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whump-town · 3 years

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The Traveling T-Shirt

No Pairings

No Warnings

It's just Morgan's t-shirt traveling through the BAU one person and story at a time

It starts with a coffee spill in Seattle. With Aaron, startlingly enough.

Six days in the rain and it seemed even their cleanest, driest clothing was damp with the chill from the constant downpour. Though, six days on their feet with clothing they’d already worn at least twice that week on their backs, they looked more and more “rag-tag” as the hours bore on. Even Hotch had lost his cookie-cutter charm. His white t-shirt crumpled where it was typically pressed to perfection, not a wrinkle in sight. His hair wouldn’t stay gelled into the style he liked it in, leaving it fluffy and soft on the top of his head. He looked significantly less like SSA Aaron Hotchner and a lot more like Aaron.

Maybe he had lost SSA Hotchner somewhere along the days and victims because SSA Hotchner would never spill coffee on himself. But Aaron would and Aaron did.

Derek watched the whole thing take place, unable to take his eyes off of Hotch since the second that he walked in. Something about his tired zombie-like lurches just couldn’t break Derek’s curiosity and he had to know what would come out of Hotch’s current state. Despite the far-away look in Hotch’s gaze, the tired bags of discoloration under his eyes, Derek would not have predicted this as the outcome. Hotch is so out of it that all he can do is stare at the mess he’s created, glaring at the mess of coffee grounds across his less than pristine white dress shirt.

“Here,” Derek shakes his head, has to manually clear the fog occupying his brain. He pulls at the loose clump of napkins someone had left atop the coffee table for this exact situation, presses the mass into Hotch’s stomach. It feels akin to something else, distinctly deja-vu. Like he’s pressing into a wound, holding him together with nothing more than cheap napkins.

The physical contact brings Hotch back to the Earth and with a few blinks of his blood-shot eyes he sighs irritably and mumbles, “I don’t have any more clean shirts.”

Derek would argue the one he’s currently wearing is not clean either. It’s got a few dots of red expo marker on the left elbow where Reid bumped into him, rambling quickly about his map and the geographical profile. On the cuff of his right sleeve, there’s something brown or black which could be something from a pen or an expo marker or something else he’s just stuck his hand in. God knows what else is on this shirt.

Hotch puts his hand over Derek’s, holds the napkins himself. Derek pats his shoulder, “it’s alright, man. I’ll get you a shirt.”

They could go just about anywhere and just buy him a shirt. It could be some looney graphic t-shirt from the boy’s sections of some store down the street or another white dress shirt to replace the one he’s wearing but Derek just gets one of his. It’s a light grey, the color worn down by how frequently Derek wears it. Where it fits Derek snugly, hugs his chest and back tightly, it fits Hotch oddly. Displays to them all just how right they were in the assumptions they have held about how his recent divorce is affecting him.

He’s lost weight.

Too much.

One thin grey Hanes t-shirt can’t fight off the chill and overtop it, covering his visible bones, Dave throws him a sweater. He stays buried in that sweater and shirt all day, long into the night as they go hunting out in the streets with flashlights. Rain comes down heavy and thick.

Dave gets his sweater back. Folded neatly and smelling of the distinct fabric softener Hotch uses, it makes his whole office smell nice and Dave nearly can’t bring himself to wear the thing again. Doesn’t want the scent to fade, every inch of that sweater is now stitched together with something more.

The t-shirt gets left at the bottom of a drawer, to be discovered months from now.

Emily finds it six nights after Foyet left Hotch in Saint Sebastion’s hospital held together by sugrical staples and the stubborn will to live. All of his clothing has been hunted through, his shirt drawer is nearly empty. JJ and Penelope had undertaken the job of finding Hotch clothing for the hospital -- anything that he could just slip his arms into without having to lift them above his head. The only things left in his drawers are regular t-shirts and jeans, meaning Emily doesn’t have a whole lot to pick through right now.

She hadn’t anticipated this need and as much forethought as she put into staying the night was assuming Hotch would have clothes she could steal. She hadn’t really thought she’d be here tonight but she doesn’t think she can leave him alone. Doesn’t think it would be kind of her as his friend to see him like this and still choose to leave him for the night.

She decides on a thin grey shirt that she finds, turning her nose up to his university t-shirts (as if she’d wear those) and a pair of sweat pants on his floor that she thinks are clean or at least don’t smell bad. It’s not the best but she came unprepared and she’s not going to complain, both are comfortable even if the pants are giant on her.

To her surprise, he’s still fighting off his meds. Hazy brown eyes blink open when she steps back out into the living room, following her as she comes to the couch. She’s careful, even if she does it nonchalantly, as she moves his legs a little so that she can sit down beside him. He’s stretched across the couch, too big so he’s pinched up in places, but he doesn’t want to sleep in his room. Stubborn like a child being asked to take a nap -- “but I’m not tired”.

“T’as not my shirt,” he mumbles into his blanket. He’s got the heating blanket pulled up his nose, wrapped tightly around his shoulders and hands.

Emily looks down at it and frowns. “Well, then who the hell else’s is it?” She reaches for the TV remote on the coffee table, turning it on without waiting for his answer. Clearly, she doesn’t care who’s it is, she’s not taking it off now. His grunt, muffled by the blanket, means he doesn’t know and he doesn’t really care enough either to figure out who it is.

He doesn’t last much longer, falls asleep with her squishing him on the couch (though, arguably, he’s squishing her). She’ll brush off his timid embarrassment at having to need her around the next morning, for waking up in the middle of the night having to be held down. Sobbing incoherently about something, neither of them really sure what. Only calming down when she put his head in her lap, stroking his hair back until he fell back asleep. Which is how he wakes up, his head in her lap and his hand holding her’s hostage.

But she shrugs it off and says she only did it for the free shirt, “don’t worry about it.”

She keeps the shirt, uses it several more nights as they graduate from sleeping on the couch to him finally going back to his bed. To being mentally present enough again to fight her about taking meds, to walking her to the front door every night, and watching her leave.

She buries the shirt too. It feels too tight on her skin, wrong. She touches the material and remembers seeing him hysterical, writhing in pain, and unable to be comforted. Can smell the antiseptic from his skin. Can hear the doctor warning her about his heart. That shirt feels like losing her best friend but she can’t bring herself to get rid of it.

JJ uncovers it a year later (before Emily has done the unspeakable, the unimaginable, and died and come back to life). It’s a girls night gone wrong but not impossibly so.

“Just grab one of my shirts,” Emily says, still laughing.

JJ glares back at her. She’s covered in water from the sink -- Emily sprayed her with the faucet. It’s revenge, payback for the pasta sauce JJ swiped down her cheek.

“You two are devious,” Penelope insists, waving her fingers at them. She’s still chopping up mushrooms, trying to size them as best as she can so that they are spread evenly throughout the alfredo sauce. “Behave before you ruin the sauce and I have to tell Dave that I not only shared his recipe but that you two ruined it.”

JJ has to search for a shirt from Emily’s pajama drawer. She doesn’t want any of the old college shirts and certainly doesn’t want any of the dopey graphic t-shirts Emily is so partial to. She ends up on a grey shirt, worn and old and soft.

Emily knows the shirt the second the JJ comes out and it takes her a moment to hide and stifle the anxiety that its presence gives her. Hotch’s health is better, he’s got a routine down with the medication he’ll be taking for the rest of his life because of that attack, but he’s smiling again. It’s harder than it was before to win one out of him but he can do it, they happen.

“Which one-night stand is this?” JJ asks, plucking the shirt with her fingers and raising an eyebrow.

Emily shakes her head, clears her throat of the residual guilt, and smirks, “trust me, you don’t want to know.” Hotch would be mortified at the insinuation but it’s funny and what he doesn’t know (and what they don’t know) can’t hurt him. She’s sad to see the shirt go, it’s a door closed, but relieved of its burden she can breathe again. Feels Foyet leave her completely.

JJ goes unburdened.

That old shirt is a comfort. She nurses Henry through fevers in it. Uses its edge to wipe his tears from his face. It’s always at the top of her laundry basket, the first thing she puts on when she gets home from a rough case. Will isn’t sure where she got it from because he knows it’s not his. It’s not the first time JJ’s stolen someone else’s clothes (he’s picked up enough of them to know that Reid wears a size small, that dark shirts sized medium are Morgan, and that white t-shirts in a medium are Hotch’s). He thinks it’s cute, she’s been stealing his shirts for as long as he’s known her.

In October, the fall of the same year that Emily leaves for Interpol, JJ gets held up in a meeting with Hotch. Something to do the with Department of Justice and all she manages to get out over the phone is that she’s absolutely pissed and Reid can just faintly hear Hotch offering her a coffee before she thanks him and the line goes dead. Will is on night shift and he can’t come home. So Reid fills in, their impromptu babysitter for the night.

It’s fine, calm… for the most part.

