#personally i think she deserved to deserved to shoot that freighter up with a gun

[dnncats]

my girl

alt color:

[littlemisspascal]

Ezra’s Journal Entries #4-6

Fandom: Prospect / Pedro Pascal

Pairing: Ezra x Female!Reader

Word Count: 1,133

Summary:  I don’t deserve you, little love of mine. Not one damn piece of you.

Warnings: angsty fluff, night terrors, PTSD, Ezra dealing with the aftermath of the Green, language, 1st person POV (Ezra), dialogue in italics because that’s just how I chose to do it, overuse of space metaphors, no beta so all mistakes are mine

Author Note: As always, thank you readers for your support! All the love to each one of you! Hope you like these new segments 💖

Entries #1-3 #7-9

Cross-posted on AO3

Look for additional notes at the bottom.

I feel a little less torn after speaking with Cee, hearing her voice crackling across the radio regale me with details of her current studies at Cero Tol, the latest novel she’s devouring, the daytrip she made to Lao to collect shells for an art project—it reminds me there was a sliver of profound goodness to come out of my otherwise disastrous journey to the Green. She rambles and babbles and laughs at her tongue’s inability to keep up with all she has to share. Her soul has found exactly what it has always yearned for: a life of her own making.

For all that she lost on the Green, she has adapted to her new path and overcome every obstacle with the same bullheaded determination a helianthus possesses. Never losing sight of her goals just as the flower never loses sight of the sun. 

I must admit I’d been reluctant to split ways with her after our perilous escape from the Green—after all, nothing bonds people together faster than the collaboration of slicing off an arm and creaming the gaping wound shut, then immediately engaging in a bloody conflict with heavily armed mercs—but she deserved better than to live a floater’s life tainted by a lack of morals and the uncertainty of not knowing if she would survive from one sunrise to the next.

She deserved to live a life amongst her own peers. To rouse that spark of creativity her father tried to extinguish. To turn gold in all the ways I cannot. 

Sending her to school was worth every point and credit we managed to scrape together. Still, I remember how bittersweet it felt watching that little bird, ever so fearless in the face of sudden change, march right up the ramp of the freighter at the Pug, determined to make me and you proud by excelling at the academy. Standing amongst the sea of parents waving goodbye to their children, I wrapped my arm around your waist, rested my head atop yours, and forced myself to swallow a harsh pill of truth.

With or without me in her life, Cee is going to be just fine.

I remember how you swung our linked hands as we walked back to our ship, your sweet voice a soothing balm easing the ache of my melancholic heart. Ezra, she’s fierce and bold and strong. That little golden child is going to have her name written in the stars one day.

Kevva do I hope I live to see your vision come true.

First thing I remember noticing about you was your eyes. Remember how I caught you staring at me from across the bar? You looked at me like I was your North Star pointing you home, like I was something shiny and special. You scared the fuck out of me. It’s the worst thing I ever thought, but it’s true. I would have fled the scene if your gaze hadn’t anchored my soul. 

You introduced yourself, and I knew goodbye would never be a word exchanged between us. No, we became a pair of binary stars, constantly orbiting each other round and round, hello again and see you soon. Falling in love with you was inevitable. The Currents designed you perfect for me. Designed you with meteorite in your bones and sunlight on your lips and all the constellations sparkling in your eyes. There is no grander form of paradise than to feel you beneath my hand. There is no comparison. No second place contender. Just you, your tender heart, and the galaxies you contain. 

Sometimes, late at night when you’re asleep and my thoughts are too loud for my head, I stare at the ceiling and speculate about alternate verses. Verses starring another me and another you crisscrossing each other’s paths as we’re pulled across the galaxy by our heartstrings. Somewhere, there is another me who never escapes the ruthlessness of the Green and breathes my last with Inumon’s knife in my lungs. Another me who will never know the emotional and physical anguish that accompanies the loss of a limb. Another me who pulls the thrower’s trigger without hesitation, firing a shot between the wide eyes of an innocent girl. Another me who ignores the temptation of harvesting aurelac in hopes of making a reputable name for myself. 

Somewhere, there is another me who ran away from another you.

And it pains me to wonder if perhaps you’re happier never knowing me.

