! “Take this.” You reluctantly said with a strangled voice as if you were a mother giving up her baby . “Take care of it. It’s the work of a lifetime … sort of.”

Leon furrowed his brows and opened the folder. Inside, there were all the articles you had collected about Raccoon City since the reveal of the incidents to the public eye plus some notes you had written during you personal late-night investigations. Leon skimmed through them. They were incredibly detailed and you could see how impressed he was. Damn, you wished you had your camera to immortalise this moment. “It won’t be of any use to me now. And it took me too much time to just throw it away so have it. Take it as parting gift.” “Wow, Y/N. I don’t know what to say.” He looked beyond happy. It made you smile. What the hell, Y/N? “Thank you, maybe?” You swallowed you smile back before he could notice, choosing to replace what could have been something sweet and nice by sarcasm. “Yes, sure.” He grinned. “Thank you.” You nodded. “I don’t want you to have a heart attack so you’re not obliged to say ‘you’re welcome’.” He teased you and as much as you wanted to find the joke lame, you surprisingly found it rather funny. “Good. Cause that would have been too much for my heart to take in a single day.” He smiled again and this time you couldn’t help but gaze. You were forced to acknowledge he was very cute, handsome even, certainly the kind of guy you would have willingly flirt with if it hadn’t been for the relentless competition between the two of you. “You know it’s nice to see you smile.” Your eyes slightly widened. You had been smiling the whole time? No! “That wasn’t a smile. That was a sneer.” You quickly replied, trying to prevent him from spotting the sudden panic in your eyes. “Sure.” But yeah, that was definitely a smile and right now your cheeks were burning.

You cleared your throat and looked back upon his face, hoping yours had found back its usual seriousness and scorn. “Well, gotta go. Good riddance, Kennedy. Good luck and try not to screw up.” You proceeded to the door, glad this conversation was over, but Leon was not ready to let you leave just yet. “You know, for me, there was never a competition between us.” You stopped and turned around. “What?” You frowned. “Of course, there was a competition.” He shook his head. “Not for me.” “Are you telling me that I have deprived myself of sleeping, fallen into coffee addiction and lost my entire social life for two years in the hope of finally beating you at a freaking test while you …” You could tell he was clearly trying not to laugh but his mocking grin was enough to make you blow a fuse. Well, a funny fuse … a funny desperate fuse “No! No!” You repeated, all irritated. “You’re kidding me!” He shrugged, playing all innocent. “Don’t fucking tell me you let me tilt at windmills!” He did. Bastard. Leon - Son of a bitch - Kennedy! That’s what the S stands for. You cursed in your head. “I tried to tell you …” He started to explain to defend himself. “When?” You harrumphed, almost shouting at him. “Well, many times but …” “Clearly not enough times.” Your sarcasm was back. “… each time you sent me packing” “I don’t do that.” You felt offended. “I can’t barely make a full sentence with you!” You opened your mouth to retort but he stopped you by pointing a finger that undeniably meant ‘Careful what you’re going to say’. So you stood there, perfectly still, mouth opened, realising that he was probably right. “You’re allowed to breath, you know.” He said as a response to your reaction but you didn’t know what to say anymore. Did you really spend all your time at the academy trying to win a non-existent competition? “Fuck.” You cursed, definitely dumbfounded.

Leon observed you, perplexed and wondering if you were going to stay rooted to the spot for the rest of the day. “Y/N” He waved in front of your face to pull you out from your thoughts but you barely noticed. “All that repressed sexual tension for nothing?” You asked yourself. Wait! Did you just say that out loud? Panic-stricken, you looked up at Leon and judging by the way he was staring at you – all ‘what the hell did she just say?’ – yep you did. “You didn’t hear what I’ve just said.” You waved your hand past his face, like a Jedi would do in a Star Wars movie, knowing perfectly it wouldn’t work but hoping that ridicule would make the situation less awkward and give you a chance to run away from his room. It was a failure. “Yes, I did.”

And just like that, Leon Saint Sucker Son of a Bitch – whatever the S stood for - Kennedy caught your face in his hands and kissed you with a passion that made you gasp against him. You tried to resist for a second but then you decided to let go. After all, you had nothing to lose. The study years could be considered over and soon Leon would be in Raccoon City analysing amazing crimes while you would be God-knows-where writing parking tickets. You would never see each other again. “Tell that to anyone, Kennedy and I’ll kick your gorgeous butt from here to Raccoon City.” You threatened, close to his mouth. “I won’t. Scout’s honour.” Leon Scout Kennedy? You shook your head (Stop being silly, Y/N!) before pushing Leon on the convertible sofa behind him.

You straddled him without waiting, definitely willing to let your sudden eagerness and your repressed desire for him get the better of you. You met his lips in a new heated kiss, your body pressed against his, craving for lustful friction. And by the way Leon was holding you tight you could tell you weren’t the only one. His tongue asked permission to enter your mouth and you happily granted it. Who would have thought that Leon Saint Kennedy was such a skilled kisser? Couldn’t he suck for once? Oh yeah, he could suck at your neck apparently. Damn. A moan escaped your throat and you felt Leon smirk against your skin. “You like that?” He asked, proud of himself. You instinctively arched your neck asking for more, your hands weaving into his soft hair. “It’s not that bad.” You acknowledged and he suddenly bit you in the nape of your neck. “What the fuck?” You shouted, surprised. Leon laughed and you caught his face to kiss him and bite his lips in retaliation. But judging by the kinky smile on his angelic face, he didn’t seem to mind. “You’re incorrigible.” You humoured. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.” He pecked your lips again and again and slowly began leaving a trail of light kissed down to your neck. “You’d better be. Aren’t you tired of making my life a misery?” You pretended to sulk as he kept on pressing his soft lips on your burning skin. You grabbed his chin, putting you thumb in his dimple and stared at him. How ridiculously hot he was right now with that arousal tinting his beautiful blue eyes and this dishevelled hair.

“What do you have in mind, Y/N?” Rhetorical question. He knew exactly what you had in mind. Hell, it was basically the same thing he had in his. “Stop playing coy and take your clothes off.” You whispered close to his face, your hot breath against his mouth, before pulling his bottom lip between your teeth “What about your silly competition?” He murmured back, his hands slowly falling along your sides. “I’m all in for cooperation right now. So are you gonna give me a hand …” You started unbuckling his belt. “…or do I need to do everything by myself?” His eyes fixed upon yours mischievous ones, gazing at you with awe. You could tell he was completely at your mercy. “I’ll give you more than a hand.” You smirked and allowed your hands to unbutton his jeans. “I thought so.” He lifted his rear and you pulled down his jeans along with his boxers, biting your lips at the view of his beautiful cock. Jesus Christ Kennedy, Mother Nature certainly had been kind to you.

You stood up to undress yourself as well, dropping all your clothes to the floor, your eyes watching at Leon’s hastening hands fighting desperately with the buttons of his shirt. Clearly, you weren’t the only one that was impatient in this room, or horny. You let him finish before taking your place back on his laps. His hard sex against your body, you slightly shivered, impatience eating you from within. “You’re gorgeous.” He said as he tucked few strands of your hair behind your ear. You couldn’t help but blush, not used to such compliments, and, as a consequence, in order to erase all sense of discomfort in you (if you could call it like that), you decided to focus your attention on his cock. You brushed his length with your fingertips, admiring it with envy and lust, excited to do more with it. It made Leon hiss and you looked up at him. His eyes were pleading you. Without looking away from the blueness of his look, you caught his penis in your hand and started pumping it gently. Leon’s eyelids flickered; his head hit the back of the sofa and his mouth opened slightly. He seemed thankful, relieved even. You continued your gesture, watching him melting underneath you, listening to his now ragged breath with delight. God, that was sexy. He was sexy. Leon Sexy Kennedy. Suited him.

You bit your lips and decided to venture in between his legs, kneeling onto the floor. “What are you …” Leon complained when he suddenly stopped feeling you on top of him. You cut him short by guiding his cock to your mouth to softly kiss the pre cum-covered tip “Holy...” The rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat and turned into a growl as you eagerly sucked the head of his cock like a Popsicle. You smiled and licked his length, staring at how ecstatic he looked from this angle. “You like that?” You winked as you quoted him and he laughed. “Women.” You engulfed his cock deep in your mouth and started bobbing your head. A new sigh of pleasure escaped his mouth and you felt him instantly relax on the couch. “God, you’re amazing.” You liked the compliment and to show your appreciation you decided to massage his balls as you kept on sucking him. You received a lustful grunt in response and soon Leon’s hand grabbed your hair to give you a quicker pace, almost making you gag on him. “Oh, sorry.“ What a gentleman! “That’s okay.” You smiled in a very naughty way. “I like it.” He chortled and you took back his dick in your mouth, welcoming it deeper to show him you didn’t mind some roughness. “You know, if you keep doing this I’m soon going to cum in your mouth.” You stopped, licked your lips and crawled back onto his lap. “That would be a shame.” You joked sarcastically, hands back in his hair “Got a condom?”

The way you pronounced the words, all smiley and adorable, made him laugh again. He pushed you softly to open the drawer of his nightstand and find your one-way ticket for cloud nine. “There!” He announced excited as he showed you the contraceptive. “But first …” He suddenly grabbed your ankles to pull you towards him, making you slightly yelp in the process. “There’s something I got to do” He lay down on the couch, spread your legs and immediately nestled his head right in between your thighs, making you instantly shiver. So, that’s what he got to do. You sighed when you felt his breath against you swollen clit but it was only when his tongue met your pink flesh that you realised how aroused you truly were. You were so wet. “Fuck, am I the one to blame for such a mess?” He joked but his mouth and tongue felt so good in between your thighs that you could only just moan and arch your back, begging for proper sucking and licking. He didn’t make you wait and gave you what you wanted as he started fondling your clit with his tongue. “Leon” That was the first time you where saying his first name and you got to admit, you liked the sound of it. “Yes, sweetheart?” “Keep going, please.” You begged and he sucked on your bud, gazing at you melting under his touch as he did. You grasped his hair when he finally let a finger enter your core. Fuck, he was good. You moved your hips instinctively against him and he added a new finger. It sank into you as easily as the first one and you cried out, finding it impossible to be discreet anymore. “Fuck, Leon. I want you. I want you now.” You begged. “Wait a second.” He asked, definitely loving your taste too much for him to stop just now. He pumped his fingers in your pussy, licking your juices greedily and you clenched your thighs around his head, feeling the imminence of your orgasm slowly yet surely approaching. “Now, Leon. Now! Please”

Leon obeyed this time and he quickly sat up and grabbed the condom he had left on the pillow next to him. He put the red wrapper between his teeth and tore it open. Then he rolled the condom down his length with both his hands. You watched him all the time, your fingers massaging your clit, finding him terribly arousing at this very moment.

Once ready, Leon bent over you to kiss you again and he tapped his hard cock on your hand to ask access to your humid entrance. You didn’t object of course and even spread your legs wider. Soon enough, you felt him slide in between your wet lips and then finally push slowly yet exquisitely inside of you. You closed your eyes as he did and drew a sharp breath once you felt him fully inside. You didn’t need time to adjust to him as if your body was meant for him. Guess Leon felt it too as he immediately took a quick pace and began pounding you. You let your hands wander on his smooth chest from his strong pectorals down to his divine abs and the chiselled V below his navel, finding him simply gorgeous. Then you grasped his hips, and nudge his rear with your ankles, pressing his pelvis closer to you to take him deeper, and started moaning his name again. His hands caught your bouncing breasts to play with your nipples, and you rapidly felt the strong wave of pleasure back in your core, ready to drown you. “Fuck, Leon!” His mouth met one of your teats and sucked on it with ardour. That was too much to handle. “I think I’m gonna cum.” You cried out. “Yeah?” You nodded, letting a tear of pleasure escape your eyes. “Cum for me then.” He didn’t have to say it twice and few seconds later, you dug your nails in his hipbones and screamed loudly as you clenched around his cock, finally coming undone under his thrusts.

Stunned, breathless and at the same time a bit embarrassed that you had already reached your orgasm, you let Leon kiss you soft lips with a smile on his face. “See, you reached the finishing line before me.” He humoured. “Fuck off.” You whispered, amused yet completely exhausted. He chuckled and pressed his lips against yours one more time before gently pushing you flat on your stomach. “I’m not done with you yet.” He whispered in your ear.

You moaned loudly when he thrust back into your wet core, pinning you down on the mattress that you ultimately grabbed tightly in order to stay in place. He started pounding you again, holding you by the hips, taking delight in watching your sweet butt bouncing against him as he was burying himself deeper than he had ever done before. “Jesus, Y/N!” He growled before spanking you. You gasped, astonished but in a good way. You had never thought he was that kind of guy. “Really, Kennedy? Spanking? That’s what the ‘S’ in your name stands for?” He laughed, still fucking you from behind. “I thought you would like it.” “Oh but I do. I just never thought it was your thing.” “You should stop taking me for a saint, Y/N.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead, brushing the strand of hair covering his right eye away and focused again on his movements. “It’s not my fault. It’s your baby face.” You confessed in between two moans. He brutally stopped and you wondered for a second if what you had just said had actually vexed him. “My baby face? Really?” He repeated in your ear with a smirk as he grabbed you by the hair. “Who’s been crying out my name the whole time?” Holy shit. You instinctively braced yourself and when he resumed his hammering you knew it was a smart decision. Leon started growling even more loudly as he slowed yet deepened his movements inside of you, his hand in your hair, using your body as leverage. He was almost aggressive but you moaned nevertheless, out of breath, feeling a new orgasm building inside of you. Really? You clenched around him, trying to hold your orgasm a bit longer, unwilling to give him the satisfaction to cum around him again.

When Leon’s hard pounding started to get sloppy you realised he was really close to his release. “Jesus, I’m almost there.” He admitted. You don’t know how you found the strength to push him on his back but you did. Sitting on top of him, you removed the condom, threw it carelessly onto the floor and started to jerk him off. “I want you to cum on me.” You confessed. A guttural moan vibrated in his throat and he let himself sprawl on the mattress, leaving you in complete charge of his pleasure. You grinded against his cock as your hand kept on firmly going up and down his length. It drove Leon crazy and you soon felt him throbbing in your grip. His breath became even more ragged and jerky and small spasms took control of his body. You angled his cock towards you and soon, a hot load of thick cum spurted on your stomach and breasts as Leon cursed and grunted between his gritted teeth. “Fuck, Y/N!”

You smiled and let go of his member, proud and satisfied of your work, looking at poor panting Leon who had a beautiful yet exhausted smile on his face. “You killed me, woman.” He joked and you briefly laughed. Then, you wiped his cum off your body with your fingers and brought them to your mouth, sucking them eagerly and swallowing the white seed looking right in Leon’s eyes. You had the feeling he would find it very hot. “Jesus Christ” Bull’s eye!

He circled you with his strong arms and pulled you against his chest. His heart was beating wildly and you allowed yourself to huddle a bit more against him to enjoy the melody. Post-coital cuddling session? Not sure that was a good idea but you decided to go for it and so did Leon as he chose to burry his nose in your hair and kiss the top of your head.

“Scott” He whispered sleepily. You looked up, wondering what he meant. “That’s what the ‘S’ stands for. Leon Scott Kennedy.”

Scott? You repeated in your head with a soft smile. Oh well, that didn’t sound so bad even though, right now, you preferred Leon ‘Stay’ Kennedy.

#leon s kennedy #leon kennedy #leon kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy x reader #leon scott kennedy #re2 remake leon #re2 remake #resident evil #fanfic #one shot

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chiseler · 3 years ago

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Tales of the Unexpected: SANTA CLAUS

Most of my life I’d been haunted by an image—five seconds from a film I could not name: Santa, in someone’s living room on Christmas Eve, fires a toy cannon at a demon’s ass. That’s all, but it stuck with me for decades. The only thing I was sure about was that it came from a film my father had taken me to see when I was four or five. There was snow in the theater parking lot.

It clearly wasn’t a typical holiday film, so as the years progressed I decided it must have been Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (co-starring Jamie Farr and Pia Zadora as martians), but I was mistaken. There are no demons in that movie. I asked my dad, but he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Then, as the universe would have it, when I was well into middle age the film was placed in my hands by someone who had no idea I’d spent much of my life looking for it. Seeing the film in its entirety for the first time in 40 years, I finally understood why things might have turned out the way they did.

When the conversation rolls around to bad Christmas movies, there’s of course a broad spectrum from which to choose. Given that nearly every Christmas movie ever made is insufferable to some degree, it’s generally easier, I’ve found, to break things down into categories that stretch from the simply godawful (Jingle All the Way) to the agonizingly painful (A Very Brady Christmas or that Marlo Thomas remake of It’s a Wonderful Life) to the merely baffling (An Ewoks Christmas). Of course there are some people who think they can bring the conversation to an abrupt end by pulling out Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the last word on holiday cinema. There’s simply nothing more to say.

Oh, but that’s far too simple. There’s another level out there. Something that reaches far beyond banal categorizations like “good” and “bad” and even “weird,” deep into the almost unfathomable territory of “brain damaging” and “utterly terrifying,” and a number of adjectives that have yet to be discovered. Films that cannot and should not be called “bad” no matter how easy it would make thinking for the smug hipsters in the Mystery Science Theater crowd. These are films that come from another plane, another universe, another way of thinking, and for that they remain fascinating, and cannot be so easily dismissed.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, K. Gordon Murray was an American film producer and distributor who made a decent living for himself by picking up the rights to foreign genre pictures (mostly from Mexico), dubbing them into English, and renting them to U.S. theaters. English-speaking audiences can thank Murray for The Brainiac and Robot vs.The Aztec Mummy.

In 1956 he bought the rights to a children’s holiday picture directed by René Cardona, a man better known for horror and exploitation pictures like Survive! and Night of the Bloody Apes. Instead of widespread distribution, Murray limited the film to short (two or three day) runs around the holidays, when the film would only be shown as a children’s matinee. In retrospect I have to wonder if he limited viewings that way because he knew what kind of effect the film would have on people.

Santa Claus sounds about as innocuous as they come. Who would even pay attention to a title like that? It’s only when you note the shrill, almost frantic tone of some of the taglines attached to the film that you begin to get some sense that there’s something else going on here—that this isn’t another Rankin/Bass production:

Bursting upon our BIG SCREEN in all the colors of the rainbow… a prize-winning blue ribbon treat for old and young alike! Here’s something for the whole family to see together!

Another tagline makes it sound even more ominous:

See All the Weird and Wonderful Characters of Make-Believe! The Fantastic Crystal Work-Room of the Happy Elves! The Fabulous Realm of the Candy-Stick Palaces!

Those families who weren’t scared away by those dire warnings were never the same again.

René Cardona

In Cardona’s vision, Santa (José Elías Moreno) lives in a cloud kingdom in space, positioned in a stationary orbit above the North Pole. Instead of elves, Santa has collected groups of children from all corners of the world—North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa. It’s unclear who these children belong to or if they’re in space willingly, but they open the film with a long recital of traditional songs from each nation.

Ten minutes later we cut to Hell. Although this happens in most Christmas movies, few do it so literally. There amid the flames, Satan informs a minor and bumbling demon named Pitch (José Luis Aguirre ‘Trotsky’) that he is to turn all of the children on Earth evil in order to anger “that old goat Santa Claus” and show the people of the world “who their true master is.”

We are then introduced to three storylines: a lonely rich boy whose parents neglect him, a poor girl whose single mother can barely support them both, and three young thugs. Behind each story, we hear Santa’s echoed laughter. Santa laughs through the entire film, often at scenes of misery and despair. It’s unclear why.

Finally and centrally, we see the core of Santa’s orbiting kingdom—an observatory equipped with a collection of surveillance devices that would put the NSA to shame. As the narrator (Murray himself) describes it:

This is Santa’s Magic Observatory. What wonderful instruments! The Ear Scope! The Teletalker, that knows everything! The Cosmic Telescope! The Master Eye! Nothing that happens on Earth is unknown to Santa Claus!

He’s not kidding, either. Santa can see anyone he chooses merely by thinking of them, listen to what they’re saying, even watch their dreams, and these are powers he abuses freely.

There is no reason to attempt to describe the plot any further. It’s not an issue. Visually, however, the film is a thing of deranged wonder, reminiscent of Japanese films that would be made ten or fifteen years later. It’s a world of remarkable and sometimes frightening imagination. The telescope features a large, roving eyeball instead of a lens. Santa’s sleigh is actually a giant wind-up toy, the living reindeer replaced with carousel reindeer made of white plastic. The color palate throughout the film (if you can find a decent print) is intense. And the film’s multiple dream sequences are, well, pretty jaw-dropping.

It’s also a remarkably subversive film—which intertwined both with the visuals as well as the director’s background, may be no surprise at all. Along with the kidnapped children he’s using as slave labor, the cannon he fires at the demon’s ass, and Santa’s often inappropriate laughter, which snakes throughout much of the soundtrack, there’s Merlin, another of Santa’s employees. Merlin runs a drug lab, and on Christmas Eve has just developed a “magic powder” that will “give people a sound sleep and fill them with wonderful thoughts and good intentions.”

Santa is perfectly willing to deliver babies to children who request little brothers or sisters, and one good little boy is set to receive “an atomic lab and a machine gun.” And then of course there’s the role of the demons here, in a world in which Santa and his toys have replaced Christianity.

It’s a film that’s often mocked by fools for its cheap sets and bad acting, without pausing to think about what’s really going on here—the kind of twisted, alien imagination at work, or the ideas that Cardona is sneaking in under their smug noses. It’s a deeply strange and disturbing work, a visionary work on a minuscule budget, and one that says more about the holidays than we may care to think about.

Maybe that’s why my dad has blocked it out of his memory, and why I spent a lifetime trying to track it down.

by Jim Knipfel

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ohdearhiddles · 5 years ago

Text

TITLE: Angel of Death

CHAPTER: 2/?

CH. SUMMARY: You tell Loki that you are a monster, and Loki tells you that he is one, too.

WORD COUNT: 3652 (Link to Ch. 1 )

AUTHOR NOTES/WARNINGS: mentions of death; So, I'm definitely going to edit this chapter eventually. Also I think I lied, this is definitely going to be a bit longer than 3 chapters. The more I think about the story, the more I want to add to it, so who knows how many chapters there will be. I hope you like it x (AO3 LINK)

Your feet felt impossibly heavy as you walked back to your apartment. The sun had just dipped over the horizon, painting the sky a magnificent orange, purple, and blue as it bid the day farewell. The streets were bustling at their usual speed, people weaving through one another like needles embroidering a ritualistic path in order to create something beautiful. These people, their lives were beautiful. You found yourself envious for the first time in a while, wishing that you could walk the streets as you used to. The unspoken wish to be free from whatever curse had befallen you was on the tip of your tongue.

You wanted to scream.

You wanted to cease to exist but exist all the same.

There was a point in time when you had believed that curses were things of fairytales and that if they were to exist in the real world, it certainly wouldn't happen to you. For your entire life, you felt as though you had lived in a way that would've made even the gods proud. You did right by others, and in return, the world did right by you. Yet here you were, paying for a crime you didn't commit and running into the law when you had meant no harm. Things like that made you wonder if gods really existed.

As you neared the apartment complex, your heart began to hammer in your chest. You were struck with the sudden realization that you had missed the "date" that Loki had planned for the two of you that evening; although, maybe it was for the better. Now the handsome gentleman would be able to see that he was better off in another woman’s presence rather than yours, and you would no longer need to worry about your lips ever touching him. No matter how many times you ran that thought through your mind, the weight on your shoulders didn’t go away. It was as if the world not only bestowed a curse on you, but now they handed you a rare specimen of a suitor that was barely out of your reach.

The world was cruel and the gods made fun of your every move.

You held your head up high, letting your mind wander to more pressing matters like how you were going to explain the lethal situation that all the men from that file had found themselves in. Would you spend the rest of your life constantly looking over your shoulder? Will they condemn you for your crimes? Or worse, would they take you away to live as a lab rat for the rest of your life?