Reid lasts about an hour and a half before he finds himself in need of a change of clothes. He’s got pumpkin all over him and his fun little idea to let Henry carve a baby pumpkin was obviously a bad idea. He just didn’t know that in advance. He’s watched Jack enough times to feel fully confident in his skills but the age gap between Henry and Jack is severe. There are a lot of developmental differences in children only two years apart in age, Reid was not prepared for that.

He feels weird about stealing a shirt but his own is soaked in pumpkin guts and Henry’s bathwater.

JJ doesn’t notice the shirt exchange. She just grins at the sight of Spencer and Henry curled up on the couch, Will sitting beside them eating popcorn while “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” plays softly.

Three days later Morgan sees his shirt on the back of the couch. It’s been washed and is waiting to be returned to JJ but he knows damn well that it’s his. “How the hell did you find this?” Morgan asks, lifting it up. Reid had called him over to fix a leaking pipe (Reid is supposed to call his Super who has a mechanic who can do it but he’s too anxious for that) and Morgan was less than prepared to find his missing shirt.

Reid frowns, confused, “that’s JJ’s. I borrowed it Thursday night when I babysat.”

Morgan shakes his head, no this is his shirt. He’s sure of it. It’s been gone for years. He thought the washing machine ate it. He couldn't remember where else it would have gone off to. That or he left it in some hotel but here it is. Grey and worn and soft, it’s his.

He takes it to work in his go-bag and all but rolls his eyes into the back of his head when he watches Garcia stumble and drench herself in cold, left-over tea. He stands from his desk, sighing hard, “it’s alright, baby girl. I’ve got a shirt you can borrow.”

He’s never getting this shirt back.

#criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds #dererk morgan #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #spencer reid #penelope garcia

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i-stan-nct-and-satan · 4 years

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Not Broken Part 10 (Jaehyun Mafia AU)

Not Broken Masterlist

Jaehyun X Reader

Y/N is a burlesque dancer living in Seoul. Jaehyun is one of the most powerful mafia men in Seoul. How will Y/N survive when Jaehyun suspects that she is involved with a rival gang?

Reasons to read this story: Ten's a cross-dressing madam so..... yeah read it ya freaks.

Trigger warning: mentions of physical abuse, mentions of sexual abuse

“Wow.”

Taeyong was the first to break the silence once the tape ended.

Everyone in the room turned their heads to look at their boss. They had been gauging his reactions as they all listened to the tape, but no one dared to make eye contact with him until now.

His unreadable expression juxtaposed the guilt-ridden faces that filled the room.

Jaehyun remained silent as he processed the contents revealed in the tape.

“Damn. We fucked up,” Mark offered, attempting to ease the tension in the room.

An abrupt fist slammed onto the table, immediately prompting Mark to regret the words that fell past his lips.

“What did you just say?” Jaehyun dared Mark to repeat himself.

“Uh. I-I just,” Mark stuttered.

“You what?”

“I was just saying that we made a mistake. That’s all.”

“A mistake? You think that I made a mistake?”

“N-no sir, I just meant.”

“What else could you have meant?” Jaehyun challenged, standing up from the table.

“What about the rest of you? Who else thinks that I made a mistake in how I’ve chose to deal with the situation at hand?”

The room was silent as Jaehyun looked around at his men.

“Don’t think that this changes anything. This tape is just another factor to consider. We’ve dealt with hostages in the past who have come up with more convincing stories than this one. The fact of the matter is that we’ve just heard another story and we don’t know if it’s true or not and even if it is, that still doesn’t mean that we were anything less than professional in how we’ve gone about this mission. I expect you all to remember who we are and why we’re here.”

Jaehyun looked at his second in command whose eyes were currently glued to the floor.

“To find the bastard who killed IU. Don’t let your feelings get in the way of that. Y/N isn’t a woman, she’s a suspect. Remember that.”

<><><><><><><><>

I shut the water off.

“Finished?”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s a towel.”

I instinctively crossed my arms over my breasts, half expecting Winwin to pull back the curtain completely. I was relieved when instead, Winwin’s hand enter the shower only to hand me a fluffy, oatmeal-colored towel.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, cursing myself under my breath for having thanked one of my captors.

“When you’re done drying off, wrap yourself **** and then come out,” the raven-haired boy instructed.

I quickly ran the towel over my body before using it to give my hair a quick ruffle with it to keep my hair from dripping all over. I didn’t want to rush, but I didn’t want to risk irritating the man acting as my prison guard, so I wasted no time in wrapping the towel around my frame before stepping out into the spacious bathroom.

Winwin’s eyes only looked over my body for a brief moment before he walked over to the door. The apparent disinterest in his stare caused me to wonder if he was only looking to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything under my towel. Maybe he really wasn’t interested in women, not that a man’s lack of attraction to me meant that he lacked an attraction to any woman. I wasn’t deluded enough to think that.

“Are you coming or not?” he asked, obviously annoyed.

Yet again, I had found myself distracted by unimportant thoughts. I followed him out the door and back into the large bedroom.

“What’s your size?”

“Excuse me?”

Winwin rolled his eyes as he grabbed my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding my towel in place. He guided me over to a black dresser whose shiny painted coating gave it an obsidian-like appearance. I lost myself in the reflection of the black surface and for a fleeting second, I questioned whether a dresser made of obsidian was really that farfetched of an idea, especially in a house like this.

Winwin kneeled in front of the dresser and opened the bottom drawer. He took out a few pairs of pants before closing the drawer and opening the one above it. I watched as he continued to open each drawer, take out a few articles of clothing and then close them again. Once his arms were filled with clothing, he stood up and walked over to the neatly made bed. He dropped the clothing onto the bed, ruining its once wrinkle free surface.

“See what fits.”

I turned to Winwin, now aware of what he had meant before when he asked for my size.

“I don’t want to change in front of you.”

Winwin rolled his eyes for the hundredth time.

“Then I guess you better check the sizes to see what fits **** you don’t have to do it more than once,” he instructed.

Knowing that he wasn’t going to budge, I walked over to bed and inspected the labels on each article of clothing. I had only meant to look at the sizing, but I couldn’t help but notice the branding that adorned each piece. Dior, Chanel, and Versace littered the bed spread. Lucky for me, the clothes all seemed to be roughly my size with only a few exceptions that were definitely meant for someone much thinner than me. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to choose any of the articles that appeared to be on the more expensive side, so I grabbed the plainest white T shirt I could find and a pair of jeans. I couldn’t help but notice that even the T shirt, which the average person wouldn’t have been able to distinguish from one that came in a Hanes value pack, had a Gucci tag on the inside.

Rich people, I swear.

I turned away from Winwin and gave my best attempt to put on the shirt and jeans while still hiding my body with the towel. There wasn’t any underwear on the bed to choose from, but I figured that was because Winwin believed that no underwear was better than used underwear, a sentiment I agreed with.

“Hey Winwin?” I asked as I awkwardly changed into the fresh set of clothing.

“Hm?”

“Whose room is this?”

Winwin paused for a few seconds as he organized his thoughts.

“Lee Ji-eun's.”

I shot Winwin a glance while continuing to change.

“Oh. Who is that?” I probed further as I pulled the shirt over my head.

“Jaehyun’s sister. The one who was killed by Lucas.”

The towel dropped to my feet.

<><><><><><><><>

“So, what do we do now, sir?” Johnny asked, cautious not to piss his boss off any more than he already was.

“Right now, we have to check her story out for any inconsistencies. Taeil, recheck the footage from the ball. If there’s anything we missed, we need to find it.”

“Got it,” Taeil obliged, opening his laptop.

“Johnny, go tell Winwin to take the girl back to the basement,” Jaehyun commanded.

“On it.”

Johnny turned to leave when the sound of vigorously clacking keys came to a sudden stop.

“Um, boss?” Taeil gulped, causing both Johnny and Jaehyun to turn towards him.

“You might want to take a look at this,” he continued, rotating the screen so they could see.

“Crap,” Jaehyun muttered, gritting his teeth.

Taeyong positioned himself beside Jaehyun so that he could see what his friend was referring to.

“Oh no.”

“What? What is it?” Mark asked as he tried to see the screen only for Jaehyun to close it.

“They know.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Jaehyun as Taeyong took the lead in updating everyone.

“That was a message from Wayv. They know Y/N killed Lucas and they know we have her. Not only that, but they’re demanding we give her to them.”

“Wait, so that confirms that Y/N’s story is true, right? That she didn’t have anything to do with IU’s death,” Mark exclaimed excitedly.

Jaehyun sent a glare towards Mark.

“What it means is that we have a rat among us, moron,” Doyoung spat.

“W-what?” Mark faltered.

“That’s right,” Jaehyun began.

“It makes sense that word would spread after the events of the burlesque show. It wouldn’t be that much of a surprise if they figured out the identity of the girl we took or even why we took her, but one thing’s for sure, there was no way that they could have found out about the contents on the tape without someone here leaking it.”

“Jae, you know that no one here would betray us, and besides, there are over ways they could have found out. They could have hacked us,” Taeyong voiced.