I speculate about those two most of all.

I woke up to screaming. My mind was a tangled mess, caught between the thin barriers separating reality from dreamscape, and I was truly convinced my head would explode from the noise. Inumon wouldn’t stop screaming no matter how hard I squeezed my fingers, no matter how much of my bulk I pressed down upon her. It’s me! She wailed like an animal in a trap, sensing impending doom but unable to flee from it. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me! Please, Ezra!

A thought crossed my mind, as sudden and blinding as a shooting star streaking through the midnight sky, and I found myself incapable of ignoring it. How does she know my name? I had cloaked my identity using a dead man’s name. It wasn’t feasible for her to know the truth or for the sound of my name coming out of her mouth to set my skin aflame. 

There aren’t words to describe the horror which consumed me when I looked down upon your tear-stained face. 

My mama once told me everybody’s a sinner. We have wickedness embedded in our cells from womb to tomb. It buries its roots deep, resistant to our attempts to rid ourselves of its corruption, and waits for the precise moment to inflict pain upon those we love most. Those who choose to love us despite the warning signs.

In the aftermath, when my fucking fingerprints were smudged across your throat blue and purple, you held me like I was a human and not a monster or a vexation or a broken thing to toss aside. I couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop my mind from conjuring a torturous loop of what ifs. 

What if I hadn’t stopped myself? What if you hadn’t broken the nightmare’s spell? What if your last word had been my name? 

Hush, you whispered. My tremors worsened upon hearing the raspy quality of your voice and you pressed your lips to my forehead. An undeserved benediction. I’m here. You haven’t lost me. 

I don’t deserve you, little love of mine. Not one damn piece of you. If I could I’d give you the whole galaxy, but I only have one hand and it terrifies me to risk letting you go. Forgive me, please, for asking you to stay with me.

Forgive me for how much I dearly love you.

Notes:

Cero Tol is a made up academy based on Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory located in Chile. 

Lao is an island planet(?) mentioned in Prospect. Damon tells Cee she was born there.

Helianthus is the genus for sunflowers. I liked the fanciness of it 🙂

Points were referenced in Prospect as a type of currency. Credits are a Star Wars form of currency that I thought would also be fitting to use.

Binary Stars =  a system of two stars in which one star revolves around the other or both revolve around a common center.

I like to think there are alternate realities or a multiverse. It’s fun to imagine all the different possibilities another me is experiencing. 

I don’t think I’ll ever understand why guns in Prospect are called throwers, but that’s what the creators decided so that’s the terminology I’ll use too.

Series Taglist: @insomniamamma

Permanent Taglist: @promiscuoussatan, @melobee, @randomness501, @captain-jebi, @artsymaddie, @happiestsparkleofall, @gallowsjoker, @vintagesaph, @sylphene, @chibi-yuki, @freeshavocadoooo, @stilllivindue2spite, @pointy-sharp, @leilei-draws, @over300books, @theocatkov, @oh-no-a-whovian, @you-and-i-deserve-the-world, @lin-djarin, @rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives, @coaaster, @waywardmando, @thisshipwillsail316, @grogusmum​, @asta-lily, @mylifeofcalculatedchaos, @absurdthirst, @disgruntledspacedad​, @read-and-rec​

[dust2dust34]

Four Walls (Of Law Firms and Honey) - Olicity AU, Explicit

Summary: Oliver is Felicity’s boss at Queen & Queen, a prestigious international law firm. She’s the tech genius, he’s the top dog’s son, and they viciously disagree on nearly everything. Despite that, they work together, neither outright acknowledging the ever-present simmering attraction that has slowly been growing hotter and hotter…

Until a chance meeting at a grocery store one night has them crossing a line, a tiny little line that was never meant to be crossed.

A collection of ficlets in the same ‘verse: Of Law Firms and Honey.

Rated: Explicit

Full fic: AO3 | Tumblr | Timeline

Reminder: Please read the story tags and notes at the beginning of each chapter.

This fic is being told out of order. Please see the timeline to read them in order. Please see the previous installments for additional author notes and story information.

Check out the Four Walls playlist, and if you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Additional A/N: This is the other ficlet I planned for a generous donor in the Fic For Food Drive I took part in. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Chapter Summary: Flash Fic #4. She finds him in a coffee shop.