From the corner of your eye, you saw your reflection on the glass window of a local shop. You stopped to stare at it, wondering if your reflection felt as bad as the both of you looked. The makeup you had put on had worn off from the countless times you had rubbed your hands over your face in distress since leaving the station. Glancing at the reflection of your hands, you pulled them up, analyzing your palms and then flipping them over to analyze the backs of them as well.

Were these the hands of the monster you had become?

Shaking your head, you turned back to the sidewalk. These thoughts were something you had thought many times over the past few years, and you had done what you could to keep them at bay. You had finally reached your building when you stopped in your tracks.

Sitting on the stairs, a bouquet of flowers at his feet, was Loki. His elbows rested on his thighs as he stared off into the distance. You were shocked to say the least. Not only had he witnessed you get into a police car, but he had sat down and waited for your return. The thought of him watching the sun set all on his own made you feel a tad guilty. He was a man that seemed to deserve more than a potential future convict as a date, and he definitely deserved more than a date that ditches him for an interrogation room.

His eyes met yours, a piercing gaze that you had matched many times before. Loki picked the flowers up from the stairs, standing to greet you. A sheepish grin appeared on your face at the sight of him. This was in no way romantic. In fact, a man that sits and waits for a date to come back from the police station is most likely insane, but who were you to care?

Loki held out the bouquet, his jaw clenching as he waited for you to take it. Your heart felt heavy at the unhappy expression on his face and you couldn’t help but let your eyes drift down to your feet in embarrassment.

“How long have you been sitting here?” You asked, eyes still trained on your shoes.

“Long enough,” he spoke, his voice still so confident despite his date for the night being driven away by law enforcement seconds before he arrived to pick her up. You felt his eyes following your every movement as you began to walk towards the entrance of the complex. It felt intimidating how he was looking at you; it reminded you of when you had first encountered him. His presence itself was intimidating, but when his eyes met yours, you always felt so small, so incomparable.

Loki followed your lead, walking only a couple steps behind as you began the ascent to your home. He was quiet and so were you, but this silence was different than usual. Sure, the two of you didn’t always talk when you met. Sometimes you just sat in the presence of one another, enjoying the feeling of not being alone in the universe - a soft, peaceful silence. This silence, however, was sharp like the finest blade forged by the heavens. It was filled with the strength of every secret hidden between the two of you, strong enough to bring down giants and break through mountains. It was an invisible blade, threatening you to break down the walls you had built or else it would do the job for you.

It wasn’t until the door shut behind Loki that he spoke again, “Care to explain?”

His tone wasn’t as intimidating as it was before. Perhaps he read your body language and understood that you weren’t in a good state of mind after such an encounter, or perhaps he had just gotten over his anger and realized that you didn’t willingly ditch him. Either way, you were happy that he didn’t seem too angered by your sudden disappearance.

“It’s a long story,” you responded, walking over to your sofa to sit down. Once again, Loki followed.

“I have quite a lot of time.”

At his statement, you looked up. His green eyes pierced through yours, trying to decipher the thoughts running through them. Loki sat down next to you, turned slightly to face your distraught self, as he cleared his throat, “The woman I was meant to accompany this evening seemed to have had some unexpected business to take care of.”

You smiled at his words, knowing that the man before you was only trying to make you smile. He was quite good at it; in fact, you had smiled more in his presence than you had smiled in the past 6 years, and for that, you were both thankful and terrified. Loki’s presence terrified you. At the beginning of the night, you had told yourself that this would be the last time you met with him. Now, as you tried to tell yourself the same thing, it was met with downright rejection.

Loki had willingly stayed, waiting for you to return to receive an explanation. So, he was quite possibly insane, but part of you wondered if his kind of insanity would mix well with your own. Since you were a woman that killed others with whatever venomous talent you possessed, maybe insanity was what you needed in your life. But when has insanity ever been the cure for anything?

Sighing, you shook your head, “I don’t think you want to hear it, Loki. It’s not exactly a good first impression.”

“So, it’s a secret?” A grin replaced the more concerned look he had only a minute or so before. The grin was gorgeous. Of course, everything about this man was gorgeous, and for a split second you thought: If he really is insane, then insanity has never looked so good.

It was true. He was by no means an earthly kind of attractive. His long black hair, sharp jawline, and lean figure along with the English accent made him seem otherworldly.

“A secret better left unsaid,” you responded, nodding.

“Oh, but what’s the fun in that?” Loki taunted. His tone seemed more playful, as if the barrier you had placed between the two of you was more of a fun obstacle course than a warning sign that said ‘No Trespassing.’ Part of you wanted to urge him to break down the walls while the more logical side told you not to trust a man that had fun poking at secrets. You were always the type to ignore logic, though.

As Loki continued to grin childishly, you turned to face him completely. You gazed into his emerald colored eyes, hoping to find security and a place in which you could safely put your trust. There was no such place in Loki’s eyes; there was something much better. You couldn’t quite put it into words or coherent thought what you saw in his eyes when they met yours this time. It was as if light and dark had met and formed a fine line in which the two of you could walk upon, a grey area where all right and wrong needn’t exist. If there was a paradise for those who had fallen so far from the grace of god and man alike, Loki knew where it was. His eyes held the promise of acceptance, a promise he, too, seemed to yearn for.

When you looked away, there was no further decision making needed. If he was meant to turn his head the other way when you fully opened your heart to him, then that was what you would have to accept. But just like the day when he first sat next to you, there was something in him that made Loki seem sad, vulnerable, and even relatable. Although he looked as if he had just walked down from a pedestal made of jade and gold, he also seemed as though he had walked through hell and back.

If there was one individual to grace this planet that would not run away, it would be him.

“Can I trust you?” You asked him, testing the waters.

Loki paused, seemingly contemplating your words. His eyebrows furrowed and his grin vanished, and you wondered if he was already thinking about backing out. Now, if you had been able to read minds, you’d know that it was quite the opposite. Inside Loki, a terrible war raged on.

Trust. A small yet powerful word that could start or end the most destructive of battles. Could you trust him? Was there anyone in all the nine realms that was truly trustworthy?

His jaw was clenched as he stared at you, and you wondered what was going through his mind. The silence between you continued for what felt like a century before he spoke up.

“Yes,” he finally answered, nothing more and nothing less. Nodding, you sat up straighter, attempting to get a hold of your nerves. This was it - the moment of truth.

So, you began, “I’m not sure how to explain, but I’m not normal.”

Loki didn’t react. He just sat there, his eyes trained on your hands that were attempting to break free from the skin covering them. The silence only urged you on.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t considered normal until I was about 21,” you continued. “It started when I was 16 and people around me started dying. I didn’t understand why, but it was a pretty big topic back then. My high school boyfriend passed away from a car accident, but we found out later he had died before impact, which was why he had crashed in the first place.”

“The next year, when I was 17, my dad passed away. The doctor said it was probably his heart, but-” The words were caught in your throat. If you said it now, you would have to fully admit that you had killed your own father. However, even you knew that there was no going back anymore. By now, you had already revealed that the deaths most likely had something to do with you, and that alone was enough to incriminate you if Loki chose to hand you over to the police.

The feeling of a cold hand enveloping your own caused you to flinch. From the corner of your eye, you watched Loki’s eyes widen at your surprise pulling his hand back almost immediately. “It was me.”

“What was?” He asked, eyes trained on the palms of his hands.

“My father, his death, it was my fault.” You admitted, the feelings of guilt rushing through you like an unforgiving wind. Loki’s eyes snapped up to look at you, his expression serious now as he spoke, “It was not your fault.”

“No,” you countered, “It was. My father, my ex boyfriend, the men I saw throughout college, it was all me. It wasn’t until I watched the news one day that I even realized that the city saw their deaths as a string of murders. It all clicked. The deaths, the unanswered phone calls, and the rumors that people needed to stay away from me - it all made sense. I wasn't just a bad omen, I was killing people. By the time I was 21, I had killed 11 men and I was being called the city’s Angel of Death - a cold-hearted murderer.”

“Did you kill those men?” Loki asked, his voice unwavering. It was almost as if death did not phase him in the slightest, and for a brief second you were thankful that he was not scared of you or what you had said.

“Did you not hear me?” You retorted, standing from your spot on the sofa. “They call me the Angel of Death.”

Loki stood as well, his expression hardening at your words. He loomed over you, his presence once again becoming much more intimidating than you would have liked. “I heard you, but perhaps you aren’t listening. I’m asking a rather important question.”

He took a step closer before speaking once more. “Did you, Y/N, kill those men?”

Your eyes began to water, tears of pain and guilt flooding your body and soul. There was no turning back; this was you, revealed. This was vulnerability. This was trust.

“No,” you said, tears beginning to fall. “I didn’t mean to.”

The tears kept falling as Loki took the final step to close the distance between you two. His arms wrapped around your waist, his chin resting on the top of your head as he calmed you with the gesture. Normally, this type of action made you feel suffocated; however, coming from him, it was like a warm blanket of security had just tightened its grasp on you. The words Loki whispered next set fire to your rabid thoughts, “I believe you.”

You pulled away in that instant, eyes turning cold, “Believe me?”

“Yes, I believe that you did not mean to kill those men.”

“But I killed them. Intentionally or not, their blood is on my hands and the police will come for me,” you cried, realization dawning on you. This was no time to be comforted by the hands of a ner stranger. In this moment, you were a key suspect in a string of crimes that would lead to your family disowning you, your friends hating you, and every good deed you had done to be erased from the face of this earth. You were dangerously close to being another killer on the long list of individuals to curse at the night sky about.

“You said it yourself - you did not kill those men.” Loki reassured, his determination matching yours. His hands were at his sides, clenching and unclenching with every other word he said.

“I did,” you whispered as a reply. The unspoken horror had never been repeated so many times in one night, and you had never heard yourself say the words aloud until now. Every life you ended, every death you had caused hammered down on you, weighing on you like rain water in a cloud. You were darkening, threatening to burst with a downpour of storms until you flooded all that your shadow touched. Your thoughts began to consume you, eyes going dark as Loki stood before your stiff body. His words floated in your mind: I believe you.

“I’m a monster,” you stated as if it were fact.

“You are not,” Loki countered your remark, fighting back. “I have seen many monsters, and you are not one of them.”

“You’ve seen monsters?” You asked, eyebrows raising in a mocking way. Part of you was genuinely curious while the other part of you wanted to scream at him for trusting you even in the slightest. “I just told you that the blood of 11 men is on my hands, and you, you say I’m not a monster?”

Loki didn’t respond at first. He stood quietly, eyes staring off into the distance, and for a moment you thought that you had won the argument. That is, until he spoke again, “If you were to know the things I have done, you would think much kinder of yourself.”

Curiosity. What a peculiar trait curiosity is. The trait of being curious seemed to break through even the toughest armors and most foolproof disguises. It was a fluid trait that demanded its rightful place as being the most dominant feeling an individual could possess. So, despite the current situation and the weight of the world resting on your shoulders, a small childlike piece of you wanted to know what the raven-haired man meant. What horrors had he seen? What had he done?

“What does that mean?” You questioned, watching for his reaction.

Loki continued to stare off as if there were demons wandering your halls and he had the duty of looking for them. Little did you know that the demons were not so far off that they had to be sought after. No, the demons were right there in the eyes of the man you had somehow grown attached to in the past few weeks.

“It simply means that you are not the only person in this room that has done the unspeakable,” he responded, voice strained as if he had struggled tremendously to even say the words. You froze, unable to process what he meant by what he had said. If Loki was also a murderer, that means he would have done so with the full intention of killing someone. Unless he was like you, cursed by fate to send those you love to an early grave.

Somehow, you wished it was the latter.

“And what does that mean?” You repeated, growing more wary of the fact that you didn’t know much about this man at all. Long talks in a public park is quite different than allowing a man into your home, and this was beginning to seem like a bad idea.

“You are not a monster no more than I am an innocent.”

“So, you’re saying that you’ve killed people.”

Those emerald eyes met yours once again, fear radiating from his gaze as he realized that he, too, can no longer take back what he has said. The confidence and intimidating aura that once covered his entirety now seemed something of the past. The walls were coming down, and both of you had exposed yourselves, more vulnerable than either of you were comfortable being.

“I am saying that I have done things I am not proud of, but I am working on fixing that,” Loki said.

“What did you do?” You questioned, finding it only fair that he share his secrets since you had shared yours. However, if you had been in your right mind, you would know that the world does not work that way. One secret does not equal another being told. Some secrets are too big, revealing much more than one hidden detail. This you would have seen in the mixed expression on Loki’s face as you had asked.

He seemed to take in a large breath before speaking, “I have done many things, but I believe you will be familiar with the memory of a god trying to take over your city.”

Neither of you spoke for a moment as the words floated through the air with no destination.

“I’m an idiot,” you said, breaking the silence. The words Loki had spoken were rattling around in your mind like dice during an astounding game of Yahtzee. “Loki.”

He raised an eyebrow at you, waiting for you to continue to speak.

“You’re the god. You’re not just named after the Norse God of Mischief; you are him. You attacked this city, you-” You stopped speaking as you came to a full understanding of what he had meant when he said he had done things he was not proud of. People had died; so many lives were lost because of him. Looking up, you met his cautious gaze, eyes filled with worry as he stood in front of you with his metaphorical armor laid at his feet. All the cards had been played, and there was no turning back for either of you.

“Do you still believe you are the only monster here?”

(Chapter 3)

#loki laufeyson #loki #loki x reader #loki x you #loki x mutant!reader #mutant!reader #mutant powers #loki imagine #loki imagines #mcu imagines #ohdearhiddles imagines #ohdearhiddles imagine

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oleanderblume · 5 years ago

Text

So I did a thing

I really gotta calm my aas down but I'm not so who cares.

Spinel oneshot derived from a headcanon of mine where she collects stuffed animals, this little story being her first introduction to the concept of stuffed animals thanks to Connie and Steven's considerations

TOY STORE

Steven grabbed Spinel's hand, pulling her up from the couch she was sitting on, smiling excitedly at his own plans.

"Connie and I wanted to take you somewhere that we think you might like." He said enthusiastically.

The pink gem blinked, confused by his sudden joy at whatever he was intending to do, but the thought of being included- no, being invited, and even being wanted by them made her heart melt.

Spinel blushed, trying to hide the overzealous joy she felt, despite it being tinged with a hint of guilt.

"I'd love to." She mumbled softly, a weak smile on her face from the warm and fuzzy feeling in her chest.

Steven grinned, pulling her out the door to where Connie stood just below the porch.

"She coming?" Connie called, attempting to hide her laughter. Steven nodded, leading his friend down the stairs to join them.

Spinel eyed each of them, wondering what they could possibly have in store for her. Was it bad? They might play a trick on her- they probably were saying a trick.

No.

She shook the thought from her head, assuring herself that her friends wouldn't do such a thing. They were kind, and only ever showed her kindness, save for the one time she tried to kill the earth and all of them with it.

The troupe made their way toward the inner parts of Beach City, further into to town than Spinel had ever been. It was odd, in her eyes. Generally anything Steven had to show her was somewhere along the boardwalk, not further into the city, further into unfamiliar territory.

Connie stopped, staring up at a large building with large English letters on them.

"We're here!" She turned to Spinel, a wide grin on her face, expecting the gem to be erratically excited about the place she had brought her.

Spinel simply stood scratching her head, still trying to comprehend what exactly was being shown.

"A building?" The gem cocked her head, then scratching her chin and quizzically looking over the building. "A building with...letters on it?"

She turned to Steven who nearly smacked himself in the face at her words. The boy held back laughter as he attempted to explain.

"It's a toy store." He chuckled, pointing at the giant letters that read Smiley's Toys. The pink gem nodded, still lost on the concept of this invitation.

"What's a toy?" She asked, causing Steven to let out a gentle sigh.

"It's something you play with- like a friend," he grabbed her hand, leading her to the entrance. "Come on, we'll show you."

Spinel glanced back up at the giant letters before giving into his request and following the two of them into the building. She stared at rows and rows and rows of tiny replicate humans, and human infants and human vehicles, and mostly human life things. None of which were interesting to her.

"Why would I like this big building full of small human things" she muttered, half out of irritation, and half out of confusion at her friend's logic.

Connie answered this time, stopping to pull out a small wallet.

"Well, we figured since you don't like being alone, you would like something to keep you company." She replied, handing the wallet to Steven who opened it and counted the paper inside.

He turned to Spinel, holding up the wallet with a soft smile.

"I convinced Connie to help me get you something," he turned away, gesturing to the 'toys' widely. "So pick whatever you want, you can have it!"

Spinel's cheeks burned, they were getting her- of all people, a gift? She didn't deserve this, not after what she'd done. The gem looked away, her eyes drifting around the store at all the 'toys'.

"Steven," she paused, unsure if she would sound ungrateful. "I don't think- whaAt is that."

The gem's eye caught a small furry thing far off in one of the aisles, causing her to completely lose track of what she was going to say. Her eyes shined as she slowly made her way toward it, leaving behind her friends.

She walked around a couple aisles before following one down to its end where what seemed like thousands upon thousands of small furry things sat on the shelves in perfect little rows.

Steven and Connie ran to catch up with her, somewhat taken aback that the gem willingly left their side. Steven glanced at Connie, then looked at Spinel who seemed entirely mesmerized by the hundreds of stuffed animals before her.

"Those are stuffed animals, they are great to cuddle when you're upset." He answered, somewhat delayed, even though the gem hadn't spoken since her initial question. Her mouth snapped shut, and she reached for a little black rabbit with a white heartshaped stomach. Picking it up in her hands.

It was soft. Incredibly soft. Fantastically soft, it had shiny little eyes and fluffy ears and a fluffy tail and it was so, so soft.

Spinel pulled the toy close to her, pressing it against her gem and squeezing it gently. A very tiny gasp emerged from her lips and tears began to form in her eyes.

"I want this." She said, almost inaudible. Steven leaned closer, reaching out his hand, noticing how upset she seemed.

"Spinel, is everything okay?" His voice sounded concerned, she was prone to breakdowns, but a stuffed rabbit?

The gem bent her knees, slowly dropping to the ground, rubbing her face into the little plush toy, wiping her tears on it and clinging to it tightly.

"I want this one." She murmured, loud enough for the two of them to hear. Steven shared a glance with Connie before smiling contently at the gem's response.

"You can have it." He said, taking a step closer. Spinel's head bolted up, she sniffled loudly, a wavering joyful smile on her face and tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Really?" She squeaked, trying to keep her tearful smile through her little sniffles. Steven nodded, somewhat unprepared for the level of enthusiasm in her voice.

"Of course." He replied tentatively. The gem immediately stood up, clutching the rabbit close to her and wrapping her arm around both Steven and Connie, pulling them into a tight embrace as she murmured with hysterical joy. She didn't even seem to be making actual words, just odd noises that somehow managed to convey her happiness.

"Thank you! Thank you so much!" She cried, finally letting go of them and staring at her new companion.

"We should probably pay for it first." Connie laughed, pulling the gem from her content thoughts.

Spinel held the rabbit close to her, nuzzling it with her chin with a small happy smile on her face as she walked next to Connie and Steven while they made their way back home.

It wasn't a trick, she thought to herself, breathing in the soft strawberry scent of the toy. It wasn't a bad game, they really, actually wanted to get something- for her.

And they did.

Steven crawled out of bed, feeling the need to use the restroom, and made his way downstairs to do so. After washing his hands he paused, glancing back at the door to the infinity room, maybe he should check on Spinel, in case she was having another nightmare.

He opened the door and stepped into the soft and cloudy pink room, searching for his friend.

She lay on the floor, sound asleep with the stuffed rabbit squeezed tight it her grasp, held close to her face.

She mumbled, pulling the toy closer to her.

Her brow furrowed somewhat before softening with a content little smile.

Steven relaxed at the sight, smiling at the peaceful sleeping gem before silently stepping out of the room.

He has happy, that he found her something she could always keep close.

And happy that she was so happy with it.

He made his way up to his room, stepping onto his bed to grab one of his own cuddly friends, and silently entered the room where the pink gem slept once more, gently setting MC Bear Bear next to her hand. Spinel reached out, feeling the small bear's furry arm and wrapped her hand around it, pulling it close to her and nuzzling her face into it.

Steven nodded, wiping a tear that was forming from his eye before heading out of the room again.

Content with the days events.

#steven universe fic #steven universe the movie #stevenfic #steven universe #spinel #fanfiction #oneshots #fluff

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making-more-sense-than-google · 5 years ago

Text

Map Of The Soul: 7 (Ver. 4)

The Notes: English Translation

Seokjin 11 April YEAR 22

I opened my eyes once again in the pouring sunlight. Beyond my eyelids, I could still see the burning flames in the container, as well as Namjoon’s dead body. I failed again this time. I raised my arm to cover my eyes and I thought, “Is there any way that I can save Namjoon?” I looked back on the events of September 30th. I didn’t feel anything in particular. I wasn’t impatient, nor afraid. Ever since the first incident, I’ve been sent through countless loops. However, I still don’t know why I’m going through these loops, or what I can do to fix this mess. No—even more than that—I couldn’t even find that ‘Map Of The Soul’, the clue that’s supposed to end all this. Map Of The Soul. The first time I heard of it was after several failures. “You need to find the Map Of The Soul. It will put an end to all of this.” Map Of The Soul? What even is that? I kept asking that, but I never got any answers. Instead, I was left with these words. “Hints always come at a price.” I could see Namjoon’s gas station in the distance. I flipped on my blinker and changed lanes. I could only think of one thing. I had to stop the incident of September 30th—I had to close the loop. I was moving toward that singular goal. Even if there was a problem with that process, even if someone was hurt or alienated, there was nothing I could do about it. If I let myself dwell on those things or I get overwhelmed, I’ll never be able to achieve my goal. What was even more important than saving everyone was making sure that I myself was able to survive and escape. That was the lesson that those endless loops had taught me.

1 February YEAR 22

There was an announcement that we’d be landing soon. I couldn’t see the clouds outside the window yet. I thought back to my time in LA. The ocean was lovely. Not much else came to mind. The plane made a big turn and the city caught my eye. Returning to Songju was so sudden. My father had called me. “Come back,” he said. Of course, there must’ve been a reason for it. My father isn’t the type of person to make a move without reason. But he wouldn’t bother telling me what that reason was. I didn’t ask either, since I knew I’d realize when I arrived. But then again, maybe coming back to Songju hadn’t been so sudden after all. Maybe everything had already been decided, and I was the only one left in the dark. “Is that our house?” I heard the kid sitting in front of me ask. I looked out the window. “No, silly, our house is across the river,” a father-like voice responded. “Home,” I thought to myself. It didn’t feel like I was going home. Then again, LA didn’t feel like home either. LA and Songju. Those two places were where my address was posted, but they weren’t my home.

Yoongi 13 June YEAR 22

Jungkook’s words sprung to my mind. “It’s because I like your music, hyung,” he had said. “It’s because when I hear you play piano, I start crying. I’ve wanted to die several times a day, but when I heard you play piano... I want to live. So, yeah. That’s why. I’m telling you, your music reminds me of my own heart.” Drunk and sprawled out on the floor, I thought of Jungkook’s expression as he repeated those words, over and over.

2 August YEAR 22

I sent the music file to Seokjin, laying down immediately afterwards. I had found something written on the border of my sheet music from the old classroom. “If we’re together, we can smile,” it said. It wasn’t my handwriting. I remembered something from a long time ago. A day filled with fog. For whatever reason, Seokjin and I found ourselves crossing the playing field together. We were awkward with each other. I shoved my hands in my pockets, purposefully walking slow. I was hoping he’d leave me behind, but he’s not that kind of person. Instead, he tried to make clumsy small-talk with me, but every time he did, it made everything that much more awkward. I’m not quite sure why, but I ended up asking, “Hyung, when was the last time you truly smiled?” He didn’t answer, I didn’t ask anymore. “If we’re together, we can smile.” This sentence was most likely the answer to all my questions. I wasn’t sure if Seokjin had written it or not. But in the end, I didn’t need to be sure. The melody on the music sheet was childish. It was only two years ago, but my music from back then was insufficient and overly-aggressive. It didn’t flow smoothly, nor sound beautiful. When I think back to highschool, I only think of getting drunk and stumbling around, but it wasn’t like every single day had been like that. I stayed up all night polishing up my music from back then, and I finally gave it a name. “If we’re together, we can smile.”