“How Taeyong? We used as old-fashioned recording device,” Jaehyun boomed.

“No evidence of hacking our networks either,” Taeil chimed in having reopened his laptop.

“What about hidden cameras?”

Taeil lifted his head from the laptop.

“Not a chance there either. I implemented a system that messes with the electromagnetic frequency of certain HighTech transmitting recording devices. That’s why we use older forms of recording devices.”

Taeyong sat down, looking defeated.

“Okay, but... who could it even be?”

A pregnant pause washed over the room as everyone attempted to cease their wandering eyes.

“Fuck!” Jaehyun cursed causing everyone to look at him.

“Winwin is alone with Y/N right now! That bastard!”

Jaehyun turned to Taeyong.

“Hurry, we need to find them before-”

“Before what?” Taeyong panted.

“If Winwin’s the mole, he might be under orders to hand Y/N over to Wayv or to kill her on the spot. We have to find them, now!” he yelled before they both started charging towards the East wing.

Johnny hesitated for a moment before turning to the remaining members at the table.

“Come on, let’s go.”

Now it was Johnny’s turn to start running towards the East wing with Mark following quickly behind.

Doyoung got up to follow but was stopped by a sudden hand that tugged at his wrist. Doyoung faced his purple haired partner.

“What?”

“You don’t think that Winwin’s actually the mole, do you?”

Doyoung’s face softened slightly before looking down at Taeil, who was purposely avoiding his gaze.

“I don’t know, but it’s not our place to challenge orders.”

Once the blue streaked boy disappeared from their vision, Yuta and Taeil merely stared at the empty doorway.

“Winwin please,” Taeil prayed softly

<><><><><>

“Are you done changing?” Winwin asked.

“Oh, umm. Yeah,” I commented, having been suddenly caught off guard.

I bent over to grab the towel that had fallen at my feet.

Winwin did his best to explain everything to me. He told me that IU was Jaehyun’s sister and that she was killed by Lucas. He explained how Wayv defected from NCT and how they’ve been unable to find him since the incident. Winwin even told me how the necklace I was wearing the night I was kidnapped had belonged to her and that led Jaehyun and the rest of NCT 127 to believes that I had something to do with his sister’s death. I stood there and listened to him without any comments or questions. It was too much to take in all at once.

“What? Are you surprised?” he questioned, observing your reaction.

“No,” I lied.

I thought they were interrogating me for Lucas’ death but instead they thought I was responsible for his sister’s death? I almost died because of that mistake. Even if that’s why he acted the way he did, he nearly beat me to death and over a goddamn misunderstanding. I scoffed in bewilderment. Winwin stared at me eyebrows raised.

“I was just noticing how I’m getting better at understanding your accent,” I lied again.

I was amazed that Winwin’s eyes didn’t fall out of his head due to all the eyerolling he did.

“Oh wow. What an honor,” he mused sarcastically.

“So...” I began.

“So...?”

I laughed at the amount of courage I was feeling. Especially since it didn’t make much sense in this situation.

“So, what was she like?”

“IU? Well... She wa-”

Winwin was cut off when the door to the bedroom was slammed open. The interruption was so abrupt and unexpected that I fell back onto the bed. Winwin, however, seemed unaffected by the pink haired man who had suddenly crashed the conversation. Only seconds after Jaehyun entered the room, a certain fiery red head soon followed suit.

Jaehyun’s gaze met mine and a wave of relief seemed to wash over him, softening his usually stiff features. I, of course, hadn’t noticed this. I was too anxious to decipher the meaning behind his expression since I was still in fear for my life.

His breathing was heavy and uneven making it obvious that he had run here. He stared at Winwin, giving himself a few seconds to catch his breath and assemble his thoughts before approaching the composed man in a less than composed manner.

“You bastard!” Jaehyun’s hands grabbed Winwin’s shoulders, forcing his narrow frame into the wall.

Despite their similar heights, Winwin’s body, which looked as though it had been defined through years of hand-to-hand combat, looked almost fragile next to Jaehyun’s more muscular build. Anyone else would have surely felt overcome with alarm and panic if put in Winwin’s position, yet the man himself seemed to be more annoyed than anything.

“Admit it, you worthless piece of shit.”

Johnny and Mark were the next to run through the bedroom door, then Doyoung, but I hadn’t noticed their presence until Taeyong’s hand came into my field of vision. I looked up at him, realizing that he was offering to help me up. I accepted without thinking.

“Mark over here is going to take you somewhere. Follow everything he says, okay?”

Despite his intimidating features, his gaze resembled that of a concerned mother. His watery eyes mirrored mine and I couldn’t help but trust that his instructions were in my best interest. I nodded in response before the nearby blonde guided me into the hall.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Winwin’s bitter stare bore holes into the hands that were wrinkling his shirt.

“And what exactly is it I should be admitting?” he challenged, making no effort to remove himself from his boss’s grip.

“Don’t fuck with me, Winwin. Or should I say Sicheng?” Jaehyun spat.

Winwin’s irritation turned into genuine confusion once the name had reached his ears.

After a short pause, Winwin’s eyes widened in realization only for them to tightly squeeze shut.

“What did Kun do?”

An oppressive force filled the room and the now somber atmosphere resembled that of a funeral rather than an interrogation.

Jaehyun removed his hands from Winwin but his unmoving figure informed his curly haired underling that he wasn’t finished with him yet.

“Wayv knows.” Jaehyun carefully analyzed Winwin’s reactions as he disclosed this new information.

Winwin looked past his boss’ shoulders at the other four men standing in the room with them. Doyoung stared back at him while Johnny and Mark did their best to avoid meeting his gaze. Taeyong simply shook his head at what was happening in front of him.

“About what? The girl?” he finally responded.

When Jaehyun gave no hint of confirming nor denying his presumption, he continued to press on.

“And what? You think I’m the one who told them? What evidence do you have of that? None, right?” Winwin scoffed.

“Well who else would it be?”

“Winwin is innocent!”

Everyone’s eyes shot towards the two men who had abruptly entered the bedroom.

“What do you mean?” Jaehyun asked.

“The message from Wayv. It wasn’t traceable.” Yuta explained.

“So? It isn’t uncommon for an enemy message to be untraceable. It’d be sloppy of them if it was.”

“Yes, but this time it’s different,” Taeil began.

“Normally with messages like these, we can at least trace them back to an IP address even though they’re almost always dead ends, but when I traced the origins of this message ...”

“Get to the point, Taeil,” Jaehyun ordered.

“Yes, sir. When I searched for the message’s origin, the IP address the message was sent from matched the IP address of the computer that received it.”

“In other words, it was sent from Taeil’s laptop,” Yuta translated.

“Wait, what does that mean? So, someone had access to Taeil’s computer?” Taeyong asked.

“Well kind of. As you all know, I’ve been the only one who’s had any direct physical contact with my laptop over the last few days,” Taeil explained.

“So, what are you saying?” Jaehyun huffed.

“Someone hacked my laptop without me knowing. I gotta give it to them, I had no idea and right now I don’t have any idea how long they’ve had access or how much control they had, but at this point, it’s highly probable that they’ve accessed control of everything my laptop has control of, including any systems we’ve implemented not to mention it’s microphone and camera.”

“So, they can hear everything Taeil’s laptop could hear,” Yuta summarized.

Jaehyun turned back to Winwin.

“Don’t think this means we’re done here,” He growled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Winwin smirked at his boss.

“Taeil? Where’s your laptop right now?” Jaehyun asked the brown-haired man.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

“So, how are you?” Mark asked as we walked down the winding hallways.

I stopped and looked at him, the irritation in my face somehow went over his head.

“So, is that like a not good?”

“Oh no, I’m great. I might have two black eyes but at least I don’t have three,” I spat out before resuming my pace.

Mark sighed.

“Where are we even going?” I asked, still peeved.

“You know what, I don’t actually know. Taeyong didn’t give me any orders beyond telling me to get you out of there.”

“How did I get myself into this mess?” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Mark looked around as we continued down the hall. I could tell there was something on his mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to care what it was.

“Hey,” He loudly called out even though I was walking right next to him.

I gave him a quick glance before returning my gaze forward.

“What?” I asked.

“Are you hungry?”

Before I could even think of an answer, my stomach thought of one for me.

Mark’s laughter added to my annoyance, but I chose to stay silent.

“I know where we should go.”

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

“Boss, what are we planning to do?” Johnny asked following his colleagues as they journeyed down the East wing’s halls.

“Do you think that we can mislead them by giving them fake information or something?” Yuta half-asked half-suggested.

“Not an option,” Taeil chimed in.

“Exactly. If Wayv has complete access to Taeil’s laptop, then they already know that we’ve found them out. The only thing we can do now is destroy it and initiate the emergency systems.” Jaehyun stopped before looking to Taeil.

“Unless you think you’d be able do anything.”

