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avidfanficwriter · 6 years ago

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Failed Repetition (Chapter 1)

Characters: Chris Evans X OFC!

Summary: For as long as Chris can remember, he’s wanted to get married. He has wanted the white picket fence, beautiful wife on his arm and a house full of kids unlike his counterpart who isn’t thrilled with the prospect of marriage.

Rating: T.

Warnings: Cursing.

Tags: wolflhards.

Notes: This idea came about after I read, (yes, I’m an ass) an interview quote from Chris saying he wants to get married, have kids. The whole nine yards. This is probably the first and also the only fic, I’ve managed to finish entirely. There will be three parts (unless I change my mind).

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4.

Being stuck in an endless cycle can only remain the norm for so long.

It’s going to be an argument, that he knows long before he opens his mouth. It always becomes an argument. No matter how subtle he is, one of them will say something and an argument will be the end result. It always ends that way and yet he can’t not ask the question.

Chris watches Reagan from afar, her lower lip between her teeth, her brows furrowed as she’s entranced in her book. A past time in which she refuses to be bothered during, “I get twenty minutes a day where I don’t have to do anything, you leave me and my book alone.” Which is never a problem with him, he is content in watching her, seeing every reaction spread across her face as she reads silently. Only to have her recite what happened with such delight after she’s done. He’s never read the book, can’t tell you the name of it but he loves to hear the happiness in her voice when two characters get together or the bad guy meets his demise. He holds her when she mourns over a character’s death, lovingly strokes her back as her tears fall reminding her it’s only a story which creates more pain. “You don’t understand.” She’d whine into his chest and he’d have to fight the urge to chuckle.

It’s her magical world, a place where unicorns exists, happiness is forever and love is always found. In the pages of her novels, she’d meet hundreds of people, witness thousands of declaration of love, breaks ups, children being born and weddings that made her wept.

A detail in which he couldn’t understand, vows that were written behind a computer screen for fictional characters could impact her but the actual possibility of marriage sent disgust down her spine.

She abhorred marriage, as if it was a drug threatening to leak toxic chemicals into her veins. It’s a sensitive topic which is why he knows it’s going to end badly, each time he brings it up their fights get worse. Their last fight ended with him sleeping on the couch and Reagan ignoring him for three days.

She’s as pretty as she is mean. The definition of a bark worse than their bite. Her little mouth can spin masterful sentences, that he blames on her admiration of books. Someone with a career in acting shouldn’t have been that gifted with words. This time he expects bringing up the topic will earn him three days on the couch and six days of her ignoring his existence.

Reagan lets out a loud sigh, closing her book and placing it on the coffee table. She has to work, forget her perfect world hidden beneath two pieces of leather and warm pages for a white script held together with glue. To her, they weren't the same. It wasn't as easy to lose herself in the story like a book. She claims it's because a book is written for you to picture while a script is written for someone to portray. "You don't see the character as they are described, you see the actor's depiction of how the character should look."

She gives him a quick kiss before leaving to find her latest script. His window of opportunity is open, it's now or never. She returns with her script beneath her arm and grabs a can of soda out of the fridge before settling back on the couch.

Chris stands, shaking the tension out of his arms and taking a loud breath, "Can we talk?"

Her brow arches but her eyes don't leave the pages. "Mm?"

"Rea?" He waits for her attention, waits for her eyes to meet his before continuing. "Can we talk?"

"Yes."

"Can we talk about it?" Her face drops, the smile she was wearing seems to leak off being replaced with a scowl. If the script she was holding had a cover, he's sure when she closed it, she would have purposely made it slam shut.

"No." Reagan shakes her head, tossing her script onto the couch cushions. She rises to her feet, abandoning her drink on the coffee table and tries to escape Chris by going to the kitchen. Hoping he won’t follow her.

"Why?" He follows her.

Reagan shakes her head again, pushing her brown curls away from her face, feeling ambushed. "Because the answer is the same." She lets out a exasperated sigh, her green eyes look around and immediately she realizes the kitchen was the worst place to be there is nothing to do. No dishes, no cleaning. Nothing to distract herself from Chris' conversation which is a startling revelation. "Is this why you invited me here? To stuff me into a hotel room and corner me into discussing this? Knowing if it got out of hand, you could storm off to work and leave me here?"

He furrows his brow and walks towards her, putting his hand close to her hip.. "No, God no. I missed you, I wanted us to spend time together; that's why you're here."

"Then why bring this up now?"

Reagan leans against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. She's not in the mood for this, especially not considering how it ends.

"It's important to me."

"It's important to you that you continually ask me to marry you, even though my answer is always the same?"

"I'm not asking you, I'm asking why there isn't a possibility."

Reagan rubs her face and lets out a sarcastic chuckle. "I don't know why we have to keep having this discussion, Chris. My answer isn't going to magically change, today or tomorrow. I've told you multiple times, I don't want to get married."

"I do!" He doesn't mean to raise his voice but it happens. It's loud and emotional.

They stare at each other for the longest time unaware of how to move on. The next words need to be chosen carefully, both are on edge and extremely annoyed. One mistaken word or phrase taken the wrong way and it'll blow up.

"I love you." She says with eyes that can only be described as full of pain. "I do, okay? If I didn't I wouldn't have spent these last six years with you, but I told you on our first date and on our year anniversary that I didn't want to get married and you said that was okay." There isn't a hint of deception in her voice, no false leading or distraction effort to not fight. It's genuine. “You told me that it was fine. That you understood.”

"I was... But I want us to get married. I want to marry you.”

"And I still don’t want to get married." She shakes her head. "I don't get why this is a big deal for you?"

"It's what you do when you love someone."

"Me not marrying you doesn't mean I don't love you, you know I do. It's a personal opinion. I've told you I want to be with you, that I'm committed to you, I want to have kids with you, grow old together. Maybe proving you love someone by marrying them was what you did half a century ago but if we were supposed to abide by that then we've broken a lot of 'rules.' We live together, I'm not a virgin, you're not. we've had sex before marriage. We'd be shunned. I love you by saying it... By being here. Getting married shouldn’t be the proving point."

"Marriage is important to me."

"I get that but all I’m asking is what does a piece of paper prove or even say that I'm not? Am I not saying I love you enough? Showing enough affection? Being involved?"

This is the longest conversation they’ve had on the topic of marriage, it’s uncharted territory. They should be fighting right now, her disappearing into the bedroom and him slumping into the couch angered. There is no saying what could happen now, they don’t have an guideline to steer their next steps.

"I just need to know if we're ever going to get married?"

"I can't answer that."

"You can't even say ten years from now, we might?"

"No." Reagan takes a step back forming an invisible barrier between them. "And you can't convince me to give you false hope. All that is going to do is make you resent me. Or end marrying you just to make you happy and end up regretting that."

"So marrying me would be a mistake?" Now his voice raises with angry masking the hurt.

"That is not what I said! Give me one goddamn reason why you're so hellbent on marriage. One reason why I should say ‘screw it all’ and marry you right now?"

"It's the beginning of our life together, it allows us to take the next step."

Her mouths opens but slowly closes. Her words caught in her throat and Chris doesn't realize the extent of the damage he's done or what it means for them. She lets out a shaky breath. "So if we don't get married... We're not moving forward?"

"I want us to get married and have a family... In that order and if it's not going to happen then-"

"Then what?” She scoffs, stepping even further back. “Then we’re not going to have kids? Move to a better house? We’re just stuck? Then what?” She asks with her frustration growing.

He swallows hard, "Then maybe we're not going to work."

Reagan tries to force her tears back, tries to force the lump forming in her throat away but can’t prevent the heartbreak from appearing on her face. "Then maybe that's the part we should be discussing instead."

#chris evans #chris evans imagine #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fic #captain america #steve rogers #before we go #puncture #christopher robert evans

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ontherockswithsalt · 5 years ago

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A Made Man

(ao3 story link)

A/N: HERE WE ARE. The story began with Jamie getting ready for a Reagan Family Sunday dinner and 40-some chapters later, it wraps up at another one. This is the last chapter of A Made Man, the third installment of The Penthouse series. What a damn ride this has been. Oof. Thanks for being here for it all.

Chapter 47.

“Uncle Jamie, that’s a pretty sick watch.”

I barely hear the observation from my nephew Jack across the dining room table. My gaze is fixed on the mountain of macaroni and cheese on my plate in front of me, the sight alone making my stomach turn.

“Hey Uncle Jamie—” Danny’s voice cuts through as he settles into his seat. “Jack likes your watch.”

“What?” I utter, glancing up. “Oh. Thanks.”

“That new?” My brother questions with a nod.

I twist my wrist to look at the watch Noble gave me, then clear my throat. “Uh, yeah.”

“Let’s be a little less focused on sick watches just before we say grace, huh?” My grandpa announces and I see Jack snicker with a look to Nicky at Pop’s choice of words. “Since you’re the birthday boy, how about you lead off?”

Suppressing a groan, I scoot closer to the table and rest my elbows on either side of my plate. “Since it is my birthday, I reserve the right to pass,” I decide. “Someone else.”

“Oh, boo!” Danny jeers. “You don’t get a pass.”

“You pass all the time,” I argue.

“Alright, I’ll start.” Erin announces.

My dad pipes up, “Somebody please.”

My sister clears her throat. “Bless us, O Lord—”

Clasping my hands, I tip my forehead down and rest it there, just praying to make it through dinner.

After grace, as everyone’s passing dishes, I’m relieved, and a little hopeful I can tune out, when Nicky takes over the conversation.

“Was anyone else really moved by that sermon?” She announces, passing the requested salt and pepper over to my dad. “I thought it was so romantic.”

“Romantic?” Sean protests. “Gross, it’s church.”

“Not gross,” she contends.

“I thought it was very beautiful,” Linda indulges her.

“I went and looked up that quote Father Quinn used when he talked about loss and love,” Nicky tells the table, adjusting to pull a folded piece of paper from one of her pockets. “It’s not from scripture; it’s from a book by C.S. Lewis.” As she unfolds the note, she glances up at my father. “Is it okay if I read it, Grandpa?”

My dad inhales deeply through his nose and then offers her one of his tight-lipped smiles to humor her. “Have at it.”

Nicky grins, straightening her shoulders. “In love,” she recites, “there is no safe investment. If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact, lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness--”

I scoff this unintended loud breath and hunch over my plate, as if I could somehow escape this.

Slowly, she turns her gaze my way. “I’m not finished.”

“Your niece is trying to appreciate literature,” Danny taunts. “Do you mind?”

Acquiescing, I merely gesture to her to carry on.

“But in that casket,” she resumes. “It will change. It will not break, but instead your heart will become impenetrable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell--”

“Alright--” Erin speaks up while the end of Nicky’s reading prompts looks from Danny’s kids.

My brother chuckles. “It’s a little deep for fried chicken night. That’s all.”

“Give me a break,” I mutter, reaching for my water. “Who gave the homily? Doctor Phil? Glad I missed it.”

“I really enjoyed it.” Nicky shrugs. “I think it’s so true. To love is to be vulnerable--”

“What are you talking about?” I hear the way my voice cuts harshly into her easy tone, but I’m too tired to come off any other way. “You’re too young to even know what that means, Nicky.”

“Well wait a minute--” she disputes.

I lean in to look past her at my sister. “You gonna let her spout off about the dangers of love? I didn’t think that was a concept you would endorse.”

Erin just meets my gaze, pausing to draw in a thoughtful breath.

“It wasn’t meant to start an argument,” Nicky insists. “I was going to relate it to the job of being a police officer--”

“Yes, that sounds good,” my dad speaks up. “Let’s relate it to the job.”

“No, let’s relate it to Jamie,” Danny cuts in. “Since that got him all torqued up. What happened, kid? You forget to lock up your heart in the casket of selfishness?”

Nicky giggles at the jab.

I drop my fork and it clatters against the plate as I push back and get to my feet. Turning away from the table, I stalk off out of the dining room.

“Hey. Hey!” I hear my brother holler after me along with Erin who calls my name.

But I can’t listen to this shit. I’d rather sit and have to deal with with my grandpa gripe about those homosexuals appropriating the word gay. It used to mean happy!

I’m not sure where I intend to end up so I just make my way to the bathroom and shut the door.

Already I regret the dramatic storm-off because now I’ll be expected to provide an explanation. Plus that was shitty to do to Nicky.

But of all days, this has to be the one where someone initiates some damn discussion about heartbreak like a cruel joke they’re all in on.

I pinch right between my eyes and take a deep breath. Fuck, I’m gonna throw up.

My core seizes and it's only a moment later that I do.

***

After a few minutes, splashing water on my face, attempting something that comes off as normal breathing, I make my way back to the dining room.

“Jamie are you okay?” Nicky speaks up. “I’m sorry if—”

“No, I’m sorry, Nicky.” I sigh, holding onto the back of my chair where I stand. “I’m uh— I’m not feeling well. I think I need to—”

“Did you puke?” Sean wonders, prompting a look of disgust from my grandfather as he chews.

“Sean.”

“It’s your favorite dinner,” Jack adds. “Mac and cheese for your birthday.”

“Boys—” Linda leans in. “Uncle Jamie doesn’t feel well.”

I acknowledge my nephews. “I know. And I appreciate it.”

“Mom made a cake.”

“You don’t look so hot,” Linda notices. “Maybe you should go lie down.”

Deciding not to argue with Danny’s wife, I simply nod. “Yeah. Maybe that’ll help.” Then I turn and head for the staircase. I could try to make it home, but it’s highly likely I’ll throw up again or have some kind of panic attack behind the wheel. So I settle on hiding in my old room upstairs instead.

I never come up here. My childhood bedroom is now this half-transitioned guest room, but a few remnants — a Harvard pennant, along with framed prints of pictures I took at Joshua Tree, a camping trip I made the summer between undergrad and law school — still hang on the wall near my bed. The old Parking For Jets Fans Only metal sign has been hung up by the door for as long as I can remember. It’s weird how these things take you back in time.

The tall bookcase in the corner displays a few diecast model cars Joe and I used to collect, books I loved in high school, and a stack of CDs next to my stereo.

I sniff a soft laugh when I peruse the album titles, so distinctly an era that seems a lifetime ago. Sliding out the case for U2’s Rattle and Hum, I pry it open and fit the disc in the CD player. I set it to shuffle the songs and then turn to fall across the bed.

I don’t know how I got here. It’s like I screwed up so many steps ago, I can’t pinpoint where. I could go farther back than the night I met Noble.

I think about when I proposed to Sydney. I was twenty-six, deliriously self-righteous after three years in the bubble of ivy league law school, acing the bar exam and convincing myself I’d never wear the NYPD uniform.

I don’t know what life I pictured for us. But it was an easy enough fit.

And then my brother was killed.

The devastation was so consuming I thought I’d never be capable of caring about anything after the loss of Joe. Since, I’ve had to find life with some other purpose. With that engagement in a sort of permanent limbo, I enrolled in the Police Academy. Because it was inevitable? Because I had something to prove? A calling to step up for Joe? Probably all of it.

And if I never had — If I’d stayed in private practice, married Sydney — would I feel like this much of a fuck up? I’ve never second guessed leaving that path behind until now.

All I know is that I wish I’d never met Noble Sanfino.

A light tap on the door draws my attention across the room. It eases open and I see Erin, lingering there with some hesitation.

I simply turn my gaze back up to the ceiling. “What now?” I murmur.

“Jamie, what happened?”

Exhaling a pained, breathy laugh, I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

She steps in the room enough to close the door. “I take it you had a talk with Nick.”

“We’re done, Erin,” I tell her. “It’s over. So— Nice work.”

“Jamie.” She says my name again with this concerned shock and it’s such a fucking joke to me.

My head throbs and I just want this all to be something I never think about.

“What do you mean it’s over?”

“I questioned him about whether he knew Tommy Messina. He doesn’t. But the reality is he can never be safe in New York so what’s the point? He ended it and he’s staying in Florida. There isn’t much else to explain.”

She comes closer, arms crossed over her chest and glances around the room. “That can’t be the only solution.”

“Well that was his solution so—”

“I’m so sorry. That wasn’t my intent.”

Fuck off, I want to say. I sit up and put my feet on the floor. “Erin.”

“I like Nick a lot.”

I just shake my head and cough out this unamused laugh. “What does that matter now?”

“If I hadn’t called you with that information, would this have happened?”

I shrug. “It would have come to this point sooner or later. I guess we just didn’t want to face it until we had to.”

“So now what?”

I look at her like what the hell do you think. “I guess you can sleep at night without the threat of your car being set on fire. What do you mean now what?”

“You love him, though.” She says it quietly because this is a bizarre conversation we’ve never really had.

If anything, her input on my relationships has only ever been her chiming in with smug, big sister commentary that I never asked for.

“I’ll get over it,” I mutter.

She sits there a minute as if she’s contemplating her role in this. It doesn’t matter, though. What’s done is done.

Eventually, she softly attempts her next question. “Do you plan on coming out to Dad at some point?”