(read on AO3)

8:27 a.m. Gilded Bean (Flash Fic #4)

The bustle of the coffee shop encompassed him in a pleasant haze.

Sipping his coffee, Oliver scrolled through his email on his phone, enjoying the relaxing slant of his shoulders caused by the chatter behind him, the footsteps of people hustling to the counter, the distinct sound of beverages being crafted. It complimented the busy downtown street outside the window he faced, the people rushing by, cars stopping and going, the sky clear for once, letting sunshine spill on the world.

He savored it, knowing he would be going back to his quiet office for the board meeting in thirty minutes.

Pinpricks of anxiety slithered over him.

Oliver sucked in a breath and quickly looked up at the busy world. His fingers tightened around his coffee cup, so hard the top nearly popped off. He fixed his eyes on signs of life - the strands falling from a woman’s braid, a man digging in his back pocket, a dog prancing by on a thin leash, the woman walking it staring at her phone, a dent in a passing car, a man talking to someone in the backseat of another car, pieces of hair sticking to the corner of someone’s mouth, a woman’s lips as she sang along to whatever came out of her headphones.

He clung to everything before him, holding it close, despite being outside of all of it.

A chime told him he had fifteen minutes to get back to the office.

He didn’t move. Instead, eyes not straying from the mosaic of life, he set his phone down and rubbed his thumb along the ridge of his index finger. The motion soothed him enough that he settled, his heart rate slowing. He calculated how long he could stay until he had to run back to the office to make it in time.

Six minutes.

Ten if he really booked it.

“Hey.”

Oliver froze.

For a split second he wondered if he was imagining it. He’d heard her voice enough over the last several months, whispering through his thoughts, and dreamt about it even more than that. It had become a permanent fixture in his mind during those days drifting on the ocean, memories coming to life, haunting him until he wasn’t sure if he was praying for death or for her.

A hint of her perfume sliced through the smell of coffee.

Oliver breathed it in, deeply, as the warmth of a person sitting down next to him fully registered.

Holding his breath, he turned.

His heart slammed into the floor.

God, she was a sight for sore eyes. She looked the same - her hair back in a high ponytail, dark-framed glasses, bright pop of color on her lips, her earrings exactly how he remembered them - but she was different, too. Calmer. Softer. A casual confidence made the air around her shimmer.

She was stunning, even more than he remembered, and all he could do was stare as the full breadth of how much he missed her hit him square in the chest.

“Felicity.”

A hint of a smile touched her lips and the quiet beauty of it shredded his insides.

“Don’t think I’ll ever be used to that,” she said with a little laugh.

Oliver huffed out a noise, something caught between a chuckle and a grunt, mostly because he felt like he should acknowledge her words somehow. And because his voice was gone.

He stared at her, his mind whirling.

He hadn’t seen her since the bluff last year, their bluff, a few weeks after he’d been found in the North China Sea. She’d found him on the cliff’s edge, staring at the water crashing into the rocks down below. To this day, he still didn’t know if he would have jumped, but then it hadn’t mattered, because she was there. And the second she touched him, he’d fallen apart, collapsing into her arms, breaking under the weight of all of it.

… the Gambit flipping in the frenzied sea, going under… terrified shouts for help from the crew before the ocean tore them away… his father shooting the captain in the face… propping himself on the edge of the raft, telling Oliver it was the only way before putting a bullet in his own head… Oliver’s frantic screams as he fought the rough ocean waves to get his father’s body back… the sea sweeping his father away, so far away, taking the gun with him… floating, for days on end, so many days, knowing he was going to die… hoping for it… wishing for it… so much that when the shadow of the freighter appeared, he finally felt a modicum of peace knowing it was all over…

But it wasn’t. He was still alive.

And the world was unchanged, unaffected, unaware.

She was the only one who knew what had happened out there. The words had come tumbling out in a fervor of raw emotion, running together, his tears blurring the edges until he was nothing but a sobbing mess that she held together all through the night.

Then that was it. They went back to their separate lives - her to a life that didn’t involve him, and him to continue his life with McKenna.

Except here she was, in all her beautiful glory, glowing with all the light he’d taken for granted.