“Sorry, boss. That’s a no go. They’re already ten steps ahead of me if they managed to hack into my computer system and if they know that we’ve discovered their presence, they’re probably working to get twenty steps ahead as we speak.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jaehyun began as he and his men turned the corner entering the kitchen.

“We’ll incinerate the laptop before we-”

Jaehyun’s words came to a sudden halt as he found himself staring at Y/N and Mark sitting and eating on the kitchen counter.

“What do you think? I was right, huh?” Mark asked, handing me the packet of gummy candy we were sharing.

“Hmmm. I don’t know, I kind of like the sour apple ones better than the watermelon.”

“Psh, whatever. More for me I gue- Boss!”

I turned towards the group of men who had entered the kitchen. When my eyes landed on the man who was responsible for my wrecked state, I froze.

“What is this?” Jaehyun demanded as he approached us.

Despite knowing that the question was directed more towards Mark than at the both of us, I still struggled to form anything even close to resembling a coherent thought. I had just watched this man get into it with Winwin without personally feeling the slightest ounce of fear, but now his aggression was being directed towards me and Mark. I hadn’t noticed until Mark started speaking that he must have felt the same way.

“I umm we-”

“I instructed Mark to take Y/N to the kitchen to get her some food,” Taeyong winked.

Jaehyun turned back towards the redhead that was standing behind him.

“Well let’s hope for your sake and theirs that they didn’t say anything of any importance while sitting only one room away from our little problem.”

“Huh? What problem?” Mark inquired more curious than fearful at this point.

Instead of answering, Jaehyun motioned for Doyoung to come closer. After whispering in his ear and pointing towards the living room, Doyoung nodded and left for the nearby room.

“Taeil and Yuta, go catch Mark up on everything upstairs” Jaehyun ordered.

“As for you,” Jaehyun rumbled, turning his head towards Winwin.

“Until we know for sure what’s going on, Johnny will be tasked with staying by your side. Johnny, make sure you keep an eye on him.”

“Um. I can watch him boss,” Yuta volunteered.

Jaehyun immediately shook his head.

“Johnny will be in charge of watching Winwin and that’s final. I need you to help Taeil explain the situation to Mark in terms that he’ll understand. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Yuta acquiesced.

Mark hopped off the countertop and offered me up a sympathetic look before heading off with his colleagues.

It was just us three now. I could hear my heart beating in my chest. It only made me more anxious as I feared that he could hear it too and that he might end my life just to rid himself of the bothersome sound.

I kept my eyes glued to the floor as to not disrespect the man in front of me. I wasn’t going to risk pissing him off any more than I already had, not while my skin was still splashed with shades of blue and violet.

I could sense his stare and though I was fearful of the consequences that would arise might my eyes meet his, I couldn’t suppress my curiosity for more than a few brief moments and so I surrendered to his gaze. Though I had expected to see a look of rage, what I was met with instead was that of confusion. He looked over my body as though examining an antique he was trying to set a fair price for. It wasn’t the most objectifying look I had received. Far from it, in fact, but I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious under his scrutinizing gaze. I had no idea what was going on. Now that they found out what happened with me and Lucas, NCT 127 had no use for me anymore and Jaehyun was probably thinking of what to do with me. If he was going to kill me, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Perhaps he had something else in store for me. Was this pink haired mob boss contemplating whether I’d be profitable if he were to sell me as a sex slave?

“Those clothes,” He growled.

I blinked a few times, waiting for him to finish his thought.

“Take them off.”

“W-what?” I stuttered aghast.

“Boss?” Taeyong quirked, voice riddled with concern.

“I said, take them off. Now.” His voice boomed.

My already uneven breathing quickly turned into full on hyperventilation. I looked for an exit hoping to find any way out of the mess that I was in, but it was no use. My heart was beating faster than a rabbit whose foot was caught in the teeth of a large predator. Adrenaline filled my veins, yet I was too fearful to use it. I was frozen in place, unable to think, speak, or move even an inch. The familiar sight of black dots began to dull my vision until there was nothing else to be seen.

“Shit!” Taeyong cursed as he scrambled to my side.

“What the hell was that?!” He shouted as he checked to make sure the fall didn’t do any serious damage.

“Those clothes,” Jaehyun muttered bitterly. “They’re IU’s.”

“So?! Just because you don’t like seeing someone else wear IU’s clothing doesn’t mean you can just order them to strip, Jaehyun! Do you have any idea what she must have been thinking?”

“She’s not just someone else. She’s the girl who’s involved in IU’s death.”

“No, she’s not, Jae. You saw Wayv’s message. Her story was true,” Taeyong stood up from Y/N’s side. He was practically yelling at his boss.

“You don’t know that. She could be working with them!”

Taeyong grabbed Jaehyun by the shoulders.

“Snap out of it, Jae! Stop looking at her like she’s the person who killed your sister and start seeing her for what she is, one of Lucas’ victims, just like your sister. No, actually. Scratch that. You should start thinking of her as the girl who killed the man who killed your sister because that being the case, maybe you should thank her instead of doing whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing!”

Taeyong immediately regret the words as they left his mouth, but it was too late. He braced himself for whatever reaction Jaehyun would have to his verbal lashings, but he wasn’t prepared for his boss’s lack of a reaction.

Jaehyun scowled at his second in command before looking at the hands that still held onto his shoulders. Taeyong noticed this and immediately released his hold on the mob boss in front of him. Jaeyong continued to stare at Taeyong as he contemplated his words.

“Then what do you suppose we do with her?” He asked through gritted teeth.

Taeyong took a step back and looked down at my unconscious body.

“She doesn’t know that much about what’s going on so letting her go wouldn’t harm us in any way, but with Wayv after her, she’s not exactly safe anywhere but here.”

Jaehyun’s eyes, which had previously been glued to Taeyong were now gazing at the figure laying on the kitchen floor. After a few moments of silence, Jaehyun sighed.

“Put her in one of the spare bedrooms while we figure this all out,” He decided, hands rubbing at his temples.

“Yes sir.” Taeyong lifted my body off the ground in a less than graceful sweep.

“And send someone to get her some clothing. I won’t have her wearing any more of IU’s things.”

“Yes sir.”

198 notes · View notes

pinnithin-writes · 4 years

Text

The Weight of Living

When the rift in space was sealed and the Resonance Cascade had ended, one glaring problem remained: they were homeless. Not in the “dire financial straits” way so much as the “our living quarters were destroyed by an interdimensional anomaly” way. It was midnight when they left the Chuck E. Cheese, and they had nowhere to go.

Hi I wrote this to cope. Sometimes you just gotta have a nervous breakdown in a hotel room with the love of your life. 5285 words.

It was never really discussed that Gordon would go with Tommy. It just sort of happened. Bubby and Dr. Coomer had dispersed to figure out their own way, and Tommy’s father had vanished to deal with some vast, cosmic problem. Once they were alone in the parking lot, Gordon had grabbed Tommy by his lapels and kissed him, searing him to his core like a solar flare.

They drove. Las Cruces was sleepy and dim; the only businesses open in the middle of the night were 24 hour diners and the Walmart Supercenter. They stopped to venture into that liminal space, numbly picking up packets of clean underwear and cheap t-shirts and armfuls of snacks while the employees they passed quietly stocked shelves. It felt surreal, dreamlike after the chaos and gunfire of the past week. Tommy found himself on edge despite the lack of danger as they wandered the aisles, bathed under the incandescent light.

Tommy paid. Gordon’s wallet had been destroyed along with his locker.

Gordon dozed with his head against the window pane, drifting in and out of consciousness, mumbling half-baked observations as he fought to stay awake. Stuff about the night sky and funny billboards they passed, his voice low and soft in his exhaustion. “There’s a La Quinta over there,” he murmured sleepily, and Tommy pulled in.

A double room was $55 a night. They must’ve looked awful, standing at the reception desk in their bloodstained clothes, plastic grocery bags in hand, one man half dead with exhaustion and the other a rubber band about to snap. The receptionist made the transaction without comment, smiling mildly as they handed over the envelope with their keycards.

“Down the hall to your left,” they said, and Tommy steered Gordon in the right direction.

Perhaps this was one of those situations that should have warranted some nervousness on Tommy’s part. He and Gordon, alone together in a hotel room. Their relationship didn’t exactly fall into any category Tommy would have previously considered: they were strangers not even a week ago, but living through the worst experience of their respective lives together had drawn them to certain unnameable proximity. He felt a twinge of loss as he swiped the key card and unlocked the door. This should have thrilled him. In another life, they would have been able to do this like real people - flirt in passing in the break room and take each other out to dinner and maybe fool around later after a bottle of wine.

Now they were both just tired.

The room was clean, decorated with that bland tackiness that marked a place as temporary. They deposited their grocery bags on the desk and Gordon drifted to the bathroom while Tommy stocked their perishables in the mini fridge. He heard the water cut on.