I glance at her, my brow furrowed. “Come out about what? No.”

She sighs when she figures that’s a dead end path and tries another way. “There are options, Jamie. I mean you guys could live in Connecticut, that’d probably be a safer situation, and you could commute—”

Confused, I just shake my head. Don’t do this, don’t fucking problem-solve after that bullshit phone call this morning that prompted this whole fallout. As if I’m anywhere near the right frame of mind to look at the situation with some kind of reason.

Blankly, I merely offer, “I know.” And that nauseated feeling starts to spin in my head once more, but I go on. “That wasn’t the conversation though. We weren’t at a place where we’re like, ready to live together. I don’t know. It’s like, all of a sudden—”

Exhaling hard, the muscles in my chest seize. I try to tip my head back and breathe up at the ceiling but the air is trapped. So I lean forward at the waist where I sit on the edge of the bed and hang my head between my knees.

I feel Erin’s palm up the center of my back. “Hey, hey, hey— It’s okay. Jamie, it’s okay.”

“I shouldn’t have even considered—”

“Shh.” She cuts me off. “You need to breathe.”

There’s a tightness in my throat and I feel like I’m choking, Like my inhale doesn’t go anywhere. I can tell myself I’m sinking into an anxiety attack but my body doesn’t listen to the rationale. It’s terrifying that I know what it is and I can’t stop it. Telling myself I’m okay doesn’t make it relent.

“Jamie,” Erin whispers. Then I feel pressure on my back like she’s resting her forehead there as she sits beside me, the weight steadying me.

She’s had to do this before. But it hasn’t been since mom was really sick, there near the end, that I’ve felt the grip of panic on me this tight. Usually, I’m able to anticipate it, unwind it before I’m held captive, but not this time.

“Try to breathe in for four seconds,” she says. “With me. Okay?”

Closing my eyes, I attempt to draw in a deep breath but I just cough out air almost like a sad laugh. “I can’t.”

“Okay two seconds,” she bargains.

I make myself sit upright and press my hands on the edge of the bed. “Goddammit,” I mutter in frustration.

“Try again. Let it be all you think about.”

Hanging my head, I inhale deeply, channel my energy into a steady breath that expands my back.

“Let it out just as slow.”

I do. But there’s still this hard squeeze like someone’s pressing just beneath my ribcage.

"See that was four seconds,” she murmurs. “Show-off."

"Don't patronize me," I manage.

Erin laughs softly and continues the steady back and forth path of her hand on my back. "Fine then as far as breathing goes, I've seen better."

Finally I exhale in amusement and just shake my head. I work on another breath.

I keep on like that for a few more, determined to follow the pattern — in for four and out for four, the sounds of it loud between my ears. It’ll pass. I can’t fight it, I have to just know I’ll get to the other side. But fuck, I don’t even want to. This will be over and Noble will still be gone.

After a few steady moments, Erin squeezes my shoulder. "This song," she muses, letting the slow-building track of All I Want Is You set a soothing rhythm to the air I take in. "Remember when Joe and I took you to that U2 concert? You were what, you’d just graduated high school?"

Another gradual breath while I think about that night out in the city. "Yeah," I answer. "Danny was on modified assignment working The Garden."

Erin chuckles. "I need to remind him of that cushy little gig next time he tries to say the bosses are too soft on you."

I sit there and let the music sink through me. This song is so goddamn sad it hurts. First Nicky’s absurd to love is to be vulnerable speech. And now the lull of Bono’s haunting voice musing that all the promises we break, from the cradle to the grave, when all I want is you — everything is a joke.

I focus on the memory of that night, years ago with Erin and Joe. When simple shit like going to concerts and walking around New York, our ears ringing and our voices hoarse, was enough of a thrill and not a lot else mattered. “We had nosebleed seats,” I recall. “And Danny managed to get us down front."

"That was a pretty awesome night."

I breathe again and the sick feeling starts to dissipate. "Between that, and this room, it's like… I'm remembering another life."

She glances up and around, seeming to consider the memories held in time here. "It sort of was."

I swallow hard and close my eyes. "Somewhere I went wrong, Erin."

She just turns her gaze to me and offers a quiet "Shh" worried I'll get worked up again.

"How is this where I'm at?"

"Jamie, don't look for answers now."

"I have to look for answers or I'm gonna start missing him like hell."

"So let yourself miss him."

I take another slow, deep breath as the heat beneath my skin begins to taper off. At this point, it’s like missing Noble is all I have the energy for. It’s all I can do to tip back across the bed once more and close my eyes.

My empty heart dwindles its beat down to something that almost feels normal, leaving the slightest flicker of clarity, reminding me that my only control is over what I do next.

#jamie x noble #welp it got worse

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h0ldthiscat · 6 years ago

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arable

once @agentdanascully and I were like “the americans AU where everything is the same except Elizabeth’s season 5 honeytrap in Kansas in a lesbian”.

so that’s what this is. enjoy!

_______________________________ She could be wrong, but it seems like she’s the oldest person in here by about ten years. It’s always hard to tell with these dark lenses on. She blinks and makes her way to the bar. The bartender is a tall woman in a denim vest who slides her a beer after checking her ID.

“I’m flattered,” Elizabeth tries, sliding the Illinois license issued to Brenda Neal back into her pocket. “Haven’t been ID’d in years.”

“Don’t be,” the bartender drawls. “I ID everybody.”

A twangy tune jingles through the bar, coming from a folksy three-piece band in the corner, cramped on a small, triangular stage, backlit by a neon beer sign. They’re nothing to write home about but a small crowd has gathered to listen and they sway back and forth lazily. Elizabeth spots her target in the group, hanging near the back. She’s shorter, small; Elizabeth doesn’t know why that surprises her. She wears a faded shirt tucked into jeans and holds a beer in each hand.

As she crosses the bar toward her, weaving in and out of women in denim, women in leather, women in tight blouses and short skirts, tall women, short women, Elizabeth is more nervous than she’s been since she first came to the US. She’d trained for it, of course. They all had. But she’d never actually--

“Oh god!” she yelps, intentionally bumping into the target and sloshing her beer all over her arm.

“Hey--” the woman turns, brow furrowed. She’s pretty, Elizabeth thinks. The picture Gabriel had provided didn’t do her justice.

“I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth says, reaching for napkins on a nearby hightop table and mopping futilely at the girl’s arm. “God, I’m such a klutz.”

“It’s okay, really. It’s okay.”

For just a moment, the woman’s fingers are on the inside of her wrist. They squeeze, just barely, and then she pulls away. Elizabeth knows that move. She’s used that move.

“I thought, you’re only here one night, you should go out, see what Topeka has to offer,” she rambles, pushing her glasses up her nose. “How bad can you screw it up?”

“Not at all,” the girl assures her, a bright smile reaching up to her hazel eyes. “You haven’t screwed anything up.”

Elizabeth gives a self-deprecating laugh. “You’re too kind.”

“So you’re only in Topeka for the night, huh?”

Elizabeth nods and the woman says, “That’s a shame.”

“Why?”

The woman shrugs; her dark ponytail bobs. “Because you’re cute. Like, really cute.” She takes a sip of one of her beers.

“Drinking for two?” Elizabeth asks, pointing.

“Oh.” The girl’s face twists in anger, maybe annoyance. “Kind of? I’m friends with…” She gestures toward the stage, Elizabeth can’t quite see to whom. “Well, she’s my ex.”

“Her loss,” Elizabeth says confidently, taking a sip of her own beer.

The younger woman smiles, looking down at the floor. She’s wearing a pair of cowboy boots and Elizabeth is thankful; she was worried hers would be too over the top.

“Anyway,” the girl sighs. “I came here tonight ready to make a peace offering and… she shows up with some other girl.”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “Ugh. What a jerk. I know the feeling.”

“You?” the younger woman quirks a dark eyebrow, her eyes dancing. She’s one of those people with whom you feel instantly familiar. “What girl was stupid enough to break your heart?”

“Um… actually, I…” Elizabeth swallows. “I’m a little… new to all this stuff.”

“Oh, oh, of course.”

“I just, um, I just came out earlier this year and it’s…” The words tumble out. “It’s like this weight has finally been lifted off, you know? I feel like myself, for the first time since…” She stops, embarrassed.

“Yeah,” the woman says, nodding, and Elizabeth is surprised to see that her eyes are wet.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t--” Elizabeth reaches out and holds her elbow.

“No, it’s just--” She laughs, loud and clear. “I never get tired of hearing people’s stories. How good they feel once they finally realize they’re allowed to be themselves.”

Elizabeth nods, not really sure what to say. She’s never met anyone quite like this woman before.

“I’m Suzanne, by the way,” the woman says, tucking one of her beers under her arm to extend a hand.

“Brenda,” Elizabeth says. “Brenda Neal.” They shake.

“So Brenda. Tell me about you.”

Elizabeth almost laughs at her forthrightness. Men have been open with her in this way, but they always want something. Well, most of them. But Suzanne is earnest and without artifice. At face value, she’s a good person.

“Well. Um, I work in fashion. I promise we’re not all as vapid as we seem.”

“You don’t seem vapid.”

“That’s sweet of you to say,” Elizabeth says. “But I’m here for--”

“No, I mean it,” Suzanne interrupts. “There’s nothing vapid about you, Brenda. You’re… real.”

Elizabeth laughs. “That’s a pretty quick assessment.”

“I can tell about these things.”

“Do you want to show her something real?” Elizabeth asks, canting her chin towards the woman onstage, washed out in the red-orange light.

“Maybe...” Suzanne says, glancing over her shoulder.

Elizabeth smirks. “Come here.”

She’s never had to lean down to kiss someone before. Her hand instinctively slips to the back of Suzanne’s neck, tilting the younger woman’s head up so their lips meet. Suzanne molds to her instantly, her arms encircling Elizabeth’s waist. She feels a beer on top of each hipbone; the chilly bottles make her shiver. Suzanne’s lips are soft and salty, and when they part for air, her eyes are sparkling.

“Brenda Neal,” she whispers, nodding.

Elizabeth smiles and feels herself turning red. “That’s me!”

__________________________

They share a cigarette on the bench in front of the bar, their two different shades of lipstick staining the filter. It’s such a commonplace action but with Suzanne it’s surprisingly intimate. Elizabeth feigns surprise when Suzanne tells her she works at AgriCorp.

“Growing up out here, farming, crops--they’re all I’ve ever known,” she says, exhaling and passing the cigarette to Elizabeth. “But I didn’t want to be a farmer like everyone else in my family.”

“I’m envious,” Elizabeth says. “I’m such a city girl. Raised in a concrete jungle, grew up with a patch of asphalt for a backyard. People just packed in everywhere…”

Suzanne shakes her head. “I don’t know how anyone does it. I need--” She opens her arms wide, struggling to find the words. “--this!”

“I couldn’t take the quiet,” Elizabeth admits.

“You’d be surprised what you can get used to,” Suzanne says, with the confidence only a twenty-six year old can muster: young enough still to believe it but old enough to know she won’t forever. “Plus I volunteer. That makes living out here worth it, more than anything else.”

“Volunteer?” Liz asks.

Suzanne nods excitedly, lights another cigarette. She talks animatedly and uses her hands. “At an AIDS crisis center. We collect clothing, food, donations. Then we send them to hospitals where the patients are being treated.”

Elizabeth can only say, “Wow. That’s… brave isn’t the right word. But you know what I mean.”

“They’re the brave ones. The people living with this disease. I mean, we know virtually nothing about it and it’s decimating entire legions of our community.” Here, her heart-shaped face twists with disgust. “And the government is doing nothing. Nevermind at a local level, especially here. But even in major cities. New York, LA, San Francisco… people are dying in droves and Reagan’s motionless.”

“He’s useless,” Elizabeth says venomously.

Suzanne chuckles a little bit. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Sometimes out here… even people like us, they’ve just been brainwashed so long that they blindly support him. It’s the reason my ex and I broke up.”

“Because she supported Reagan?”

Suzanne gives a woeful nod. “I know.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about that with me,” Elizabeth assures her. “I’m the furthest thing from a Reagan supporter you could imagine.”

“God, you’re really only in town for one night?” Suzanne sighs, leaning back on the bench. Her arm falls back across Elizabeth’s shoulders. It’s comfortable, natural. Elizabeth leans into her a little bit.

“For now,” she says, with a wry smile. “But it looks like I’ll be coming here pretty regularly, maybe weekly. For work.”

Suzanne shoves her shoulder. “Brenda Neal! Why didn’t you say so!”

“I don’t know, I guess I was worried about coming on too strong or something,” Elizabeth says, looking down at her lap. Her embarrassment is only partially put-on.

“You don’t have to worry about that at all,” Suzanne assures her. “I like strong women.”

“Well then. That makes two of us.”

__________________________________

It’s late when she gets home, but Philip is still awake, eyes drooping over an issue of LIFE that’s been cluttering the bedside table for months. When she enters the room with her suitcase, he smiles. She leans down to hug him and his face is warm against her neck.

After a happy hum, she sits beside him on the edge of the bed and murmurs, “It was cold on the plane.”

“How’d it go?” He reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear.

She thinks for a moment. “Good. She’s nice. It was… easy.”

“Good.”

She nods, takes off her boots, her earrings. “She’s… I don’t know. Not what I expected. Young, idealistic. She volunteers at an AIDS clinic.”

“Wow. Sure you don’t want to flip her?”

“Ha, ha.” Elizabeth twists her hair up and flips on the light in the bathroom. “The whole time she was stroking her own ego about how important it is, the work she does. How she hates Reagan. But what she’s doing, what AgriCorp is doing, is starving an entire country.”

“Not if you have anything to say about it,” Philip says with a smirk.

“I mean it, Philip. These are the people we have to be the most careful about. The ones who think they’re fighting for the same things we are.”

“The only thing Deirdre seems to be fighting for is a promotion.”

“How’s that going?”

Philip pulls a face that makes her chuckle as she slides into bed beside him. “That bad?” Instinctively, she curls toward him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“It’s fine. It’ll be fine,” he says, and she mostly believes him.

“With a woman...” she says suddenly, “I wasn’t sure I’d know how to talk to her.”

“But you did.” It’s not a question; he’s confident in her abilities, always has been. It’s reassuring, his unwavering faith in her, but also infuriating sometimes. That he just assumes she knows what to do in every situation. She’s good at her job. She’s proud of her job. And sometimes she is terrified.

When Gabriel had told them about Kansas, that she’d be targeting a woman, she didn’t balk. It wasn’t about that. More and more she feels like she’s slipping, like little pieces of her are being chipped away, and she’s someone new under all this… stuff she’s been for all these years. And with a woman she’s out of her element, has to use her brain in a way she doesn’t normally with marks. It’s hard, and she is tired.

“But you did,” Philip repeats. His lips are warm on the crown of her head.

“I guess so,” she whispers, feeling her voice reverberate along his collarbone. She wants to shut her eyes and burrow so close to him that they become one person who can never be broken in two.

__________________________________

Six days later, Suzanne is all smiles at the trailhead, with an optimism that would almost make Elizabeth nauseous if her target wasn’t also so genuine. She’s not sure if the lack of artifice makes her respect her or pity her.

“Brenda Neal,” Suzanne says, with her approving nod. She gives Elizabeth a quick kiss on the lips. “Hello.”

“Suzanne Stobert,” Elizabeth matches. She gestures at Suzanne’s backpack, a formidable contraption carrying quite a heavy load, by the looks of it. “We going somewhere I don’t know about?”

She’s only worn a fanny pack herself, thinking they’d hike for a few hours, and then she’d invent some work emergency and leave a day early with apologies and promises to meet next week.

Suzanne shrugs. “Maybe. I was trying to keep it a secret but I’m terrible at that.”

Elizabeth smirks. “Are you.”

“Well when it’s something good, yes,” Suzanne says, her eyes glinting. “I thought--if the weather stays nice, that is--that this hike could turn into a little overnight camping trip.”

“Camping? Wow.” Elizabeth chuffs.

“I’ve got food, blankets, matches. I know this great spot about ten miles out with an incredible view of the valley.”

“I didn’t know you could get high enough in Kansas to look into a valley.”

“Well, what passes for a valley here.” Suzanne winces. “I’m sorry, is this totally crazy? Is this too much right out of the gate?”

“No, no, not at all!” Elizabeth assures her. This could be easier than she thought. “I was just wondering if you’ve got a sleeping bag in there.”

Suzanne pats her pack, a scrappy smile across her features. “Well I only own one…”

Elizabeth loops her arm through the younger woman’s as they set off down the path. “You’re in luck, because I happen to have this excess of body heat that I never know what to do with.”

“That must have come in handy growing up in Chicago.”

“You remembered.” Elizabeth raises her eyebrows, pleasantly impressed.

“It’s kind of a gift,” Suzanne shrugs. “Flawless memory, incredibly thoughtful…”

“And somehow still single,” Elizabeth laments.

“Am I? Single?” She has moved her hand down Elizabeth’s arm and intertwined their fingers.