Namjoon 25 August YEAR 22

I collapsed to the floor. The inside of the steel-plated container was already so hot, I could barely open my eyes. I looked at my surrounding, a frown on my face. It had been 10 minutes since I told him to wait up, saying I’d be going out to buy some ramen. I heard a cough. When I turned around, I saw Woo-chang crouched further inside. I doused a blanket in water, wrapping it around his body. I pointed out the window. “We’re gonna have to jump out of there,” I said. “Woo-chang. You can do it, right?” Outside the door, the crimson flames were growing stronger. I grabbed Woo-chang’s hand tightly. “We’re gonna jump on three,” I told him. “One, two—” At that moment, something fell in front of the door. The materials piled next to the container seemed to be collapsing in the flames. Sparks and dirt flew around in the dust. Woo-chang and I stumbled back, shocked. In less than an instant, our exit was blocked.

18 July YEAR 22

I stared up at the building. They had a few lights on, scattered about here and there. Maybe it was because it was near city hall, but there were lots of signs for accounting firms and offices. On the highest floor of the building—the 5th one—all the lights were turned on. For the past few weeks, Taehyung and I have climbed all of Songju’s tallest buildings, looking out from the tops. We weren’t even sure what we were looking for. Our only clue was Taehyung’s dream. In that dream, he saw canned coffee and a four leaf clover. With those two clues, we went up and down buildings all night long. Some days, it rained. We brought umbrellas in the beginning, but these days, we just let it come. We’d found ourselves caught up in some disputes because of it. One time, while we were soaking wet and walking up the stairs, we were mistaken for ruffians and kicked out of the building. The fence on the roof was usually locked up tight, and we couldn’t see anything from the landing of the staircase. I looked up at the building again. “Will this be what we’re looking for in the end?” I wondered. There was a familiar name etched onto the door. Office of Congressman Kim Chang-jun. “Who’s that?” Taehyung asked. I looked back at him. “You don’t know?” Taehyung looked back at me, his gaze pure and innocent, completely unknowing. Sometimes, I feel at a loss when it comes to Kim Taehyung. There are some things that seem impossible not to know, yet Kim Taehyung boldly stated that he didn’t know them. Without hesitation, Kim Taehyung would look at the things that I was too scared to look at. He would also willingly reach out to grab someone’s hand, even when no one else would. “It’s Seokjin’s father,” I answered him.

Hoseok 24 July YEAR 22

“Seokjin, can’t you say something to your dad? You know, hyung. You know what that place means to me. That orphanage is like a home to me. And if the orphanage isn’t there, all the kids that live there will end up getting separated. Even if they redevelop the area, they should leave the orphanage out of it.” Words just slipped out of my mouth without explanation as I walked into the container. Everyone was looking at me with shocked eyes. Seokjin hyung was the only one whose expression remained unchanged. I was nearly crying, but hyung just looked at me as if it were nothing. “Everything’s already been decided. There’s nothing I can do.” Every word that my hyung was saying reached me very slowly. I could see that each of those words drew a precise line between me and Seokjin. Hyung belonged to a decisive world, and I belonged to a world where I couldn’t even stand up against those decisions. I thought that I was Seokjin’s friend, but now the thought occurred to me that maybe people like us couldn’t be friends in the real world. I was angry at him. I shouted at him, asking how he could be like this, and I begged him to help. But I guess I already knew. All of that was just noise. There was nothing I could do. The words that I said, the anger I showed—it wasn’t meant for hyung. It was meant for myself. It was for me, who could do nothing. For me, who was nothing.

31 July YEAR 2

My first impression of Hagok was that it was similar to Songju, just a little more lively. I fell behind the people rushing to get off the platform, walking leisurely. It was unlike me to move all slowly like that. But I was so slow that I was almost a burden to the flow of people around me. I was acting like someone who had promised to not do anything that felt like Jung Hoseok. I didn’t pay attention to the people around me, I just went on my way. I ate all the spicy foods that I didn’t usually eat, and when I paid, I didn’t tell the the cashier that the food was delicious. When there was no one around me, I even spat on the road. I followed the map on the internet to the location that the store was supposed to be opened. It was the first floor of a strip mall near a highschool. Next to it, there was a stationary shop and a 24 hour kimbap joint. It was almost funny how similar it was to the two star burger place in Songju. I looked around, wondering where I should be looking for a house if I was really going to move here. As I was glancing around, I bumped into someone. “Oh, I’m sorry—” I started to say automatically, but I stopped myself. I didn’t really need to, but I hardened my gaze, looking at the person critically. “Look where you’re going,” I said. The Jung Hoseok of Hagok was a ruthless jerk and a crazy person, as well as a fool who did whatever he wanted 24 hours a day. That illusion lasted for all of five seconds. “Hoseok hyung, that’s you, right?” That’s when I realized I knew that face.

Jimin 18 July YEAR 22

I killed my time by wandering around the nearby convenience store. It was at the tail-end of the Songju Middle School. I used to ditch school and secretly head over this way, and I would wait for my hyungs in a small park across from the shop. I checked my surroundings. It had been a while since I’d found myself in this neighborhood, but not much had changed. I recalled that Yoongi hyung’s and Jungkook’s house was nearby. As I glanced around, I saw some graffiti-looking artwork on the wall of an alleyway to my right. It looked like something Taehyung might’ve done. I walked toward it. Without really realizing it, I stopped in front of the drawing. It was someone’s face, devoid of warmth and scribbled out with rough, black lines. I say ‘someone’, but I knew exactly whose face it was. I knew that face’s owner. It was Seokjin hyung. As soon as I thought of hyung, another person’s face overlapped it. No matter how I looked at it, they weren’t alike at all. Yet, they were. They had the same eyes. Soulless eyes. That was when I realized. I knew who I needed to find.

12 August YEAR 22

I hugged the trembling younger me. I could feel my damp body and my heart that was beating too quickly. I spoke while stuttering, “Wait just a little longer. When you get a little older, you’ll meet some good friends. With those friends, you’ll become a better person. If you can wait until then, everything could be okay. So, just have a tiny, miniscule bit more strength.” When I finished speaking, I hugged myself tighter. I was crying. I couldn’t hold it anymore, so I just cried. I wondered how much time passed. When I opened my eyes, the younger me had disappeared. I stood up, rubbing my eyes and looking up at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud in the clear afternoon sky, and everything around me was quiet. I saw the arboretum’s exit in the distance. There wasn’t a single trace of rain.

Taehyung 23 July YEAR 22

We went to the middle of the classroom. I shined my phone flashlight on the old desks, chairs and rolled up event placards. The classroom that no one entered anymore seemed older than ever. I checked my surroundings. I wonder what happened here. Jimin was crouching by the far wall, and Yoongi hyung was perched on the piano bench. Namjoon hyung was writing something on the window with his finger. “Reminds me of highschool. Since we’re here in the middle of the night and all,” Namjoon spoke after a long time. “Highschool?” Yoongi said, sneering a bit. “No thanks, I’ll pass.” Namjoon started talking. “Why does the world look like this? This world... It isn’t something we created. It was already like this when we got here. But why do we get thrown into this world without any means to survive?” Just then, Jimin sat up a little. “Yo, look over here,” he said. “This is Seokjin hyung’s dad’s name.” We walked to where Jimin was pointing. Hidden among the scribbles on the wall, there was a few names. Everyone’s flashlights illuminated one particular name. Jimin pointed again, saying that there was another one. “It’s the guy from the psyche ward,” he said. “I don’t know the others, though.” Yoongi pointed to another name. “Choi Gyu-ho. That’s the guy from the missing person’s case, right?” Underneath the names, there was a message that Namjoon had written. ‘Everything started here.’

24 July YEAR 22

I wonder how long I’d been sitting there. I saw someone walking out into the 3rd floor hallway. They were pretty far away, so I couldn’t see their face very well, but I could tell that it was a slim, middle-aged woman. She rested her arms on the handrail, gazing down at the playground. Then she lit up a cigarette. The lighter’s flame flashed brightly and then disappeared. Cigarette smoke floated up into the blue, early morning air. I looked up at her without moving an inch. Everything around us grew brighter, probably because of the rising sun. The woman was still leaning against the handrail, her posture staying the same. One cigarette was already burnt to the tip, so she pulled out one more. I wondered if she had seen me. I was far enough away that she wouldn’t have been able to see me very well, but I still wondered what she might’ve thought about seeing a guy sitting on a playground swing at this hour. I supported the swing with all the strength in my arms and legs so that it wouldn’t creak. I kept seeing the cigarette light flare and wane, over and over again. The sun was rising. The woman lit her last cigarette, as if to greet the sunrise. Then she turned around and disappeared back inside. I counted all the doors in the hallway one-by-one, starting from the left. 304, 305, 306. That was the door to my mom’s house.

Jungkook 13 June YEAR 22

I had a dream. In that dream, I was floating in the air above my hospital bed, looking down at a different me lying there. The me in the bed seemed to be sleeping. I wondered what kind of dream the sleeping me was having, seeing as his eyelids were twitching erratically. All of a sudden, his eyes flew open. Our gazes met. The next thing I knew, I was laying the the bed. I dreamed of the night of the accident. The headlights formed into a moon, and then they changed suddenly into marble-like green and blue lights. I opened my eyes and saw another version of myself floating in the air above. I met eyes with the floating me. Our gazes overlapped and our consciousness reversed. I was the me floating in the air, and then the one lying in bed, switching back and forth over and over again. The speed of the overlap and reversal was getting faster. I got dizzy and felt like vomiting. I woke with a scream. The sheets were soaked in sweat. I tried to catch my breath, still feeling nauseous. Suddenly, something that I’d forgotten sprung to mind. Someone’s voice. Living will be more painful than dying. Is that okay with you? Mom called in the doctor to check my condition. The doctor said that since I was recovering so quickly, it was nothing to worry about. I had bruises and fractures, but almost no internal bleeding. He told me that I had been very lucky in that crash. I looked at the doctor and asked him, “Who was it that hit me?”

3 August YEAR 22

“What’re you doing—not killing anyone?!” At the sound of that urgent shout, I pulled myself out of my thoughts. On the screen, there was a shooting game going on. Someone yelled in my headset that the enemy team was approaching. I immediately gripped the mouse. I shot like crazy. The opponents I shot felt like dolls without stuffing. I moved the mouse and pulled up the map. There was a railroad crossing through the middle of it. Next to the tracks, there were huge containers stacked all around. It felt like seeing the container village at Songju Station. I switched my weapon. There was a machine gun that could shoot nonstop. Someone wearing a black bandanna appeared in the distance. I aimed my gun, but for just a second, he looked like someone I knew. I took him out in one shot. Enemies came in one after another, but I shot them without a second thought. I didn’t know why, but my hyungs were coming to mind. I let out a giggle. When I really thought about it, they were a little similar. I took them out one by one and advanced. I shot the opposition that came from the containers. For a moment, I looked down at one of the ones that had collapsed on the ground. “Is that Namjoon hyung?” I thought. Someone fired their gun, hitting me in the shoulder. I used my mouse to look up, and I saw an enemy carrying a gun. It was Seokjin hyung. In an instant, my rage boiled over.

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purplesurveys · 5 years ago

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842

have you ever violated school dress code? My Catholic school had us on a very tight leash and we’d have to be crazy to dare to break the dress code over there. My university doesn’t have a dress code though and anyone entering the campus can dress up any way they want, which I’ve always been grateful for. if you are listening to music, is the singer male/female? They are five dudes. what, if anything, do you give up for Lent? I never observed Lent; and as much of a religious fanatic my mother is, I’m glad she never forced me to fast or abstain from something I liked. what phrase leads your mind directly to the gutter? 69, even though it’s childish. when you feel like giving up, how do you convince yourself not to? I just tell myself that things will get better because that seems to be the pattern all the time with me, which is a really good thing.

what are your opinions on immigration? I don’t know much about the issues and its intricacies but as an Asian, I really admire fellow Asians who don’t speak a word of English, end up in the States or somewhere similar and build themselves a better life there. It’s fucking metal. would you tell an actual immigrant your views? Sure, if the topic is raised. what was the subject of the last list you made? There was a tweet asking people to list down which YouTubers practically ~raised them~ growing up, so I joined in the fun and gave my own names. If I remember correctly I listed down Pewdiepie, Smosh, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and the entire Brit crew. do you ever get nervous before interviews/important meetings? Only if it’s supposed to be crucial. Like I imagine I’d be sweating bullets for my first job interview. who pays for the majority of your belongings? My parents. would you ever willingly shop in a thrift store? Of course. There are always some great finds in them. what is the most that you would ever spend on an outfit? Assuming I’m earning my own money, I’m willing to spend around ₱5000 to ₱10,000 on a top or bottom but I can widen my wallet a lot more if we’re talking shoes, because I like them more haha. is there anything you do that just outrages your parents? I know my mom hates it whenever she pulls us for online mass and I visibly grumble. I don’t know if my dad is annoyed with anything I do; and if he feels that way he’ll tell me. I respect him a lot more so if that’s the case, I’ll actually stop whatever it is I’m doing. when was the last time you were embarrassed in public? Probably when I was brought to the hospital a month ago and the nurse was explaining to me how to take a urine test. have you ever won an award you were actually proud of? If Latin honors count, then yes. That was my only goal when I started college, and I reached it, so I’m allowing myself to be proud of, well, myself. the importance of education, rate it from 1-10, 10 as most important? 12. --- explain your choice to rate it as such? It’s different when you come from a third-world country. Education is realistically your only way out. what is the coolest science experiment you've ever done? I liked the ones that we did that involved chemicals and powders. are you experiencing difficulties with any friends right now? Not really. There’s a chance JM has been irritated with me because I always turn really grumpy when he messages me about work stuff, but if he is, at this point I don’t really care anymore because I’ve been detached from org work for a while now. I busted my ass for the org for three years so I think I’m entitled to feel detached now haha. how do you deal with a fight between yourself and a friend? I haven’t been in an argument with one of them in a while but I would prefer to talk it out. when you apologize to someone after a fight, how do you go about saying that you are sorry? I apologize and I mention the thing I did that they were hurt by, so that they feel acknowledged. In the end, I tell them that I’ll be better and if there’s anything I can do to make them feel better or to make the situation better, that they shouldn’t hesitate to let me know. have you ever played around with "dry ice"? No. Isn’t that dangerous lol? do you think parents are responsible for the actions of their children? For the most part, yes. But I know there are still some instances where parents can try and try to be understanding and be the best influences, but their kids will still end up going down the wrong path. There isn’t one answer to this, I think. should the military draft take both men AND women? why/why not? I don’t know, it’s a little complicated. I’m definitely all about equality and providing the same opportunities for men and women, but I know there’s a lot of issues on sexual harassment and assault in the military that have yet to be fixed. Until that’s ironed out and I hear change taking place, it seems a little shady to randomly pick out women to join the military. when was the last time that you corrected someone? My mom had a grammatical error in her Facebook post from yesterday so I told her what the right word to use was. when was the last time you were corrected? I set the table for breakfast today and apparently it wasn’t enough for my mom, who liked her plate to be set in a certain way. when did you last say "i told you so"? Maybe when Kate told me she had broken up with the guy she was having a thing with, lol. is there any celebrity you like to "keep up with"? Not really. I think I’m over that phase now. I’ll check up my faves from time to time, but otherwise I don’t feel the need to read daily updates on them anymore. celebrity gossip: YAY or BOO? Yay if it has substance or if it’s controversial, like a celebrity being exposed for sexual harassment; boo if it’s something stupid like “Kendall Jenner spotted eating pasta today.” what is the most life-changing book you have read? I haven’t encountered it yet. have you had a negative impact on anyone's life? I would say so. I wasn’t always the nicest kid; and I also did a shitty job handling my friendship with Sofie when we were off to college. has anyone had a negative impact on yours? who/why? Yeah. Some relatives, some teachers who didn’t know how to act like teachers, and some people I distinctly remember that bullied me when I was a kid. how will you know when you are ready to get married? I guess when I’m no longer nervous thinking about it and when I’m already 100% sure that I’m independent and capable of looking out for myself. I don’t wanna be married and still be slightly dependent on my parents, which is what a lot of young Filipino married couples end up doing. how much time have you spent contemplating your own death? A very, very good amount. is there a joke that you just can't stand? Ones that you just can’t defend and are just simply offensive, like slavery or poverty. I’ve seen a few shows where they’d refer to the Philippines being poor or being a source of child labor for laughs, and they’ve never been funny to me. have you ever read any self-help books? No, I don’t really trust those lol since they’re usually written by people from other countries who most likely have different experiences and perspectives. If I need some help I’d rather figure it out myself and hear from people that I trust, like my friends. what's your take on the obesity problem in america? It’s a serious problem, obviously. I don’t know much about it other than the fact that Americans are crazy about their fast food and that their serving sizes are ginormous. I really hope they find more ways to address it. what is something you used to love, but now greatly dislike? Journalism. what is something you used to dislike, but now like? Chicken curry, and I think spicy food in general haha. when/if you become a parent, what will you do differently, compared to how your parents raised you? I’ll be more involved. I’ll compliment them more, not invalidate their feelings, and I’ll let them talk when I do something that upsets them, and I’ll apologize to them for it.

do you equate spanking with physical abuse? would you spank a child? The way Filipino parents do it, yeah especially. They don’t just do it with their hands - spanking kids here usually involve slippers and belts. My mom forbade anyone to spank me and my siblings, but nonetheless I watched it happen to my cousins and that alone was traumatic enough for me. How much more for them?

The thing is that it can’t be assumed that kids are able to process why they’re being punished, so I think that any physical punishment to them will just drive them away from their parents, which to me makes it physical abuse. I would never spank my own kids. what's the most ridiculous thing you've done this week? Skipping out the rest of my shower because a moth came into the bathroom and started flying around me lmaoooo eugh. --- did you regret it/love it/hate it/want to do it again/etc? I fucking hated it. if your bf/gf wanted to wait until marriage for sex, would you be willing? Yes. Sex honestly isn’t really a big deal to me. when you look at the sunset, what do you think about/feel? I don’t really think when I look at the sunset. I just admire how pretty it looks and savor the quick few seconds of the sun going down. is there someone you wish you could trust/you wish was trustworthy? No? I don’t wait on people to be trustworthy, if that’s what you mean. I’m grateful for the people who are already around me that I can trust. is there anyone that you no longer want in you life? who/why? There are times I wish I could get rid of my mom so that I don’t get yelled at as much anymore and so that I don’t have anyone watching my every move so much so that I’m cautious to walk around in my own house.

how has your outlook on life changed in the past few years? I’m a lot happier and more stable this time around. I’m glad I stayed around to see the change happen. have you ever walked out of a boring movie (in theaters)? Absolutely not. Even if the movie was bad, I’d watch it through the end. Ticket prices are not to be fucked with lol. how open are you with people you know online? ...What do you think? what do you think of athletes that take steroids? Idk about other sports but that’s a big fuck no in wrestling, after it’s led to addiction, overdoses, and a lot of deaths especially in the 80s and 90s. if a celebrity is involved in scandal after scandal, is that likely to affect how you view him/her & his/her work? Depends on the scandal. I don’t mind when nudes or videos get leaked because honestly, the leakers are the assholes in that situation. But if the scandal is something like people speaking out to accuse a celebrity of racism, abuse, or harassment, then I can very much turn against that person. what is one celebrity that you have zero respect for? Amber Heard. have you ever driven under the influence of alcohol/drugs? Just slightly tipsy, but I’ve always made sure that I’m super super super aware of my surroundings in those times. I won’t drive – and I know my friends won’t allow me to – if I was even just a little dizzy. I’m always the first to start sobering up when I go out to drink because I’m usually the only one with a car and thus responsible for bringing my friends home. are you overly attached to your material possessions? For the most part, yeah. have you ever ridiculed anyone for their clothing choices? Not to their faces. living in poverty: what do you think it'd be like? I already live in a country wallowing in it. My family isn’t poor, but I see poverty on a daily basis nonetheless. No documentary or article can best explain it to anyone who has never lived in a poverty-stricken country. Pretty insensitive question btw. what is one "diet" that you think is just utterly worthless? I’m not familiar with any of them. what advice would you give someone that is uncomfortable with his or her body/appearance? I prefer not to give advice because some people don’t wanna hear it and just wanna hear reassurances and boosters. That said, I’ll just keep encouraging them and telling them that they look really good in their outfit and just making them feel valid and seen. what advice would you give someone about to start high school? Don’t be scared to make mistakes and while you should always study hard and do your best, don’t take everything seriously. It’s high school and won’t matter on your professional resume. what foreign food are you NOT interested in trying? Uhhhh this question makes no sense to me ahahaha I’m always down to try anything. what foreign country do you believe is misunderstood? I can’t speak for other countries but I know mine is pretty misunderstood. I’ve read countless testimonies of Filipinos getting condescendingly told “You speak good English for a Filipino” by white Americans, not knowing that their country conquered mine for 40ish years. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misconceptons about my country and its people. have you ever felt entirely unwanted and alone? Of course. in your eyes, which is worse: rape or murder? Both are equally bad and disgusting but I’ll have to go with rape, because 1) the victim has to live with the trauma and fear for the rest of their life, 2) victims are usually too scared to speak out for fear of being judged or not being believed, and 3) victim-blaming is still a big problem today. do you understand/read shakespeare? No. When we took up Shakespeare in high school I bought the No Fear versions. would you feel comfortable living with someone that owned a gun? No. do you know anyone that lives in a foreign country? Tons.

#survey #surveys

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kiradillinger · 6 years ago

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Lapidot Human videoblogers AU PART 1

So, I had this idea for a few days and I finally wrote it. Wow. It’s long, I never wrote an AU like this, and I hope someone will like it =)

PART 2 IS HERE

and yes this will have mistakes in my English and I’m sorry

Peridot is a gamer and has a popular YouTube channel. She makes streams, letsplays, and because of her funny reaction to winning or losing, people like to watch her channel. Or they just put the video as a background while they are doing something, because Peridot is never silent, almost always comments on the game.

She lives with Steven and the rest CG in one big apartment that Steven's father bought. Everyone has a room. She is about 19-20 years old, Steven is 14, and he sometimes appears on her stream as a co-player. The rest CG, by the way, also sometimes appear there as interlocutors, analysts, co-players, or simply come to say hi.

Peridot lives a not very social life. She mostly stays at home and plays, because to earn money from a channel like this, you have to make many videos. Sometimes she is invited to all sorts of blogger festivals or gamers conventions, and she willingly agrees. This is a change of atmosphere, usually the organizers pay for the tickets. Also a blogger can talk with fans, and Peridot loves her fans.

Lapis is also a blogger, but in a completely different area. She travels and shows the culture of other countries, traditions, food, language, everything she can learn. She usually arrives in the country, spends a week in the capital, and then goes to cities for another week. Then she returns to her hometown, where she spends two weeks on video editing and loading them on her channel. After a little rest she travels somewhere else.

Money for trips is usually taken from sponsors (advertising of airlines, hotels, cafes, and so on), although earlier she had to travel with her saved money by working as an artist and handmaker. She still draws, and brings from travel a lot of sketches that she collects and loves more than photos.

Lapis and Peridot have never met, but they watch each other’s channels. Lapis likes to put Peridot's video on the background, while she is doing some kind of home routine, sometimes she watches her streams if the hotel has good internet. She likes to listen to the stories of Peridot and Steven, and she likes the way Peridot reacts to what is happening around.