Keeping himself busy, he took out the phone charger he’d bought and removed it from the packaging, casting around a moment for Gordon’s phone before remembering it was gone along with his wallet. He plugged his own cell in instead, standing in that little aisle between the beds where the nightstand was. Connected his phone to the hotel wifi. That’s another thing Gordon would need, he thought as he mindlessly opened messages and didn’t answer them. A phone and a wallet and an apartment and a ring of keys to call his own and a bed and a good night’s sleep and a job he didn’t hate and -

He locked his phone. At least right now he was getting a shower. Gordon deserved a lot of things - a shower was a decent start.

Tommy removed his shoes, which were all but ruined. Undid his tie and shucked off his lab coat, folding them neatly out of habit even though he immediately crossed the room to pitch them in the trash. His ears were ringing with a staticky fuzz in the calm silence, like they were expecting a flash grenade or the wail of a monster that would never come.

It was over. It was over.

The water cut off, and after some shuffling the bathroom door opened, letting out an exhale of steam. Gordon emerged, looking more human than Tommy had ever seen him.

He didn’t know why he felt the need to avert his eyes. It wasn’t like he was naked as he stood there in his one dollar pair of Hanes and his three dollar souvenir shirt and his gentle smile that couldn’t possibly have a price. Hair soft and clean, steadily drying in the open air, falling freely around his shoulders. The HEV suit had made Gordon’s silhouette hard around the edges, solid and unyielding, but now his shoulders were sloped in a relaxed set of parenthesis.

Soft and achingly mortal. How he survived all this was a miracle. Tommy only stared at him a little like that.

Gordon caught his gaze and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. “What?”

Tommy faltered. “Here’s - I - you can use my phone if you need to make any calls,” he said, nodding to where the device sat on the table. “I left it unlocked.”

He quickly hurried past him to the bathroom, snatching the grocery bag with his clothes in it on the way.

---

He was never looking at showers the same way ever again.

Tommy found himself running his fingers through his hair over and over afterward as he stood in front of the mirror. Clean, clean, finally clean. A quick pass over his jaw and he felt stubble. Too bad he forgot to pick up a razor.

He didn’t know wearing clean clothes could feel so much like putting on new skin, how much he took that luxury for granted before the events of the past week. He ripped the tag out of the shirt collar, flicked it in the trash, and pulled it over his head. Once he’d slipped on a pair of sweatpants - glorious, comfortable - he left the bathroom.

Bare feet on carpet felt good, too, even though it was that questionable, threadbare hotel carpet. There was just this inherent sensation of being able to breathe, finally, after peeling off the layers of blood and sweat and dirt that the Resonance Cascade had coated them with. The lights were all out except for the lamp on the nightstand. Tommy was ready to collapse into bed.

He stopped short when he saw Gordon, still awake at the edge of the bed he’d picked, the one closest to the window. His legs were tucked up criss-crossed and he was staring at his hands, loosely interlaced in his lap. He looked up at Tommy’s approach and his breath audibly caught.

No one had ever looked at Tommy like that before. Like he was some kind of unexpected gift.

Gordon finally found his voice. “That shirt looks good on you.”

Tommy glanced down, caught the Chuck E Cheese logo with its mascot printed on its surface, and snorted out a laugh. “Thanks,” he said. “Yours is good, too.”

“Yeah?” Gordon asked, smiling despite his exhaustion. He was wearing a shirt with chili peppers - one green and one red - and the text Go Both Ways stamped across the front. “I thought it was befitting.”

Chuckling, Tommy sat at the edge of the other bed, and his legs stretched long enough to almost bridge the gap between the two. He checked the clock. It was 01:15.

“You’re - I thought you’d be asleep already,” he admitted.

Gordon shook his head, still openly staring. “Couldn’t,” was all he said.

He didn’t have to elaborate. The safety in numbers instinct had ingrained upon them so rapidly in Black Mesa that it was difficult to imagine sleeping without someone taking watch. Even in this dingy hotel room, miles away from what used to be the facility, neither of them felt completely safe. Probably wouldn’t for a while.

“I’ll be right here, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy told Gordon, indicating his side of the room.

Gordon nodded, his smile fragile. “Okay.”

“It’s over,” he said, firmly, in as much an attempt to convince himself as it was for Gordon’s sake.

He nodded again. “Yeah.”

They sat there like that, the distance yawning between them, waiting for the other to speak. There was so much to be said, and hurtling through hell they had never been able to find the time or space to say it. Now, it was like the weight of their words would shatter them if they voiced them aloud. The space between the set of beds may as well have been the ocean.

Tommy broke the silence. “Do you wanna-”

“Yeah.”

And then Gordon Freeman was climbing into bed with him.

Tommy felt a brief swoop of panic in his stomach at the willingness with which the other man did so. It shouldn’t have felt so natural, to scoot aside and make room for him, to settle against the pillows together, Gordon on the right side and Tommy on the left. But they’d done this before, hadn’t they? Resting with their backs to a wall so they couldn’t be crept up upon, shoulder to shoulder, bone tired, weapon in hand. Rather, weapon as hand.

A hotel double in a La Quinta was not quite the same thing, but Tommy couldn’t imagine sleeping alone right now, and he suspected Gordon felt the same way. He’d clambered in close but not too close, keeping to his side of the bed so Tommy could have his space. Something welled up in his chest as he watched Gordon situate himself, pulling the covers back with careful hands, and he took a moment to examine how he felt.

This wasn’t a thrill of proximity, and his pulse didn’t race rabbitlike under his skin at the thought of Gordon sleeping with him. It was quieter than that. Gentler. An affection that crept up on him slow like a sunbeam across a hardwood floor. Gordon, here beside him, wonderfully human as he was. Just as he had been the entire week, and as Tommy hoped he would be for weeks to come. The thought of them folding into sleep together was a comfort. It felt… right.

It felt like home.

Once Gordon had set his glasses on the bedside table, he gave Tommy a weary smile. “Goodnight, Tommy.”

“Goodnight.”

He reached for the light switch, but his hand hesitated midair. Several seconds of stillness passed where Tommy watched him carefully.

Then the muscles of Gordon’s throat worked delicately as he found his voice. The words came out unstable. “Shit... I really can’t do this, huh?”

Tommy understood all at once what the problem was. The last time the room had cut to black, foreign hands held him fast and a blade cleaved through his arm. Sure, his father had given the limb back to him, but the fear the incident birthed had crawled inside him and settled there, stuck tight to his lungs.

Tommy chose his words carefully. “You can um, you can leave it on,” he said. “If you want. It won’t bother me.”

Gordon balled his hand into a shaking fist and let it drop to his side. The laugh he let out was soured. “I shouldn’t have to. I sh - I should be able to turn the fucking lights off, man.”

It didn’t matter what he should have been able to do; the fact remained that he couldn’t, and probably wouldn’t for a long while. Tommy didn’t know how to tell him that without sounding like some detached, emotionless asshole, so he remained silent. Gordon kept his eyes on the duvet. His hand was still in a fist.

“This week fucking took everything from me,” he said, so quiet he was almost inaudible.

“It - yeah,” Tommy agreed softly. “It was pretty fucked up.”

Another humorless laugh hissed out of him. “It was so fucked up,” he nodded, his words teetering on the precipice of something. “God, Tommy, it was so fucking fucked up. Why did we-“ half a sob choked out of him. “Why did it have to be us?”

“Mr. Freeman...”

“We went through all that bullshit and everyone at Black Mesa still died . We didn’t save a single fucking person, and now I can’t even - I can’t - I c - c-“

Gordon pressed the heel of his hand so hard against his teeth Tommy worried he was going to draw blood. Tentatively, he reached out to touch his shoulder, light and questioning. Gordon leaned into it immediately as he fell to pieces, curling in against Tommy while short, gasping breaths ran through him.

As soon as he was certain the other man wanted to be held, Tommy slid both arms around Gordon and pulled him in tight.

Gordon was suffocating at the bottom of the ocean, finding himself face to face with everything he’d done all at once. Tommy held him close as sob after shuddering sob wrenched out of him. There were no words to make this better, to undo what had happened to them. He rested his chin on top of Gordon’s head and let him cry messily into his shirt.

The sound of his grief was awful. Something small broke inside Tommy upon hearing it. He threaded an idle hand in his hair, running through the dampened locks over and over, a repetition to soothe himself and Gordon in equal measure. He smelled like salt and cheap hotel soap, and his sobs rolled through him like tidal waves.

This hurt. This was good and it hurt. This was good for him.

Gordon fell asleep like that, against Tommy’s chest, completely worn out. There was a damp spot of tears and drool on Tommy’s shirt, which he didn’t mind, whisking it away with a small wave of his free hand. He kept his other hand buried in his hair, holding him close until his eyes drifted shut, too.

He left the light on.

---

Gordon slept for eighteen hours.

Tommy slept for ten, which was still a lot considering his usual sleeping habits. When he awoke with Gordon still curled up against him, one heavy arm slung around his waist, he nearly forgot how to breathe. His face was soft and yielding, untroubled by gunfire and alien teeth as he slumbered. Tommy took a moment just to stare at him like that, small and quiet and temporal. He was beautiful.