“I don’t know.” Elizabeth pushes her glasses up her nose. “Are you?”

_____________________

The fire crackles in the darkness and Elizabeth can scarcely see anything beyond the small clearing where they’ve pitched their tent. They share soup from a thermos, Suzanne’s hands lingering on hers as they pass the cup back and forth.

“I hope this isn’t rude but um, what took you so long?” she asks. “To come out? Most people your age--I mean, you look… You’re beautiful. Ugh, listen to me!”

Elizabeth laughs and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “No, no! I’m no spring chicken, you’re right. But, um. I guess it was my job that kept me from coming out sooner.”

“Really?” Suzanne settles in, laying her head in Elizabeth’s lap. “I would have thought that in your line of work things would be… I don’t know, different.”

“For guys, maybe. But with gay women… I mean, you know the stereotypes. I didn’t want to lose credibility. Plus, it’s not like you might think, even in the fashion industry. There are still a lot of people who don’t like us. Don’t accept us. I like my job and I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”

“That must have been hard.” Suzanne plays with Elizabeth’s hands while she talks, interlacing their fingers, kissing her palm, the inside of her wrist. Elizabeth strokes her hair, rubs her temples. The things that Philip does when she’s laying beside him.

“It was,” she says. “It is. It’s hard having a job that you love but where you don’t... feel like you can be yourself.”

Suzanne nods, turns over on her stomach. Her cheek rests against Elizabeth’s thigh, her dark hair glowing orange in the firelight. “Are you out at work now?”

“To some people. My one or two close friends. It’s not perfect but it feels better. More honest. I guess I never thought I--” She stops, her heart thumping in her chest, her tongue thick all of a sudden.

“What?” Suzanne whispers. She pushes herself up slowly, one arm on either side of Elizabeth’s legs.

Elizabeth shakes her head. Behind her, an owl hoots in the trees. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought I deserved to feel happy like that.”

“Well you do,” Suzanne says after a moment. “You deserve everything.”

“You sound like one of those inspirational posters in my break room.” She almost can’t believe there are people that actually talk like this. But as always with Suzanne, there’s no pretense. She actually believes it.

“There’s a lot of people out there that hate us, Brenda,” Suzanne says. “So we might as well love ourselves, don’t you think?” She reaches a hand between their bodies and defly undoes the first button on Elizabeth’s shirt.

“Suzanne,” Elizabeth says against her mouth, but the younger woman shakes her head.

“Everybody calls me Susie,” she says, and unbuttons Elizabeth’s shirt the rest of the way. The crisp fall air hits her skin and she gasps in spite of herself.

“I’m not everybody,” she smirks.

“No. You’re definitely not.” Susie straddles her in one swift movement and Elizabeth’s hips buck in surprise, unused to being in the other position. The younger woman’s hands are hot and insistent, sweeping across her belly, over her breasts, behind her neck.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers. It feels objectively good, just like every other target, all of them indistinguishable from one another. An unexpected heat pools in her gut and she hears herself gasp when Suzanne’s lips close over her earlobe. She is suddenly aware of a rock beneath her leg and she stiffens in Susie’s arms.

“What’s wrong?” she asks instantly. “Too fast?”

“No, I just, um--” Elizabeth runs a hand over her face. “I’ve never--”

“Oh, god,” Susie says, dismounting. Her hazel eyes flash wide with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have just assumed you--I mean of course you haven’t. Not that you couldn’t, my god, I mean--”

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth insists, taking Susie’s hands between her own. “I want to. Let’s just… will you hold me?”

“Of course.” Susie settles in beside her, arm snaking across her waist, head on her shoulder.

“I really like you,” Elizabeth says after a moment. “And I don’t want to rush things.”

“I think I got a little carried away. I’ve just never met anyone like you before, Brenda.”

“Oh, I doubt that’s true,” Elizabeth murmurs, but she knows she’s never met anyone like Susie before either.

______________________________

Paige’s eyes widen when Elizabeth hands her the keys. “You’re kidding.”

“No, get us home,” Elizabeth says with an encouraging smile. “I trust you.”

“You’re sure?” Paige asks, taking the keys from her mother. “You’re not gonna like, make me pull over on the Beltway and switch with you if you don’t like the way I merge?”

Elizabeth frowns. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“That sounds exactly like you, Mom.”

“Come on, get behind the wheel before I change my mind.”

Her heart swells with pride as Paige turns out of the parking lot, her acceleration a little slow but her eyes steady and her hands strong on the wheel.

When they’re at a stoplight, Elizabeth asks, “Do you know if Pastor Tim does any work with AIDS Action?”

Paige blinks. “What?”

“It’s the group that’s helping communities affected--”

“I know what AIDS Action is, Mom. I’m just surprised you do.”

Elizabeth narrows her eyes. “Why are you surprised?”

“I don’t know, a lot of people your age aren’t… talking about it. The disease. I mean, our teachers are always like, ‘Don’t do drugs’, ‘use protection’ or whatever. But they’re not actually talking about the disease or… who gets it, or how you get it. It’s always ‘don’t do this, don’t do that.’ But never any actual information.”

Elizabeth smiles; it’s so exciting to hear Paige get passionate about something that isn’t Youth Group. She hasn’t prayed before dinner in months, and the last time she was in her daughter’s bedroom Elizabeth noticed her Bible discarded on the shelf under something she’d had to read for school. She’s getting close to giving up church for good, Elizabeth can feel it.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of information out there right now, sweetie,” she says. “But until there is, and even after, I think it’s worth supporting these people. Would that be something you’re interested in?”

Paige thinks a moment, shrugs. “I guess so.”

“What?”

“I guess I’m just surprised that you… feel this way. That you want to help. Doesn’t Russia like, hate gay people?”

Elizabeth looks down, chastened. “There are a lot of outdated laws. We’re a little focused on other things right now. But I think change is coming. Soon.” Even as she says it the words feel like lies in her mouth. But the opposite is unthinkable.

“I mean, you don’t…”

“You know what I believe, Paige. That everyone should be equal.”

Her daughter nods. “That’s what Pastor Tim says Jesus believed too.”

Elizabeth hears the hollowness in Paige’s words here too, dares to hope. “Well if Pastor Tim knows any way we could get involved in AIDS Action, would you want to come with me? To a… clothing drive or something?”

After a moment, Paige looks over at her mother and nods. “Sure,” she says with a smile.

Elizabeth tries not to grin. “Good. Now, eyes on the road.”

_______________________________

Suzanne’s house is modest but well-decorated, eclectic and modern but also comfortable, cozy. Unique Eastern and African pieces adorn the walls, rest on end tables and windowsills. Tall white candles burn in her bedroom and her pillowcases are hand-stitched, bought from a woman on a mountain in New Guinea. Suzanne tells her this in between kisses, her voice low and full from the wine they’d had with dinner.

“I don’t get you,” Elizabeth says, their legs tangled together, clothes still on. “You’re a thoughtful, compassionate woman who cares about other people. Wants to help them. But you’re stuck working for the man at that stupid Agro company…”

“AgriCorp,” Susie says with a laugh.

“I’m serious,” Elizabeth continues, propping herself up on an elbow. “You could be running your own company, one that’s actually affecting change, helping people, like you want to do.”

“I am doing those things. At AgriCorp.”

“Oh really?” Elizabeth teases. She leans in for a kiss but Suzanne pulls back, her eyes flashing, her brow furrowed.

“Yes, really,” Susie snaps, venomous. She sits up, chin high. “You don’t need to patronize me.”

Elizabeth reaches for her hand but she pulls away. “Susie. That’s not what I was doing.”

“What were you doing?”

“I only meant--I mean, look at you. Volunteering. The Peace Corps. Working for some big corporation just doesn’t seem like you.”

“You think you know me? I met you a month ago in a bar.” Suzanne stands now, arms folded across her chest. “I hide who I am pretty well when I have to, but I still get a lot of judgement from people around here. And I thought you were different.”

“Suzanne. Listen…” Elizabeth struggles to keep her voice even.

“I thought, oh wow, a cosmopolitan fashion gal from Chicago looked twice at me. How lucky am I? But I’ve dated girls like you before. Trying to make me into what they think I should be. I’m either too involved or not involved enough. Too butch or too girly. Whatever I am, I’m always too much for people.”

Elizabeth reaches out and takes Susie’s hand. “Susie. Listen to me, please. I know… I know what you’re feeling.”

The younger woman scoffs but doesn’t pull away.

“It’s not easy hiding who you are. You’re right about that. I did it for almost forty years. I still have to do it. And it’s exhausting. To wake up every day and think that there are people out there, all around you, who want to do you harm. I know what that’s like.”

Susie looks down at their hands, joined between their bodies. “I know you do.”

“I wasn’t trying to judge you. To make you into something you’re not. I care about you, Suzanne.”

She nods, bringing her gray eyes up to meet Elizabeth’s. “I really, really like you, Brenda.”

Susie closes the distance between them and leans down to kiss Elizabeth, her lips warm, her tongue cabernet. This time, Elizabeth does not stop her when she unbuttons her shirt with hungry hands, when she reaches around and removes her bra in one swift motion, when her skirt is up around her waist. There is a reverence to her actions, something holy in the way Suzanne touches her.

“Is this okay?” Susie asks, her lips on the inside of Elizabeth’s thigh.

“Yes,” Elizabeth assures her, lying back against the pillow from New Guinea.

“You’ll tell me if you want me to stop, right?”

Susie’s hair is down, tickling Elizabeth’s knees, making her shiver. Elizabeth winds her hands in it and says, “I won’t want you to stop.”

________________________________

Philip’s face lights up when she walks into the office the next afternoon. She knows she must smell like the airport. It’s not a long flight, and only an hour’s time difference, but she’s always exhausted when she comes home.

“I didn’t think you’d come by,” he says, pulling her into a hug once the door is closed.

She smiles. “Surprise.”

“How was it?”

“Fine.” Elizabeth shrugs. “I think I got too comfortable too fast, the whole thing almost blew up in my face.”

Philip’s forehead puckers and the corners of his mouth turn down. “Too--”

“Oh, not--I mean we did--” Elizabeth shakes her head. “I hit a nerve with her. We fought. But it’s fixed now.”

“Good.” He nods. She thinks he might be relieved. What did he think she meant?

“What about you? How’s everything here?”

Philip leans back in his chair, runs a hand over his face. “Henry’s been a little lax on his curfew the past few nights.”

Elizabeth frowns. “I didn’t know we gave him a curfew.”

Philip narrows his eyes at her but smiles. “I told him back by 11 on school nights, but he’s been pushing it. Says he’s studying with--”

“Chris, yeah. Do you believe him?”

“I don’t have any reason not to. Oh, and Paige said Pastor Tim got back to her with the names of some people he knows at AIDS Action? Do you know anything about that?”

“Yeah, I asked her--”

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Stavos. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No, no, what is it?”

“The Mays’ honeymoon package to Bermuda. Looks like the wedding’s off and the parents of the bride want to know if it’s too late to get a refund.”

“Yikes.” Philip winces. “Tell them I’ll look into it and I’ll call them right back.”

“Okay. Elizabeth, how was Seattle?”

“Wet.”

Stavos gives a sympathetic nod. “I’ll let them know to expect your call.” He closes the door behind him.

Philip picks up the phone and dials. “If it’s not one thing…”

“I’ll talk to Paige,” Elizabeth tells him.

He nods and gives her hand a squeeze.

______________________________________

She leaves her suitcase by the door and drops her keys in the bowl. “Anybody home?”

“Hi, Mom,” Paige calls cheerfully.

Elizabeth follows her daughter’s voice into the kitchen. Paige sits at the table, books spread out around her. “Hi, honey. Did you eat?”

“Yeah. You?”

“The flight made me a little sick. I’m not really hungry.”

Paige twists her pencil between her fingers. “You were gone for work, right? This is the... thing you were telling me about before?”

Elizabeth sits down at the table across from her. “It is.”

“How’s it going?”

Elizabeth remembers the feel of Suzanne’s hand between her legs, the slick skin, the sound of her voice, breathy in her ear. Oh my god, Brenda. Look at you, oh my--

“Fine,” Elizabeth answers with a shrug. “Interesting.” She takes a breath and changes the subject. “Dad said Pastor Tim gave you the names of some people at AIDS Action.”

Paige closes her textbook. “Yeah, and I called one of them, a woman named Diane. She said there’s a food drive next Thursday that they need volunteers for, and it’s right by your office.”

“Okay. Why don’t you come by and we’ll all go together after work. Dad too.”

“That’s the thing, it actually starts at noon,” Paige says, chewing her lip. “So I’d have to miss school. But don’t worry. I already checked with Ms. McKinley, and she said I could take my science test another day if I’m going to be absent.” She pauses, raises her eyebrows expectantly. “What?”

Elizabeth shakes her head, trying to put on a neutral face. “Nothing. I’m just--I’m glad you’re taking the initiative.”

“Is this something you’re working on… for work? Helping people with AIDS?”

“No. Not really. A source I’m working with now, she does a lot of this type of work. And it made me realize how much more we could be doing.”

“Is this more like what you and Dad used to do? Before I was born?”

“Some of it, yeah.” She smiles. “Standing together with a group of people, showing the world that this is what you believe in. You know what that feels like. It’s very powerful.”

“So it’s okay if I miss school?” Paige asks.

Elizabeth nods and it feels like a balloon expands inside her chest when her daughter grins and says, “Thanks, Mom.”

_____________________________

“I told Paige she could skip school on Thursday,” Elizabeth says, her earrings falling with a clank in a dish on the dresser. “She and I are going to a food drive that afternoon, if you want to come.”

“I already told Henry I’d take him to hockey practice Thursday afternoon,” Philip says. He pulls his t-shirt on and climbs into bed.

Elizabeth nods. “That’s okay. It’ll be good for Paige and me to do something together that isn’t church.”

“Or fighting in the garage.”

“She’s good,” Elizabeth says, fumbling with the buttons on the back of her blouse. “Fast. She can move quickly. It’ll surprise people.”

“When will she need to surprise people?” Philip has come to stand behind her and she meets his eyes in the mirror.

“When she needs to defend herself, Philip,” she says sharply. “It’ll happen whether she does what we do or not.”

Philip’s mouth settles in a thin line and he works at the buttons down her back. She moves to take over but he gently brushes her hands away and she hums her thanks. His hands move along her back, untucking her blouse, then unhooking her bra. Elizabeth lets herself relax, leans against him, feels his lips on her scapula, her shoulder, her neck--

“What’s this?” he asks against her nape.

“What?”

She feels his thumb run over a spot on the back of her shoulder and remembers Susie behind her, her legs bracketing Elizabeth’s, chest flush against her back and Susie’s mouth hot on her shoulder as their fingers moved together--

“It’s what it looks like,” she says simply. She steps out of her skirt and into a nightgown, busying herself with rearranging the jewelry on the vanity.

“You fought but you made up, huh?” he asks, sauntering to the armchair in the corner.

She glares at him. “Come on.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t,” she says, more harshly than she means to.

“Elizabeth.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I’m not asking because I… I don’t care about that. I’m just asking.”

She sighs, moves to sit on the ottoman. She picks at a loose thread that’s coming up. “When we do… this. There are certain things you get used to. Risks you know you’re taking walking into that bedroom. You prepare yourself for certain possibilities.”

Philip nods. “Yeah.”

“Most of the time, with men, you know there’s a chance that they’ll hurt you. Hit you. Whatever. But with her… I was afraid she would see me.”

_________________________________

There is a small crowd outside the building as they approach. She watches Paige’s fingers tighten around the paper bag of canned goods they’ve brought.

“Do you think they’re volunteers?” Paige asks in a tone that says she knows they’re not.

Elizabeth shakes her head. “Just stay close, okay?”

As they approach the door she brushes past a man with a scraggly beard and a sign that reads: GOD HATES FAGS. A woman even closer to the door makes eye contact with Paige and scoffs in apparent disappointment. Elizabeth keeps her eyes ahead and ushers Paige in quickly once they reach the door.

Inside the small office space, there is the smell of fresh paint. The reception desk is empty but before Elizabeth can ring the bell, an older African-American woman enters from the hallway and approaches them expectantly, a friendly smile on her face. “Hi, are you Paige?”

Paige nods. “Are you Diane?”

The woman nods enthusiastically. “Yes! Tim told me you’d be coming with--” She points to Elizabeth, extends a hand. “This must be your mom.”

They shake. “Elizabeth. Thank you for letting us help out today.”

“Of course. We’re always looking for more hands and frankly, with all that bullshit that’s going on out there--oh god, excuse me.”

Paige chuckles. “It’s okay.”

“Well, I see you brought some food yourselves. Let me walk you around and introduce you to some of the people you’ll be working with today.”

Elizabeth watches as Paige takes it all in: these people who are fighting, who are risking so much to be here, to stand up for what’s right. Her daughter observes with wide eyes and a tentative smile as Diane points out the clothing donation boxes, the metal shelving units stacked with canned goods.