Peridot likes to watch Lapis' channel, because she has never traveled much, but the world around her is still interesting, and Lapis, unlike many similar bloggers, doesn't stick to the script, doesn't have an operator, doesn't learn the text and shows what is around, not just herself on the screen.

Lapis is sincerely excited about everything new around and talks about how beautiful the world is, and Peridot sees all this beauty through her eyes, but most of all she admires Lapis, who in her 20+ y.o (maybe 23) isn't afraid to travel all alone.

In short, they watch each other's videos, but they never chatted or spoke.

Once, at one of the gaming festivals, Peridot was a guest at an interview with fans, where one fan asked about what other channels she likes. Peridot named several game channels and added that besides this she likes Lazuli's travel blog. "I know that we are subscribed to each other, but I don't know why she is subscribed to me. Lazuli, I know that some subscribers will come to your comments with this question, so you can answer me somewhere, because I'm interested. Do you play something that I play?"

Of course, people came Lapis' comments with this question, and Lapis preferred to answer in her instagramm with the answer: “I played games when I was a teenager, now I don’t have time and people to play with, so sometimes I watch how other people play and enjoy. Peridot does it better than anyone, I like her sincere emotions every time something goes no according to her plan."

According to the "law" of the society of YouTube, fans began to demand joint streams. Lapis promised to think when she returns home from another trip, and Peridot didn’t really think about it. Lapis was a busy person. But two weeks later, Lapis wrote that she had suddenly completed all the editing, she has free time, and some kind of collaboration can bring subscribers to both of them. So Peridot chose the least difficult game that can be played together, and they make the stream. Their fans were delighted.

Unfortunately, because of her travels planned for six months ahead, Lapis couldn’t play with Peridot often, but they started to talk and quickly became friends (they love the same TV shows, of course). Gradually, the communication came to chatting every day (as far as possible and still as friends). Lapis didn't consider Peridot as a potential romantic partner, because Lapis wasn't looking for anyone. She knew that she was never at home, and no one would travel with her.

It lasts for about half a year, after which Lapis understands that she needs a break from constant traveling, and the next trip will be the last for some time. And, wow, what a coincidence, it turns out that she goes to the country where Peridot lives. Lapis goes there for quite a long time, so it seems to her that she can meet Peridot personally, since they are already good friends.

Peridot offers her to stay at her place, because everyone goes on vacation, only Stepven stays and there are 3 free rooms in the apartment. Lapis doesn't want to impose, but on the other hand she is pretty tired of the hotels, and this time she didn't even book something in advance, so she agrees with the condition that she will rent a room and not just live there.

Steven is delighted with their guest. He asks lots of questions and tells that Pearl took him to different countries too, and that once he went somewhere with Peridot, and says that traveling is so cool. Lapis doesn't believe that he is 14, it seems to her that he is much smarter than his age. Peridot greets her cordially, but doesn't talk to her as often as Steven, giving her free space and time.

In order to repay hospitality and company, Lapis cooks something tasty in the evenings, because, as it turned out, Peridot doesn't know how to cook. Steven knows how, but only snacks, nothing that you can eat normally.

Lapis spends days in the city, and only occasionally Peridot makes her company. Sometimes she helps her to film or tells her that she knows about this or that place, and Lapis warns her that she wouldn't cut it out of the video, and would definitely show the audience that Peridot is not only a nerd in games but also in history.

One evening, Peridot is going to make a stream with the donates, because her playing chair broke and she needed a new one, until "her back broke from sitting on a simple chair". In order to attract more viewers, she says that she has a special guest today, and the fans are absolutely delighted when Lapis turns out to be the one, because many of people ships them. Peridot doesn’t endorse the shipping of real people, but so far nothing bad has happened, so it’s okay.

The audience donates with different questions and wishes, and Peridot and Lapis willingly tell something and share stories about the first games, the countries where they would like to go, about their favorite animals, TV shows and so on. The result is that they have the same dream - a small house near a lake, with a garden, a corgi and decorated in the style of Camp Pining Hearts.

One donation comes with the signature "how much I need to donate, to make you kiss each other." Peridot laughs and says “zero, this is a violation of personal space,” and Lapis shrugs and answers “two thousand bucks”. "Nobody will send so much at once, calm down. And if they send, we can think of something."

And BAM - someone donates such a sum.

They are both shocked, and the chat almost explodes. Lapis looks embarrassed and guilty, Peridot just blushes and looks away. In the end, they agree that this is “friendly” and “means nothing”, and they will not do this anymore. The kiss doesn't last long, but it was pleasant and warm. Lapis unwittingly thinks that it is precisely a kind of feeling that you feel when you kiss someone after returning home. She had never experienced such a thing before. Nobody waited for her at home, and this brought anguish to her: she instantly understood how good it was to live with Peridot this week, and how pleasant it was to come back, hearing a simple "hey".

After the stream, which lasted a little more, for the first time they talk about love and relationships, and Lapis says that in fact the whole problem is not that she is constantly traveling, but that she is afraid that she has a difficult character and no one will wait for her after each trip. And that if her partner asks her to stop traveling, she won't be able to agree to this, because traveling is her life and dream.

Peridot says that she has about the same thing - the channel takes a lot of time and effort, and that she will spend more time with the computer then with her girlfriend. But Peridot, unlike Lapis, isn't afraid to try, and everything is really solved by long and hard work on travel schedules and other things. She doesn't want to put pressure on Lapis, and doesn't force her to anything, but it seems to her that they are very similar and something can work out between them.

Lapis promises she will think about it. She leaves soon, will be busy with editing and she wants to rest from all the fuss. Peridot understands everything and replies that she will wait for an answer. Lapis leaves, returns to her home and works on the editing for several days, trying not to think about anything because she is afraid of starting something that can break their hearts.

Peridot goes the other way. She records a video to her channel (a letsplay) in which she talks about why she doesn't date anyone, and how this topic of relationships has affected her life in general. This is not the entire video dedicated to this particular topic - she plays as usual, but on the background she tells this story. In the end, she says that there is a person who is most likely afraid to start something, but she is ready to give all support and adds "in any case, not a place is important, but a person you can always return to and say "hey"".

Lapis (and some Peridot's viewers) understands what this video means. Peridot cleverly disguised everything, but it is enough for Lapis to surrender.

After a while, subscribers of Lapis' instagram see the instastory which says “I'm going to say "hey” to one blond nerd” and a picture of a travel bag.

#lapidot #steven universe #it's long but interesting I promise #lapis lazuli #peridot #My writing #my headcanons #can someone write a fic pls #xD

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belphegor1982 · 5 years ago

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Aaand this will be the last chapter until next February or March. BUT. There will be new chapters in February or March, come rain, sleet, snow, or frogs and locusts. So, there’s that.

FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM

Summary: 1937: Two years after the events of Ahm Shere, the O’Connells are “required” by the British Government to bring the Diamond taken there from Egypt to England. In Cairo, while Evelyn deals with the negotiations and Rick waits for doom to strike again, Jonathan bumps into an old friend of his from university, Tom Ferguson. Things start to go awry when the Diamond is stolen from the Museum and old loyalties are tested… (story on AO3; on FFnet)

(Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

Chapter 16: Underture (on AO3 here)

To say Evelyn O’Connell felt a little out of place would have been an understatement, albeit a small one.

She had helped Izzy land his dirigible in the middle of the Medjai camp, downed her supper without really stopping to appreciate the taste or even acknowledge what it was she was eating, and now she was left to her own devices while everyone got ready. This was a situation she was not at all accustomed to. She was a librarian, an Egyptologist, a scientist of ancient history, a problem-solver. Right now, though, she did not know exactly where she should be and what she should, or even could, do. This state of forced uncertainty was unbearable.

The sun was going down on Egypt in the truly spectacular way that was unique to the place. There was something both sharp and mellow to the light, the way it appeared to envelop everything in bright gold like gift wrap around a Christmas present. Of course, the fact that this particular present included gleaming scimitars and machine guns made the whole thing feel a little bit bizarre.

Nobody seemed to pay any mind to the rich light, despite the definite possibility that at least some of the Medjai in the camp would not live to see the sun come up again if Hamilton was even partly successful. Everyone was walking among or in and out of the tents, looking determined and purposeful.

This especially made Evelyn O’Connell feel out of place.

There was also the fact that, ever since sunrise, she had been unable to get rid of a lingering anxiety, as though lead was slowly but surely settling into the pit of her stomach. She wondered whether this was anything like the ‘weird feeling’ Rick claimed to have whenever she was about to read books she shouldn’t read aloud or open chests she shouldn’t open. If it was, then she made a note to listen to him a little bit more in the future. This kind of feeling certainly was difficult to ignore.

Maybe the sight – the sheer stench, rather – of the still glowing remnants of the lorry they had found had brought this anxiety. It had been such a relief to hear Ardeth say that nobody had been inside when it blew up. Evy was not at all squeamish around thousand-years-old mummified corpses, but when it came down to facing the possible loss of one or two of the men she loved most and in such horrific circumstances… Well, suffice it to say that for a closer look she had waited until Ardeth was absolutely positive that there was no gory remains to stare her in the face and impress upon her how spectacularly she had failed them. If he was aware of her repugnance and the reason behind it, he tactfully avoided to mention it.

As for why that lorry had blown up, there were only three possibilities that held water: either the Chamber of Horus – as Sheikh al-Nazar had said the name of the organisation Thomas Ferguson worked for was – had set fire to their own vehicle, and that was illogical; or else Rick and Jonathan were the ones who somehow managed to blow it up, and that was probable; or else it had been an accident, which was not impossible (since nobody had been in it the lorry must have been stationary, thus not creating any spark) but improbable.

Whatever had happened, Charles Hamilton and his men had waltzed off, taking the two prisoners with them.

Needless to say, Alex had waited for his mother and Ardeth with barely concealed agitation. He was stamping his foot with impatience and almost shaking when they had got back on the dirigible. And had let out a suppressed but still perfectly audible ‘Whew!’ when Evelyn had told him that the explosion hadn’t made any victim.

They had reached the Medjai camp by sunset.

Evy had not quite expected this. She had thought they were going to an appointed place where the leaders of the Twelve Tribes Ardeth had told her about could join them – a sort of war camp with a few tents and some poles to tie the camels to.

She frankly had not expected the children to be there.

The women had not been a surprise1. The Medjai were warriors and scholars, often at the same time, men and women both. The descendants of the Pharaohs’ personal guard, they had to use every set of arms they could get to protect Hamunaptra and other places, less well-known and only slightly less dangerous. As Evelyn had understood it, they had come close to dying down around around the 4th Century; it was then, more or less, that they had created the position of High Commander, to bring all tribes together in an hour of need. About a third of those had been women, as were about half of the current Elders. This had surprised Evy at first. After all, in England women only obtained the right to vote about ten years ago – why, they still didn’t have it in France, their nearest neighbour.

But war was not for children. And yet there they were, helping with menial work, taking care of the animals, or playing hide-and-seek among the tents.

Alex had gone off exploring after she had made him swear that he would not get into anyone’s way or start any mischief. She knew her son to be fairly well-behaved around even relative strangers when he had a mind to, but she also was very much aware that, when nervous, he had something of a propensity to trigger catastrophes without the slightest malicious intent.

This had amused Rick to no end when Evy first pointed it out innocently. Of course, he had teased her mercilessly about this, pretending to wonder ‘who he had gotten it from’. She had huffed, pointedly ignoring the memory of the mighty shambles their eight year old son had single-handedly caused at the temple where they had found the Bracelet of Anubis.

Of course, Jonathan had roared with laughter when Rick had told him about the whole pillar business. And, considering the way Alex had so quickly lost all remorse and had kept grinning at her afterwards, there was absolutely no doubt that his uncle had been sharing with him a story or two about Evelyn’s frequent little bouts of clumsiness during her time as the librarian of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. And she would willingly have bet her beloved small stone painting of Hatshepsut that stood on her bedside table that at least one of the stories Jonathan had told his nephew was about her accidentally knocking down all the bookshelves of the Cairo Museum library.

Honestly, those three…

The reality of the situation came back to her with such force it felt like being splashed in the face with icy water. She had to get them back. She just had to. The alternative was simply unimaginable.

Evy started when someone spoke to her and relaxed when she recognised the voice.

“We are ready to begin the meeting,” Ardeth said, his tone serious but friendly. She nodded and stood up, dusting herself off and smoothing her rumpled clothes as best as she could. Although a few of the people she was about to meet knew her already, she thought it best to try to make a good impression – and, truth to be told, she did feel a little nervous. After all, it was up to the Council of Elders to decide what the Medjai’s course of action was going to be in the next hours.

It was very considerate of Ardeth, really, to fetch her himself while as the High Commander he could, maybe even should have sent someone.

Alex was currently engaged in lively discussion with a slightly younger girl Evelyn recognised as Maira, Ardeth’s eldest. The conversation was in two languages and backed by a good deal of gestures, as neither exactly mastered the other’s language. This did not seem to deter them, Evy noticed amusedly, and it was on this slightly cheerful note that she stepped into a large tent after Ardeth, who courteously drew back the canvas to let her pass.

The inside of the tent was well enough lit, with rich colours and comfortable-looking cushions strewn in a circle. The entire Council were seated there, all members looking up when Ardeth and Evelyn entered. She bowed respectfully, and many gave her an answering bow of their head in acknowledgement.

“Sit down, Evelyn O’Connell,” said the oldest Elder, Fatheya, a deceptively frail-looking old woman sitting in front of the entrance. “We were just about to start.”

Evy sat down on unoccupied cushions beside Ardeth, who cast a last sweeping glance at the people in the tent before joining her.

“First of all,” he said, “let me remind all of you –” here he looked at everyone in turn, but Evelyn had the fleeting impression that he lingered half a second’s time on her in particular “– that everything you have to say will be taken in consideration. Just remember that time is of the essence and we should make the most of the moments we have left. Elder Atef, I believe you have a suggestion.”

Elder Atef’s face was sharp, his eyes beady, and when he spoke there was a controlled sort of urgency in his voice. “Indeed I do. Commander, I know that the attack two days ago failed, and I believe I understand the reasons of this failure. But couldn’t we organise another, maybe stealthier attack, that would strike down their leader and cancel the whole operation?”

Evelyn listened with rapt attention, grateful for the use of English – for her benefit, no doubt – and found herself rather in agreement with him. Anything that could stop the search party from entering the Pyramid sounded good in her book, especially since it was only a matter of hours before the complete and utter destruction of Ahm Shere.

But Ardeth shook his head.

“I have sent scouts ahead for the past two days, with instructions to look for any weakness. Unfortunately, Hamilton now constantly keeps men close enough to him that we can’t attack from afar. To get to him would mean first getting through them, and we’ve already tried just that.”

There was a silence, during which Evelyn thought about the Medjai’s last attempt to ‘get to’ Hamilton. Ardeth had parted very reluctantly with enough bits of information for her to put together the jigsaw of that night. The skirmish had abruptly ended when Rick – always one to grab an opportunity when he saw it, he’d been right in the middle of the fray – had failed to stop Hamilton from bringing down a gun on the side of his head. The Englishman had cocked his gun and stared at Ardeth, fully aware of who he was, what he was, and ready to gamble everything on the basis that the Medjai would not risk getting O’Connell killed.

And that gamble had proved successful. Evelyn wondered what had been Ardeth’s thoughts after this, and wondered about the Elders and the Chieftains, as well. She had known, without a doubt, that Ardeth was the kind of man to lay down his life for the people he considered friends, and that thought very much humbled her. But what really shook her was the knowledge that he was also willing to risk the success of a mission and the responsibilities he had as the High Commander of the Medjai for the life of one of them.

That fact, when you knew Ardeth Bay as Evelyn knew him, was earth-shattering. Apparently his authority hadn’t seemed to weaken since that night, but she kept a close watch on the interactions between Elders and Commander all the same.

The turn had come for Pyhia, one of the youngest Elders – barely fifty or fifty-five years old – to speak out.

“Yet there is surely something we can do – we must. As we speak Hamilton is entering Ahm Shere with his men, and within hours, he will have raised the Army of Anubis. Is there nothing the Medjai can do but stand tall against the jackals from the ancient hells?”

Pyhia was one of the Elders that Evelyn knew best. Despite being comparatively young, she often used a convoluted phrasing that was often confusing, both in Arabic and English. However, behind the formal words was a question bordering on insolence: in short, were the Medjai only good for battling against Anubis’ Army and useless for any other, more elaborate, plan?

A whisper ran through the tent, but Ardeth raised his hands immediately. A hush fell despite some mild glares thrown in Pyhia’s direction.

“Please, Elders, now is not the time for sterile arguing. Elder Pyhia, is there some action in particular you would suggest we take?”

“Indeed, Commander. Our topmost priority should be sending a party to overpower the men Hamilton might have left outside the pyramid to guard their camp. It would give us a mighty advantage should they come out again.”

‘Should they come out again’… Evelyn couldn’t repress a shudder. She was fully aware that considering every possibility was the rational, reasonable thing to do, but for once she absolutely refused to think in the rational, reasonable way. There was only one outcome to consider seriously, and this was Rick and Jonathan both coming out of the pyramid alive. Unscathed as well would be absolutely splendid.

This made Evelyn shake her head at herself. Maybe not thinking in that blasted rational, reasonable way was a mistake on her part.

Thing was, try as she may to force herself to contemplate a grimmer alternative for logic’s sake, it failed every time.

Ardeth nodded, and Evelyn wrenched her mind back to the situation at hand.

“This is a very sound proposition indeed, Elder Pyhia. I suggest Maher of the Fourth Tribe for this mission – he and his team are especially trained in stealth combat. Given the number of men Hamilton has placed there, Maher’s men should overpower them without unnecessary bloodshed.”

This everybody seemed to approve of, and if the way the Elders began shifting in their seats and gathering their things was anything to judge by, the meeting was nearly over. But Ardeth raised a hand, and everything stilled.

“Evelyn, I hope you are aware that you are absolutely free to make a suggestion. Is there anything you wish to say?”

Evy bit her lip, then cleared her throat. She didn’t think she would sound entirely convincing if the first sound that came out of her mouth was a strangled squeak.

“Yes, there is,” she said with as much calm and composure she could muster. “Commander, I know that the men you will send to Hamilton’s camp are skilled fighters, and I am perfectly aware that the Medjai are undefeated on the battlefield, but –” Here she stopped for a second, because for all the respect she had for the Elders, she did not appreciate the two or three definite sniggers she guessed rather than heard. She let her face naturally assume the stern, scolding expression she often wore when Alex (or Jonathan, for that matter) clearly was not listening to a lecture. Just because most of these men and women knew just how aware she was, having faced and been defeated by the Medjai twice in her time, didn’t mean they had to rub it in her face.

There was something of an awkward pause. Evelyn did not dare look at Ardeth, who if she knew him at all probably had an amused smile dancing in his eyes.

“– But if we want Hamilton’s plan to fail, we should not be fighting only his men and the Army of Anubis if he does manage to raise it.” She took a deep breath. “We need someone to go down into the Pyramid of Ahm Shere as well and try to stop him. I volunteer for this task.”

The whispers that filled the tent made the stir caused by Pyhia’s earlier remark sound like a mere ripple. Before Ardeth could react, Elder Raneb, a very fat man with hard features, stared at Evelyn full in the face and spoke to her. Both were sort of unusual for him.

“What on earth could make you believe that the Medjai would not be fit for this kind of mission? I know what you have in mind – you would take the glory for yourself and let the Medjai be slaughtered, when it is you and your kind who have brought danger back to the desert with the Diamond of Ahm Shere!”

This caused an uproar. Most of the Elders sprang, shuffled or waddled to their feet and hurled expletives at Raneb, who stuck out his three chins mulishly, his cold eyes fixed on Evelyn.

She felt every muscle in her body tense, but held out his stare silently.

This was nothing new. She’d had to deal with minds like that all her life. Whether it was because she was a woman or because of her Egyptian mother, some people made their contempt towards her very clear. ‘The mongrel bitch’ and ‘that jumped-up little upstart’ were some of the nicer nicknames she had heard herself referred as throughout her childhood and her university days. For these people, the world was arranged in a stricter classification than the Dewey system, and if you didn’t belong in their category, you had better keep your mouth shut and your head down. Evelyn had long decided that crying herself to sleep every night probably would not help matters, and pointedly kept her back straight and her chin up as much as she could. She had followed her passion, she had learned and studied, and talked to anybody who would listen, mostly Jonathan, who occasionally dealt with nonsense of his own and always had an ear ready for her.

Being called ‘your kind’ in a tone of voice usually reserved for words like ‘filth’ or ‘scum’ is never pleasant. Someone insulting her English heritage turned out just as upsetting as someone insulting her Egyptian heritage.

The heated exchanges settled down to a tense hush when Ardeth finally silenced the tent, his eyes blazing.

“That is quite enough! Elder Raneb, I will not have Medjai Elders disrespecting a guest, particularly a guest as honoured as Evelyn O’Connell is. Besides, she and hers bear absolutely no responsibility in what is happening.”

“Yet you cannot deny that the Diamond of Ahm Shere would not have been stolen if it hadn’t been for those foreigners!” the old man snapped, still glaring at Evelyn.

“Raneb, you are acting just as some of the foreigners you hate so much,” came the placid voice of Fatheya, the oldest Elder. “You know, those who cannot and will not be bothered to distinguish one Arab from another.” She leaned towards him, exhaling smoke from her hookah as she said with the shadow of a very wrinkled smile, “In other words, you are an idiot.”

Elder Raneb stiffened, but remained silent. Fatheya turned her startlingly green eyes on Evelyn, who gave a strained nod in acknowledgement.

“Thank you,” Evelyn mouthed rather than said.

Then she straightened up, her head still held high. “I feel I cannot express upon you how much I don’t care for glory,” she said in slow, halting, but grammatically correct Arabic. Although she spoke at the entire Council she could see a few heads turn inconspicuously towards Elder Raneb. “If anyone here has doubts about my loyalties, they should do well to remember that Hamilton is keeping my husband and my brother hostage and will not hesitate to kill them if he feels it necessary.”

She was proud that she managed to keep her voice from shaking and her pronunciation accurate, except for the last sentence, on which she couldn’t help but trip. All eyes were on her. She turned to Ardeth.

Of course, she knew how she could plead her case. She could appeal to his feelings, say that she should be the one to enter the pyramid because it was nobody else’s husband and brother down there… But she’d feel like betraying herself. Evelyn O’Connell did not appeal to anyone’s feelings to obtain something. She did so by being the right person for the job.

So she bored into the jet-black eyes and said levelly, “I am the only person in this tent who has been inside the Pyramid of Ahm Shere. Nobody else would know what to expect or where to go.”

Ardeth looked at her intently, and gave a serious nod.

“Has anyone got something else to say?” he asked in English. Nobody moved a muscle and jaws remained shut.

“All right. Then we are sending Maher’s people to cover the ground around the Pyramid of Ahm Shere, I will lead the rest of the men nearby for the eventuality of a return of the Army of Anubis, and Evelyn will go inside for a direct stealth attack on Hamilton. Council dismissed.”

He bowed where he stood and left the tent. Evelyn followed him.

When she was certain nobody was watching her except Ardeth, her muscles relaxed as one and she let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” said Ardeth, “about Raneb. He never fails to make things… difficult.”

“Don’t be. I’ve heard far worse occasionally, growing up in England.” A cool breeze made her shiver. “Do you think a mortal can really control the Army of Anubis?”

“No, I don’t.” In the quickly fading twilight, Ardeth looked tired, the tension and lack of sleep finally catching up with him. “Anubis does not like it when mortals meddle in the gods’ affairs. That’s why his gifts are double-edged swords. If Hamilton does what he intends to do, it will be Anubis who will control the creatures, not him. He will simply be a tool.”

“What would it take to stop Anubis’ army, then?” asked Evelyn, her heart plummeting in her chest.

Ardeth appeared pensive. “In theory, Hamilton’s mind leaving his body. Nothing short of that would break the link.”

“Death, then.”

“My friend,” said Ardeth gravely, “you and I both know there are fates worse than death.”