How could someone so soft and lovely endure so much? How could he keep that heart full of love through all that pain? Whoever Gordon Freeman had been at the start of this disaster, he certainly wasn’t the same person now, even as he slept so deep and gentle into the crook of Tommy’s shoulder. Tears welled suddenly in his eyes and he brushed them away with haste.

It was a perversion of humanity, a death of the self. What an injustice.

He eventually extricated himself from the warm tangle of limbs under the covers, leaving Gordon to doze into the hotel pillow without much disturbance. He took care of all those things that humans needed to take care of upon awakening - used the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth. Normal. This was what normal was. As he got dressed, he avoided looking at his reflection in the mirror.

Tommy busied himself until Gordon awoke. He took out the trash in the wastebin - it reeked from their discarded clothing - and walked it to the dumpster out back. He unloaded the rest of their purchases from the previous night, sorting and organizing them on the polished wooden desk. Pairs of socks, a cheap wristwatch, a packet of hair ties. His and Gordon’s. Gordon’s and his. His hand paused over an empty picture frame he had watched Gordon grab off the Walmart shelf on impulse.

The smiling, watermarked child that stood in as a placeholder for a real photo was identical to the one Gordon had kept in his old locker. Tommy traced his finger along the edge of the frame and smiled. He set it on the desk next to his wallet.

He paced. Showered again. Thought about turning on the TV and decided against it. He didn’t want the noise to wake his companion.

He was sitting against the foot of the bed and scrolling through apartment listings on his phone when a muffled noise signaled Gordon waking. Tommy set his phone down and watched the other man shift and yawn, blinking sleepily as he raised his head to look around. There was a brief flicker of confusion in his eyes before they landed on Tommy, and his expression relaxed.

“Mornin,’” he mumbled. His voice was low and hoarse from days’ worth of shouting, coming out of him in a lovely purr.

Affection spread slow and warm in Tommy’s chest. “It’s seven o’clock in the evening,” he informed him.

Gordon scratched his head, hair tousled and wonderfully messy. “How long was I out?” he asked.

Tommy told him.

“Fuck,” he said. “Alright.” He raised his arms overhead in a massive stretch. “Gotta… get back on a routine, huh?”

Tommy liked Gordon like this. Muted and calm, not fully awake, words slow to rise to his mouth. “We’ll figure it out,” he assured him.

They had time, here. In this temporary home they’d made for themselves.

Gordon’s gaze stuck on Tommy for a while longer until he registered the distance away he sat, the glow of the lamp on the bedside table, still alight from the previous night. His breath hitched suddenly in his throat. “Oh, shit,” he uttered, dropping his eyes self-consciously to the comforter. “Tommy, I’m sorry. I like - I just kinda fell apart there.”

“I’m - I think you had every right to, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy intoned quietly. “You went through a lot.”

“So did you, man,” Gordon replied immediately, dark eyes snapping back up to meet his. “So did you. Thank you for being there for me.”

Tommy didn’t acknowledge his answer fully. He spun his phone around in a circle with his index finger and said nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Gordon with the heaviness that now settled in the pit of his stomach. He did. He just didn’t know how to articulate it, how to take it out and examine it under the light and untangle it thread by painful thread. It was safest, he felt, to leave it untouched for the time being.

“Anyway I’m starving,” Gordon said finally, sensing Tommy’s discomfort and changing the subject appropriately. “You wanna like, order takeout or something?”

He nodded. Takeout sounded good.

The following hours passed, in which Tommy and Gordon slowly remembered how to be human. They remembered the taste of cheap noodles out of styrofoam containers. They remembered the dull roar of cars on the distant highway. They remembered laughter, passing Tommy’s phone back and forth to share funny videos.

They didn’t go anywhere – there was little to do in Las Cruces in the middle of the night, and they were both a little fragile to drive to the nearest city with its loud noises and flashing lights. Instead, they tightroped between close and casual in the quiet cocoon of the hotel room.

Some activities were perfectly safe. Mundane and natural. Watching old game show reruns, throwing out guesses and commentaries at the Wheel of Fortune contestants like it was a football game. It felt good, caring about something that had such little consequence.

Other things felt so desperately intimate Tommy thought he might drown. Working out the knots in one another’s shoulders, skin on scar-tallied skin, after carrying the collective weight of the world together. Tommy was struck by how impossible it seemed, that this soft, wordless love was their reward for what they endured.

It didn’t feel entirely real to him. He didn’t feel like he deserved it.

Morning began to dawn, thin and pale, behind the window. Tommy drew back the curtain and watched the distant desert bleed with gold. Behind him, he heard Gordon yawn.

“You should sleep,” Tommy suggested quietly.

When this was met with silence, he turned to look at Gordon, where he sat cross-legged on the bed that was still made. He had the hotel notepad balanced on one knee, glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose as he wrote something down. He raised his eyes to look at Tommy when he noticed him watching.

“Huh?” he asked.

“If you’re tired, you should sleep,” Tommy reiterated.

“Oh, no I’m-“ his sentence was split by another yawn. “I mean, I am. But I can-“ he flicked a look to the alarm clock on the bedside table. The face read 06:27. “I can stay up a few more hours. Maybe falling asleep at noon will get me closer to normal.”

Tommy guessed that Gordon would crash long before that, if his own lingering exhaustion was any indication, but he didn’t voice this aloud. Instead, he offered, “the breakfast buffet should be open,” and watched the other man’s expression brighten.

He volunteered to load down a few plates with food and bring them back to their room so they could eat with their privacy intact. Tommy made a note to remember what Gordon asked for - sausage and eggs, biscuits and gravy if they had any. Now that they no longer had to concern themselves with the immediacy of dying, Tommy wanted to memorize all of Gordon’s favorite things, learning them and tucking them away over time like he was supposed to. How he liked his coffee. If he even liked coffee at all.

There was time for this now. It was over.

---

When Tommy returned, paper plates in hand, he found Gordon sitting on the edge of the bed by the window and watching the news. The story was about an explosion in the New Mexico wilderness, out near Doña Ana County. He drew up beside him as the reporter mentioned something about the Black Mesa Research Facility.

Tommy didn’t expect the name to make him flinch, but it did.

“Hey,” Gordon said, reaching for the remote and ticking down the volume. “We’re in the news.”

Tommy averted his eyes from the screen in distaste. “I - Can we turn that off?” he began. “I don’t - I’m not…” he paused, resorted his words, and tried again. “Sorry. I don’t want to hear about it right now.”

“Really?” Gordon asked, but he complied, hitting the power button and killing the feed. “I thought maybe you’d want to know if there were any survivors.”

“There weren’t,” Tommy said flatly.

He wordlessly passed Gordon his breakfast plate before taking a seat beside him. The syrupy waffle he’d made for himself suddenly didn’t seem as appetizing as it did before, even as the pat of butter in the center melted and swirled hypnotically.

Gordon accepted his food, but didn’t pay attention to its contents as he fixed Tommy with a questioning gaze. “How do you know?”

He picked at the waffle with his fork, not meeting the other man’s stare. “Dad told me,” he muttered.

There was a long stretch of silence, in which Gordon worked through some thoughts, attempted to speak, and stopped to rework. The eggs and sausage he held remained untouched. Finally, he pulled in an unsteady breath and set the plate aside. “He told you how many people died,” he began, quietly, “but he didn’t… tell you anything about what was going on? So you could save them from dying?”

Tommy’s throat went suddenly tight. “I saved you,” was all he could say.

It was all that mattered to him. If he dwelled too long on all the people he failed to rescue in that week of nightmares, he’d wind up at the bottom of a pit he’d never crawl back out of.

“You did,” Gordon agreed. He was staring at Tommy very intently, dark eyes burning like smoke from a car fire. “You did, Tommy. And I’m - god, I’m so glad you did, but like…”

He slid off the bed suddenly, taking Tommy’s food without resistance and setting their plates side by side on the desk by the TV. Returning his attention to Tommy in earnest, he carefully took Tommy’s hands in his, boring into him with that dark burning stare while the other man kept his gaze down. Like this, with Tommy sitting on the hotel bed and Gordon standing before him, they were almost the same height.

Okay, they were doing this. They were having this talk.

“This hurt you, too,” Gordon said, and every word felt like a knife. “I don’t know what kind of fucked up game your dad was playing, but it hurt you, too. You should have had the option to leave.”

“I did,” Tommy admitted, barely audible. He studied the scarred fingers linked in his, unable to raise his eyes. “But you didn’t.”

Gordon’s grip tightened on Tommy’s hands as his words sunk in. His voice was edged with sorrow. “Tommy…”

“You didn’t have a choice and - and Bubby and Dr. Coomer didn’t and all the - every person who worked at Black Mesa didn’t get to just leave if they wanted to.” It wasn’t fair, didn’t make sense that Tommy of all people was saddled with the burden of choice and still decided to stay. An opportunity wasted on the likes of him. “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I had to stay. I couldn’t just… leave you like that. E-Even if I didn’t know you very well.”