“Tim said you’re invaluable to the food pantry downtown,” Diane says. “That the place wouldn’t run without you.”

“I’ve been doing it for almost two years now,” Paige says. “And it’s a lot of work but it’s… rewarding, you know? I know I’m helping, I can see that I’m making a difference.”

“Tim and Alice really know how to inspire young people.” Diane meets Elizabeth’s eyes with a knowing smile, but before she can reply, Paige speaks again.

“I love Tim and Alice. They’ve been great. But we’re here today because of my mom. This was her idea, to get involved with AIDS Action.” Paige smiles. “She met someone through work who volunteers and wanted to get involved.”

Elizabeth thinks her heart might burst looking at Paige, her brilliant brown-eyed daughter who knows nothing and everything, who’s always full of surprises, whose chin reminds her of her own mother’s.

Diane smiles at both of them. “That’s wonderful. What do you do, Elizabeth?”

She is surprised that her voice is strained with emotion when she answers, “I’m a travel agent.”

_______________________________

“I had to go to DC for a work thing last week,” Elizabeth says, passing the bowl to Susie. “And while I was there I, uh, went to an AIDS Action thing.”

The young woman shoves her shoulder. “Get out! I’m so jealous.”

“You inspired me.” Elizabeth shrugs. “I don’t know. I try to help however I can. But I realized I could be doing more.”

Susie leans over and gives her a chaste kiss. She tastes like weed and the unfinished bottle of wine on the hearth. Elizabeth tightens the blanket they share around her shoulders and scoots closer.

“Before,” she begins, “when I said I didn’t think the work you were doing was… I didn’t mean--”

“I know,” Susie says. “I forget sometimes that--and I’m not saying this to make you feel stupid or anything--I just forget that most people don’t understand what I do. Or care about it, for that matter.”

“I care.”

Susie smiles, her gray eyes crinkling at the edges. “I know you do. And thank you for putting up with me while I ramble about genetically modified wheat.”

“Please,” Elizabeth insists, “it’s so much more interesting than ‘what shoes go best with jeans for casual Friday at the office.’”

“You’d be surprised,” Susie sighs.

“So what, you… breed wheat? For what?”

Susie shrugs and expels a puff of smoke. “There are countries all over the world with incredible natural resources but they don’t have the money to protect their crops against pests. So we’re trying to breed a strain that can survive pretty much anything.”

Elizabeth feels the blood rush to her head, suddenly dizzy. Or maybe she’s high. “And… and then what?”

“We give it to these countries. Reduce famine, help bring some of these places out of the third world.”

“Wow.” Elizabeth lies back against the couch, turning away from the fire.

“You okay?” Susie reaches out and rubs a hand against her leg.

“I should tell you something,” she says, the corners of her mouth tugging down as she tries to keep her voice even.

Susie’s brow wrinkles. “What?”

Elizabeth looks down at her hands, studies the half-moons of her fingernails, her cuticles. “I have a daughter.”

Whatever Susie is expecting, it isn’t this. “Oh.”

“She’s sixteen. I was young, I was… I had her for all the wrong reasons. Things between us have always been hard. I’m away a lot for work and I know that’s not easy for her. About a year ago I told her. Who I really am, you know. I’d wanted to for so long and I thought that if maybe I just told her the truth, treated her like an adult, that things would finally be better between us.”

Susie has settled against Elizabeth’s chest, nestled between her legs. Her voice thrums across Elizabeth’s sternum when she says, “That must have been hard.”

“My--her father didn’t want me to tell her. But then she asked and… I couldn’t lie to her anymore.” Elizabeth’s mouth is dry.

“What did she say?” Susie whispers.

“She was confused at first. Then angry that I’d lied. But lately we’ve been… Things are good. We’re getting along. And I mean, we still fight, of course. But I think she’s--I think we’re finally starting to understand each other. I was able to bring her with me to DC last week and we went to the meeting together.”

“Wow. So… what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says. “You just… you worry.”

She rests her cheek on top of Susie’s head and they sit like that until the fire is just embers crackling in the darkness, whispering voices that haunt her in the place between dreams and waking, ghosts that say, careful, Nadezhda.

______________________________

Gabriel’s face breaks into a smile when he opens the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“It’s not a bad time?”

“No, no, not at all. Come in, please.” He ushers her inside. She’s grown used to the smell of the place: old wood and the dry, metallic heat that comes from radiators in the winter. It reminds her of home.

“I was just about to make some tea, would you like some?”

Elizabeth nods. “Sure.”

She sits with her palms around the teacup, seeing how long she can hold them there before it becomes too hot to stand. Finally Gabriel says, “Topeka. How’s that going?”

She sets her jaw. “You read my report?”

“Yes.” The old man sighs, looks into his tea. “You know it goes like this sometimes. And I know this wasn’t a good time to get it wrong.”

Elizabeth nods. “I can cool things off there, be out of it in a few weeks.”

Gabriel squints. “I thought your instructions were clear. Maintain the relationships, you and Philip both.”

“Do we need to? I don’t see the point,” she says, trying to keep her voice even.

“Elizabeth, what’s going on?” When she doesn’t answer he sighs and clears his tea from the table. From the sink he asks, “In your report you said you told Stobert about Paige. Is that what this is about?”

Her stomach twists. “Why would it--”

“Sometimes the things we share in order to get what we need… it can be hard.”

She almost scoffs. “We?”

“Elizabeth, no one is discounting your sacrifices. Especially me.”

“I didn’t need to tell her,” Elizabeth says slowly. Her tongue is thick in her mouth. “I don’t know why I did.”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Gabriel tells her. “It’s allowed. It’s okay for you to share things to get close to your targets.”

“That’s not the way I do things, Gabriel.”

He sighs, stands beside her at the table, takes her hand between his. “Cancel this week if you need to. But go back the week after that.”

She nods, bites the inside of her cheek. She feels her hand in his and has to keep a lump from rising in her throat.

___________________________

On her way home she stops at a phone booth and dials Susie’s number. She keeps her voice airy but disappointed when she tells her she won’t be able to make it down there on Thursday, she’s so sorry baby, something unexpected came up at work and they need her to stay here.

“The week after that I’ll be there for sure. Definitely,” she assures the younger woman.

“I miss you,” Susie says quietly. “You’re the best thing about this place.”

“I’m not really a part of it though, am I?” Elizabeth asks. “48 hours a week hardly makes me a Topeka resident.”

“Oh, I don’t know. These past few months have just--I’ve felt alive in a way I haven’t in a long time. And it’s because of you.”

She’s touched, rendered almost speechless for a moment. “Suzanne…”

“I won’t guilt trip you anymore,” Susie says on the other end of the line. “But it’s a shame you’re not coming tomorrow because I was just lying here thinking about you.”

Elizabeth notices for the first time how breathy she’d sounded when she’d picked up. “Is everything okay?” she asks, hand tightening around the receiver. Her wedding ring clunks hollowly against the cheap plastic.

“You heard me,” Susie murmurs, “I was thinking about you.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth shifts her weight in the phone booth, checks the street. “What about me?”

“You. Here. Your body stretched out next to mine.”

Elizabeth hums in her throat. “I wish I was, baby.”

“What would you do if you were?”

“I would… kiss you. On your lips, your neck. That spot behind your ear that you like so much.”

Susie chuckles, low and dark. “Brenda Neal. You’re good. Where next?”

Elizabeth clears her throat, suddenly dizzy. It’s not that she hasn’t done this before, it’s just-- “Well that depends,” she hears herself say, “What bra are you wearing?”

“I’m not.”

“Oh.” She swallows. “Are you touching yourself? Right now?”

“Yeah,” Susie sighs. “Are you?”

Elizabeth looks around again, puts another quarter into the pay phone. “I… yeah. Oh, yeah.” She adds an extra hum for emphasis.

“What are you gonna do to me?”

“You’ll have to wait til next week to find out,” Elizabeth says.

“Tell me,” Susie whines.

“Just… just keep touching yourself. It’s me. I’m touching you, Susie. Nice and slow, how you like it. You feel that?”

“Uh huh. Keep going.” Susie’s breathing is short and shallow, crackling through the receiver.

Elizabeth feels tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “You like the way I touch you, don’t you, baby? Oh yeah.”

“God, Brenda. So good.”

“Good girl,” Elizabeth whispers, her throat tight. “That’s right Susie. I’m going faster now.”

“Please,” Susie whimpers. “Please don’t stop.”

“Come on, baby. Come on. Oh my god, you feel so good.”

“Brenda--I--oh my god!” Susie lets out a gasp and there’s more crackling through the receiver.

She waits five seconds, ten. Elizabeth swallows the lump rising in her throat. “Oh, yeah. Oh, didn’t that feel good baby?”

“Holy shit. So good,” Susie agrees, her voice low. “What about you, you ready for me? God, I bet you’re so wet.”

“I’ll see you in two weeks, you can repay the favor then.”

Elizabeth hangs up and waits until her hands stop shaking to get in her car and drive the rest of the way home.

________________________

In the few years that follow, she will remember Suzanne in bits and pieces. She will see her face when she smells vanilla incense. They will get occasional AIDS Action fliers in the mail, calls for volunteers; she will give them Paige’s address at her new apartment and remember a feeling, Suzanne’s wide-eyed hope on that bench outside that shitty bar. She will retain none of the names of the tai chi positions she taught her, but keep them in her body even when she is too tired to do them anymore. Even later, when she draws, she sometimes tries to recreate the movements, the simple flow of arcs and lines a poor substitute for the momentary peace they’d brought her, arms akimbo and her feet grounded on a braided rug from Guatemala or somewhere.

She and Philip don’t talk about her, about any of them. The people whose lives they ruined, whose lives they saved. Suzanne is in that place with all of them, halfway between remembrance and forgetting. Between the two sides of the world, between the earth and the sky that seems so much bigger here.

Now, they walk. Long, wandering treks that leave her nose red and her lungs on fire. They relearn the roads they walked once, a lifetime ago, in a country they never really knew.

#*runs away*#my writing #the americans

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robert-emmett · 5 years ago

Text

So Others May Live, a Coronavirus Story: Part Two

As promised by the mysterious author last week, another , manilla envelope wrapped package arrive at our editor’s doorstep yesterday. After taking the necessary precautions to clean the package, as the virus can live on cardboard and paper for quite some time, the editor went about transcribing the included written work.

As it was written in colored pencil and partially in hieroglyphics, this was no easy feat.

Part Two

Shortly after they’re seated in the corner booth, Brendan heads to the restroom, with a bag full of cleaning supplies and disinfectants that Terry imagines are carried by only the biggest germaphobes, or the most immaculate serial killers.

Apart from the old man in the VFW Post hat sitting at the counter, a group of high school children at the other end of the row of booths, and the serving staff, the restaurant is entirely empty. The short order cooks wait behind the counter, watching the road for more customers. When they first arrived, the waitress seemed so excited to see Terry and Brendan, for a moment they both thought she recognized them from somewhere. There’s an anxiety in the air that Terry can’t quite place.

Terry’s hands hover over his phone. In his text conversation with Jess, the last message is from her, asking when she can call next.

“Whew! This bag came in handy after what I did to that bathroom!” Brendan says, returning to his seat across from Terry.

“Brendan, could you do me a favor? Could you not loudly announce how badly you’ve wrecked every restroom you use? It stopped being funny two days ago,” Terry says.

“Wow! Okay...I guess someone woke up on the wrong side of the uncomfortable motel room twin mattress…” Terry says, eyes widening as he chortles to himself.

The waitress approaches with menus. Brendan quickly puts out a hand to stop her.

Slowly, he removes a claw-shaped device from his belt, and unfolds it. The grabber extends to exactly six feet. He pushes it forward, grips onto the menus, and precariously arcs then over to their tables.

“Can’t be too careful!” Brendan says to her, awkwardly seating the claw next to him, and pulling out disinfecting wipes to clean the menus’ surfaces.

“Sure,” she says, with a forced smile, before checking on the kids at the other end of the restaurant.

“You know, if you wanted a cleaner place, we could’ve gone somewhere other than Waffle House,” Terry says.

“We’re going on a cross country road trip, and there are no Waffle Houses in the North. This was never not going to happen Terry.”

“How do we infect her?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How do we infect Betty White with the Coronavirus?”

“Oh. Well, we’ll just have to find someone who’s sick, and get them close to each other.”

“And what happens if she doesn’t die? That’s the whole point right? She can’t just get sick, she has to die so that everyone can mourn her loss and actually quarantine themselves.”

“We’ll figure that out.”

“Brendan we’re driving across the country, breaking quarantine by the way, to kill a beloved American figure. You should have a more solid plan than ‘we’ll figure it out’.” “She’s 98 years old for God sakes! I’m sure it won’t be that hard. And right now the only planning I’m trying to figure out is which kind of Waffle I want!” Brendan says, perking up as the waitress returns.

This time she stands far away from them on her own.

“I will have this!” Brendan says, pointing to the menu.

“I can’t see what you’re pointing at because I’m six feet away,” she says.

“Right! I’ll have a pecan waffle and a coffee.”

“And I’ll have a Bacon Chicken Cheese Sandwich,” Terry says.

As Terry slides the menus back to the waitress, he looks up to find Brendan staring at him with a look of horror.

“...what?” Terry asks.

“You came to Waffle House and ordered a sandwich?”

“Yeah. It’s noon.”

“But it’s Waffle House. Would you order a burger at IHOP?”

“Brendan, I can make my own decisions.”

Brendan’s eyes narrow. He leans across the table.

“You haven’t told Jess that you were coming with me on this trip,” he whispers.

“No...I did.”

“Then why are you acting so weird?”

“...I didn’t tell her that we were driving, and that it could take a week and a half.”

“I knew it! I knew something was going on! And why not?”

“Because I knew she wouldn’t approve.”

“That’s ridiculous! You already had this week off of work before the quarantine. What’s so wrong with me that she doesn’t want us spending a week and a half on the road together?”

The waitress returns, holding a serving tray with their food in one hand.

Brendan gets his claw out, and grabs the tray. It’s heavy. The grabber buckles awkwardly. Water cups on the surface dance and spill. The entire restaurant is almost breathless watching the heavy tray rotate in the air until it arrives at their table.

The water has spilled into both of their food, making both their dishes soggy.

“Hey! I’m getting better! Didn’t drop it this time!” Brendan says.

With the sound of a pneumatic hiss, Brendan takes off his respirator, rolls it to his forehead, and begins to eat. More than once when he leans over to take a bite, the respirator on his forehead bangs into Terry’s glass of water.

“You never answered my question,” Brendan says when he’s almost done with his waffle.

“I think you answered it for me.”

Terry looks away, scanning the restaurant, the wait staff, the kids in the corner, before he takes a sip of his water.

“This tastes weird…” he says.

“We’re in the country Terry, don’t be impolite.”

After they’re done and Brendan pays, Brendan perks up at a sound.

The kids in their faraway corner booth are flicking rubber bands at each other. Brendan’s eyes look from them, to the old man sitting at the counter. He puts his respirator back on, dramatically throws the napkin on his lap to the floor, and stands.

“Jesus Christ, we can’t do this every time we stop at a - “ Brendan cuts Terry off by making a shushing sound.

He walks, slowly, across the restaurant, towards the kids. By the time he arrives, they are all looking up at him.

“Whoa,” the tallest one says, “you look like a broke - ”

“- Bane. Yes, I know. It looks like you all are enjoying a nice lunch.”

“Sure, I guess…”

“Having a good time now that school’s cancelled, I see. Just out and about with nothing to do.”

The kids exchange glances, not sure of what to say.

“Bro,” the one in shorts chimes in, “are you ok? You look high.”

They chuckle for a moment.

This is quickly silenced by the sound of Brendan slamming his fist into their table.

“I am high! High on responsibility!” he screams.

Brendan points to the old man sitting at the counter.

“What would you like him to be wearing?” Brendan asks.

“What?” the tallest one asks.

“What would you like that man to be wearing when they give him an open casket funeral because you’ve killed him WITH THE CORONAVIRUS!?”

Whatever fun the kids thought they were going to have with Brendan is gone. Maybe it’s the mad look in his eyes or the fact that he actually does sound like Bane, but they are afraid.

“We didn’t mean -”

“- didn’t mean what?! Didn’t mean to give a fuck about your fellow man!? I hope to God that one day there is a virus that only infects teenagers, whose symptoms include jizzing your pants and screaming ‘Nancy Reagan!’ everytime you’re near a girl you like! Because when that day comes, I will break quarantine as you have today!”

Silence.

“...who’s Nancy - “

“-GET OUT!” Brendan screams.

They leave in a hurry. A few of them give hushed apologies to the old man on their way out.

There is a quiet in the Waffle House as there probably never has been before. Everyone watches Brendan as he nods proudly to himself, and approaches the old man.

“Thank you for your service sir. It’s a pleasure to protect you, and all elder Americans,” Brendan says.

The old man nods before speaking.