He nodded at her and walked away to get ready, leaving her with a lot on her mind.

Night had fallen during the meeting, bringing a radical change in temperatures. Fires had been lit throughout the camp to light the way, and every square inch of it was buzzing with an anticipation such as Evelyn had seldom felt before. She had been young when the Great War had started, but there was something in the air that reminded her in a very striking way of the end of that particular summer. It was as though everything – what she was about to do, the choices she would have to make – everything could become a possibility to change History still about to unfold. At the same time, she felt that she and her actions were utterly insignificant, something trivial that was about to be ground by History in motion. The great big void that swallowed people, and spat out the names, as her father would say when he was feeling depressed (generally about the lack of knowledge about Ancient Egypt).

That’s why we do what we do. So History remembers us as people, not names and dates.

But it’s only people who properly remember people, had once pointed out a seven-year old Evelyn.

People.

Her father had laughed, closed the book he had been reading and ruffled her hair. Then he had changed the subject.

Evelyn shook her head, allowing some of the tension that had been piling up for the last few hours to ease suddenly as she smiled a little.

I’m doing this for Rick and Jonathan and Alex, she thought, and this is well enough for me.

History can have the rest.

.⅋.

Tom had never set foot in a jungle before, but he had read books about it. Most authors, he suspected, bragged and boasted and were oh-so-slightly untruthful about the reality of the situation. He had figured early on that, if there was really any truth in those pages, there would hardly be any tigers left in India, for one thing.

A few points all authors agreed on seemed to be rooted in truth: the stifling heat, made all the worse by the heavy dampness of the air, the impression that the very oxygen was getting rarer as you trudged on through the leaves… But the thing that came up most often was the ever-present sensation of being watched. Your every move, every word, every breath… Every single small thing you did seemed to be under careful, constant surveillance.

It was very unnerving.

Tom clearly wasn’t the only one to feel that way, although the others’ reactions were all different. Most agents huddled together, clutching their weapons and throwing nervous glances over their shoulders from time to time. Some tried to look relaxed, and failed.

The most interesting to watch was O’Connell. Tom could vaguely recall Jon telling him at one point that the American used to be in the Foreign Legion many years ago; now it was obvious in his stance, his walk, the way his eyes scanned every dark corner before taking a step… He didn’t look all nervous and scared like so many agents did – well, truthfully, kind of like Tom himself felt – but rather wary and aware of his surroundings. There was something deceptively relaxed and calm as well. It seemed to stem directly from instinct, and was probably helped by the fact that, unlike everybody else (except Jon) he had actually already been in that pyramid – and got out alive. Even though the inside of it did not match Jon’s description at all.

The atmosphere was damp, dark and thick. They literally had to hack their way through the enormous leaves and lianas sometimes. The plants were everywhere, creeping up the walls, intertwined around the columns, forming a thick, mostly dark green cocoon all around them. The condensation sometimes made droplets of what Tom hoped was water fall from the ceiling, wherever and whatever the ceiling was. It also made people jump out of their skin every time some tepid liquid dripped on their heads or shoulders, which made Tom wish very hard everybody would just take their fingers off the trigger of their guns before something horrible, definitive, and entirely non-supernatural happened.

At times they could make out in the light of the electric torches the sudden glint of gold through the foliage, or the hint of another, bigger room beyond the green wall. They passed it silently, without stopping. There was barely any conversation between the men apart from a few whispers.

They all followed Hamilton, who followed O’Connell. What O’Connell himself was following – his memory or his imagination – was anyone’s guess.

Tom couldn’t help but jump when he heard a mutter from somewhere to his immediate right, “Place has changed a bit, hasn’t it.”

Peering through the occasional holes in darkness created by the electric torches, he could make out Jon’s face, his eyes resolutely staring in front of him at the black hole that was going to be their path in seconds. Even with the lack of light he could see that the usually slightly slanted eyes had gone a bit rounder, and his jaw was clenched a bit tight.

“I guess,” he replied uncertainly, falling into step with him. “First-timer, remember? This looks more like the jungle around the pyramid you told me about. With the – dead soldiers and stuff.”

“Yeah… Well. Did I tell you about other, er… stuff?”

“What? The blokes in red who wanted to grab the Bracelet of Anubis and kill your nephew?”

“N—no… The other other stuff. That could still be around. The – the pygmy mummies.”

“What?!”

Tom stared and almost stopped in his tracks. Jon looked dead serious.

“You are joking, right?”

“Ha. I wish. Rotten little bastards.”

“What are they?”

“Guardians of the jungle of some sort. They jump on you with no warning, with blowpipes and the sharpest, nastiest little knives – I even saw one spear a guy.”

“Blimey! What with?”

“A spear, I think.”

“Oh.”

“Right.”

Tom threw a somewhat nervous glance at the forest around them. Suddenly it seemed to rustle with malevolent life and odd noises. He was suddenly aware that his already clammy hands were starting to shake. “So… How d’you kill them?”

Jon jerked his head towards Tom’s gun that he kept in a holster swung over his shoulder.

“Blowing them up with dynamite rather does the trick too,” he added. “Oh, and a shotgun too, according to Rick. The results were just as messy, too.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, Imhotep seemed to make them back away, but other that that…”

Tom shook his head with a grim smile he was pretty sure no-one could see.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where that thing landed, now, would you? After all, you were one of the very last people to use – to – to know where it was.”

He saw Jon’s pointed look when his face caught the light of the torch the agent behind him – Becker, a hefty fellow with a bushy beard and a thorough mind – was holding. His friend hadn’t talked in length about his first interview with Hamilton, but he had been clear about some specific things he had voluntarily left out.

Even though Tom wasn’t sure he entirely believed that particular part of the story – the ‘resurrection’ part – he was not going to argue about keeping things from Hamilton. Not after he’d watched and listened to his own boss talk about killing thousands of people as collateral damage and asserting, in horrible calm honesty, that it was for the greater good.

Admittedly, Tom reasoned, having doubts about Evelyn O’Connell coming back from a deadly knife wound while not having problems with accepting a three-thousand-years-dead mummy being raised from the dead was a little bit inconsistent of him. Maybe it was because he had seen Mrs O’Connell, talked to her. The fact that this lively, smiling, essentially alive woman had actually been dead, even for a few minutes, was hard to process.

And this no matter what Jon said. It was a gut thing.

The Southerner shook his head wryly.

“To tell the truth, I completely forgot about it once we got Evy back. I guess it stayed wherever Alex left it and got lost somewhere in that jungle.”

“You didn’t find it on your way out? Because I thought, you know, someone could have picked it up then. After all, it is priceless. One of the most famous books in history – at least Egyptian history.”

Jon actually stopped in his tracks and stared at him with an odd look on his face. Then he shook his head and walked on with a shrug.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know whether we even would have picked it up on our way out. It got pretty frantic down there, we just wanted to get the hell out. Besides, that book is bad news, my friend.”

“Thought you and your nephew resurrected your sister with it.”

“That’s beside the point. Of course I’m glad Evy didn’t… Bloody hell, ‘glad’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. But that book also brought old Imhotep back. Twice. Granted, the second time we didn’t get the whole locusts, bugs and boils and sores business, but…”

Jon’s voice trailed off, and Tom nodded. His point was a bit unclear, but the Liverpudlian reckoned he got it.

Still… It was a shame.

Lost in his musings, Tom didn’t see that the party had stopped until he almost bumped into Agent Bennett’s back. Being taller than him, he stared over his head at what had brought this sudden stop.

The two agents watching O’Connell (and protecting Hamilton, no doubt) had hacked a fork in the road clear of branches, and everyone was now peering through the darkness at the double path.

“Well?” Tom heard Hamilton mutter impatiently. Maybe the atmosphere was finally getting on his boss’ cold steel nerves, after all. His voice came as a mere whisper. “Which way?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been told about our last happy family trip to this place,” O’Connell deadpanned, “but I wasn’t particularly thinking of lining the path with white pebbles. I didn’t even come in that way.”

“I realise that. But do you have any idea as to the path we should take right now?”

In the crossed rays of the electric torches what little of O’Connell’s face Tom could see looked grim and set.

“Yeah, we should turn around and get the hell out of here before we’re all dead.”

Tom could suddenly sense tension rise higher among the agents around him. The American’s voice had been low, but firm and utterly devoid of any irony or jokey element. He was simply stating a fact.

There was no doubt that he had been aware of voicing some of the silent anxiety that had gripped most of the men since they had set foot in that pyramid. Granted, Tom hadn’t known O’Connell for that long a time, but it was obvious that the guy was anything but dumb. The Englishman could easily assess the cleverness of the seemingly casual remark.

Whispers ran all through the back of the group, and they gradually travelled up to the front, one agent at a time. Even if O’Connell hadn’t actually heard what they were about, he was smart enough to pick up on the atmosphere and encourage the doubts some of the men appeared to be growing.

Of course, those doubts didn’t fit Hamilton’s plans at all. Tom caught his boss glancing briefly in Baine’s direction, and the agent pushed back his jacket, leaving the butt of his gun exposed. He heard Jon gulp in the dark near him.

“Unfortunately for you,” Hamilton growled, white teeth gleaming in the erratic light, “this has never been an option. What always has been, however, is the possibility that I might grow bored of your deplorable lack of manners. So either you help us onwards, or I may just ask Agent Baine here to –”

Tom felt someone brush past him and realised with a start that Jon had pushed his way to the front of the group. Jon stopped and just stood there, his hands in his pockets in a would-be casual fashion.

“You’ve got to go right,” he said, his voice unsteady but standing his ground. Both Hamilton and O’Connell turned to him, both faces displaying different shades of surprise.

“How do you know that, pray tell?” Hamilton asked, not bothering to keep the disdain from his tone. It dripped like melting water from an icicle. Jon shrugged, apparently unfazed. Tom, who knew him, knew better.

“I’ve been inside that bloody pyramid too, if you’ve not forgotten. And it so happens we – I – this is the way we came in from. I mean, I recognise this corridor. I reckon that if you cut away the greenery on this wall here there’ll be hieroglyphics that mean ‘This way to the Scorpion King’.”

The boss made a sign, and his two bodyguards raised their machetes and hacked at the vegetation covering the wall in front of them. When they had uncovered a few symbols, Hamilton turned back to Jon with something new on his face. Tom decided he didn’t like at all the way his grey eyes started to gleam.

“Well! We may finally have found a use for you, mister ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’. I can’t deny I’m somewhat surprised.”

“You’d be even more surprised at the things I picked up,” Jon retorted with what he probably thought was a sly grin. Actually, it came off more as a grim sort of wince. Tom had known that one for a very long time. It never fooled him, even back then.

Hamilton eyed him for a couple of seconds, then moved onwards, turning right; everybody followed, O’Connell muttering “Hey, quit that” when Bennett poked him in the small of the back with his gun. To Tom’s surprise, the agent looked almost apologetic as he hastily put the gun away and, thankfully, took his finger off the trigger.

“So,” Tom heard O’Connell whisper to Jon, who looked slightly green – unless it was a trick of the light, or lack thereof. “When’d you get the time to brush up on your Ancient Egyptian reading skills?”

“I was gonna ask the same question,” Tom piped in, highly curious. “Does it really say ‘That way to the –’”

“I didn’t, and yes,” Jon answered in a low, still slightly shaky voice, glancing uneasily at Bennett and Norton who were walking nearby, watching the three of them. “But I didn’t translate that. Alex did – that time. The three of us walked past it, on our way to… You know.”

“Yeah,” O’Connell said, his low baritone a bit rough round the edges.

“The ‘three’ of – oh. Right.” Tom cleared his throat and asked, a tiny bit awkwardly, “Well, is there anything you remember that might come in handy? Can you still read hieroglyphics?”

“Not as well as I used to,” Jon replied with a shrug. Then he added fervently, “But I’ll never forget that bloody Ahmenophus stork thing now. I’m likely to remember that one as long as I live.”

“Why? What does it mean?”

Jon stood still for a second, then he stared at O’Connell and Tom, who stared back, puzzled. Then something passed into his eyes, and his face relaxed.

“Do you know,” he said, with a shake of his head and a small but genuine smile this time, “I really haven’t got a clue.”

A low chuckle escaped O’Connell, and Tom let out something halfway between a sigh and a small, shaky laugh. There was something that he was missing here, clearly, but it didn’t matter right now. Not really. Not when a tiny fraction of the cold, gripping apprehension that had been clutching at his gut ever since they entered the pyramid had been lifted, even for a second. He tugged at the straps of his rucksack and fell into step with the two brothers-in-law just as O’Connell asked, his voice almost normal, “You don’t give a damn about the meaning of that symbol really, right?

“How did you know?”

.⅋.

“Look, lady, I’m not so sure about this.”

“And you choose this precise moment to inform me?”

Not letting go of Dee’s helm, Izzy turned his head towards Mrs O’Connell, a bit puzzled at the quiet laugh behind the seemingly biting remark. He had been expecting irony, or worse, sarcasm. But there was the hint of a smile on her lips.

“So… Remind me again. We are goin’ under to – to do what, exactly? Apart from probably gettin’ shot, I mean.”

She threw him a pointed look, but didn’t pick on the remark. Instead, she put down the whetstone and the short sword that the Medjai chief guy had given her and explained with a slow, deliberate voice.

“We are going down into the pyramid to stop a man named Charles Hamilton from summoning the Army of Anubis, because if he is successful in that, he will destroy the world.”

“Right. Okay. I still don’t get it.”

He caught her disbelieving stare for a second, then her face kind of slackened a little bit and she rolled her eyes. “Honestly, this is not so hard to process, you just –”

“No, no – I get the ‘The Earth is doomed and someone’s got to save the world’ part. But I still don’t understand why we gotta do the saving. I mean, it’s not like it’s your fault or something, right?”

She didn’t answer that right away and her gaze drifted off a little, and he wondered whether he’d blurted out exactly the wrong thing. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“It isn’t, right?”

Well, he’d heard stories. People talked, on long journeys. Most customers found the silence of the open desert sky so daunting and empty they quickly got the urge to fill it with words. And sometimes Izzy listened. If half the stories about Evelyn Carnahan O’Connell were true, the woman had – granted, with some help – had a hand in raising each and every single mummy buried in Egypt2.

This was probably a cartload of bull, but after the nasty business with the wall of water and the desert swallowing that pyramid two years ago, Izzy felt more inclined to give some of those stories far more credit than he used to.

Mrs O’Connell suddenly looked back at him and stated, rather intently, “No. I mean no, it’s not,” she corrected, more gently. “It’s just that we’re the only people who stand any chance of success. And we need to do it quickly, because it all comes down to the new moon setting. At dawn tomorrow.”

Izzy did not ask why they ‘stood the only chance of success’, because her earnestness and seriousness was so much more disturbing than O’Connell’s laid-back ‘mummies, pygmies, really big bugs’ attitude. It meant that it was real, and that it was just the start. Worse, he was actually expected to take a part in the ‘saving the world’ party.

And he’d always thought himself a sidelines kind of guy, too. Ever since O’Connell had buggered off to the French Foreign Legion, that is. The odds of getting shot in the arse were much lower if you stood on the sidelines.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, going back to scrutinising the landscape, “no wonder you people never stop to look at the scenery.”

Mrs O’Connell spared a brief, tense smile and returned to her whetstone and her sword. In the silence that followed, a tiny sound reached Izzy’s ears. It would have gone completely unnoticed in the middle of the conversation between him and his passenger, but as it was, he could not ignore it. Blocking the helm with the autopilot – a simple jamming device – he tip-toed towards the sound as silently as he could, followed by Mrs O’Connell’s curious gaze.

He did have a hunch about what, or who, could have made this sound. He was just wildly hoping to be wrong.

Sure enough, when he plunged his hand into one of the empty crates usually filled with supplies, his fingers caught something wriggly, warm, and emitting remarkably colourful language as he hauled it out into the night air.

Young Master Alex O’Connell’s blue eyes, looking unnervingly like his father’s, shot him a full glare that his blond fringe quite failed to soften.

Izzy let go of him before the collar of the jacket he was holding on to ripped for good. In a flash, the boy went from red-faced anger and shame at having been caught to dutifully wincing when he saw his mother advance on him. She did look quite formidable, much more so than a petite, slim librarian had any right to be.

“Oh, brother,” Alex mumbled, his cheeks rapidly losing colour. In spite of his annoyance at finding a stowaway – not to mention the identity and especially pedigree of said stowaway – Izzy couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kid.

“Mum, wait – I can explain everything.”

This should be really interesting, then.

.⅋.

Jonathan was starting to hate pyramids with a passion.

His reasons for doing so seemed perfectly sound to him, too. For starters, pyramids were the place you buried dead people. Long-dead powerful people. People who had been dead for millennia, and who, when they had been alive, had made arrangements for a peaceful, undisturbed afterlife.

As the Pharaohs were for the most part fantabulously rich, they had no problem getting the best architects to design the most perfectly lethal booby traps to ward off intruders. Knowing this early on had somewhat quelled his enthusiasm for archaeological venture.

Not that he really agreed with angry people who claimed that digging out ancient artefacts and putting them on display for the world to see was grave-robbing and sacrilege, but… Pyramids were graves, after all. And Jonathan had never really been too fond of cemeteries in the first place.

But what he was now loathing with all his heart, what really riled him to no end were bloody pyramids filled with bloody jungle swarming with bloody creepy little pygmy mummies!

Keeping his mouth shut tightly against the terror-induced nausea, he walked with his eyes and ears wide open, peering and listening intently for any sign of the eerie hush that had suddenly fallen just before the nasty little buggers had attacked two years ago. It had seemed, then, that the only sound for a couple of miles around had been his own blood thumping in his eardrums and Evy’s deep breathing.

It had been shockingly easy to stand on that ridge with Evy, telling himself over and over that if they didn’t shoot these men in red, Alex and Rick and Ardeth didn’t stand a chance down there. The old reflexes had come back as though they never left. Jonathan had slowed his breathing, pushed down his nausea, done his best to ignore his pounding heart, and got to work. The enemy’s uniforms were red instead of grey, and thankfully Hafez’s men were too busy trying to survive the jungle to shoot at them; but for those two differences, he might have been back in a trench, twenty years ago. Aim, shoot, reload; repeat ad nauseam.

It had been a sickening, exhausting business – not to mention the nightmares after that, both those where he missed and those where he hit the target – but at least he had not been part of the big action then.

This time, he’d been shoved unwilling in the middle of the fray, without any other purpose than just because he happened to be there, surrounded – with two noteworthy exceptions – by people who would kill him if he tried to escape, just as he’d killed those men two years and two decades ago.

Trying to escape would be a bloody stupid thing to do anyway, considering the lurking pygmy mummies that vied for everyone’s blood, his and the agents’.

Equal shares of danger for all. Hurray for equality.

Except it wasn’t really equality, now, was it? Rick and him were now in the exact same position Hafez’s nutters had been at the jungle of Ahm Shere, hunted down and potentially shot at from two different parties at once. Not that he felt sorry for the blighters (not after they kidnapped Alex and threatened to cut his arm off to get the Bracelet), but suddenly finding himself in the same situation actually had something laughable about it.

Sometimes I hate irony.

He kept chewing on his grim thoughts as he walked, and since Hamilton wanted to keep an eye on him after his little remark earlier about the path to the Scorpion King, the company was not helping any. The only difference it made was that instead of having complete and utter darkness engulf everything behind him with each step that he made, he had complete and utter darkness ripping open before him, as though reluctantly.

It came as great relief when Rick quickened his own step and muttered right behind him, making him jump a little, “Recognise the place?”

Jonathan peered at the little he could see of the space around them with narrowed eyes.

“Well… Can’t really say I do, old boy. Must’ve hurried past and not stopped to enjoy the view. Why?”

“Because I think we’re getting close. See that gold… ish thing on your left?”

“That pointy thing that sticks out from behind the big ferns?” They probably were anything but ferns, but Jonathan couldn’t for the life of him tell what kind of greenery the big dark leaves were supposed to be. Risking a glance behind him after making sure Hamilton wasn’t looking, he saw Rick staring at it.

“Yeah… I guess. Well, that’s where that nutcase Hafez stuck the bracelet. There’s a statue somewhere that sucked his hand right off.”

Jonathan winced. “Guess I won’t be sticking my hand anywhere around there, then.”

For some reason, Rick’s four-hundred-tooth grin took on a sinister gleam in the torches’ lights.

“Might be a good idea.”

His round blue eyes hardened a great deal the second after that, and Jonathan looked around to see what had brought this sudden change. He was met with Agent Baine’s equally cold and steely glare, and for a moment there he felt like having stepped into a less muddy no man’s land.

After a few seconds of silent glowering, Jonathan cleared his throat and asked awkwardly, in the most normal voice he could muster in the circumstances, “Say, how come everybody got a bag and we didn’t? Planning to do some archaeologing on the side, are you?”

Baine’s cold eyes shifted their aim from Rick to him, and Jonathan had a fleeting but haunting sensation of being a butterfly pinned in one of those display boxes entomologists showed them off in. He gulped nervously.

Incidentally noticing that he seemed to be doing that a lot these days.

Baine’s expression turned into one of grim amusement as he gestured at his own rucksack.

“Well, our thinking was, you probably won’t make it out of this place alive, so what would be the use of giving you a bag? It’s all first-aid kits and ammunition and other stuff you won’t need anyway.”

Jonathan knew he ought to have been more afraid of Baine’s answer; it sounded more like a promise than like a remote possibility. But he just couldn’t push the pygmy mummies out of his mind. His memories of them, though blurred (mostly with running like mad) and, truthfully, rather brief, were so much scarier than the seemingly more direct threat of Baine and his bunch.

He made a mental note to ask Tom what was in his rucksack. It hadn’t looked like there had been much in the way of equipment.

As for Rick, threats of all kinds must have got so old by now that he just raised an eyebrow at the bloke, who-rang-your-bell style. Then his toothy grin came back and he walked past the agent with a shrug.

“I wouldn’t think of depriving you of your first-aid kit, you probably will need it more than us,” he drawled, throwing a derisive look over his shoulder at Baine. “By the way, how’s your eye?”

Baine stiffened and automatically raised a hand to his two-days-old bruise. The angry red and purple was beginning to fade into yellow and green at the edges. It was not without a certain amount of satisfaction that Jonathan remembered having made this particular impression to the agent’s face. The small victory over him in the scuffle two days ago was worth any amount of glaring he’d been subjected to since Monday.

And there had been a certain amount.

A sharp intake of breath made him turn his attention back to the front of the group, a few feet away. Hamilton and his two bodyguards had stopped on the first step of an enormous stairway and were pointing their torches down in the room they’d just entered.

This chamber was big. Even with the greenery that was invading everything, gripping the columns, covering the statues and crawling up the walls, you could feel the weight of thousands of years coming down on you like the Egyptian sun on your head at the height of the afternoon.

It wasn’t just about the weight of the years, too. The entire room gave off an impression of malevolent watchfulness. It might have been just another demonstration of the theory that stated that the bigger the room was, the less you felt like talking, but there was something creepy in the air that you couldn’t help but taste, something damp, heavy and… dark. Brownish, maybe. Something that didn’t bode well at all, anyway.

As he walked carefully down the slippery steps, Jonathan noticed that his knees were having a heated debate about whether to start wobbling or not. He could hardly blame them, having just recognised the place as the chamber where he’d seen Anck-su-namun peering into a corridor, as though waiting, before she turned those cold black eyes on him and stared him up and down. As though he was something small, useless, and utterly out of place in the general order of things. When he had cleared his throat and raised his fists – feeling remarkably foolish in the process – the look in her eyes had changed, and in there he could now read, “Oh, does it want to play? Does it do tricks?”