He dared a look at Gordon. His jaw was tight, brow darkened, anger lining the corners of his mouth, but it wasn’t directed at him. Outrage on his behalf, though Tommy didn’t feel his poor decision making was worth the sheer, burning heat of Gordon’s emotions. Gordon’s jaw worked silently, at a loss for words, still clinging tight to his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy went on quietly. “I’m sorry it had to be you.”

Gordon swallowed angrily as his words returned to him. “Why the fuck are you apologizing to me?” he asked. “None of this is your fault. Especially not all the fucked up shit you had to go through.”

“Chose to go through-”

“Bullshit,” Gordon interrupted. “You didn’t choose anything. You were expected to pick between leaving people behind to die or putting yourself through hell, Tommy. That’s not a choice,” he said. “For you? That was never a choice.”

His words fell steadily out of his mouth and into Tommy’s lap, where he could examine them in detail and find them to be true. He felt his chest constrict, and suddenly Gordon’s hands in his were the only thing tethering him as his resolve crumbled.

Tommy didn’t sob outright. He didn’t weep. He broke apart quietly, hiccupping out shuddering gasps while his fingers shook. He leaned forward and buried his face in Gordon’s shoulder, strangled repetitions of it’s not fair, it’s not fair murmured into his shirt.

Gordon let him lean on him, strong and without judgment, freeing one of his hands to cradle the back of his head. “I know,” he whispered. “I know. It’s not your fault.”

Tommy hadn’t realized he had been blaming himself to begin with until he heard those words spoken with such conviction in his ear. And it wasn’t that he had been asking Gordon to forgive him, because he wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for, but a part of him was stuck back at Black Mesa all the same, begging to come home.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair and it’s not your fault.

This was the absolution of a sin that was never committed. Tommy cried silently, heartbroken in his blamelessness. Gordon ran his fingers through his hair, sniffling softly as he cried, too, and they mourned together on the edge of the bed while their breakfast went cold.

---

They stayed at the hotel in Las Cruces for another week, using it as their home base while they took care of the necessary chores that came with rejoining the living. Trips to the bank to replace Gordon’s debit card. A few hours at the public library to use the computer lab. Gordon checked the news while Tommy browsed a shelf of paperback thrillers, still not ready to revisit what happened.

They tried new restaurants. They visited parks. They rediscovered the world and all its joys, and Tommy thought that maybe surviving the Resonance Cascade wasn’t always going to be a burden on his shoulders. While hand in hand with Gordon, laughing with him while he pointed out ground squirrels and gave them funny names, maybe the weight of living was worth it.

Eventually, they signed a lease after visiting the many apartment complexes Gordon had scribbled down on his notepad list. A quiet little place called Monte Vista near Guadalupe County. Perhaps here they could build the home they had fought so hard for. Tommy’s hand trembled as he filled out the paperwork.

When it came time to check out from the hotel, the atmosphere was subdued, both absorbed in their thoughts about what the future held as they packed up their few belongings. They thanked this in between space for allowing them to become human again within its walls. As Tommy collected his things into a bag, his hand found the picture frame from earlier.

“Here’s - Don’t forget Joshua,” he reminded Gordon, proffering it in his direction.

Gordon laughed as he took it. “My beautiful son,” he said, “I could never. Does this look like a face you could forget?” His smile showed his even teeth as he held up the stock photo beside his face.

Tommy’s mouth quirked in a smile of his own. “I can see the family resemblance,” he said.

Lowering the frame, Gordon chuckled again. He fell silent as he studied the picture inside, his smile tinged with something that was almost wistful. His hair was tied back in a ponytail, showing off his round cheeks and those dimples he loved so much. Tommy watched him in contemplative silence.

“Y’know,” Gordon finally began. “When I bought this for my locker - like, not this one, but the first one? I didn’t… have anything to put in there. So I just sorta left the stock photo in and hoped that like - y'know, maybe one day I could find something worth framing.”

Tommy didn’t really know how to respond to this, so he remained silent, watching the studious wrinkle in between Gordon’s brows deepen. There was a hesitant wonder behind the lenses of his glasses.

“Guess I can’t say that anymore, huh?” He raised his gaze to meet eyes with Tommy. He didn’t look sad, just tired. Hopeful. “Do you still have those selfies we took on your phone?”

He nodded. Of course he did. He’d never delete the first photographic evidence he had of this newfound happiness, their faces smushed cheek to cheek to fit in the shot, alight with laughter. It made his insides go soft, to hear that Gordon was as fond of them as he was.

“Maybe we could get some prints of those,” Gordon said, stowing the frame in the grocery sack he carried with the rest of his few belongings. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, fighting for control over his voice. He exhaled shakily, warm in the knowledge that Gordon wanted something permanent in its physicality, a reminder to look at every day. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Piece by piece, they were going to build this new home together. Even with how painful the past was, how heavily the onus of survival rest on their shoulders. Tommy was looking forward to rediscovering joy again and again, with Gordon Freeman by his side.

He couldn’t wait to live.

#ink #fanfiction #part of my endeavor to relocate all my ao3 work #i think this is the last of it #thanks for bearing with me #hlvrai

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emma-frxst · 4 years

Text

Smooth Criminal 9

Summary: you've been hit by, you've been struck by a smooth criminal.

Pairing: Detective!Colossus (Piotr Rasputin) x Criminal!reader

warnings (for this chapter): talk of stealing and illegal behavior

a/n- its good to be back!!!! I’ve missed this series so much, thanks for bearing with me. let me know what you think, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated! thanks for reading.

p.s.- I promise this series wont drag on forever!

You pulled your jacket tighter around you as the cold, winter air nipped at your skin. You did hate the cold, but you hated it a little less now thanks to Piotr and his tendency to have a massive amount of body heat that you loved to snuggle into.

Piotr had been busy with work recently, so you hadn't seen him that much. You missed him.

Another strong wind pulled you from your thoughts, refocusing you to the task at hand. You were headed to meet Victor for another job.

Entering the run down bar, you tried to ignore that bad feeling in your gut that always made itself known whenever you came here.

The bar was only a cover for the smuggling and theft ring run by Shaw.

Taking a seat on the barstool, you flagged down the bartender.

“What can I get ya?” he asked in a heavy New York accent.

“A Mona Lisa, lemons on the side.”

Your drink order was your secret code to let them know you were here.

He nodded and disappeared into the secret back room- where the people like Victor and his associates took residence.

People like you.

The bartender came back out and gave you the go ahead.

You found Victor in his usual corner booth, unceremoniously sipping his whiskey.

“There she is.” He proclaimed. “Drink?”

“No. Just need to know the job.”

“Straight to the point, as usual.” He said while pulling out an iPad. “I’ve always like that about you, y/n.”

His words sent a shiver down your spine, and not in a good way.

“The iPad.” You demanded.

He handed it over and you scrolled through the information.

The coveted item was a vase. Looked ancient with intricate detailing engraved into it.

Item description: Hane-like flower vase, white with blue detailing.

Origin: Satsuma Province, Japan.

Location: The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., USA.

“This is in the Smithsonian are you insane? Shaw wants me to steal from the Smithsonian?”

Your heart began to race and your palms grew sweaty. That place was locked down tighter than bark on a tree.

“Yes, but this one has an excellent reward and you’re the only one available who can pull it off.” Creed replies

You tugged at the collar of your shirt and swallowed thickly.

“There’s video surveillance, recordings of security shifts as well as blueprints of the building on the private cloud.

You nodded and slipped the iPad into your bag.

“It’ll take some time. You and Shaw know that.”

“Buyers want it ASAP.” Victor responded.

“Yeah, what else is new?” You let out a sigh.

Victor chuckled slightly.

“Alright. I’ll have it ASAP.” Not that I have much of a choice -

Unlocking the door to the loft, your eyes beheld the mess that you had been meaning to clean up for the past two weeks. Unopened boxes of books and supplies, receipts and paperwork everywhere. Balancing your two lives hadn't left a lot of time for things like cleaning.

You decided to order a pizza and begrudgingly start on the stuff Creed gave you. this was gonna take so. much. planning.

The blueprints were laid out all around you and you were in the middle of reviewing security shift overlaps when there was a knock on the door.

Your pizza.

grabbing your wallet, you waltzed over to the door.

“Well that was quick-“

The person standing there was not the pizza man.

Colossus.

You immediately noticed he wasn’t his usual self, the dark circles under his eyes, his posture- usually perfect- was slouched.

“Hello darling.”

“Piotr. Is everything okay?”

He didn't answer right away and you knew something wasn’t right.