“Son...I would prefer it if people such as yourself did not speak on my behalf. It’s a bad look for me.”

Brendan isn’t sure how to take this, so he nods deeply in return.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

---

“No mom, I can’t be immunocompromised if I broke a bone as a child…”

Jess digs around the clothes in her room. She knows her gloves are somewhere.

“But the health website I’m on says that any trauma can hamper your immune system,” her mother says, calling out from her room next door.

“Mom the Fox News Website is not a health website.”

“That’s not what I’m looking at.”

“You’re not? You’re not on Fox’s website right now mom?”

“No,” her mother says.

There is a long silence, as Jess waits.

“...I’m on the Fox News Youtube Channel.”

“Mom!”

“It’s not a big deal honey! I want to get out and walk around!”

“No mom. You stay in your room while I get groceries.”

Her eyes scan the bed, the floor. Finally, top shelf of her closet, she spots them.

“Ok I’m heading out!” Jess says, pulling on her gloves.

“Remember to buy Bleach.”

Jess puts on her coat, stops herself before she heads down the stairs.

“...is the bleach for cleaning or for drinking, because that website told you it’s a cure?”

Silence.

“...why not both?”

“Mom!”

---

With a rubber gloved hand, Brendan rings the bell at the front desk to the Motel while Terry gets the luggage out of their car.

Brendan hasn’t fully expressed his financial situation to Terry, but he’s starting to think that maybe Terry has an inkling of how bad it is by the motels Brendan is choosing to pay for. Most of the places they stay in are in tiny, one main street towns just off the highway. This one is called “Falston”. According to the town’s sign near the post office, it has a population of 526, and it’s known as “The Home of It”.

“What do they mean by it?” Terry asks as they pass the roadsign.

Brendan shrugs.

The motel they pull up to has a parking lot cracked open with weeds, goldenrod and dandelion sprouting up in the parking spots. Every time Brendan walks around on the lobby carpet, he hears squelching beneath his boots.

There is an overwhelming sense of something ominous here.

A man emerges from the backroom, the voice of Sean Hannity screaming the word “China” on TV while a blonde woman across the desk from him nods along, occasionally chiming in by saying “ISIS”.

“Can I help you?” the motel manager asks.

“One room with two twin beds please,” Brendan says.

“Hmmm. The only room we have like that is Room 207,” the motel manager says, with concern.

“That’s...fine. I guess,” Brendan says, not sure what the issue is.

From beneath the desk, the motel manager pulls out a basket. It’s filled with apples, oranges, and incense sticks. He pushes it towards Brendan.

“...thank you! Never gotten a complimentary gift basket at a motel before!” Brendan says.

“Your total for the room is $25.”

“Wow! Good for you for doing Coronavirus specials to drive up your business.”

“What are you talking about? Those have always been our prices.”

“Oh...ok! By the way sir. What precautions are you taking to ensure that the coronavirus isn’t on any of the surfaces in your rooms?”

“Peg wrings out the cleaning towel every once in a while after the rooms are wiped down.”

“Who’s Peg -”

The motel manager is already pointing over Brendan’s shoulder. When Brendan turns, he almost jumps backwards into the check-in desk.

A man covered in tattoos, with long, black and white hair draped over his face, wearing a leather vest without a shirt and ripped, oil covered jeans, stands near a mop and bucket by the lobby exit. Other than everything about him, Brendan finds it unusual that the man has a peg leg. Slowly, painfully, while he stares directly into Brendan’s eyes, the man wrings out a yellowed towel into a bucket filled with murky, brackish water.

“You thought ‘Peg’ was short for ‘Peggy’ didn’t you? Common mistake,” the motel manager says.

Brendan nods.

“The reason he’s called ‘Peggy’ is because he has a peg leg,” the manager says.

“Yes, I understand.”

---

As with all of the ratty motel rooms they’ve stayed in, Terry waits outside of the room while Brendan, almost literally, does battle with the inside of the room. Terry wanders around the internal courtyard area of the motel where the rooms face inward towards a pool. He walks around their motel room furniture, most of which Brendan has moved onto the lawn so he can fully clean the room.

Terry’s phone buzzes again. It’s a FaceTime request from Jess.

“Oh I am giving this room a deep clean!” Brendan shouts from inside the motel room, “Getting all up in those nooks and crannies - what’s this...oh wow...Oh god! I think I’ve disturbed something!”

Brendan screams.

Trying to decide whether or not to answer his phone, Terry’s finger hovers over the screen. Thudding sounds from the motel room suddenly stop.

“Ok. Ok. It’s fine. I don’t know where it’s gone but...oh sweet Jesus! It was behind me the whole time, just waiting! Terry my god, it’s intelligent!”

There’s crashing sounds and roars inside the motel room. Terry returns his phone to his pocket without answering.

He wanders over to the pool area as the sounds of Brendan’s yells quiet, and Brendan shouts something about a truce or an alliance with whatever he’s been fighting. Surprisingly, the pool is clean, the water crystal clear, shining lattice patterns on the stucco sides of the motel building. He stares into the water for a long time, well after Brendan has told him that the coast is clear and that he can return to the room.

A part of him doesn’t want to have to defend Brendan to Jess again. He wants to have his best friend in his life, even if Brendan is “strange”. No matter how many times he's tried to explain it, he feels that Jess doesn’t really understand. The fact that having Brendan as a roommate is the only thing keeping Terry and Jess from moving in is also a sore subject, one that he knows she’s going to bring up again. His friends have mostly moved away and he’s become what expected of an adult in almost every facet of his life. What’s wrong with keeping one last thing in his life that reminds him of what it’s like to be young? Everything in his life is ordered and routine. Brendan isn’t. Brendan is the kind of friend who proposes a cross country road trip, a spontaneous outing in the middle of the work week, investing in Theranos because it sounds cool. Terry doesn’t want that to be cut out of his life.

It’s been weeks since he and Jess have seen each other, and he can't be sure if the questions he’s having about the relationship are because of the situation, or because of the relationship.

---

Even though it’s over sixty degrees outside, Jess wraps her face in her scarf. Her walk to the Trader Joe’s is short. The line, however, stretches out the door and wraps around the block. No one in line is keeping their distance, and everytime she tries to keep far away from the person ahead of her, someone tries to cut her. So she has to get close. She’s bumped multiple times and brushed up against. When she enters the store, it’s so crowded that she can feel the people behind her breathing on her neck. Even though she knows she’s just being paranoid, she can feel her heartbeat getting faster.

At this point she has her process for shopping down perfectly. When she was young, her mother said that as soon as Jess could learn to write she was keeping lists and making plans. She shops for the things that are far away from the line first. Vegetables, meat, dairy. Then she gets into the line that snakes around all the store aisles, and picks up the rest of what she needs along her way. Olive oil, pasta, rice, canned food. She gets ugly looks as she slows down to pick things up, but she ignores them. An itch develops on her cheek below her right eye, and she spends the entire time in line trying to ignore it.

It’s only after she’s checked out she realizes that she can’t use Lyft anymore. By the time she’s dragged the groceries to her mom’s townhouse, her hands are stiff and her shoulders are on fire. She enters the house, takes off her outer layer and clothing, puts it by the coat rack in the foyer, goes to the bathroom, washes her hands, takes the groceries upstairs to the kitchen, washes her hands again, and then uses a disinfecting wipe to clean the surfaces of the groceries before putting them away.

When she steps out into the living room, she notices that the door to her mom’s room is open. Jess comes up to the ajar door and peeks in. Her mother is seated on the bed, back against the headboard, watching TV.

“Mom why is your door open?” Jess asks.

“It must have just come open. By the way, I’m waiting on a package, so if you see one, it’s for me,” her mother says, looking at the TV.

“Mom, did you go outside of your room?”

“...Someone rang the doorbell.”

“You went outside?!”

Her mother does not answer. She changes the channel.

“Mom, you can’t go outside, you might -”

“Jessica I have been alive for 72 years, and I will not be talked to like a child! I will go where I please!”

Her mother’s voice is loud in a way that Jess hasn’t heard in years. As embarrassed as she is to feel it, Jess is a little frightened.

“I’m closing the door…” Jess says.

“Leave it open!”

Jess does not listen. After she pulls the door shut, she goes to the kitchen to begin preparing lunch for her mom. She tries to ignore the sound of the door to her mom’s room reopening.

After she’s done making lunch, she slides the food tray into her mom’s room. Jess pauses before she leaves, and decides to close the door yet again. As she’s walking to the dining room with her lunch, her mother yells something through the door about Jess being as stubborn as her father. She keeps walking.

Jess eats her sandwich alone in the dining room. She has a sudden urge to either cry or curl into a ball beneath the table. The anxiety that creeps up into her throat is something she hasn’t felt for years, something she thought she’d dealt with. It feels ridiculous to be getting worked up over something like this, but being so isolated is making her feel crazy. She decides that she’ll call Terry. That would make her feel better. Terry is so even that no matter what she feels, he can always calm her down. It’s been a few days, so they should be back from California by now.

The phone dials a dozen times. No response.

She takes in a deep breath, puts her phone away, continues eating. Jess doesn’t consider herself to be the kind of person who checks her phone constantly for messages or calls because she wants to feel relevant. If she’s honest with herself, she hates those types of people who are desperate for attention. She considers herself to be above them. But more and more she finds she’s desperate for anything from the outside world. She finds herself counting how long it takes for friends to respond to her texts. It’s been a feeling that's been growing in her, and she hates it.

Down the hall from where she’s sitting at the table, she can see the door to her mom’s room. The door stays closed. For now.

------

With nothing to do in their motel room and nothing on TV other than college basketball reruns and the news, Terry and Brendan go for a walk. Out here, with nothing but fields and wide open spaces, they can walk around freely. It’s the first time they’ve been able to in days. It’s calming.

Around the other end of the motel’s lot there are some chairs set up at the top of the hill that overlook the highway. Peg is sitting in one of the chairs, smoking.

“Hey there! You boys wanna come over and chat?” Peg asks.

Brendan realizes that it’s the first time he’s heard Peg speak. The man sounds nothing like he looks, which is to say, “normal”.

He and Terry exchange looks.

“Sure!” Brendan says.

On his belt is a length of measuring tape which he takes out. The chairs next to Peg are about 5 and half feet away, so Brendan carefully moves them an additional six inches further.

“Pennsylvania?” Peg asks.

“Sorry?” Terry asks.

“Your plates say ‘Pennsylvania’.”

“Yeah we’re from Pennsylvania.”

“Philadelphia to be more precise,” Brendan says.

“Never been. I’ve traveled a lot but I’ve never been there. Used to be Army, so they had us move around a lot.”

“Army? I would’ve thought you were Navy because of…”

Brendan stops himself.

“Because of what?” Peg asks.

Out of the corner of his eye, Brendan can see Terry looking at him, shaking his head slightly.

“I would’ve thought you were Navy...because you have a peg leg..” Brendan says.

Peg stares at them. His jaw goes slack, as he leans forward in his chair.

“I have a peg leg?”

Neither Terry nor Brendan know what to say. Peg looks scared, confused.

Finally, he breaks into a laugh.

“God I got you!” he wails.

Both Brendan and Terry laugh, uncomfortable.

“No, no, I lost it cause I got a bad cut on a piece of metal years ago. Didn’t have insurance so I just sort of treated it myself. Bad idea. Ended up having to go to the ER. Damn thing was so infected they had to cut it off.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Peg,” Terry says.

“That’s life man! Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. Same thing I think about this Chinese virus. I’ve survived worse. Everyone’s making a big deal out of it. But come on. Really? I’m not gonna change the way I live. If I want to go out and have a beer, I’m gonna do it. You know what I mean?”

“Peg, you’re talking to a man in a respirator and a lab coat. We are taking this very seriously,” Brendan says.

With a wave of his hand, Peg dismisses the comment.

“It’s not gonna be a big thing. We’ve been through worse and we’ll be through worse. Sometimes you younger people don’t know that because you don’t have perspective. I do. This will all blow over,” Peg says.

“I hope you’re right,” Terry says.

Out here, without as much light pollution, the stars stick out in the sky. The further they crane their necks back, the more the sky spreads out above them to show the shape of the cosmos.

After a few minutes, Peg gets up and goes to what looks like a shack tucked away behind a copse of trees. Neither of them ask, but Brendan and Terry assume that this is where Peg lives. When he returns, Peg is carrying a small portable radio. He puts it down by his chair and starts playing something.

“- I just believe that we as people have to understand the magnitude of this virus, that it’s scope is far beyond -

- Hold on a minute *marijuana cough*...we have a word from our sponsors. ‘Are you tired of your workouts being shit and your penis being small? Try Bone Broth by BoneZone. BoneZone, you're not really a man, not yet.’ What were you saying?

...what I was saying was that this virus can replicate in ways we haven’t even conceived -

-do you think we have aliens at Area 51?”

“I didn’t know they played Joe Rogan’s podcast on the radio!?” Brendan says.

“It would be great if we could listen to something else,” Terry says.

Peg shrugs, turns the dial.

They land on a station playing a Sturgill Simpson song. None of them speak for a while as they watch the stars.

After they say their goodbyes and Peg stays to finish up a few more cigarettes, Brendan and Terry return to the motel room.

“Hey Brendan.”

“Yeah bud?” Brendan says.

The only time that Brendan does not have his full get up on is right before bed. He still wears a facemask and gloves, but they’re toned down, making him seem human.

“This has been an interesting trip so far,” Terry says.

“You’re having fun?” Brendan asks.

“I did not say that. I said it’s been ‘interesting’.”

“In a good way I hope?”

Terry thinks about this, then nods.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to places like this. It’s interesting to see how people live,” Terry says.

“Right?! I actually grew up in a town that does not look too dissimilar to this, and let me tell you, it’s a whole different world out here. They are not prepared for what’s coming. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

Terry nods, looks out the motel window towards the hill where Peg is sitting.

“Yeah...I guess so…”

They both get into their beds. Before Brendan turns off the light, he turns over to face Terry.

“Hey Terry?”

“Yeah Brendan?”

“When the lights go off, make sure they stay off. It doesn’t like to be disturbed as it roams.”

“...what is ‘it’?” Terry asks.

Brendan shakes his head.

“I wish I knew Terry. I wish I knew.”

The lights go off.

At some point, late in the night, Terry swears that he’s woken by the sound of Brendan whispering to something, saying that it’s an honor that they have been allowed in it’s room, and that it deserves to be treated like the deity it is.

---

The street is narrow, lined with brown and red brick townhomes, small, painted car garages, white blossoms in early bloom. In the very near horizon the Comcast Center and Liberty Place loom.

It’s so quiet. People may break quarantine during the day, but in the very early hours, well before dawn, it’s different. The emptiness feels oppressive, almost scary. It’s as if the virus has already wiped out the city’s population.

He waits at the end of the street. He’s wearing a leather jacket, jeans, boots, gloves and a surgical facemask. His head is shaven. After a deep breath, he takes off the mask and gloves, and puts them in his pocket. It comes up on it’s own, he doesn’t even need to force it. A fit of coughing. He coughs onto his hands, making sure to cover both sides.

With a quick pace, he walks down the right side of the street. Every door he passes, he touches the doorknob. Every railing that leads up to an entry, he rubs his hands over. Every early package delivery that waits at a doorstep or welcome mat, he makes sure he has his fingerprints all over. When he’s done with the right side of the street, he moves over to the left side, and covers those houses as well.

Everyday he does it, he gauges how many blocks he can hit. Some days it’s less, some days it’s more. Today he’s feeling ambitious. He walks over to the next block.

---

Before they leave the motel room in the morning, Brendan carefully arranges the oranges and apples from the gift basket in a pyramid shape by the side table near the window. He lights an incense stick and writes a note beneath the offering:

“To only be consumed by it.”

They pack up their car, and this time, Terry lets Brendan drive. He’s in a good mood today.

The moment he gets in the passenger seat he opens his phone. Jess has texted him. She says that she tried to FaceTime him, she’s asking where he is. He lies and says that they're on their way back now, that he loves her, and they’ll facetime soon.

“My guess is about a day and half more driving and we’ll be in California bud,” Brendan says.

“Can’t wait,” Terry says, and for the first time, actually meaning it.

Brendan pulls the car out of their space. As they’re driving across the lot, they see Peg, standing at the end of one of the open corridors, pushing his cleaning cart. Peg waves to them as they leave. The moment they wave back, Peg breaks into a fit of coughing. He almost doubles over. They can both still hear the dry, rattling coughs long after they’ve pulled out of the parking lot.

Brendan and Terry exchange looks, but say nothing. Neither of them mention this again on the trip.

---

Before her 8 AM call with her offshore coding team, Jess has to make breakfast for her mom. She barely slept the night before. Being indoors all day has thrown her circadian rhythm off. She feels awful.

After she cracks a couple of eggs and puts them in the pan, she remembers the package her mom was talking about. It might be some of her meds. She goes downstairs to check.