Never, in his entire life, had he felt so much like a mouse stuck in a room with a cat in a playful mood. The woman had just murdered Evy, driven a knife into her stomach, up close and personal, and smiled. Seeing her had made cold sweat run down his neck and his back, and this was before she had toyed with him like a predator with its food. Jonathan was fully aware he didn’t exactly have a lot going for him in terms of chest-beating, swinging-from-lianas manliness, but he still did have his pride, and being thrown and beaten around by someone who must weigh half as much as he did still stung. Super badass concubine fighter from Ancient Egypt – as Alex had once put it – or not.

The whole group stopped at the foot of the stairway, circling something on the floor, and Jonathan tried to peek through the mass of dark suits to get a look. When he finally sneaked a glance, he spotted Hamilton being helped into a set of large robes with a lot of gold stuff on them that Jonathan judged too gaudy to not be fake. Especially when it looked so much like a fancy bathrobe minus the belt.

“Gentlemen,” Hamilton said, shaking the long sleeves to make the hem fall on his wrists, “this is the end of our journey. Here lies –” here he paused for effect, gesturing at the ground with the cloth of his sleeves giving an appropriate wave, “the Seal of Anubis.”

The few agents who were standing too close to it took a hasty step back.

There was not a single root or leaf on that seal. The big scorpion figure was clearly visible, the different shades of gold gleaming where the light of a torch touched them. The total absence of dark green was unsettling. It also made it crystal-clear that this was what they had come for. The ominous, heavy feeling hanging in the room seemed to emanate from this very point.

Anyone could sense that this seal meant business.

And Hamilton, without any other form of ceremony, cool as anything, came to stand right on top of it.

Instinctively Jonathan tried to take a step back, but froze at the sudden touch of cold metal against his neck. From the rustle behind him, it appeared that he was not the only one with survival instincts. There was a collective intake of breath and a fifty man gasp –

And nothing happened.

The collective breath was released and the tension in the atmosphere seemed to dwindle. All things considered, the whole business felt anti-climatic, even something of a let-down.

But Jonathan had learned not to trust seemingly all-clear situations. He still had the soot behind the ears to prove it.

Most agents seemed to welcome the lull, and they all gave a start when Hamilton turned a strangely meaningful look at Baine and said, “You’re in command now, ag—”

He never finished the word. Under his feet the seal sent a gradual shudder that shook the walls and eventually the entire pyramid. Golden light so bright those too close to it had to shield their eyes seeped – not unlike some sort of thick sticky syrup – from the gold parts of the seal and into Hamilton, who had gone stock-still, his eyes lost into the distance and his mouth slightly open.

He looked like any unfortunate bloke who had just walked rather violently into a lamppost, except for the very disturbing detail of thick yellow light pouring straight ahead from his eyes, his mouth and his nostrils. Then his feet left the ground.

It felt like watching a string puppet show done by someone who had only heard the theory of it. Hamilton’s dark grey shoes floated aimlessly four or five inches off the ground, his head lolled at a weird angle on his neck, one shoulder was slumped when the other one remained rigid…

“Here we go again,” Jonathan heard Rick mutter. The words fell in a stunned, shocked silence. Only Baine seemed to know exactly what was going on, and seemed very pleased by the turn of events so far.

Hamilton’s body – obviously his mind was busy somewhere else, possibly a few planets away – began to drift off towards the passageway to another chamber, his feet still dangling a little off the floor. The leaves and lianas shuffled aside gently, as though self-consciously, where he went.

A small crowd of agents followed Baine, who kept a leisure pace behind Hamilton, looking calm and poised and as gleeful as if Christmas had come early. Not so Jonathan’ and Rick’s escorts, who hung their heads low and shuffled silently, occasionally treading on each other’s feet. Once in a while they would glance grimly at the fantastic sight of their boss being dragged on as though by some sort of invisible string.

The supernatural does take some getting used to, gentlemen, Jonathan thought with an inner sarcastic grin which slipped abruptly when he bumped into a taller agent’s back. The agent gave a start and whirled around, his hand – and gun – jerking nervously. Jonathan took a hurried step back, startled, only to knock another agent to a halt. His gun was out in a flash, too.

“Now, now, gents, no need to resort to extremes,” Jonathan stammered, instinctively raising his hands. As the two men let out a trembling breath he made a show of straightening the creases in his jacket and added in a slightly steadier tone, “You know, you’d really better put those guns of yours away before one of you does something I’ll regret very much.”

“What?” the taller agent barked while the other shook his head and put his gun back into his holster. “Shoot one of our own?”

“No, I meant me.”

The agent sniggered, but Jonathan did notice with great relief that he kept his finger off the trigger now.

When he tried to peek around the dark suits to get a sense of why they had all stopped, he was unceremoniously shoved in front, where Rick already was, standing beside Tom with his blue eyes fixed on something ahead of him. Hamilton’s body had drifted to a halt.

His eyes still wide open and his mouth agape, his head still rolling on his neck like a ragdoll’s, he went near the wall as though attracted by a giant magnet like in the cartoons from the moving pictures Alex loved3. He stayed there, as though tied to a post, under a heavily-decorated gong of massive proportions that hung from the wall, too high for anyone normal to bang.

A sort of spasm ran through his whole body – even his fingertips jerked. Then he went completely still.

A shadow swept over the large chamber, and it felt hot and cold at the same time, and empty. Emptying, rather. Jonathan had a mad urge to dig his fingernails into his palms just to be able to feel something. The last time he had felt anything like it, he had thought the reason was the body of his dead sister lying in his arms. To say it had been unsettling would stretch the limits of even the most open-minded judge on English understatement.

Like last time, it lasted only a few seconds before everything went back to normal in a flash, leaving a trail of lit flambeaus and oil lamps, their light greenish and faintly sinister behind the trees, the lianas, and the giant ferns.

Except the Army of Anubis had just been raised again.

Jonathan let out a raspy breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. It fought briefly with what felt like his heart hammering inside his throat to get out.

Then Baine turned to him and Rick a look that made something churn in the region of his stomach. It wasn’t the passing glare or occasional sneer Jonathan had got used to in the past few days. It was a straight, direct stare. The kind that made you wish you were being ignored.

“Kill them.”

Oh, bollocks.

.⅋.

1 Me in 2008: “The Medjai, while being mostly a warrior people, were a society where the position of man and woman was not about superiority or inferiority. Rather, they went through life having different tasks (the men were taught in the arts of war, the women generally took care of the breeding of camels and whatever farming there was to do) but came together when it came to raising children and making important decisions for the future of the tribe.”

Me in 2019: to hell with gender roles, let’s say the Medjai came too close to extinction in three millennia to confine men to war and women to farming. We didn’t see women Medjai in battle in TMR but they were there.

2 This amounts to a grand total of one, two if you count Anck-su-namun. I would like to state, in Evy’s defence, that she was in no way responsible for the second time Imhotep was raised from the dead. (She just took the Bracelet of Anubis from its chest and Alex activated the Bracelet by putting it on.)

3 Cheating a little here, because while Porky Pig cartoons were already pretty popular in 1937, Daffy Duck was only created that same year, and Bugs Bunny a year later.

#Fairy Tales and Hokum #fanfiction #my stuff #the mummy films #the mummy

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ellanainthetardis · 6 years ago

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Here’s to hoping it will show up on tags even with the links... Let me know your thoughts!

[ff] or [ao3]

Peeta traced furrows in his mashed potatoes with his fork, wondering if there was a law somewhere that said school food had to taste disgusting. If Katniss noticed anything was off with the meal, she didn’t let on. She was sitting in front of him and she was eating with good appetite, checking her English Lit notes with obvious boredom. She had a test planned for after lunch, or something.

“How’s your mom doing?” he asked.

He didn’t really want to spend the whole lunch hour sitting in silence. That was why he had sought her out in the first place even though having lunch together was still a relatively new thing. He hadn’t really given her a choice in the matter once she had started eating in the cafeteria with everyone else instead of hiding away until classes started again, he had asked if she minded and had sat down and that had been the arrangement for close to a week now.

She didn’t seem to mind his company but the thing with Katniss Everdeen was that it was always hard to say what she really thought. Ever since the night he had found out who she really was, he felt he had made progresses at befriending her. He was allowed to drop by her house to watch movies with her and her sister and he had also been allowed to accompany her and Haymitch on patrol twice – not that either of them had been happy about it and not that he had really left them a choice about it when he had showed up at the cemetery in the middle of the night.

“A bit better.” Katniss answered after a second too long.

She put away her notes and focused back on her lunch, her grey eyes darting up from time to time to sweep around the cafeteria as if looking for a threat. It was loud in there and Peeta regretted not suggesting they took their lunch elsewhere. He wasn’t really in the mood to be surrounded by people. Of course, Katniss had never been like most people – not that she was aware of it.

“I’m still angry about… you know.” she volunteered before he could try to probe some more. That was also a good sign that they were becoming real friends, he supposed, the fact that she actually told him things without him having to pull it out of her mouth now. He decided you know meant her mother inviting a vampire inside their trailer, which had resulted in Prim getting kidnapped, so he simply nodded and let her continue. “The doc Haymitch found is okay. He changed her meds. She’s been up a little more but…” She shrugged. “The doc says the best thing would be for her to go to a clinic for a while.”

“Too expensive?” he hesitated. He knew she was sensitive about money matters, all the more so with him who didn’t have much troubles on that front. His father’s bakery was a really successful business and he didn’t lack for anything.

At least, on the money front.

But he dug his fork in the mash and brought it to his mouth before he could linger on that kind of thoughts. They were better left unexplored. Particularly today when he was trying to forget his ribs hurt.

“There’s that.” she sighed. “And there’s the problem of where we’d go while she’s getting fixed.”

“Haymitch would take you in…” he pointed out.

She pursed her lips and tilted her head a little as she checked the room again. The fingers of her free hand were drumming impatiently on the edge of the table.

“I don’t know.” she replied, a little harshly. “He’s already paying for groceries and the doctor…”

He frowned and lowered his voice. “He’s your Watcher.”

“He’s my Watcher, not my dad.” she snapped. “And I can take care of Prim and myself. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

He lifted both hands defensively but he couldn’t help the tinge of jealousy in his voice. “Sure, sorry. Though if someone wanted to take care of me like that, I’d just say thanks and be happy about it.”

She frowned – in an angry way more than in a puzzled way – and he was pretty sure they would have ended up fighting if her gaze hadn’t suddenly darted to his right. The frown turned into a small scowl and she stood up without a word of explanation. He watched her cross half the room right up until she reached Gale Hawthorne who had just arrived.

The discussion seemed animated but he couldn’t hear anything from where he was sitting. Gale seemed to calm down eventually, even though Katniss was still gesturing wildly as she ranted.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”

He looked up and smiled at Madge who was standing uncertainly next to the table and gestured at her to take a seat. They made small talk for a while. She was easy to talk to, if a little shy, and not for the first time since he had gotten his first glimpse of Katniss all that time ago in kindergarten, he wondered why he couldn’t simply like a girl who was less… difficult than Katniss was. There were girls who at least noticed him instead of merely tolerating his presence.

But, of course, he wasn’t Gale Hawthorne and Gale Hawthorne was the only boy Katniss had ever willingly given the time of day to.

When Katniss came back, she was still scowling but she also looked more hurt and sad than angry, so it was hard to remain jealous.

“What’s wrong with Gale?” Madge asked after they exchanged a hello, saving him the trouble of asking that particular question. It would probably have sounded less innocent coming from him.

“He’s being stupid.” Katniss scowled. “He went to Heavensbee and told him he thought Haymitch was being inappropriate. Haymitch told me at training two days ago and he really wasn’t happy about it.” She shot him a mild glare. “See, it’s complicated. We can’t just move in like that.”

“What kind of training are you doing? I thought you quitted the team?” Madge inquired. “And who’s Haymitch?”

“She’s been training with Mr Abernathy.” Peeta answered quickly before Katniss could invent a lie that wouldn’t be believable at all. She wasn’t great at lying. “Like a teacher assistant.”

“Oh…” the girl said like it made all the sense in the world. “I didn’t know you were so good at History. And you said Gale went to the principal about it?”

“He went to the principal and said he was concerned because of all the time I spend with a male teacher who I might not feel comfortable saying no to.” she spat. The quotation marks were almost audible.

Peeta couldn’t help but laugh, his general bad mood of the day forgotten. “Has he met you?”

Even Madge chuckled. “I can’t imagine you being uncomfortable saying no to anyone.”

Katniss relaxed a little and her mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile but she didn’t look any happier. “I just don’t want Haymitch to get in trouble. He said Heavensbee didn’t believe Gale but…”

She let her voice trail off.

“Hey.” Peeta said softly, reaching out to squeeze her hand. He didn’t let the contact linger because he knew she wouldn’t like it. “It’s going to be fine. He’s just being a jerk because you don’t spend much time with him anymore.”

Katniss rolled her eyes. “That was mentioned too. Seriously, what does he care if we have movie marathons? I told him he could come next time if he wanted and he said it wasn’t the point… Then, what’s the point?”

He and Madge exchanged a look and it was good to know Madge shared his own opinion about Gale’s interest in Katniss not being of the friendly variety.

“You guys have been having movie marathons?” Madge asked, to change the topic.

“Peeta and my sister have movie marathons.” Katniss grumbled. “I just show up for the cupcakes.”

“We’re trying to educate Katniss.” he joked. “She hasn’t seen anything worth watching. You should come next time.” He smiled at Madge who smiled back and suddenly, for no good reason that he could think of, Katniss was scowling again. Maybe it was because he had essentially invited her to the Everdeen’s house, he had noticed Katniss had been even more defensive than usual the first few times he had gone to her trailer, as if waiting for him to make a comment. “We could go to my house this time…”

He offered with reluctance and already knowing he would try to take it back through any way possible.

Katniss had reasons she didn’t want people over.

He had his own.

“Or you could come to mine, maybe?” Madge suggested. “We have this big screen… Besides, it’s mostly me. Dad works late and Mom spends most of her time in her room.” She shrugged a little awkwardly. “You could bring your sister. And Gale if he wants to come. I wouldn’t mind…”

“That sounds good.” Peeta immediately answered. He could almost feel Madge’s loneliness, he knew the kind and he didn’t want her to feel rejected.

Katniss’ grey eyes were traveling from her to him, back and forth. Her voice was a little guarded when she finally nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Cool.” Madge grinned and it was a lovely grin, he couldn’t help but notice.

He found himself smiling back.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed before how pretty she was. He usually had eyes only for Katniss though and, of course, Katniss was beautiful but in a different way… They looked good next to each other… Dark and fair. Dangerous and sweet…

The two girls gathering their stuff and standing up put a stop to his daydreaming.

He was confused by the suddenness of the move. “What…”

Katniss was watching him as if he had grown a second head. “Don’t you have Art or something?”

“But there’s still half an hour left.” he objected. He was sure because he had checked his watch when Madge had sat down.

“The bell just rang.” she scoffed. “You’ve been sitting here smiling like an idiot for ages. What were you thinking about?”

He could feel his face turn crimson.

He was pretty certain she didn’t want to know what he had been thinking about. He shouldn’t have been thinking about the kind of things he had been thinking about. Not when he respected Katniss and Madge so much. Not when he was usually doing his best not to swoop to the levels of most of his friends. The kind of talk he heard in the locker rooms after wrestling practice…

He scrambled up and grabbed his bag, suddenly desperate to get out of there before either girl could notice the embarrassing problem he was having. He hurried out of the room, mumbling excuses over his shoulder and almost knocked Miss Tigris off her feet.

He ran all the way to the closest bathroom and berated himself all the while. This wasn’t him. He was growing mad. Maybe it was finally the knowledge that the occult was a real thing catching up to him. Maybe it had pushed him over the edge. Maybe…

Or maybe he was just more of a typical teenager boy than he wanted to admit.

Either way he felt guilty about having thought about Katniss and Madge that way – all the more so because he really wasn’t interested in Madge – and he had to run all the way to the Art classroom to make it on time. His ribs were aching something fierce and practice would be torture that afternoon.

He ducked inside the room just as Miss Trinket was about to close the door and he flashed her a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

“Do try to be on time.” she chided gently. “Punctuality is everything.” She clapped her hands to get the general attention, a bright smile on her lips. “Now, now. Let’s continue what we started the other day, shall we? Pick up your canvas and go to work, children!”

Peeta and the others did as they were told, picking up the canvas they had been working on and setting them back on the easels. Peeta had more or less claimed one for himself at the back of the class because it was in a corner. He didn’t like people peeking over his shoulder when he drew.

His mother never grew tired of telling him this was a waste of time and she probably was right but drawing had always been his favorite form of escape ever since he had been in age of holding a pencil. One of his earliest memory was decorating cakes with his father. Even today, he was often in charge of the frostings when he helped out at the bakery.

“Now, remember the assignment…” Miss Trinket hummed. “Paint something that scares you. Dominate and sublimate it.”

She smiled at him when she walked past, just like she was smiling at everyone else. There was something a little hyper about her, as if her skin was a little too tight for her, as if she was made for much bigger things than teaching Art in a high school with no good Art program. Looking at her, it wasn’t difficult to guess why. She looked like she could have been a model or something… She had been there for less than a week and already half the boys in school were in love with her and the other half plain and simply were fantasizing about her.

Peeta liked her well enough. Their last Art teacher – the one who had been found with suspicious puncture marks in his neck – had showed them power point after power point without giving them many opportunities to practice. He hadn’t wanted them to dirty the classroom. Miss Trinket didn’t mind what they did with paint as long as they cleaned it afterwards – and as Marvel had discovered after having tried to toss some pain at him the other day, she would make them clean it.

She didn’t have to work hard to enforce discipline. Unlike some other teachers, she didn’t have to shout or get angry. A pout and a disappointed look was all it took.

In some aspects, she reminded him of Haymitch.

He painted a little mechanically. He had done most of the groundwork during the previous class and now it was more of a matter of adjusting the colors and finding the right balance. His mind wasn’t really on it though. He was thinking about Gale and what would happen if Katniss told him the truth.

Haymitch had forbidden it, of course. It was against the rules – which made sense because he couldn’t even imagine the mass hysteria if people learned vampires were real – and the Watcher already wasn’t happy about him being in the known. Peeta had tried to tell him he wasn’t some helpless burden they would have to shift around, that he could hold his own and help… The two patrols he had crashed had been the extent of his involvement in the supernatural so far and neither Katniss nor Haymitch had let him try to have a go against a vampire even though he had brought a stake.

They kept saying it was for his own protection but he didn’t think they were being fair. He was captain of the wrestling team for a reason. He was strong, he was smart and he knew his limits. He just wanted to help.

But if Katniss told Gale… If Katniss told Gale, he was pretty sure that she wouldn’t hesitate so much about bringing him on patrol as back-up. They would just jump around shooting arrows at all the bad guys and he would be left cheering from the sideline up until she forgot he even existed and it would go back to how it had been before with him trying desperately to get her to notice him and her…

Marvel knocked him from behind on his way back from fetching some clean water. His brush glided across the canvas, smearing a long trace of dark paint over the rough sketch.

“Oops, sorry.” Marvel chuckled. Peeta glared at him but it only seemed to amuse him more. “What’s the matter, lover boy? Not even going to stand up for yourself? That girlfriend of yours really made you a wimp, didn’t she?”

“What’s your problem?” he retorted.

But he knew what Marvel’s problem was. It was the same problem Glimmer had. The same problem all his friends had. Cato and Clove were gone, officially missing but in a town like the Seam missing often meant dead, and he had completely deserted their little group for Katniss.

Had she even noticed his friends were giving him a hard time? He didn’t think so.

“Hang out with losers, get treated like a loser.” Marvel hissed, stepping right in his space.

Peeta clenched his jaw but he refused to take the bait. It would have been easy to hurt Marvel – well, maybe not easy because he had a footballer body but Peeta knew where to hit to cause pain. Violence should never be an answer – at least when the person in front of you wasn’t a vampire, a demon or actively trying to kill you – that was something he had learned the hard way. He didn’t want to be that guy. He didn’t ever want to be the person who thought with his fists or use them as an outlet for his frustration.

“Go back to your easel, if you please, Marvel. You and I will have a talk after class.” Miss Trinket ordered, appearing at this side as if summoned by magic. She inspected his canvas and winced in sympathy. “Perhaps some white paint…”

“It’s fine.” he told her. “I’ll work around it.”

Something that scared him.

There was something really cathartic about splashing black paint all over the canvas. Everywhere around him, the other kids were painting monsters, spiders and weird shaped aliens… He found his zone and he started working without even really knowing what he was doing. His ribs were smarting from the bread trail that had slammed into them that morning, still hot from the oven, and the anger was bubbling under the surface.

He didn’t even hear the bell ringing.

He barely heard the lecture Miss Trinket gave Marvel once the other students were gone. He kept on painting, half aware he would be late for practice and that would mean getting a lecture of his own. He didn’t care much about wrestling, he had gone into it because all his brothers had before him. His thing was painting but his mother thought it was a waste of time when she didn’t outright tell him he was a waste of space…

“This is really good… Much better than your original project. Perhaps I should not have scolded Marvel that much…” Miss Trinket commented softly, in a teasing tone. She was right next to him again but this time he had heard the clicking of her heels coming closer so he didn’t really startle. “Is it done?”

He surveyed the piece and dropped the brush in the glass of water. He wouldn’t be able to do anything more until the paint had dried anyway. But… It looked alright like this.

“I think so.” he answered after a moment.

The whole canvas was black and white curves swirled around the surface. They didn’t look like much if you didn’t focus but if you did they made out crude profiles. He wasn’t sure anyone else would be able to see them or even recognize the people on it. It was abstract, more than what he usually did.

“Who is the woman?” Miss Trinket asked thoughtfully – and a little carefully to his ears. “Her face is everywhere.”

He had been focusing on Katniss’ vague profile but her remark made him take a step back and he realized, his guts clenching, there was indeed one profile that came out a lot more often than others. Maybe because his ribs had been hurting or maybe because his father had pressed a few bills in his hands that morning and told him to buy himself something nice in that same apologetic tone Peeta hated or maybe because he felt so damn weird today…

He had painted his mother’s profile. Again and again.

“No one.” he lied.

“The assignment was to draw something that scares you…” Miss Trinket pointed out, placing a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away. Her hand hovered in the air for a second and then she simply lowered it down gracefully. He was afraid she would press the point but she simply smiled at him and looked back at the painting again. “You have talent, Peeta. This is really good.”

He wasn’t sure it was that good. He thought she might have been trying to be kind. Still, she was nice. “Thanks. I should…”

“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, glancing at the delicate golden watch around her wrist. “We would not want you to be late again.”

She sounded more teasing than serious so he smiled back, quickly cleaned up his station and grabbed his bag. He was at the door when he paused. “Your perfume…”

It had bugged him ever since she had come close enough for him to smell it. It was heavy but not too much and a little fruity too and a part of him hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, about the curve of her neck or how tight the cashmere sweater she was wearing was… It was the same part that had made his mind wander during lunch and he wasn’t really interested in a repeat.

“Yes?” she encouraged with a small puzzled frown, her head tilted to the side.

What was he doing?

Why was today that weird?

“It smells good.” he mumbled, red in the face, and then he left without even acknowledging her thank you.

Forget practice, he needed a cold shower. And maybe some form of exorcism.

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #everlark #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #thg fanfiction

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bourbonboredom · 7 years ago

Text

Silver Lining Chapter 7

If you’re ever gonna find a silver lining, it’s gotta be a cloudy day

A ClydexReader fanfic

Word Count: 2,694

Warnings: none

Silver Lining Masterlist

Tag List: @oh-adam @kyloren-supreme-ben @xis23@elsablackswift @ladygrey03 @grey-reylo-solo @givemelifeorgiveme @attorneyl @ayatimascd

Clyde woke up the next morning wrapped in blankets, the sun in his eyes, and with her head nuzzled into his neck. It felt perfect. She was still sound asleep, curled against him. He noticed she must have gotten up at one point in the night because she was now wearing his sweatshirt. It was far too big on her frame with the sleeves falling past her hands and the end of it stopping at around her upper-thigh, but he loved the way it looked on her. He closed his eyes and nuzzled his face into her hair, not wanting this to end.