“Hi,” he whispered.

It was all he had.

Her brow furrowed and he watched that familiar line appear between her brows. It always announced her troubled thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to hide them. His mouth went dry. Was she regretting sitting here? Did she wish she’d turned and left instead? They didn’t have much of anything to say anymore, did they? Not now. Not after everything. But the thought of her walking away again sent a white hot knife slicing through his gut and Oliver opened his mouth to beg her not to leave, even though he knew he didn’t deserve it…

She didn’t leave.

With a tiny whisper of his name, Felicity grasped his hand.

Choking on a surge of emotion, Oliver’s eyes dropped to where she touched him. How many times had they touched? In how many ways? Hundreds. Thousands. It was countless, and yet it felt like the first time he was feeling her skin against his. She was as soft as ever, and so damned warm. It wasn’t until this moment that he fully appreciated just how frozen he still was at his core.

His fingers curled around hers, his heart cracking when she held him back.

His phone chimed.

Oliver started, blinking rapidly, only realizing in that moment that tears had been filling his eyes. He swallowed hard as he glanced at his phone.

Five minutes.

“Damn it,” he breathed.

She tugged her hand out of his and the loss carved a jagged hole in his center.

“I have to go, too, actually,” Felicity said, sliding off the barstool. Her front grazed his arm in the miniscule space between them before she stepped free. She offered him another smile. “It was good seeing you, Oliver.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

Absently. Automatically. Blankly. Just going through the motions.

Which was all he’d been doing, wasn’t it? For months now. Floating through life, doing what he thought he was supposed to do, filling shoes he felt woefully inadequate in, going home to someone who barely pierced the surface of his heart.

And he was doing it here, with her.

He didn’t want to be numb anymore.

Oliver surged off his barstool, towards her. The coffee shop was busy, people loitering in line, baristas yelling names, glasses hitting tabletops, utensils hitting plates. All of it was suddenly so viciously clear that it hurt his ears, but none of it mattered as he looked at her.

A thousand words hovered on his tongue. None of them came out, nothing but…

“Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said, her smile warming. She grasped his bicep and pushed up onto her toes to kiss his cheek. Oliver’s eyes slammed shut and he instinctively leaned into her, his heart damn near ricocheting off his chest plate when she lingered for a second longer than necessary. Her lips moved over his stubble as she said, “Of course.”

As if it was a given.

As if he deserved it.

Oliver let out a ragged exhale and pressed his cheek to hers. She paused, but she didn’t pull away, like he thought she would. Like she probably should. Instead her hand tightened on his arm and then she pressed back, a stuttered breath dancing over the shell of his ear.

They lingered there, caught in the in-between, suspended between the past and the present, and a future that didn’t exist.

He knew nothing about her life anymore. He didn’t know what she had been up to. He didn’t know what she did with her time. He had specifically gone out of his way to avoid looking her up, because it was a closed door that needed to stay that way.

But she was also here, right here, right before him.

“Felicity,” he whispered, his hands finding her elbows, tentative, unsure.

I miss you.

With a ragged gasp, Felicity slid her arm around his neck and tugged him into her.

Relief shot through him and he sagged into her arms.

They hugged each other, tight, grasping, clinging so tight it hurt. Her nails bit through his jacket, a whimper he hoped he wasn’t imagining slipping out as she used her hold on him to yank him down closer to her. He pulled her flush against him, burying his face in her shoulder, and then her neck. The lapel of her jacket got in the way and he nosed it out of the way so he could breathe in that unique scent that was all Felicity. She smelled so good, so perfect, and something deep inside him slid into place, a missing piece he hadn’t realized was missing. A piece he hadn’t wanted to admit was missing. Because he needed it, like the air in his lungs, and the thought of living life without it for even one more second had him gasping her name again and pulling her in even more.

He had to leave. So did she. They had lives to live, lives that didn’t involve each other anymore.

But neither of them moved, not until someone bumped into them, breaking the moment. Even then, when they parted, they lingered in each other’s bubble, so much flying between them that he didn’t know where to begin thinking about it, much less talk about it.

They did finally part, though, and went their separate ways.

But they didn’t say anything, because they didn’t have to.

This was enough.

It had to be.

*

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