There’s a box waiting for her on the welcome mat at their front door. It’s not her mom’s meds. It’s an Amazon package, probably some books by Bill O'Reilly or another writer that would be just as equally annoying to Jess. She picks up the package. Before she goes back inside she takes a moment to get a breath of fresh air, look up at the white blossom trees on her narrow street and the looming towers that make her feel like she’s right in the middle of the city.

After she goes back inside, she’s going to wash her hands in the guest bathroom by the foyer, but she’s interrupted when she hears her mom calling her from upstairs. Something about a smell.

“Oh shit,” Jess says.

Jess drops the package and runs up to the kitchen to find the eggs just about to burn. She turns down the stovetop. After making toast, she puts together a plate for her mom, opens the door to her mom’s room, and slides the tray in. Her mom does not look in Jess’ direction when she enters. They haven’t spoken since the fight yesterday.

Jess then has to make breakfast for herself. She throws a plate of eggs together without toast and makes it to her computer just in time to get on a conference call. It’s not until much later in the day that she remembers to wash her hands, well after it’s too late.

End of Part Two

#coronavirus #corona #covidー19 #betty white

0 notes

lesbiandanieljacobi · 8 years ago

Text

Sway With Me, Go Astray With Me

In which Mick Rory and Oliver Queen discuss feelings over pizza and L&P without ever actually saying the word feelings, and somehow it turns into porn (don't ask me how, it just does)

Totally NSFW / Read on AO3

Oliver's not entirely sure how this happened.

Okay, Oliver's entirely sure how this happened, he just doesn't want to admit it.

He flops back until he's laying flat on his back on the training mats and closes his eyes. They'd been working with the Legends on some Time issue of some description that Oliver hadn't really asked too many questions about, happy to play 'point and shoot' as required - after the explosion on Lian Yu, not bearing the burden of responsibility on occasion was very nice - when one of the men they'd been fighting had snarled something about Prometheus being right and doing right and Oliver had seen red and left a dead mess smeared on the concrete behind him. After his usual brow-beating from Felicity, both teams had fucked off to parts unknown to celebrate the successful completion of the mission, leaving Oliver to contemplate his apparent fuck-ups in solitude.

Someone clears their throat above him.

He opens his eyes to find Mick Rory standing there, pizza box in one hand and a six-pack in the other.

"You looked like you could use some company." he says. "And it's not like the Legends will notice I'm gone."

Oliver snorts.

"Then we're in the same boat, aren't we?" he says.

Rory grins, lopsided and companionable, and sits down next to him.

"Its pepperoni." he says. "And this is L&P - a soft drink from home." His shoulders bounce. "I figured simpler is better, and we shouldn't give them more ammunition by drinking."

Oliver snorts again. Rory's blunt. He likes that, in this moment. Rory squints for a second.

"Well, for them, read her. That was quite the lecture."

Oliver groans, and reaches for a drink.

"If you expect me to deal with that particular can of worms, I'd need actual alcohol."

Rory shrugs again, opening the box and sliding it between the two of them.

"Look, I hate talking about -" he makes a hand gesture that Oliver knows means 'feelings', "but you very clearly need to."

Oliver, now sitting and drinking what is an admittedly great bottle of something non-alcholic, shoots Rory a look that says 'fuck no'. In response, Rory drains half his bottle, and starts talking.

He tells Oliver about his family, their farm, the fire he started that had killed them, foster home after foster home of people who couldn't care for him, never being able to mourn in the way of his people. He tells Oliver about falling into crime and out of school, about arrests and Juvie. He tells Oliver all about Leonard Snart, the man he'd loved more than life itself, of Len at 12 and fighting for his life, at 16 and beaten black and blue for being gay by his father, of Len at 21 taking on the world, of Len at 26 in a cheap motel bed telling Mick that they'd get married as soon as it was legal, of Len at 32 helping Mick recover from the fire that scarred his body still, of Len at 40 with a flamethrower, of Len at 42 with a ring. He tells Oliver about Rip Hunter, and the Time Masters, and his time as Chronos - years and years of brainwashing and torture and emptiness, about what he'd done to Len, what Len had done to him, what the team had done to him after that. Oliver listens to most of it with a dropped jaw.

"I didn't - fuck - what the fuck are they doing?" Oliver says, when he's done. Mick - he's definitely Mick now, rather than Rory - shrugs.

"I told you mine. Now you tell me yours." he says.

Oliver groans, takes another drink, and then does. He tells Mick about everything, from the beginning. It's easier somehow, when he's just heard half the man's life story, to tell his own in return. He tells Mick about Laurel and Sara and the Queen's Gambit, about running from commitment, about his father pulling the trigger right in front of him, about Yao Fei and Shado and Slade (Slade, who he'd loved - not that he'd ever confessed that to anyone, except apparently Mick Rory and his uncommonly good listening skills and unfairly warm interchangeably colored eyes). He tells Mick about Ivo and Anatoly and Kovar and the totem and Constantine and working for the Bratva. He tells Mick about Waller and the Suicide Squad and Tatsu and calling Laurel just to hear her voice and emailing Tommy because he didn't know what else to do. He tells Mick about getting off the Island and coming home and the list and telling John and asking Felicity for help. He tells Mick about how good it was, at first, about Barry, good-intentioned and making him a mask that felt more like a he was wearing belief than material, about Isabelle, malicious and lost, and Tommy, breathing out love and blood and death in the ruins of CNRI, about watching Slade come back as a corrupted shadow of the man Oliver had loved, about his mother telling him and Thea to be strong.

He tells Mick about Felicity's moralizing, about trying to change himself. He tells Mick about Sara and Nyssa and Roy and the League. He tells Mick about dying to live, to save his city. He tells Mick about Thea's parentage and Sara's resurrection and Constantine's aid. He tells Mick about feeling like he couldn't be both Oliver and the Green Arrow. He tells Mick about trying to run away wth Felicity, about Laurel and her incredible journey, about what she meant to the city. He tells Mick about Darkh and Samantha and William, about a city that raised him up, about losing Felicity because they couldn't fathom who they had become. He tells Mick about losing Laurel, about how hollow he feels, about the recruits, about Adrian Chase and Oliver's own legacy coming back to haunt him, and Rory Reagan, and Evelyn's betrayal, about finding Dinah and finding Felicity again after Billy and then losing everyone only to get Slade back and then watch them all explode in a ball of flame only to get them back in ten minutes, of William, enrolled at a local private school. He tells Mick about the promise he's made to himself, one more time, about not letting anyone in because he can't bear to lose them.

"Shit, Robin Hood." says Mick, when he's done. "You need a shrink as much as I do."

Oliver finds himself laughing, for reasons he can't quite fathom.

"And then you need to stop letting Glasses run your life for you. Have you noticed how much she's changed you?"

"For the better." says Oliver, a little too quickly.

"I don't think so." says Mick. "It's not for the better if it's not coming from you. Look at Lenny and his dad."

They've finished both the pizza and their soft drinks, and they're both lying flat in their backs staring at the ceiling. Oliver turns his head to look at Mick.

"And you think it's not coming from me?"

"It's not." says Mick. "You're changing to be what she wants because you think that if you do you can make peace with a fuck ton of demons that have nothing to do with her. What do you want, Oliver Queen?"

Oliver has to think about it. No ones asked him that question about anything other than takeout orders in a very long time.

"I want to feel safe. And like I'm making a difference." he says, at length.

"Can you do that if you're bending over backwards to play Vigilante Lite for Glasses?" Mick asks.

"No?" guesses Oliver. He goes back at staring at the ceiling while he weighs up the evidence.

"No." he says, more authoritatively, when he's done.

"Does she make you feel safe?" asks Mick.

"No." says Oliver, marveling at his own denial. He sits up.

"There you go." says Mick, and pushes himself up on to his elbows. "You're allowed to not want to kill anymore, Arrows. Doesn't mean you can't, when you have to, or that you being upset when you do is wrong, either."

Oliver turns to look at him. He makes a fantastic view, sprawled back like this. And, now Oliver's thinking about it, he makes him feels safe. He's never told anyone about the Island. Not like this.

Oliver's still an impulse-driven person, at his core, and all his impulses are telling him he should kiss Mick Rory. So he does.

"Kissing me breaks the promise, remember?" says Mick, after he's shoved Oliver back by his shoulders, a good two minutes into what had been a very nice makeout session.

Right, the dumbass promise Oliver made to himself to not get caught up in anything romantic until he could be sure he could prevent anything like that explosion at Liam Yu from ever happening again.

"You can take care of yourself." he tells Mick, and moves in to kiss him again. Mick rocks back, just out of Oliver's reach.

"Seems to me like you need someone to take care of you, too." says Mick, obviously thinking back to everything Oliver has divulged in the last few hours. Oliver reddens a little, thinking of all the lovely things Mick could do if Oliver was just willing to give in, give over control just a bit.

Mick grins, and Oliver swears he can see flames dancing in his eyes. It's like he knows every filthy thought that is running through Oliver's head.

"Well, then, Robin Hood, are you gonna let me take control?" Oliver shoves Mick back until his broad shoulders are pressed flat against the mat they'd been sitting on.

"Call me by my fucking name." he hisses, and then kisses Mick again, hard and biting and digging his teeth in. They part again when Mick gets a handful of Oliver's hair that's mostly scalp and hauls him back.

"That wasn't a no, Ollie." Mick rumbles, smoothing his hand down until he's got a solid grip on the scruff of Oliver's neck. "Why don't you give me an actual answer?"

Oliver swallows and finds himself looking away, unable to meet Mick's gaze.

"That certainly looks like a yes, but I want to hear you say it." says Mick, turning his hand so he can use his thumb to tilt Oliver's head back, forcing him to meet his eyes. "You've gotta tell me you want it, Oliver."

Oliver's been the strong one for a very long time, unable to let somebody else take the lead - no one since Slade, on the island, has made him feel as safe as Mick is right now. There's something inherently comforting about knowing that Mick won't judge him for anything he's done, for anything he might do. There's no room for moralizing in Mick's world, no harsh call to the "light". It's - refreshing, when it comes down to it. It's been almost 10 years since Oliver's been able to not think, and hand it all over to someone else. It's about time he got to do it again.

"I want it." he says. "I want you to take over."

Mick runs his thumbs over Oliver's cheekbones and looks at him with something warm and soft in his eyes.

"You're something else." he says, and then rolls them so Oliver's underneath his weight, pressed back against the mat again, safe and safe and safe and safe. He shudders a little and presses up into Mick's body, arching his back enough to get a bit of friction. Mick grins again, all teeth, and shifts up so he's perched too high on Oliver's hips to give him anything to rub against, but just enough to take away any leverage Oliver might have.

"None of that, now. You'll get off when I say you'll get off, Kitten." Oliver shudders at the address. It's a pet name, something little and soft and warm and just for him, and he hasn't ever had someone use one of those with that level of warmth, not ever. Mick runs his hands up Oliver's chest, fingers tracing the dips between muscles, until he can rub this thumbs over Oliver's nipples. Fuck. Oliver's painfully aware of how loud his moan was, and he freezes under Mick's touch, unsure of how he'll react. Mick chuckles, low and gravel-rough.

"That was plenty loud, Kitten." he says, and rubs again, firm and pressing, and Oliver makes the same noise as the first time, even through his gritted teeth. Mick makes a tsk-ing sort of noise at that.

"There's no reason for you to stop." he scolds. "You can be as loud as you want for me." He starts rubbing in neat little half-arcs, causing Oliver to start twitching between moans, looking for anything to push his dick against.

"I'm just pleased I found something that gets you going that much." Mick tells him, plainly ignoring Oliver's aborted, useless thrusts. "I want to know all of those places, all the spots that make you shiver, every little thing that makes you hopelessly desperate for me."

Oliver shudders under the warmth in his voice, and doesn't fight when Mick stops his movements so he can gather Oliver's wrists up in one hand and pin them to the mat above his head.

"Look at you, Kitten." murmurs Mick. "So good for me, you're so good for me."

Fuuuuuuuuuck. Oliver whimpers a little, and Mick smiles again.

"There we go, you like that too, don't you?" Oliver nods, something little and jerky. "Shhhhh, Kitten, it's okay. Can you be good and keep your hands where I put them?"

"Yes." says Oliver, desperation sneaking into his voice. "Yes, I can -" He forces himself to stop before he says anything incriminating, but Mick notices the cut-off in his voice anyway. Fuck, he's so in tune with what Oliver's feeling, more so than anyone since Laurel.

"Hey, now," says Mick, catching Oliver's face in his hands before Oliver can look away. "Hey now, Ollie, what is it? What is it you wanted to say?"

Safe, says Oliver's brain. Safe, warm, just what you want. Better, it whispers, low and truthful. Better than the alternative, what you need. Tell him, it begs. Tell him and keep him and never let him go.

"Come on, Kitten, what was that you bit back to keep from me? Let me hear you." Oliver screws his eyes closed for a moment.

"I can do that, sir." Oliver whispers. When he opens his eyes again, Mick's looking down at him with a kind of fondness Oliver had lost hope of finding again.

"So good, Ollie." Mick croons. "You just leave them right there."

Mick takes his hands away from Oliver's face and his weight away from Oliver's hips for long enough to strip them both out of their trousers, and Oliver keeps his hands just where Mick put them. Mick hums with delight when he sees this, and kisses Oliver deep and long, blanketing Oliver's whole body with his own. He pulls back, at length, and smiles, stroking a hand through Oliver's shorn-short hair. And then, he moves, climbing his way up Oliver's body until he's straddling his shoulders. Mick pauses, for a moment, and reaches for his jeans, fumbling for something in the pocket. Oliver already knows what it will be, and finds himself delighted at the fact that Mick cares enough to have a condom on hand, just in case. God knows that Oliver hasn't, in the past. And his last partner -

Oliver wasn't going to think about Felicity. Not now. Not when he's so turned on he can hardly breathe and Mick Rory is straddling his shoulders and about to feed him his dick.

"Will you let me fuck that gorgeous mouth of yours, Kitten?" Mick asks, drawing Oliver out of his thoughts. Oliver nods, probably faster than he should have if he wanted to hide how much he wanted this. But he doesn't want to hide it - he wants Mick to know just how much he loves it, how much he wants it.

"Yes, sir, please, sir." Oliver says, because spoken consent appears to be key for Mick.

"If it gets too much, I want you to snap your fingers to tell me. Can you do that now?" Well, now Oliver's totally fucked. Mick's figured out that the easiest way to make Oliver's knees buckle is to go for his nipples and has full command of Oliver's praise kink, and now he's making sure Oliver can still tap out when he can't speak. Safe, safe, safe, chants Oliver's brain, and he snaps his fingers.

"Good boy." purrs Mick. "Now, open up for me." It's so easy, to just let go. Oliver's brain is only focused on two things - Mick's voice, and keeping his hands right where Mick told him they should stay.

"That's it, just like that, so good, look at you, taking everything I'm giving you." Mick says, slowly driving his hips forward and back. Oliver sucks when he can and licks when he can't and enjoys being used in the best way he knows. Mick doesn't stop talking, and it's working Oliver up more than dirty talk ever has before - probably because of the content.

"That's it, Kitten, keep going. You're going to look so pretty, with your lips all swollen from sucking my cock, when you're gasping while I work you open. Shall I use three, or four fingers, Kitten? Three will open you up enough that you'll be feeling me for days, but with four I'll slide right in. If I've got four in you, it's only one more, it's so tempting -" Mick's narration gets cut off by his moan, which is, in turn, due to the moan Oliver just let out at that thought. A wicked smile floats across Mick's face.

"Oh, Ollie, you liked that, didn't you? You love the idea of me working you so open I could slide my whole fist in." Oliver moans again, thrashing his legs.

"You'd bite your lips redder than red while we worked you up from one to two to three to four. And then you'd look so pretty when you were screaming for me, when every rock of my arm shoved my knuckles right up against your prostate." Oliver's hips are bucking against nothing and his mouth tastes like precum and all he can smell is Mick and he's desperate but not desperate all at the same time, frantic to come and yet ready and willing to wait for Mick's say-so. Mick pulls back and tips Oliver's head back too, to make sure he can speak.

"What's your refractory period like, Kitten?"

"A little faster than average, sir." says Oliver, truthfully. Mick shifts forward, and Oliver laves his tongue over what parts of his cock he can reach.

"Mmm, yes, keep doing that, Kitten." says Mick, scraping one hand across Oliver's scalp. "If that's the case, Ollie, then I'd make you come, just like that, on my fist."

Oliver drops his head back and moans. Mick's grinning when he manages to look up. Mick cants his hips forward when Oliver does, shoves his dick down Oliver's throat and holds it there, and then pulls out so Oliver can get air.

"Yes. That's exactly what I'd do. I'll clean you up while you're still shaking, get my tongue all over those gorgeous abs of yours. And as soon as I'm done with that, I'll slide right in. There'll be no resistance, not after I've had my whole fist in you. I'll be able to shove right into you, and then fuck you until you're screaming again, screaming my name. I'll fuck you until you come all over yourself again, and then I'll roll you over and ride your ass until I come all over it." Mick tells him.