But he knew he had to. It was the day. Today he had to land himself in jail for the sake of a crazy heist his brother had come up with. He had to do it, it was for his family. And the money certainly wouldn't hurt either.

He looked at her frame next to his, remembering what she had told him just a few hours ago. She needed money. She wanted her freedom from her psycho ex who was demanding she pay him for medical bills that were his fault. She didn't really need to pay them, in his opinion, she didn't owe him. But he considered that she saw it more as her just removing anything he could hold over her head. It was unfair, but he could understand it.

He decided there, in her bed with her curled up in his arms, that he was going to use some of the heist money to help pay her medical bills. He could find a way to send it anonymously to her ex, keep him out of her life for good. Maybe even help her get her tooth fixed. She admitted a few weeks back that He didn't have much he wanted for himself, he wanted to use this money to help her.

She stirred next to him, lazily opening her eyes and looking up into his. She smiled.

“Hey,” her voice was thick with sleep

“Mornin’,” he responded. “Did you get cold during the night?” he played with a string from his sweatshirt. She chuckled as he poked her cheek with it.

“Maybe, do you want it back?”

“Not right now, are you doin’ better?”

“I think so, yeah,” she untangled herself from him, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Thanks for staying over, sorry if its weird,”

“I don’t mind it,”

She moved a lock of his hair out of his face, fingers lingering over his skin just enough to give him goosebumps on his arms.

“You have really nice hair, y’know that?” she mussed it a little as she pulled away.

“Mellie tells me that a lot too, she keeps giving me shampoo samples from work, says they’re good for me,”

“Well, whatever she’s giving you, its working,” She got off her bed, his sweatshirt just falling below her ass. It started to ride up a bit as she opened her bedroom door and walked out into the front room.

It was just a little peak of skin, just enough for him to see how her sleep shorts had ridden up her thighs, hugging her curves tightly. Fuck, this was not the time to get hard, Clyde. He willed himself to settle down and she turned around in the doorway.

“You comin’? I can make you breakfast if you’d like,”

“In a minute, I gotta put my hand on,” he hoped it wasn't obvious he was trying to hide his lower body under her blankets. She just nodded and went to the kitchen.

He cursed himself silently, trying to think of things to calm him down. Why was a little bit of skin getting him riled up in the first place? Women came into his bar in bikini tops in the summer if it was hot enough! He tried thinking about the bar, going over the steps to clean it. Mopping the floors, filling napkin dispensers, wiping down the bar, bending her over the bar and taking her right there…

He groaned, this was not the time for this to start happening. He wasn't even going to be around! He was going to be in a cinderblock cell for christsake!

And there it was, nothing kills the mood faster than the thought of willingly going to jail for a few months. He got out of bed and reattached his prosthetic, feeling sullen. At least he’d have something to think about in jail now.

He went to the kitchen where she was standing by the stove. She had eggs scrambled and put on to two plates and was just starting to put some bacon in the pan. He willed himself to only look at her above the waist.

“Hey, I’m almost done and then we can eat. How do you like your bacon?”

“Are you gonna laugh at me if I say burnt?”

“Only a little,” her nose crinkled as she laughed, “But if that’s what you want, I can do that no problem,”

He got some orange juice out of the fridge and poured it into two glasses before setting them on the living room’s coffee table. She hadn’t bothered to get a kitchen table, said there wasn't much of a point when it was just her in the house. She came over with the plates of food a few minutes later. She set his in front of him, bacon burnt just how he liked. She had obviously taken hers out of the pan a little bit sooner. She turned on the tv to a morning talk show and they ate while listening to a team of too-chipper women argue over whatever the days gossip was.

The longer he stayed with her, the harder if was going to be for him to leave. He pushed the remainder of his eggs around on his place, barely listening to the talkshow. All he could think about was how in a few hours he was going to be in jail and he couldn't tell her. He couldn't prepare her for him saddling her with Duck Tape for months on end. The guilt gnawed at him.

He stood up suddenly, surprising both of them.

“I have to go, Jimmy wanted me to do something for him this morning,” he said quickly. “Thanks for making breakfast,”

“Thanks for staying over, it was— uh—I—” she stumbled over her words, playing with the strings of his sweatshirt. “I appreciate it,”

He stopped rushing to leave and turned to her.

“I’m here for you, I’m glad I could help,”

“Yeah, well—uh— I’ll let you know if I need help again,” she smiled at him, “I’ll give you your sweatshirt back at work, yeah?”

He swallowed.

“Yeah,”

———————————

The trial went by quickly. It was a minor charge, he’d only serve three months in prison. He had gotten to see his siblings as the sentencing, they sat near the back of the court room. Before the trial began Mellie told Clyde to call her when he could, she was worried.

He did just that only a few hours after arriving at Monroe County Correctional Facility. The line rang twice before she picked up.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,”

“Clyde! What happened are you okay? The operator just asked me if I wanted to take a call from an inmate,”

“I’m okay, my foot slipped on the gas and I got into a car accident, I’m serving a short sentence because of some property damages from the building I hit,”

“You hit a building?”

“I’m okay, I swear. I’m sorry I didn't get to tell you before, I wasn't allowed much,”

“It’s okay, I’m glad you're okay. I was so worried about you. Mellie came by to tell me that you were in trouble, but didn’t have a lot of details. People were asking about you at the bar, I wasn't sure what to tell them,”

“You can tell them whatever, I dont mind. I’m sorry to just be leavin’ you with the bar like this,”

“I’m really not sure what to do to be honest, its strange without you here,”

“You’ll do just fine, I’ve seen you work, you know what you're doing. And I trust you,”

“I’ll do my best,” She said quietly. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine, its just three months I’ll be back before you realize,”

“Okay, thats not too bad. Do you need commissary money? Do you want me to visit?”

“No, Mellie and Jimmy can handle the money don’t you worry about that. And—“ he stopped himself.

He wanted to see her. He really did. But then he looked down at his prison uniform and his bare limb. The guards told him he couldn't have his prosthetic in prison, it was too easily use as a weapon or a place to hide weapons. So he would be going three months without his hand, which was kept in the safety of his room back home. He looked awful. He felt awful. He didn't want her to see him like this.

“And I dont think I’ll be needin’ any visits any time soon, I’ll be okay. Promise,”

“Okay,” It was hard to tell over the phone but he thought he detected a hint of sadness, “As long as you’re okay,”

“Listen, if you ever need any help, call Jimmy or Mellie. They’ll be around for you,”

“I’ll remember that, thanks,”

“And I dont get many phone calls, but I’ll keep in touch. Y’know, to hear about the bar. And you,” He heard her give a breathy laugh.

“I’ll put this number in my phone so I know to pick up. And regarding the bar, I’ve got some light gossip to start off with…”

———————————

The heist was pulled off about a month later. Jimmy had to move up the date by a week because the construction job that made this all possible was closing up early. They rushed to accommodate the time difference but it worked.

Of course there were a few hiccups. They almost got caught a few times, once by the English man whose car Clyde had torched with a molotov cocktail. But he took care of that real quick. And then the bomb Joe Bang was supposed to have made flew back into his arms, giving him a flashback of his service days. And then there was a problem with his prosthetic.

Mellie had given it back to him for the job, it felt good to have it back. It helped him feel like a person again, if only for the few hours he was out of prison. But then Joe Bang had to go and suck it up in the tube that they were using to suck up the money with. Jimmy said he’d get it back for him but it still felt awful to lose it.

And then to have all the Bang brothers confirm his worst fears. People knew why he joined the army, they understood it was because he was trying to be half as good as his brother. Jimmy had a life, he was going to play football, he had his wife and his daughter and was the town’s pride. Clyde just wanted to feel like he was something too. And he almost felt it. Then he lost his hand. And Jimmy lost the football scholarship. But it was all going to be worth it if they pulled this heist off.

And now he comes to hear from his sister that the money was found at a gas station and had been returned to the race track. Jimmy had screwed them all over. And now he was sitting in jail for nothing.

The family curse had worked its magic once again.

He was angry. He didn't talk much to people in the first place but he was almost completely silent for the next week. He did his job mopping the floors, ate his meals, and would lay awake at night in silence.

He didn't want to call her. He had done this heist partially for her. He wanted to get her that money to help her feel the freedom she craved. He was ashamed and couldn't even tell her why. He pushed it from his mind, it hurt too much to think about. He was disappointing her and she didn't even know it.

Mellie came to visit him two weeks after the heist. If she noticed he looked disheveled she didn't comment on it.

“I know you're upset. Hell, we’re all upset, but what’s done is done. Jimmy isn't talking to anyone about it and we aren't gonna figure this out until he talks. Which’ll be who knows when!” She waved her arms, which made the guard shoot her a warning look. She glared back and looked at there brother again.

“Your girl was asking about you by the way. She’s worried about you, you know. You haven't called her in two weeks. She won’t say she misses you but she does. A lot,”

Clyde let out a half-hearted grunt in response. He really didn’t want to talk about this with his sister. And he didn’t want his sister calling her his “girl”. She wasn’t his. And wouldn’t ever be.

“Did I tell you last time I went to her place she was wearing your sweatshirt? You wanna tell me about that?” She continued, not accepting his grunt as an answer.

Clyde groaned. He knew Mellie and her were becoming good friends but he didn’t think this would come up.

“It’s nothin’. She was upset one night and I stayed over is all. I let her keep the sweatshirt because I knew I was gonna be in here and I wanted to give her some comfort,”

“Like a beau would, you mean? And what do you mean ‘stayed over’? In her bed?” Clyde’s face was steadily turning a shade of beet red. “Clyde, did you and her—“

“No, Mellie. We did not. Not that it’s your business.”

“But you want to,” She gave him a look. “We all see how you look at her, and we see how she looks at you. You two need to get it together already,”

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. She's my employee,”

“Who is runnin’ your bar like a champ right now, but the way. She barely even needs help. And don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. I know you, and I’ve spent a helluva lot of time with her now that you aren't around to keep her to yourself,” she pointed a long, manicured nail at him. “You’re both crazy for each other. Man up and admit it to her,”

“I don’t know about all that,” he said quieter. “Havin’ a girl like me like that,”

Mellie softened after hearing that. She knows how hard of a time her brother has had.

“Look Clyde, she’s different. She cares for you. It shows in how she cooks for you and how she’s taken to your family, and how she talks about you. Even when you're not there, she talks as if you hung the moon all by yourself.”

His lips pursed together, it sounded too goo to be true.

“She told me a little about what happened by the way, how she got here. She wouldn’t go into detail but she did tell me about how you’ve been helping her. You’re a good person, I know you don’t like to hear that but you are. And she knows that. She doesn’t judge your past or your disability or even the fact that you’re in a damn prison right now! She liked you for exactly who you are. And she’s walking around her house in your clothes? She’s packaged at your door, you just gotta pick her up,”

He was quiet for a few moments, processing what she had just to him. He felt a glimmer of hope. That things could work out for once,

“Tell her I’ll put her on my visitation list, I wanna see her,” Mellie nodded to her brother, breaking into a huge smile.

“She’s gonna like hearing that,”

#logan lucky #clyde logan #clyde logan x reader #clyde logan/reader #clyde logan x oc #clyde logan/oc #masterlist

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nooneelsecomesclose17 · 7 years ago

Text

But, in the end if I’m with you, I’ll take the chance - Robron Week - Day 3

This is sort of a sequel to this ficlet, but it works well as a standalone. I’ve probably taken liberties with police procedure but no more than the show.

The title is from ‘Right here waiting’ by Richard Marx. Blame spotify!

*****

*…We’re getting reports of an extremely dangerous escaped prisoner from the Yorkshire area…*

Aaron wasn’t really watching the news, it was just background noise. His French was still rubbish and it was the best he could find. The added bonus was it made him feel closer to home.

*…We’re told the prisoner’s name is Cameron Murray. He escaped while being transferred. The public are advised not to approach him…*

The plate he’s drying slips from his fingers, smashing around him.

“Aaron? What happened?” He couldn’t move, eyes fixed on the TV in the corner. “Aaron, what is it? Talk to me.”

“It’s Cameron. He’s escaped. I need to get to Mum.”

“Whoa, hold on. Come here, sit down.” Robert leads him into the living room, sitting him on the sofa. He’d done the same thing the night his Mum had called, telling him all that Cameron had done. He’d had to talk him out of going home there and then, even hiding his passport for days.

“No Robert. I need to…she’ll need me. What if he’s going back there?”

“If you go you’ll be arrested the minute you set foot in the village. How’s that going to help? The place will be crawling with police. It’s too risky.”

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing. It’s my family!” He’s up and in their bedroom before Robert can stop him, rummaging in the wardrobe for his bag.

“It’s my family too! He goes to the pub, Diane is there. He’s not going to care who gets in his way is he? What about Sarah and Jack? Just stop and think.” He slumps down on the bed in defeat. “Right…here’s what we’ll do. You go call your Mum.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be booking a ticket into Leeds Bradford. If I’m lucky, I’ll be there by tonight. No one is looking for me and if they are, I can lie with the best of them. As far as anyone knows, I haven’t seen you since you left me to go on the run.” He was right, Aaron knew. Even if they tracked Robert’s passport the day he left, there was no trace of Aaron leaving the country. The police couldn’t prove anything.

“I…you’ll be careful though, won’t you?”

“Of course. Call your Mum. Don’t say I’m coming, just in case.” He watches him go into the other room before finding his phone. It’s been a couple of weeks since he called her and she still sounded shaken about everything. He dreads to think how she is now.

“Mum? It’s me. I just saw the news. Are you alright?”

*****

A few hours later he’s watching as Robert checks he has everything. It’s stupid but he has a bad feeling about all this and the only thing stopping him going too is the knowledge that it’ll make things a whole lot worse.

“You’ll call me, yeah?” He’s sitting cross-legged on their bed, fingers clutching his phone for something to do. His Mum had promised she was fine, that the police thought Cameron would be heading abroad. He wasn’t convinced but maybe they’d get lucky just this once. He snorts to himself, when did that ever happen.

“Yes. It’ll be alright you know, and I’ll be back before you know it.” He joins him on the bed, tugging until they’re laying side by side. “What is it?”

“Just…jealous I guess. Stupid, you’re not going for a holiday are you?”

“I can talk to Adam while I’m there. Get him to go to the police.” It was an old argument and his answer never changed. Robert might have willingly come with him, but he was furious with Adam, even a year and a half later.

“No! I mean it Robert. Just leave it. I made my decision. I’m just being daft. As soon as I know Mum’s alright, I’ll be fine. We’re managing ok though, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are.”

“You know, if you wanted to, you could stay. Like you said no one’s looking for you.” He didn’t think he’d survive if he did, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was somehow holding Robert back. Even though Robert wasn’t on the run, they were still careful. Robert had a fairly decent job with a haulage firm but it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. He’d picked up more French than Aaron had and the work meant speaking English most of the time. They were more settled than ever.

“Do you really think I would do that? Leave you here alone? For one thing your Mum would kill me! Besides, I’ve grown pretty fond of you.” He laughed, as he kissed the end of Aaron’s nose.

“Yeah?”

“I love you, you idiot.” He glanced at his watch. “I should go. I’ll call when I land. As soon as it’s all sorted I’m on a plane straight back home to you.” He gets up reluctantly, picking up his bags. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Gives me a fair amount of leeway.” Aaron laughs, grabbing him for one more kiss. “Love you. Go on, go. Be careful.”

“Promise.” He watches from the door until Robert is out of sight before going back inside, the flat suddenly feeling incredibly empty.

He doesn’t go into work the next day, tells his boss he’s sick. He misses Robert already. He’d called the night before to tell him he’d landed and was staying in a hotel before going to Emmerdale first thing the next morning. He feels utterly helpless. The last year and a half has been tough but he’s never felt like this.

When they left he’d still been in shock that Robert had left his life behind and turned up at the airport. He’d tried to make him go back, even though it had originally been his idea. He didn’t want Robert ruining his life on the run with him but the older man wouldn’t budge and really deep down, he was glad he wasn’t alone.

They hadn’t settled anywhere for long those first months, living off the money Cain had given him, and some of Robert’s savings, wanting to keep moving, just in case. It had been fun at first, like an extended holiday. Eventually they’d settled in Paris, managing to blend in as best they could. Those were the days he looked back on when he was regretting his decision, when he wanted nothing more than to go home.

He wouldn’t have made it without Robert, he wouldn’t. He’d spent weeks expecting him to leave, still does sometimes. Every time, Robert would tell him not to be so soft, that he loved him, didn’t want to be anywhere else.

It’s not until the evening that he hears his voice again, having to settle for texts until then.

“You ok?” He sounds tired.

“Yeah. How’s Mum? Any sign of him?”

“Nothing. I’m staying at Paddy’s. There’s police outside the pub and Debbie’s. They’re convinced he’s out of the country but your Mum said they’d be there until they knew.”

“And she’s alright?”

“You know your Mum, she’s fine. Can’t say she was too happy to see me until I explained that I hadn’t abandoned you,” He laughs, imagining the ear bashing that she gave him. She’d hadn’t been happy at them being together in the first place. Maybe she’d come round now she knew he’d stayed, all the things he’s done. “I’m going back over in a bit to see Diane. Bit of luck and they’ll have him by the morning and I can come home to you.”

“I don’t mind if you stay a while, spend time with Vic.”

“Well I do. Not the same around here without some lad scowling at me.”

“Is that right?”

“Right pain in the arse he was. Couldn’t get rid of him.” The gentle teasing relaxes something in him, he feels calm for the first time that day.

“Oi, watch it. As I remember you followed me out here Sugden.”

“Guess I must like you then.”

“Guess so.” If anyone had told him a couple of years ago he’d miss someone the way he’s missing Robert right now, they would have got a right mouthful. Now he doesn’t know where he’d be without him.

“I’m going to head over. I’ll call before I go to sleep, yeah? Oh, by the way, you won’t believe how much Leo has grown.”

“Take pictures. I’ll talk to you later.”

When they’ve hung up, he forces himself to make something to eat, toast being the only thing he’s had all day. That feeling is still there, he can’t shake it. He wants Robert home, safe.

*****

The police car is still parked up outside when he wanders across to the Woolpack. He could have stayed here, Chas had grudgingly offered and he knew Diane would do the same, but when Paddy had butted in saying he was putting him up, he’d never been more grateful. They’d probably never be friends but the two of them recognised they both wanted the best for Aaron and that was enough to keep them civil.

“Back again?” Chas is behind the bar when he walks in. She’s smiling but he can tell it’s forced and he can’t help admiring her. Most people would have gone elsewhere, escaped the threat, but not Chas. She was staying put, loud and confident as ever, at least on the outside, just like Aaron said.

“If I leave without seeing Diane she’d never forgive me.”

“I’ll get her. Pint?”

“Cheers. I er…” He lowered his voice, ever careful, there were some unfamiliar faces in. “I spoke to Aaron. He told me to tell you he loves you and when this is over, you’re paying us a visit.”

“What do you think to that?”

“Fine with me. We both love Aaron after all. Be easier if we got on.”

“Hmm. I’ll fetch Diane.” She puts his pint on the bar and he takes it to a table, nodding at a few familiar faces.

Paddy had told him most of the village had guessed he was with Aaron but no one had said anything to the police. He supposed that was one of the advantages of a small village, everyone looked out for each other. At least they did for Aaron. He’s not sure he’d be afforded the same loyalty if he were alone.

Later, when he’s finished catching up with Diane, he’s in the bathroom, just about ready to go back to Paddy’s. That’s when he hears the screams. He risks peeking through the swing doors, sees Cameron behind the bar, shotgun in hand. He ducks back inside the Gents before he can be seeing, calling the police. He can either hide, or go out there. He’s bound to be found but before he goes he has to call Aaron. He knows he’s glued to the news and this is bound to make the headlines. He can’t imagine Cameron is just going to hand himself in.

His hands are shaking so much he keeps selecting the wrong number. Finally he manages, has no idea how he’s going to tell him. He’ll want to come home, he needs to stop him, because the thought of losing him, even just to prison is more than he can bear.

“Rob? What’s going on?”

“Um, I need you to listen ok? Listen and not freak out.” His voice was shaking and he couldn’t hide it. “I’m in the pub and…well so is Cameron.”

“What? Robert get out of there!”

“Your Mum and Diane are still inside. I’m in the toilet…I can’t leave them, Aaron.”

“I want you safe.”

“You want her safe too. I can’t Aaron. I’d never forgive myself and neither would you.” He needs him to understand.

“I can’t stop you. I’m stuck here, useless.”

“Hey, listen to me. You are not useless. Trust me, the one thing I’m glad about is that you’re safe. Promise me you’re not going to do anything daft like get on a plane. Promise me Aaron.”

“Ok.”

“I should go, before he finds me. I’ll…I love you, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” He was crying, he could hear it, knew him too well. “Love you too.”

“I’m coming home.” As the words left him the door banged open and he was face to face with the shotgun. “Aaron, I er, I have to go…”

“Robert? ROBERT!” That’s all he hears before Cameron rips the phone from his grasp and throws it to the floor, stamping on it until it’s in pieces.

He doesn’t bother saying anything as he’s pushed into the bar with everyone else. There’s no point, he can see from his eyes there’s no reasoning with him and even he knows his smart mouth will only get him into trouble. He stumbles into Chas as he’s pushed forward and he sits beside her.

“What the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you get out?” She hisses when Cameron’s attention is elsewhere.

“Do you think Aaron would forgive me if I left you here?” Her face softens and he shuffles closer. “I managed to call the police. I’m not completely stupid.”

“You pick your moments to start being bloody sensible and thinking about other people though, don’t you?”

He lets out a breathy laugh because the old him, the person he was before Aaron probably would be outside, safe by now.

*****

*…We’re receiving reports of an ongoing hostage situation in the Yorkshire village of Emmerdale…*

“Took your time didn’t you?” Aaron mutters. He’s curled up on the sofa, fist clenched around his phone. He wants to do what Robert said he would, get on a plane, train, get to Robert. He won’t, he promised. He wants to call Paddy, anyone who can help him find out more, but he doesn’t want to use the phone in case Robert manages to call.

He knew something would happen, should have stopped him going. Now he’s here, alone, helpless, just having to wait and hope. He’s never felt further away from Robert.

*****

It all happens so quick. One minute everything was still and the next Chas has hit Cameron with a chair and Zak has rushed him. He doesn’t feel it, not really, thinks he’s been punched in the struggle. It’s not until Diane screams that he realises something’s wrong. Everything is a blur of panic and noise and all of a sudden he’s scared.

There’s pressure on his chest and Chas is there smiling at him. Something is definitely wrong then, and he wants to laugh but it hurts and she’s telling him to lie back, to keep looking at her.

“Chas?” He reaches for her hand and she holds on tight. “Aaron’s gonna kill me.”

“No he won’t love. Soon as he can, he’s going to hug the living daylights out of you. Hmm? You just hold on.” He lets his eyes close because it definitely hurts to breathe, and he’s not an expert but he’s pretty sure that’s not good.

“Don’t…don’t let him…make him stay. Can’t…come back.”

“Shh, don’t worry.” He nods, closes his eyes again. “Robert, you have to stay awake. Stay with me.” He tries, he really does but it’s too hard. In the end it’s easier to just float away

*****

It’s dark when he wakes up, but he knows he’s in hospital, there’s never any mistaking them. His chest aches but it’s easier to breathe and he remembers everything so clearly. Someone’s holding his hand and he looks round, expecting Vic or Diane, but it’s Aaron. No, it can’t be. He’s meant to be in France. He tries to sit up but all he manages to do is feebly lift his head from the pillow and send the machines he must be attached to into a frenzy.

“Robert? Hey, calm down. You’re ok, you’re safe.” He’s stroking his hair and it’s nice. He does it sometimes if he has a bad dream. Maybe that’s what this is. “What did I say about being careful, huh?”

“No’ my fault. Shouldn’t be here. Should be home.”