Oliver's sure his eyes are rolling back in his head and his thighs are shaking. He snaps his fingers, once, twice. Mick pulls off instantly.

"Too much, Ollie?" he asks.

"No, sir." says Oliver, and Mick looks confused.

"Not enough, sir." Oliver says, in response to the questioning eyebrow. "Please, sir, I want you to do it, sir, everything you just said, I want you to do it, please, please." Mick strokes Oliver's face again.

"Oh, Kitten, you're so good for me. Begging so prettily for me to use you just like I want. So perfect. But if we're going to do that, I want a bed and a gallon of lube. Do you have that, Kitten?"

Oliver thinks wistfully of the loft, which Felicity is staying in "until she finds her own place", thinks of the broad bed, thinks of Mick in the kitchen, smiling, when Oliver gets back from a hard day at City Hall. It would be so nice to take Mick there now, to let him cuff Oliver to that headboard, to have an arsenal of toys for Mick to discover, to use. It would be so nice to know there's eggs and ingredients for omelettes and Oliver's favorite sourdough in the kitchen for when they wake up in the morning. One day. He'll hold on to that for one day.

For now, he's got a cot and a literal gallon pump bottle of lube, and that's going to do the job just fine.

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Where?"

"There's a cot just around the corner, there, and lube. It's where I've been staying."

Mick looks contemplative for a moment. Then he seems to come back to himself.

"If that's the case, then that's where we'll go." Mick says, and swings himself off Oliver. Oliver rolls over into all fours, taking a moment to steady himself.

"Well now, that's a pretty sight, Kitten." says Mick. "I'm so glad our plan for the night is going to give me such a good view of this fantastic ass of yours."

Oliver smiles to himself, a little dopey, he's sure. Mick's on his feet before Oliver is, and into the alcove with the cot before Oliver makes it to the corner. When he does round the corner, Oliver can see that Mick's already brought the lube over and is laying a towel over the blanket on the bed to catch the excess. Oliver's knees are still weak with arousal, and he gives in and let's them crumble.

"Kitten?" Mick asks, taking a few steps towards Oliver. "Are you all right?"

Oliver, on all fours, nods. "Fine, sir. You said you liked the view?"

Mick actually laughs as he walks backwards until he can sit on the cot.

"That's my Kitten." he says, voice full of joy. "Are you going to put on a show for me?"

Oliver smirks, and then crawls, as sexily as he can, over to where Mick is sitting, legs sprawled wide. Mick's eyes dilate to the point where Oliver can't tell their shade as he approaches, and then Mick's guiding him so he's kneeling between Mick's knees.

"I think I want to hear you beg, Kitten." says Mick. "For exactly what it is you want."

Oliver swallows, hard, and then opens his mouth.

"Please, sir, I want you to open me up so you can get your whole fist in me. I want you to pound your fist into my ass until I come untouched. I want you to pull your fist out and slide your dick in while I'm still clenching from my orgasm. I want you to fuck me so hard I go hoarse screaming your name and come again, and then I want you to get me on my knees and fuck me from behind until you're coming, and I want you to mark me with your come."

Mick makes a soft little surprised noise.

"Like it rough, don't you, Kitten? I can do rough for you. I can do all of that for you. I just want one more thing. Tell me you're mine, Kitten."

"I'm yours." says Oliver, fervently.

"And I can believe it." whispers Mick, mostly to himself. "Alright, Ollie, up on the bed, on your back."

Oliver goes where he is told, relaxes his legs out in a wide sprawl, and raises his hands back over his head, as they had been before.

"So good." says Mick, smoothing one hand over the inside of Oliver's thigh and teasing the first lubed finger of the other around Oliver's hole. Oliver groans and tries to shove down on the intrusion, only for Mick to take his hands away.

"I'm sorry, who's in charge here?" he asks, almost jovial.

"You are, sir."

"Damn right I am. Hold onto your ankles, keep those legs spread wide."

Oliver does as he's told. It's so good, so nice, so easy, so safe.

"Two birds, one stone. You have less leverage, and I get such a lovely view of the hole I'm going to fuck."

A shudder rocks all the way through Oliver at Mick's words, and he knows he's panting for breath. Mick finally slides the finger in, and all his breath pushes out in a rush.

"Yessssss!" Oliver hisses, and Mick chuckles, turns his wrist a few times, slides in a second. The first time he scissors them punches a gasp out of Oliver.

"So good, Kitten, you just keep taking it." Mick murmurs, and opens Oliver enough to push in three, pressing hard and firm against Oliver's prostate. There's nothing but an endless high-pitched whine coming out of Oliver's mouth, and his knuckles are white on his ankles. Mick's petting the inside of Oliver's thigh with his free hand, soft and strong. Mick slides in four, dripping wet with lube, and Oliver drops his head back, lets it bounce on the mattress while Mick works him over, stretches him out until he's shaking and rolling his hips ineffectually down.

"I think we should tie you up, next time." says Mick, thumb teasing against Oliver's rim. "Tie up your hands and your ankles, keep you just where I want you. Get a ring on you, keep you on the edge for hours."

"Yes, sir, yes, fuck, please." says Oliver, which is both his opinion and the extent of his vocabulary at this moment. Mick smiles, pleased, and pushes a little firmer with his thumb.

"Are you ready?" asks Mick, and Oliver can hear the second question underneath, the 'do you still want this' that was present but unsaid.

"Please, sir." Oliver begs, beyond shame. Mick makes a comforting little noise and slides his thumb forward, slowly and wetly easing the widest part of his hand into Oliver, turning his wrist slowly until he's satisfied. The push-pull of his arm is perfect, strong and solid and sure, and Oliver can feel the heat building in his chest.

"Please, sir, more." he begs, tossing his head back and forth because it's all the movement he can make without breaking one of Mick's rules.

"You want more, Ollie?" purrs Mick. "Want me to take you fast and hard and rough?"

"Yes." pants Oliver. "Please."

"Next time, Kitten. Next time, when I tie you down and we've talked about this more." Oliver whines in protest, and Mick smiles.

"Let me show you it's okay to let yourself be looked after. Let me show you you're safe." Mick tells him, still smoothing his free hand up and down Oliver's inner thigh. His fist is still moving, slow and inexorable, and Oliver knows he's close.

"Look at you." says Mick. "Look at you, taking it so well, my perfect Ollie, right here where I can look after you. You don't have to worry about anything but me." Mick's knuckles are rubbing against Oliver's prostate with every movement, just like he'd promised they would. Oliver's so close - he's almost there - he just needs a little more -

"My good Kitten. All mine." says Mick, and pushes back in hard and sure. The words send a shiver through Oliver, push him so close to the brink a heavy breath will knock him over.

"Sir, can I, please can I -"

"Are you asking for permission to come, Kitten? Oh, oh you're so perfect. Yes, Ollie, my Ollie, you can come." Mick's knuckles scrape over Oliver's prostate one more time, and then he does - he comes with a guttural kind of scream, without a hand on him, just like Mick had said he would, just like Oliver had begged for.

He's still reeling through the aftershocks when he feels Mick pulling his hand out, murmuring something low that Oliver's not quite registering. When he focuses a little, the words become clear.

"So good, Kitten, all mine and so good, you're going to be so good for me, aren't you, so perfect on my dick, all mine, my Ollie." Oliver whines, and Mick thrusts in. Just like he'd promised, while Oliver's still shaking his way down, smooth and strong and with little to no resistance. It's so good.

"Is it, Kitten?" asks Mick, and oh, Oliver must have said that out loud. Mick smiles again, that warm safe smile that's got Oliver so wrapped up in knots. He tells Mick it is good, it's so good, he feels full and perfect and just right. Mick pulls Oliver's legs around him, wraps Oliver's thighs around his hips and pushes in deeper, smoother. Oliver clenches his legs and pushes back against Mick's thrusts, wraps his arms around Mick's shoulders and pulls him down for a kiss. Mick goes, kissing him with enthusiasm, and sneaking a hand between then to wrap around Oliver's rapidly hardening dick.

"That's it, that's my good Kitten, come on, that's it." Mick purrs, right into Oliver's ear. Oliver loses track after that, drifts somewhere warm and happy and safe. He can feel Mick fucking him - and holy god does it feel good - but he has no idea how long they've been in this position, how long Mick's hand has been wrapped loosely around Oliver's now-hard dick, how long Oliver's been whining and writhing and panting for air because it feels so good, chanting Mick's name whenever he has breath in his lungs.

"Do you think you can come for me?" asks Mick, cutting through the haze. Oliver nods, somewhere beyond words. He feels like he could do anything Mick asks.

"Good, that's my good Ollie. Come on then, come for me." says Mick, and he tightens his grip around Oliver, and Oliver does, he comes just as instructed, to the soundtrack of Mick's gravelly praise in his ear.

"I know I said I was going to flip you over, Kitten, but right now I just want to make even more of a mess of those gorgeous abs of yours - will you let me do that?" Mick asks, running a hand through the come on Oliver's skin. Fuck, that sounds good. Oliver nods, and Mick slips out of him, straddles his thighs again, and wraps his hand around himself. Oliver just lays there, lets his arms fall over his head and arches his back a little. Mick's breathing hard when he comes, and he lets out a harsh little grunt from between clenched teeth. They both just stay, catching their breath, for a good long moment, before Mick slides off.

"Let me clean us up." says Mick, after a few minutes of him stroking Oliver's hair.

“Do you want to come with me, or will you be alright for a moment while I'm gone?" Oliver hums, still coming back from the pleasant floaty place he'd gone, and contemplates the question.

"As long as you come back-" he starts.

"I'm definitely coming back." says Mick, and when Oliver looks over he's got an appreciative, lewd grin on his face.

Oliver sniggers, and then goes back to blinking slowly.

"I'll be good for a couple of minutes." Mick nods, and swings himself off the bed, disappearing around the corner to the bathroom.

Oliver swirls his fingers through the still mostly-wet come on his stomach and thinks. With Mick, he'd been able to switch off entirely, just hand himself over and relax, a feeling he desperately needs. And Mick understands him, gets the years of trauma, the baseless but unshakeable guilt, the need on occasion to do something dark so that someone else can stay in the light. Mick's lost people he loves too, had to watch and not be able to do anything. And it's not like he's going to leave - five faberge eggs and the chance to start the Great Fire of London couldn't get Mick Rory back onto the Waverider, not without Leonard Snart. But given their line of work, and the alarming regularity with which people came back from the dead -

"Well, that's an image I'm holding onto for the next ten years." says Mick. He's got a damp washcloth in one hand and a fresh towel in the other, and he's smiling, soft and warm. Oliver's suddenly aware of the ridiculous porn-shoot nature of his current pose, and ducks his head, cheeks flushing. He didn't think he was capable of blushing anymore, but apparently Mick Rory is very good at making him do things he'd never thought he'd do again.

Mick cleans Oliver up with care and practiced ease, and then gets them both into sweatpants, before arranging them on the narrow bed so Oliver's head is pillowed on Mick's chest. He's got his fingers back in Oliver's hair - which is very nice, and Oliver is going to insist on happening regularly if the rest of this conversation goes well - when Oliver speaks up.

"So, when you were talking about us negotiating this more thoroughly-" Oliver says, hoping Mick will just put him out of his misery and give him a straight answer.

"We definitely will be." says Mick, firmly. "I will make you dinner and we will hash out all the details and make sure we have a good understanding of each other's limits. And then I am absolutely tying you up and having my way with you."

Mick pauses, like he's running through what he's just said to make sure he's touched on all salient points. Then he seems to remember something.

"As long as that's what you want, of course." Oliver finds himself smiling like a giddy child.

"Yeah. That's absolutely what I want."

Wait, there was something else he'd wanted to ask.

"And if Len were to come back? Would you still stay with me?"

Mick pauses, obviously not expecting the question. He ponders it for a while. Oliver listens to his heartbeat.

"I think if Lenny came back, he'd be more than willing to stay here with us." he says, finally. "As long as you were willing to share me, of course."

Oliver blinks, dumbstruck. He'd known Len and Mick were married, but hadn't considered the arrangement could be like the one he was now creating with Mick.

"Is he more on my end of things, or yours?" Oliver asks, for clarification's sake. "Hypothetically considering his return."

"Yours." says Mick, with a rumbling laugh Oliver feels more than hears.

Oliver has to shake himself out of the very pretty pictures in his head in order to answer.

"I might be amenable to a little more than sharing." he says, and Mick presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Nap now. Hypothetical hookup discussions later." says Mick.

Oliver tables the very enjoyable fantasy he'd been contemplating of Mick's thrusts shoving a bound Len Snart's cock further down his throat, and lets Mick's breathing lull him to sleep.

Two nights later, everything goes to shit while the team is breaking up an arms deal and Oliver has to shoot someone before they can shoot a police officer, and puts the arrow through their throat without thinking. Post-explosion, most of the team is more relaxed in their "what the fuck Ollie you can't just kill people" attitude (which Oliver is laying entirely at the feet of Slade Wilson, who banged heads and told stories until the full extent of Oliver's Lian Yu experience was at least hinted at enough to make Rene and Curtis and Dinah understand. John has understood for a long time now). Felicity, however, is almost worse than she used to be. They get back to the Bunker to find her standing at the door with her hands planted on her hips, chest already inflating so she can give them all - especially Oliver - some kind of long lecture on morality. Oliver walks past her without a second thought and heads to where Mick is sitting on a table near the training room.

"Hey, Ollie." says Mick, soft and warm like he always is, even when he's got Oliver bent over his knee. "Come here."

Oliver goes, and crumples into his arms, trusting Mick to keep him anchored, and trusting his team to not take advantage or discouragement from his emotion. Mick gets his fingers back into Oliver's hair and starts stroking, happy to wait just like that until Oliver gets his breathing back under control.

"You were going to say something, Glasses?" says Mick, nonchalantly.

Felicity doesn't say anything, and Oliver stays in the warmth of Mick's arms.

#Mick/Oliver #ArrowWave #prouves writes #what the fuck this was not supposed to turn out like this #and yet I actually love this fic?#not really felicity or olicity friendly #but then again neither am I so like what did you expect

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amorremanet · 8 years ago

Note

10 facts about meme: Lucy? And Adelaide, if you don't mind doing two?

send me one of my oc’s and i tell you ten facts about them

This is the shitty, “I fell asleep instead of doing this last night, and then, when I was almost fucking done, trying to make tumblr instant messenger stop doing something made it decide to click over somewhere else, and Firefox apparently doesn’t let the Lazarus extension work anymore, so I lost everything and am completely skimming out of frustration because the original was detailed and cool, and I lost basically all of it” version

LUCY

1. Has never completed a Pokémon game with a grass or water starter. She just doesn’t bond with them as much as she does with the fire starters, and any time she tries to pick a grass or water starter, she inevitably gives up, restarts, and picks the fire starter instead.

2. Since she turned 18, she’s made a point of giving blood as often as possible, because she’s type-O negative (the universal donor), and the Red Cross is pretty much always running short on blood, which can leave a lot of people totally screwed when they need to get transfusions.

3. Doesn’t believe in astrology and dismisses most of things in that vein as a cold-reading scam that’s based on exploiting people’s ability to project themselves onto anything…… but she does have an interest in dream interpretation.

4. She finds recipes confusing, and is even more befuddled by the Food Network and, “how to make [x baked goods]” videos on youtube, to the point that she finds them more stressful than getting a, “We need to talk” text from her parents. And yet, she is not confused by instructions in a chemistry lab.

5. She loves her red hair, but hates being called, “ginger.” It’s not that she thinks the word is offensive or anything; she just thinks that it sounds weird and slightly disgusting.

6. One of her favorite forms of, “teenage rebellion” was watching televangelists (or more accurately, having them on while she did other stuff because it’s really easy for Lucy to tune them out), which Lucy wouldn’t have liked so much if she’d actually paid attention to any of them (because of how televangelists exploit their viewers’ pain and suffering, get rich off of it, and don’t have to pay taxes on most of that money because they call it, “religious donations”) — but it did successfully annoy her very Catholic parents and very Catholic, “he’s a legit priest and everything” uncle.

7. A horror movie can be as political or politically coded as it wants. Unless it does something truly novel with the genre, like Get Out, then Lucy will probably just roll her eyes, complain about how many people value, “edginess” over quality, and then go watch The Great Mouse Detective for the umpteenth time. It’s not even that she gets squicked by horror movies, because she stops at dismissing all of them as edgelord garbage and doesn’t give them a chance.

8. She has even less patience for the films of Christopher Nolan, and literally the only one that she doesn’t go in too hard on is The Dark Knight, which only gets any consideration because Heath Ledger died not that long after making it, in ways that were pretty heavily associated with the movie in popular culture.