“Yeah well, that’s what happens when your boyfriend gets himself shot. It’s fine. I handed myself in. Cain’s talked to Adam and he’s done the same.” He’s trying to follow but his brain is full of cotton wool. “Doesn’t matter. They let me stay until you woke up. Mum’s here, she’s going to stay with you until Diane gets back.”

“Where you going?”

“You really are out of it aren’t ya. I’ve got to go, they’re not going to give me bail Rob.” “No, wait! You can’t.” There’s a police officer at the door and Aaron’s leaving and there’s nothing he can do. “Just one more minute.” Aaron says and then he’s back, kissing him softly. “It won’t be for long and then we can be together again. No more running. Just get yourself better yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘s my fault.”

“No, no it’s not. It’s what should have happened in the first place. I’ve got to go.” He leans down again as close as he can. “I love you.”

Then he’s gone and Robert’s alone. This isn’t how it was supposed to go and now Aaron’s gone again, who knows when he’ll be back. Before he knows it his cheeks are wet. It’s not long before Chas is there, looking tired and as though she hasn’t slept a bit. He guesses she hasn’t.

“You really love him, don’t you?”

“All it took was me gettin’ shot. Shoulda stopped him.”

“He was on his way before I even got to speak to him. That boy loves you. Can’t say I’m not glad that he’ll be at home again soon enough.” He couldn’t really disagree with that. As much as they’ve had a good time and gotten on alright in France, Emmerdale is home.

*****

Two months later he’s in a taxi parked up outside the prison. Eight long weeks. He’s visited, but only a couple of times, only out of hospital for a few weeks himself. Since then he’s moved back into the pub, into Aaron’s old room.

Within days Chas had despatched Cain to France with their keys to collect their stuff and Robert had contacted their bosses who were none too pleased at losing employees without any notice. He didn’t care, they weren’t going back.

He’s all healed, a scar to show for being in the wrong place and now all he needs is Aaron. There’s a party planned back at the pub and Chas had offered to drive him, but he wanted a little time alone, just the two of them before their families descended.

It feels like an age that he sits there waiting and the taxi fare will be extortionate. Then he sees Aaron at the gate and he smiles, getting out of the car. He’s still tired, still a little week and he’s not sleeping properly after that night, doesn’t without Aaron.

“Hi.” Is all he says before Aaron launches himself at him, arms clinging tight as he drops his bag. Eventually he pulls away, hand laying flat over his scar.

“Don’t you ever do that again.” He laughs and pulls him close, nodding against his shoulder.

“I promise, the next time it happens, I’ll get out of the way, ok?”

“I was so scared.”

“I know. Me too. But it’s over now. I’m fine.” He keeps his arm around him as they head for the taxi, doesn’t want to let him go just yet. “No more getting arrested.”

“I couldn’t stay away Robert. You were hurt.”

“I get it. Just don’t leave me again.”

“I won’t. I promise. Take me home.”

So he does. They go home. Together.

#robron week #rw2018 #day 3 #tw: guns #tw: gun violence #aaron dingle #robert sugden #cameron murray #chas dingle #part of my 2012 au world #if i'd hadn't started writing it the day before #it would have been better #and i've changed the ending to because i'm evil #anyway enjoy

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ryqoshay · 7 years ago

Text

How to Handle a Nico: Reassurance

Primary Pairing: NicoMaki Secondary Pairing: NozoEli Words: ~3.7k Rating: T? Time Frame: Late in Maki’s college career and early in Nico’s idol producer career Story Arc: Stand Alone

List of all HtHaN scenes

Author’s Note: Not too long ago, a comment over on AO3 made mention of liking how I portray Nico demystifying Maki, “breaking her behavior and responses down to a science” and that got me thinking that the reverse is true as well. Maki also analyzes and learns Nico’s behavior and responses. She may be a bit slower in figuring things out, but she is just as driven in her desire to learn everything she can about Nico.

On thinking more about this topic, I realized that a lot of the scenes I have been writing as of late have been more or less using Nico as the audience surrogate. And while I think that’s fine, I would like to turn things around every so often and write a scene or two that focuses on Maki’s perspective on things.

The moment Maki entered the room, she knew something was wrong. “Nico-chan?”

“Maki-chan!?” Nico jolted before looking up at her girlfriend. “I didn’t hear you come in.” Her hand moved to do something on her laptop before she flashed a smile and her signature gesture. “How were classes?”

No. That wasn’t right. Maki pursed her lips and furrowed her eyebrows as she moved across the room.

“Maki-chan?” The raven-haired girl’s smile faltered, just a bit at the lack of response.

The redhead knelt behind her girlfriend, draped her arms over her and nuzzled her nose into her hair.

“You don’t have to lie, you know.” Maki said softly.

“Wha…?”

“That was probably fakest smile you’ve ever shown me.”

“Oh…” Nico’s shoulders slumped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Noth…” The older girl cut off as the younger girl grunted disapprovingly. After a moment, she sighed. “Sorry, Maki-chan, I… I guess I just don’t want to make you worry.”

Maki pressed herself more against her girlfriend’s back. “I’m already am worried.” She admitted, her mind running through memories of how she had watched her girlfriend ride an emotional rollercoaster for the last couple of weeks. And while she was more than happy sharing in the highs, she was feeling increasingly helpless during the lows. “Tell me, please.” She requested. “If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, please let me know. I want to help, Nico-chan.”

“You really don't get it, do you, Maki-chan?”

What? A flash of panic skittered across Maki’s consciousness. What didn't she get? What had she missed? Did she do something wrong? Was Nico upset?

“You’re doing it right now and you don’t even realize it.”

“Huh?”

“Just keep doing what you are doing.”

“Hugging you?”

Maki could feel the other girl chuckle under her.

“Well, that too. But what I mean is… keep being you, Maki-chan. Continue to cheer me on. Stay by my side. Just… uhm, how did that song go from the Phantom again?” Nico pondered for a moment. “<Love me, that's all I ask of you.>” She couldn't help singing the lyric in English.

“I do love you, Nico-chan.”

“I know. And I don’t think I could ever tell you properly how happy that makes me. So, like I said, just keep doing what you’re doing, because I love it.” Nico leaned back against her girlfriend. “I love you, Maki-chan.”

A warm feeling spread through Maki. No matter how many times she heard Nico say it, she doubted she would ever tire of it. Still…

“I just…” Maki struggled for a moment to find the best words to express her concerns. “I wish I could do more. You…” She was about to list off all the things Nico did for her when she was interrupted.

“Maki-chan.” Nico said firmly. “Not once have I ever thought that you don’t do enough for me. Not once have I thought, ‘Gee, I wish Maki-chan would do more in our relationship.’” She took her girlfriend’s hand, raised it to her lips and placed a gentle kiss on the back of it. “I love you, Maki-chan and I love all that you do for me.”

“… Sorry…” Maki heard herself say before she thought better of it.

Nico chuckled again. “What are you apologizing for now?”

“I wanted to reassure you because you looked upset when I came in, but you ended up reassuring me instead.”

“But you did reassure me. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Wha…?”

“You saw that I was upset, didn’t buy my attempt to hide it and came over to comfort me. You reassured me and didn’t even realize it. Geez, you’re dense sometimes.”

“Mmmph…” Maki felt a pout come to her lips.

“You reminded me that no matter what, I have your support. And the support of many others.” Nico explained. “I’d forgotten that for a moment.”

“What the heck?”

Nico sighed. “Because I stupidly started reading some forum threads.” She motioned to the laptop in front of her.

“I don’t get it.”

“Remember that deal I was trying to set up with that other small production company?”

“The one that fell through?”

“Yeah. Anyway, it seems Etsuko somehow found out about it and has spent the day stirring up the embers of anger with my old fans who still feel betrayed. There’s a full-fledged flamewar spreading across several idol sites.”

“Hasn’t Etsuko done enough to you already?” Maki wrinkled her nose while saying her name.

“Apparently not.” Nico shrugged. “But it’s alright. You can’t have a fight on a forum without two sides and that other side is made up of those who still support me. I really am blessed to have such loyal fans.”

“Yeah, you do have some great fans.” Maki agreed.

“And that thing falling through isn’t even that big of a deal.” Nico continued. “Sure, it would have been nice, I mean connections are connections and alliances are alliances, but it’s not going to break us. Egao Jōshō will still become the No. 1 Idol Production Company in the Universe.”

“You mean it isn’t already?” Maki couldn’t help asking, allowing a hint of teasing into her tone.

“Nope.” Nico responded with a surprising amount of sincerity, enough that it made Maki second guess her teasing for a moment. “But so long as amazing people like Hanayo, Tsubasa,” she hugged Maki’s arms “and you are around, we’ll get there. I know we will.”

“Mmm…” Maki tilted her head down to plant a kiss on top of the other girl’s head.

Nico began to twist around and push herself towards her girlfriend. Maki sat back and allowed the other girl to slide onto her lap. From her new position, Nico wrapped her arms around Maki’s neck so she could pull closer. Maki responded by turning her head to meet the incoming kiss.

“We’re home!” A voice announced from the entry.

And just like that, the spell was broken. Maki pulled away, immediately lamenting the sigh Nico released before rolling her eyes.

“Welcome back!” Nico called, getting to her feet. She turned to her girlfriend and offered a hand. “Let’s go greet them, shall we?”

Maki nodded quietly, accepted the help up and allowed herself to be lead toward the door.

“Hey, you two!” Eli greeted with a smile as the couple came around the corner. “We have a surprise for you!” She indicated a long and slim, but sizable box leaning against the wall.

“Elicchi noticed this while we were out shopping today.” Nozomi explained, already moving to open the box. “I consulted the cards and they said it would prove useful.” She slid the item out of the box before turning to reveal it.

“A keyboard?” Maki stepped forward to get a better view.

“It’s a little beat up because it was used, but I tried it before they reboxed it and I think it sounds alright.” Eli turned her attention to the redhead approaching. “Still, we should probably let you, our resident pianist, make the final decision on whether we keep or ret…” She cut off as she suddenly found herself in an unexpected embrace. “Xорошо?” She uttered in confusion.

“Thank you.” Maki murmured before letting go. She turned to find Nozomi already grinning and holding her arms wide. Suddenly aware of her emotionally charged behavior, she blushed.

“You’re welcome, Maki-chan.” Nozomi said, as the younger girl sheepishly moved over to hug her as well. “So, do you want some help setting it up?”

“Yes, please.”

With all four girls working together, it took less than five minutes to get the device up and running. Immediately on powering up the keyboard, Maki began pressing keys to listen to the sounds they made. Eli had been right, despite the external casing being a bit banged up, the sound quality was surprisingly good so the internal components were fine.

“Are you going to play something, Maki-chan?” Nico asked, obvious anticipation seeping into her voice.

Maki looked up to find an expression of excited expectation on her girlfriend’s face and she couldn’t help meeting the smile with one of her own. The older girl knew how to cook, willingly did house cleaning duties, took care of her when she was sick and overall did many things to look out for Maki’s wellbeing. And while Maki’s abilities to reciprocate in those departments was lacking, there was one thing she knew, for certain, she could do that never failed to make Nico happy; play the piano and sing. Or maybe that was two things, but whatever.

“Definitely.” Maki agreed as her mind began shuffling through what she knew she could play from memory.

One song, in particular, repeated itself in the cycle; the one Nico had brought up earlier. She did a quick mental check to ensure she remembered all the lyrics and chords. But, it was a duet, in English… Would Nico pick up on that? Did she know the words to her part? Wait… in the play, the song ended with the two characters kissing! Eli and Nozomi were here! Would Nico still want to… yes, of course she would want to; Nico loved public displays of affection. And Nozomi would definitely tease them about it because that’s just what Nozomi did. Still… it did seem to be a fitting song for the situation… and she hadn’t sung a duet with Nico in far too long… and it would definitely make Nico happy…

Swallowing her embarrassment, Maki began to play. “<No more talk of darkness. Forget these wide-eyed fears.>”

Nico’s eyes widened with recognition. Maki could tell by her expressions that the older girl was quickly reviewing Christine’s part in her own mind to prepare. She fidgeted with her phone, likely considering looking up the lyrics. However, when she smiled, Maki knew she was ready.

“<Say you’ll love me every waking moment.>” Nico sang, moving to a position opposite the keyboard from her girlfriend, maintaining steady eye contact the entire time. “<Turn my head with talk of summertime.>”

For someone who had likely only heard the song less than a dozen times, Maki had to admit she was impressed with how well Nico performed the part of Christine. Though she didn’t play an instrument, nor did she write songs, there was no question that Nico’s musical knowledge and prowess easily rivaled that of Maki’s. Well, actually, there were a few songs that Nico had written mostly on her own, and she definitely had helped refine many of the songs Maki and Umi had written back in high school. And, if she put her mind to it, Nico probably could play an instrument if she wanted.

Nico giggled a bit when Maki substituted her name for Christine’s and it was enough to bring Maki’s focus back on the duet they were sharing. By the gods, she loved that smile. Nico’s smile was undeniably genuine now, not fake like she had tried to show earlier. This was the smile that had worked its way deep into her heart years ago. Seeing that, Maki was certain she had made the right choice in songs.

“<Anywhere you go, let me go too.>” The couple sang in unison as the song approached its conclusion. “<Love me, that’s all I ask of you.>”

As they held the note for the required number of beats, Nico reached up to Maki’s cheek. The redhead responded by leaning forward, across the keyboard. Finally, they ended the song and their lips met.

“<Bravi! Bravi! Bravissimi!>” Nozomi intoned in Italian.

Maki tore away from her girlfriend, almost throwing herself off balance with how quickly she stood up. Silently, she cursed the blush she knew was already flaring across her cheeks. Gods, she hated this part of herself. Nico’s lips turned down into a frown. No. That wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to see Nico smile again. But what could she… well, the kiss had ended prematurely… again… and she did like, no, she loved kissing Nico… but Eli and Nozomi were watching…

“Geez, thanks Nozo…” Nico began to grumble.

Oh, what the heck. Maki crushed down her embarrassment once again and reached forward to place her hand on her girlfriend’s cheek. The raven-haired girl’s eyes widened again, this time in surprise as she cut off what she was saying. Before she could decide against it, Maki leaned forward and pressed their lips together. She felt Nico stiffen for the briefest of instances, but then she relaxed and wrapped her arms around the taller girl’s neck to pull her deeper into the kiss.

Closer. More. Nico.

Maki shoved all thoughts of the audience aside and let herself get lost in the moment, almost tipping over the keyboard as she tried to get even closer to the girl she loved.

After a little while, it was Nico who began to break away, and with no shortage of reluctance, Maki allowed her. Ah, that was more like what she wanted to see. Nico’s eyes were unfocused, her breathing was heavier than normal and she even swayed a little unsteadily, all proving how deep she had dived into the moment with her.

Maki couldn’t help glancing over at Nozomi, who thankfully remained quite this time, though Maki decided she could do without that overly-satisfied smile. Eli looked like she wanted to say something but was unwilling to be the one to break the silence.

“Mmm…” Nico hummed contently as she came back to reality. She smiled as her gaze met Maki’s before murmuring. “That was lovely.”

“Quite lovely indeed.” Nozomi agreed.

“Uhm, yes.” Eli spoke up. “That was a lovely song, though I cannot place where I might have heard it before.”

“Oh, it’s from Phantom of the Opera.” Nozomi explained.

“Ah, that’s why.” The blonde nodded. “I’ve never seen the show, just heard some of its music here and there.”

“Well, perhaps that’s what we should watch tonight.”

Maki couldn’t help wincing a bit and quickly tried to hide it.

“You object, Maki-chan?” Of course, the ever-attentive spiritual girl would notice.

“No, I just, uhm…” Maki fumbled for an explanation. “It’s not that the movie is horrible, just that… well, I grew up with the Broadway production…”

“Grew up with Broadway?” A quirky expression crossed Nico’s face. “Maki-chan, the movie came out when you were only, like what, five…”

“Eight.” The redhead corrected.

“Whatever.” The raven-haired girl dismissed. “Anyway, you would have grown up with that as well.”

“Not really.” Maki shook her head. “My parents love the theater and took me to see shows on Broadway when they traveled to New York on business. They wanted me to appreciate the theater and the arts as much as they do. And the movie is just… I dunno… Butler’s voice is too…” what had that one reviewer called it? “rock ‘n’ roll? I mean I know The Lord Lloyd Webber…”

“The Lord Lloyd Webber?” Nico raised an eyebrow.

“Technically, the Right Honorable The Lord Lloyd-Webber, but…”

“Huh… royalty…” Nico shook her head.

“Nobility.” Maki corrected. “And he’s a life Peer, not a hereditary Peer.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, I know he liked Butler, but it’s just not what I’m used to. The Phantom is supposed to have a smooth, powerful and seductive voice. And…”

“Yeah, well not all of us can just go see Broadway plays whenever, Maki-chan.” Nico pointed out. “So, the more widely available Hollywood production is good enough.”

Nozomi giggled. “Nicocchi, have you forgotten you’re dating someone who can take you to Broadway whenever?”

“I… no!” Nico protested. “I’m sorry, Maki-chan.” She glanced apologetically at her girlfriend. “I didn’t mean that like it probably sounded. And I wouldn’t want to take advantage…”

“I want to go.” Maki interrupted. “I love Broadway. And I would love to go with you sometime, Nico-chan. We could see any show you want, even if I’ve already seen it; especially if it’s Phantom.”

“Really?” Ruby eyes sparkled.

“Honestly, when we all went to New York as µ’s, it felt strange not to see a show.” Maki remembered the trip they had all taken a few years back. “But I didn’t know if anyone else would want to go, so I didn’t bring it up.”

“Sorry, Maki-chan,” Nozomi spoke up “I didn’t realize you felt that way. I would have gone with you.”

“Same here.” Nico added.

“I would have gone as well.” Eli chimed in. “I’ve seen some of the dance numbers in online videos, but seeing them in person is an entirely different experience.”

“Maybe…” Maki’s mind raced with ideas. “Maybe we could all go sometime?”

“All four of us?” Nozomi inquired.

Maki nodded. “We could join Papa and Mama the next time they go for business. There’s plenty of room on the plane. We could get a box to ourselves.” Amethyst eyes lit up. “Maybe we could even get Box 5!”

“We wouldn’t want to impose.” Eli said.

“You wouldn’t be.” Maki shook her head. “As I said, my parents love the theater. But they really love sharing that experience with others who might be interested. They bring friends and business partners and such all the time. And they’ve told me before that I could bring friends if I wanted. I guess I just haven’t had friends who were interested in theater before.”

“Maki-chan.” Nico’s shoulders slumped in an exaggerated display of exasperation. “How many musicals have we watched together?”

“I, uhm… a lot?”

“And you didn’t know I liked musicals?”

“Well, yeah, but the stage is different from the screen…”

“Yeah, it’s live.” Nico grinned. “And what have I said about listening to recordings of my idol music versus seeing a concert live?”

“Live is better?”

“Exactly. And Eli is a former ballet dancer, so we know why she is interested.” Nico motioned to the blonde who nodded affirmation. “And Nozomi… probably just wants to check out the chorus girls…”

The purple-haired girl giggled.

“So, you guys want to go?” Maki asked tentatively, despite pretty much knowing the answer. When the expected three confirmations were given, she smiled and continued. “I’ll ask my parents when they’re heading over next.”

Nico practically skipped around the keyboard. Once on the other side, she threw herself at her girlfriend in an excited tackle hug. “This is going to be awesome!” She bounced up and down happily, pulling Maki along with her movements. “I’m going to have to check online to see what shows are running.”

Maki couldn’t help but laugh at her girlfriend’s exuberance. And knowing that she was responsible for Nico’s excitement made her all that much happier.

“We’ll leave the planning up to you then, Maki.” Eli glanced at her girlfriend, who nodded. “We’ll see whatever show, or shows, you two want.”

“In the meantime, are you really that opposed to watching Hollywood’s version, Maki-chan?” Nozomi asked.

“Not really, I guess.” Maki twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. “If Eli hasn’t seen either the movie or stage version, seeing the movie first might be the better order to do things.”

“Alright then, I’ll see if I can find it one of the services.”

“I’ll go make dinner.” Nico said, turning toward the kitchen. “Would you be so kind as to provide some accompanying music, Maki-chan?” she asked over her shoulder.

A smile pulled at Maki’s lips. “Of course.”

“I’ll…” Eli started.

“Elicchi.” Nozomi interrupted. “Please take your usual spot, relax and be your adorable self.” She smirked as her girlfriend’s blush. “I’ll join you in a moment so we can enjoy Maki-chan’s concert together.” She then began to fuss with the remote in order to find the movie.

Once her audience was ready, Maki began to play.

“So… Maki-chan as Raoul, huh?” Nico mused as she crawled under the covers to join her girlfriend. “Would owning a hospital today be a kind of modern equivalent of a viscount?”

“Maybe.” Maki replied. “I’m not sure, really.”

“But Nico thought Maki-chan knew all about royalty and stuff.”

“Nobility.” The younger girl corrected again. “And I don’t know everything. Though I think I remember Mama or Papa telling me that members of Nishikino lineage were included within the Kazoku.”

“So, I’m dating someone of royal blood?” The older girl suddenly sounded excited.

“Noble. And maybe?” Maki conceded. “But I’m not entirely sure. I’d have to ask them again to remember what rank we may have held.”

“So, Nico really does make a good Christine.” Even in the dimly lit room, Nico’s smile shone splendidly. “Not only are we both amazing singers, but we are both dating royalty.”

“Nobility.” At this point, Maki figured the other girl was doing it on purpose to annoy her.

“Though given the choice between Raoul and the Phantom…” Nico continued, apparently ignoring the correction. “I don’t think I’d take either.”

“Oh?”

“Yup. Nico is quite happy with her choice.” That said, Nico pulled herself closer to her girlfriend and snuggled into her. “Nico-nii’s Maki-chan really is the best choice.”

Maki’s heart skipped a beat and warmth gathered in her cheeks. Strange. Even though they had been dating for a few years now, Nico still managed to have that same old effect on her.

“Hee… is Maki-chan blushing?” Nico propped herself up on her elbow so she could lean over the other girl.

“I… hey…” Maki turned her head. “D-don’t look at me…”

Nico laughed.

“Mohhh…”

“Anyway,” Nico settled back down beside her girlfriend “thank you, Maki-chan, for a wonderful evening.”

“Mmmm…”

“Today was kind of rough and that whole flamewar forum thing didn’t help.” Nico continued. “But then you came home and reassured me that, all things considered, I’m doing pretty good.” She smiled. “Really good, actually. Really, really good.”

“I’m… glad I was able to help.”

“You did.” Nico confirmed. “More than I think you realize.”

“Hmmm…” Somewhere in the back of Maki’s mind, she felt like had considered something like this before; if just loving Nico was enough. After a few moments, she realized she wasn’t going to remember and decided to just be happy that Nico thought it was enough, even if Maki still wanted to do more.

More…

Well… there was one other thing she knew she could do that made Nico happy… though, maybe happy was the wrong word, but…

“Maki-chan?” Nico asked as the other girl turned toward her.

“Nico-chan…” Maki let her desires color her tone as she pushed herself up to a position over the other girl.

Nico reached up to pull Maki down into a kiss. As their lips met, the pleased sound Nico made let Maki know her actions were appreciated.

Author’s Note Continued: I swear this scene was not originally intended to turn into a discussion about the Phantom of the Opera. I had Nico say sing that one line initially just as a reference to the fact that the couple often watch musicals together. Then my µ’s muse started working a bit of overtime and the scene almost quadrupled in length. Not complaining, mind.

And I guess there is now a keyboard in Nico and Nozomi’s apartment. I have little doubt it will come into play - pun intended - in a future scene or two.

And there is a New York trip being planned. That has also been added to the notes for a possible future scene or two.

And now I need to double check to see if the Original Broadway version of Phantom is still on my iPod so I can listen to it the next time I drive up to the cities.

#NicoMaki #Nishikino Maki #Yazawa Nico #How to Handle a Nico #Love Live #fanfic

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