Not that she really cares about Heath Ledger, or even about the taboo on speaking ill of the dead, but she figures that he isn’t Ronald Reagan levels of terrible, or worse, so it’s easier to just not get into it with people over Heath Ledger when all that she wanted to say was that The Dark Knight isn’t actually that great

She will, however, talk shit about Ronald Reagan pretty much any time she’s given an opportunity, and especially if her Mom and Dad are around (because they were big Reaganites, back in the day, and annoying them with her hatred of the Gipper keeps them from paying attention to things like how her, “best friend” Sara Grace is actually her girlfriend)

9. Her answer to the question of whether she prefers cats or dogs will probably be something like, “iguanas” because she hates the assumption that it’s not possible to love cats and dogs more or less equally, but she also has better things to argue with people about.

10. She can’t whistle, she’s not really a very good dancer, and the last time she tried to tie a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue, she wound up swallowing it.

ADELAIDE

1. At 5’11”, Addie is taller than her big brother and their Mom (who are both 5’10”), and when standing up as best man when Max and Linda got married, she didn’t try to make him feel short, but she did wear a nice pair of heels and didn’t really go out of her way not to make him feel short, either.

2. By all rights, Addie probably should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD a while ago, but because her childhood and adolescence lasted from about 1986-2000 (when she turned 18), and because in 2017, ADHD is still badly misunderstood and under-diagnosed in AFAB kids, Addie got missed and made it to 33, thinking that all of her ADHD symptoms are just personal quirks or failings.

3. Her favorite color is purple. The darker the shade, the better.

4. Her ability to interpret song lyrics is often questionable. Like, on one hand, she’s totally made the mistake of hearing, “There’s a bathroom on the right” instead of, “There’s a bad moon on the rise” during the chorus of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”

—and on the other hand, she completely missed that most of Missy Elliot’s “Work It” is explicitly about cunnilingus until Pete asked her what the Hell she thought the lyric, “Go downtown and eat it like a vulture” was referring to, especially given its proximity to Ms. Elliot talking about shaving her chocha. (All Addie has to say for herself is that she got caught up on the, “Girls, girls, get that cash / If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin’ your ass” verse.)

She also thought that Spice Girls were singing about group sex in “Wannabe,” rather than singing about making sure that your significant other can get along with your gal pals, and she kept thinking this until mid-September 2012.

5. As far as her family knows, Addie almost got arrested on her 18th birthday and had to run from the cops while she and a few friends were kinda drunk and screwing around in New York City. What really happened was that her birthday was on a Saturday, so they signed themselves out of school for the weekend, went to NYC, and saw the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar because her parents bought them tickets.

Then, they used fake ID’s to get some alcohol and got kinda drunk. Then, while they were screwing around in Brooklyn instead of going to cousin Jeremy’s place and crashing for the night, they wound up going by a gay bar, where Addie tripped over her own feet and got caught by a cute butch lesbian who happened to be dressed as a sexy cop for a themed party at said gay bar and had gone outside for a smoke break.

Then, one of Addie’s friends mistook this poor woman for a real cop and insisted that they run, and despite putting it together in the cold, sober light of day that there had been no actual danger, Addie told Sebastian the, “We so totally almost got arrested” story because she thought it sounded cooler, and at this point, it’s been 15 years, and she doesn’t see a point in correcting her family when her younger cousins get the, “Don’t get too rowdy on your 18th birthday or you may end up running from the cops like Adelaide” cautionary tale.

6. She would probably try to play real-world Quidditch, if she could get anyone to play with her, but that’s not going to happen, because everyone who knows her also knows that Addie is competitive as fuck, and that playing “muggle Quidditch” with her is a good way to get at least mildly injured.

7. She can see where the dislike that a lot of people in her life have for the All-Stars comes from, but personally, Addie doesn’t buy into it herself. She doesn’t really care to defend them, either, but at this point, she feels like most of the world’s problems can’t be solved with super-strength or heat vision, and they’re more complicated than the All-Stars’ image would allow them to handle, so it’s best to see the All-Stars as entertainers, rather than actual heroes.

Not that she begrudges anyone their annoyance with the fact that the All-Stars make, “we are actual heroes” a cornerstone of their so-called “brand,” but if you ask Addie, it’s not all that much different from how U.S. politicians lie up one side and down the other about basically everything, and how much of U.S. politics is increasingly little more than a theatre spectacle to cover up what’s actually going on

Oddly enough, Addie is accidentally on to something with that, because a lot of the supervillains in this universe are not truly participating in any shadowy conspiracy…… but they are being manipulated by members of one, and alternately being used as a source of talking points, or as distractions, so that the folks in said shadowy conspiracy (who are a mix of mutants and not) can push through their own agendas and try to secure their own power at the expense of anyone who gets in their way

Not that it’s really here or there at the moment, but this is totally going to bite them in the ass, partly from the people they’ve been exploiting and screwing over for decades putting shit together and pushing back, and partly because they decide to bank on installing a puppet who isn’t as easily controlled or as easily made to serve their agendas as they think. Anyway, as I was saying.

8. If Adelaide hadn’t gone into the family business and started vying with Max to see who’s going to become CEO when their Dad retires, she probably would’ve gone into advertising. If not that, she most likely would’ve gone to law school.

However, despite the fact that her Mom and several of her cousins are lawyers, Addie’s notions about how being a lawyer works are mostly derived from Legally Blonde, Ally McBeal, and Law and Order: SVU, so it might be a good thing that she has no idea what she’d actually want to do at law school.

9. Popular wisdom holds that she only isn’t the worst driver out of her siblings because Sebastian is the one who should’ve racked up multiple DUI charges by now, by all rights shouldn’t have his license anymore, and rarely uses it these days anyway because he, “doesn’t have PTSD, he just doesn’t like driving okay, it kinda freaks him out” (…which it does because of the PTSD that he allegedly doesn’t have but that’s another matter)

Addie holds that this popular wisdom is misogynistic bullshit being passed off as familial teasing, because actually, she’s a much better driver than all three of her brothers (with both cars and motorcycles, though only she and Seb have ever driven one of those, so it’s a little unfair to Max and Ambrose)

—and she may not know how to fix more complicated car problems, but she can at least get a better grasp on what might be wrong than, “I don’t know, it keeps making a thunka thunka thunka sound if you go above 60 mph” and she has more than once fixed something for her brothers that turned out to be something like, “You were driving with the parking brake on, dumb-ass”

10. Her go-to karaoke night songs are Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” — the latter of which would be funnier to Adelaide if she’d intended to sound hella bi when she first started doing it, rather than picking it because she was kinda drunk and knew all the words, then getting really into singing it and having no conscious idea where those emotions were coming from

#builttobalance #ask box tag #memes for ts #ocs tag #that story with the mutants that i should find a working title for fml #adelaide moncrieff: ambitious disaster #lucy murphy: hemokinetic disaster #alcohol ref//#ten facts meme

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ontherockswithsalt · 6 years ago

Text

A Made Man

/1/ /2/ /3/ /4/ /5/ /6/ /7/ /8/ /9/ /10/ /11/ /12/ /13/ /14/ /15/

A/N: EEEEE JAMIE!!!!!1 That’s what partners do, you guys. Enjoy a new chapter!

Chapter 16.

“Hey man, you wanna grab a couple drinks?” I push closed my locker and turn to Vinny where he sits on the bench tying the laces of his sneakers.

“Definitely,” he mutters. “After that tour, more like a couple pitchers.”

Exhaling a laugh, I stretch my arms into my leather jacket. Even my muscles feel done for the day, beat from an exhausting week on patrol. “Sounds good. I'll see you out there.”

It's rare that Vinny and I spend time together outside of work. When he first transferred to the 12th precinct last year, we didn't exactly see eye to eye when it came to how we did things on the job. But considering the rough Harlem sector he used to patrol, I chalk it up to different styles and we've come to appreciate the dynamic over the last several months.

But still, the job is one of the few things we have in common. So I'm not quite sure why I feel compelled to let Vinny in on the news of my relationship with Noble. It's not that I'm putting off telling my family. It's just something about Vinny, cool-headed and laid back but still a strong partner, makes me wish he knew.

Hanging back against the hallway of the precinct, I swipe through my phone while I wait. I send off a text to Noble: Happy hour. Talk to you tonight just before Vinny rounds the corner.

“Let's hit it, Reagan.”

We head out the door and make our way down the block. “Let’s skip Murphy’s, though,” I tell him.

“Not feeling it?”

I shrug, sinking my hands into the pockets of my jacket and wait at the crosswalk. “Even when you’re off duty over there, it’s like… people still wanna talk shop, you know?”

“Yeah, alright,” he agrees. “There’s a place over on Ninth we can shoot some pool.”

It’s an easy agreement and we head west, our pace picking up with the brisk November wind that cuts through the side street.

It isn’t long before we get to the tucked away tavern. With a subtle scan, I check that I don’t see anyone I know while I wait at the bar to start a tab.

At the back of the pub, there’s a pool table, dimly lit in the glow of green neon and lucky for us, unoccupied. The bartender meets us there to set a pitcher of amber lager and two pint glasses on the nearest table.

“Anything else I can get you guys?” She wonders as she tips the last glass against the pitcher and pours.

“We're good, Allie,” Vinny assures her as he reaches into the table for the rack and starts to collect the balls into it. “But I want you to check back in a minute because my boy Jamie over here is about to lose and I think it's gonna be hard on him so he might-- y'know, need a little support.”

With a shake of her head, she smiles. “Oh really?”

“And then I'll need a high five,” he adds, proudly.

I have to scoff as I peer up to choose my pool cue.

She hums, as if to humor him but manages to giggle anyway. “I'll see what I can do.”

Then she heads back to the bar and I make sure Vinny catches me rolling my eyes as I meet him at the table.

“It never stops, huh?” I tease him, but by now I’m used to his persistent flirting with any halfway attractive woman he comes in contact with.

“What, you think I can turn it off and on? Just accept me for who I am, Reagan.” Back and forth, he slides the balls across the green felt and carefully lifts the rack. “One day, you'll reap the rewards of my wingman efforts. Wanna break?”

I cough out, amused, and scoop up the cue ball. “Sure.” Positioning myself at the end of the table, I line up my first shot. “Speaking of that--” I start just before swiftly knocking the end of my pool cue against the ball which clacks hard into the triangle and sends all the other balls scattering. Two solids find a pocket and I make my way around to ponder another shot. “I gotta give you a heads up in the off-chance my brother decides to question you. But if he ever asks, you and I went to Miami for a weekend.”

Vinny tilts his head while he takes a drink. He swallows hard and arches an eyebrow at me. “We did?”

“I told him we did.”

He chuckles, obviously amused that I would ever attempt to pull one over on my family and include him in the lie. “What’s the story there?”

I glance over at him across the table, pressing my lips together in hesitation. Fuck, it’s all gonna come out, I know it.

“Oh shit, tell me.” His dark eyes light up once he realizes whatever the story involves, it’s anything but innocent. “What'd you do in Miami?”

“My family knew I went, but they got all suspicious about why, so I just told them I went with you to visit some friends.”

“So who were you really with?”

All I can manage is a deep inhale as I lean over to take another shot.

“Come on, Reagan.” He grins, excited the more I resist confessing. “You roped me in on it, so I gotta know. What, is she from our house or something?”

“No--”

“Is she married?”

“No.”

“Does she work for IA?”

“No, not--”

“Yo, is she in high school?”

“No! Vin--” And then I sputter a surprised laugh and rub a hand across my eyes. I let out a weary groan and shake my head. “It’s not like that.”

“Alright, so what’s with the cover-up?”

I step back from the table and reach for my pint glass. “He--” I begin, glancing at him over the rim. “--isn’t any of those things.” Then I tilt the beer to my lips and down a hard gulp.

It takes him a second. An averted glance, the slight twitch of one eyebrow, before he gradually lifts his chin in realization. Then he tips it down and his brow creases when he looks at me to confirm, “Oh, like that?”

I exhale a breathy laugh. “Yeah, like that.”

He nods, taking a moment for a sip of his beer too, then presses his lips together. “Alright, alright--” he repeats, still nodding, then he looks at me. “I didn’t know.”

A blameless shrug lifts my shoulders. “How would you know?”

His head cocks as if to recall some sort of indicator, but he just mirrors my shrug.

I manage a nervous glance away and chew on my lip muttering, “So…now you know.”

“A good guy?”

The simple question surprises me, seeming to push away some of the weight sinking through my chest. “Yeah. Yeah, for sure.”

“Nice, Reagan,” he comes closer and smacks the back of his hand against my shoulder, seeming to deflate a little in relief. “You had me thinking you took a hostage across state lines or something.”

“No,” I chuckle.

“So I take it your family doesn’t know.”

“No one really knows,” I tell him, then gesture to the pool table. “You’re up.”

“No one?”

“Not really, no.” I hang back in the pub chair with my beer while Vinny takes his shot.

“Wait.” He straightens up to watch the striped eleven sink into the side pocket. “No one knows about him, or no one knows… about you?”

My brows pull together as I consider it. “Both, I guess.”

“Oh, damn.”

I laugh. “Yeah, it's complicated.”

“Well hey.” He holds up his hands in affirmation, tipping out the pool cue. “I got your back brother, you know that. I'm just glad you could tell me. I'll corroborate the Miami story if it comes to that.”

I can't help but smile as I grasp my beer and glance down. “I appreciate it.”

Backing up, her turns and leans in for another turn. “So what’s his deal? Do I know him?”

“No, he lives in Florida.”

“How’d you meet him?” He misses his shot and makes his way over for his beer.

Inhaling deep, I sit back in my chair. “That's the complicated part.”

“I'm all in now, Reagan. Tell me.”

I glance up, across the bar just to ensure no one else is within earshot. Then I pass a hand across nervous lips and scratch my jawline. “Last year when I was working UC. But I can't tell you the whole story.”

Vinny’s eyebrows jump and he comes closer to the table. “Wait, what?”

Stepping down off my chair, I turn for my pool cue that's against the wall. “It's my turn.”

“Bro.” He groans. He stops me before I head to the pool table and murmurs, “You telling me he's in WitSec?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Yeah but I know the gist of that undercover you did. You met him here but he lives in Miami now? Come on.”

“Alright yes, he's in WitSec,” I offer a hushed confirmation before I turn away for my shot. “That's why I can't say anything.”

“Oh shit.” He tries to contain some sort of noisy reaction as he mutters into his fist. “Reagan!”

I look back at him and spread my hands before I lean over the ledge of the table.

“I think I'm gonna order a couple shots,” he announces.

***

It's a fairly easy win in the game against Vinny. He tries to blame it on being distracted with too many questions but really he's just all talk when it comes to his pool technique.

He makes good on two shots of Johnny Walker and we retire to the pub table with pitcher number two.

“Well it sounds to me like you really like him,” he reasons.

“Of course I do.”

“I'm just saying. If this were nothing but a hook-up you wouldn't be telling me.”

I swallow another gulp from my beer and consider it. “I guess so.”

“Which is why I'm questioning what you're gonna do, man.”

“I don't know what to do,” I concede.

“Why don't you talk to your sister?”

With an absent nod, I pause a beat. “I've thought about it.”

“Would it be bad news if he left the program?”

“I think there will always be a threat. His guys are locked up but… Those ties run deep, you know? There's always someone out there who would try to be some kinda a hero.”

He nods and sniffs a soft laugh. “You wanna move to Miami then?”

I smile. “No.”

“So you do long distance for a while,” he decides and I appreciate the content, albeit temporary, resolution.

“Yeah. So far, so good.”

“Would I like him?” Vinny wonders.

“I think you'd like him.”

“I wanna know about him. What's his name? What's his deal?”

I let a smirk sit on my face a minute while I think about how much to reveal to my partner. “His name's Nick.”

“Alright.” He nods, knowing that's not his real name but he has to go with it. “Does Nick know your dad's the PC?”

I clear my throat and nod. “He knows pretty much everything.”

“Man, I'm not gonna lie. This is…” And then he trails off while he considers it.

“It's fucking… stupid.”

A rumbling laugh sputters in our throats before the both of us crack up.

Vinny shakes his head. “No, he must be some guy, that's all.”

I down what's left in my pint glass and breathe out hard. “He must be,” I muse.

“I gotta meet the guy who can make Jamie Reagan this stupid.”

Nodding in acceptance of that, my laugh tapers off. “Maybe you will.”

He reaches over and slaps a hand on the side of my arm.

I set my glass down with a thud on the table and stretch back my shoulders. “See now you don't have the competition anymore when you're trying to get girl's numbers on patrol but they only want to talk to me.”

“You can get the fuck out.” He points his glass at me, a sideways smile curving on his cheek. “Ain't no competition. I don't care if you're off the market or not.”

“We'll see what Allie has to say about that.” I slide off my chair and start to make my way over to the bar.

“No, see I'm playing the long game with Allie,” he calls out.

Arching a skeptical brow back at him, I give him a phony nod as if I believe him. “Let me know how that goes, partner.”

#jamie x noble #my heart is full #vinny cruz 4everrrrrrrr

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