“May I come inside?” -

Tags: (tag list of open, send me an ask if you want to be tagged, removed or only tagged for certain characters.) @chromecutie @xenomorphique @evelyn120700 @nightriver99 @iamwarrenspeace @this-that-and-every-thing-else @hsk-puma @bungeewabbit @pianomad @lesbianstarkx @hazilyimagine @super-darkcloudstudent @thehuntress26 @siren-lamented-vampire @mooleche @rovvboat @leo-writer @dandyqueen @nitemaremotionless @thewintersoldierswife

#colossus x reader #Piotr rasutin x reader #colossus reader insert #Piotr rasputin reader insert #colossus/ reader #peter rasputin x reader #colossus x reader series #deadpool fanfiction #xmcu #mine #kacceywrites #smooth criminal #sc #writers on tumblr

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h-styles-babes · 7 years

Text

No Control | Chapter Seventeen

Summary:

Micky Bennett: college student, loyal friend, aspiring nurse, One Direction fan, Harry Styles enthusiast. Her best friend, Trevor, wins tickets to a show in New Jersey with meet and greet passes. Micky expects a quick photo op with the boys and a great night at the concert with her best friend. What she gets a whole lot more than she bargained for.

To read previous chapters, you can go here.

*Please feel free to reblog and send feedback. It’s much appreciated :)*

*Gif is not mine.*

SEVENTEEN

The Coopers stick around well into the evening, playing a game of croquet in the yard that Robin set up after we all ate. The adults all play while the younger crowd sits back and laughs as the intoxicated parents bumble around, trying to knock the other balls off course. Harry keeps me in his lap all day, hands roaming over my jeans and up under my shirt to touch my bare skin when he can. Around the time the sun starts to go down, I can feel him begin to get restless, shifting in the seat constantly. Jen hasn’t really taken her eyes off us the entire day, so I think it’s in discomfort of having her practically stare at us, until he whispers in my ear.

“I need to have you, pet,” he says, lips grazing against my earlobe. He pulls me closer against him, and I can feel his erection press into my bum, making him hiss at the contact. “Think we can sneak away for a bit while everyone’s preoccupied out here?”

I glance around, taking note that Gemma’s on her phone, taking pictures of the game on Snapchat, laughing as her mum stumbles over her own feet for no reason. They’re all well entertained and not at all paying attention to Harry and me, except for Jen.

“In your mum’s home, Harry?” I ask, unsure if this is a good idea.

“It’s turning me on more thinking about it, angel,” he admits, teeth nipping at my ear now. “Never had anyone there before.”

“The sneaking around and the possibility of getting caught turns you on, doesn’t it?” I guess.

“Absolutely.”

I don’t really have to think about it; I just hop off his lap and grab ahold of his hand, helping him out of the lounger and letting him lead the way inside. I haven’t made it past the first floor all day, so I have no idea where his bedroom is. He leads me up the stairs and down the hall to the very last door on the right. I’m actually quite thankful that his bedroom is so far, hoping that maybe it’ll make it less likely for anyone to hear anything that might come from his room.

“Strip for me,” he demands, shutting and locking the door behind us. When he turns back to me, there’s a look in his eye that makes me shiver and heats me from the inside out all at the same time.

I smirk and let my fingers untie the material at the bottom of my shirt. “Anything for you, daddy.”

Harry and I leave early the next morning for the three hour drive to London. We stay just long enough to have a cuppa with Anne and Robin, and I thank them profusely for having me and welcoming me into their home for the day.

“It was wonderful to meet you, darling,” Anne insists, reaching over from where she’s sat across from me to grab my hand. “Anyone that Harry is so comfortable with and enjoys so much is more than welcome in our home.”

I can feel the blush rising on my face as Harry smiles at me, looking very content and a little blissed out, if I’m quite honest. The sex the night before was amazing, but I don’t think it warranted this level of relaxation twelve hours later. I smile back at him shyly.

The weather has gotten a bit nippy, so I’ve dressed in jeans, one of my favorite tees, and a black and pink Valentino bomber jacket that is much too expensive. The jacket, as well as the black Coach ankle boots I’m wearing were gifts from Trevor that resulted in his father not being able to see him on holidays. Whenever that happens, his dad wires him more money that usually results in shopping trips from Trevor. And since his own closet is to the point of nearly bursting, he takes it upon himself to make sure I’m well dressed, too. In the beginning, I flat out refused to accept any of the designer things he always bought, but he eventually wore me down, saying it’s what friends are for and he likes being able to do something nice with the guilt money that his dad’s always sending him.

“Like that jacket,” Harry compliments as we merge onto the highway. I look down at the bird and flower design and run my fingers over the slick satin. “It was a gift from Trevor. Valentino and I don’t even want to know how much it cost him.” I cringe just thinking about it.

“Valentino?” Harry asks. He glances over and looks at the jacket, rocking his head back in forth in contemplation. “Probably about three thousand pounds.” I gape. “That’s nearly four thousand dollars.”

Harry shrugs. “It’s Valentino, love. Shit’s not cheap.” He pulls at the jacket he’s wearing, a brown leather thing a pocket at each breast and diamond shaped cutouts. “Saint Laurent. About twenty-five hundred pounds.”

“Oh God,” I breathe out. “I don’t even want to know how much those damn button down shirts you wear cost. Could probably pay for my entire wardrobe with three of them.”

He chuckles and glances over at me, pushing his sunnies up into his hair as the sun goes behind the clouds. “Probably. I only wear them when I know I’m gonna be out, though. I don’t wear them to just lounge about the house.”

“Oh, that’s a relief,” I mutter sarcastically. I take a look at what he’s wearing now. He’s got on a tunic style grey shirt underneath with some buttons that go until about mid-chest, all unbuttoned of course. It looks like he could have bought it for thirty quid at TopShop, or it could be a ridiculously expensive article from Gucci or something equally over the top.

“Also Saint Laurent,” he quickly tells me, seeing me eyeing the shirt.

“Are we going out today, then?” I ask. I’ve seen him in a regular t-shirts before that I know were bought in the package because I could see the Hanes label on the neck, but I’ve only seen him wear those to lounge around in.

“Gonna stop by my house first, and then I have some mates who want to go to lunch, if that’s alright?” He looks over at me, a look of slight concern on his face, like he thinks I’ll nix his plans for the day, even though he’s probably had these plans a week out. I’m not his girlfriend and I’m not in the business of telling him what he can and cannot do, so I just shrug and nod.

“Fine by me. When do you think you’ll be back?” I ask. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to London, so I’m sure I can find something to do if I venture out on my own while he catches up with friends. There’s a medical museum in the area that I’d like to visit, now that I’m thinking about it.

His eyebrows shoot up on his head. “What? You’re not gonna come with me?”

I furrow my brows in confusion. “You want me to come with you? To meet your mates?”

“Well…” he gives me a look like that was obvious, “yeah. I want them to meet you. I wasn’t gonna bring you to London and then abandon you as soon as we got there. All my plans for the next few days now include you.”

“Oh,” is all I can say for a few moments as I realize Harry actually wants me to tag along with him. “Well, okay. Where are we going, then?”

“Just an Indian place in Covent Gardens,” he assures. “Might go out to do a bit of walking afterward.”

I look down at what I’m wearing again, taking in my plain jeans and the shirt I did get from TopShop for thirty quid. It’s just a white tee with the words “Females of the Future” in black block letters on the front. I look nowhere near acceptable to be standing beside Harry Styles, much less having lunch with him and his undoubtedly famous friends. The expensive-as-hell jacket I’m wearing is not a very good facade for what I’m wearing underneath. “Should I change?”

“No. I like your shirt. And your ass looks good in those jeans.” He smirks over at me.

I glare at him. “Yeah, and they were a bitch to get on this morning, thanks to you.” The bruises that had finally begun to fade from my bum were replaced with a vengeance last night.

“Weren’t complaining about it when I gave them to you, were you, princess?” Harry asks rhetorically. “Actually, I quite vividly recall you begging for them.”

“The term ‘princess’ is forever ruined for me. I’m gonna get turned on any time anyone says it in any context, now.”

Harry laughs, a loud barking laugh that I love hearing out of him, because it’s something he can’t control and it’s absolutely adorable how embarrassed he gets by it. “How do you think I feel about ‘daddy?’ I’m never gonna be able to have kids. They’ll have to call me by my first name or something.”

We tease each other back and forth for the remainder of the drive into London. We don’t ever pass through central London, but we eventually get towards a residential area near Hampstead Heath, and Harry slows the car down. We pass by a few little family-owned shoppes before he turns into the beginning of a driveway, closed off by a barn door style gate set into a brick wall that surrounds his property and butts up to his white house. He presses a button that he keeps on his visor like a garage door opener and the door begins to slide open, revealing Harry’s yard and the backs of the houses his is next to.

Harry’s house is large, but not overly so. It’s three stories, from what I can ascertain, and it’s got lots of little square windows. It’s big for a house in London, or the UK in general, but it’s about the normal size of a home in America. Harry pulls his car in and parks it just inside the wall, waiting for the gate to close before getting out. He quickly comes to my side to help me out, and I’m hit by the humidity and coolness of London. We live further from the coast, so we don’t get much of the mugginess, but I can nearly smell the water here.

Harry holds my hand and carries both of our bags over his shoulders as he shows me into his house. The door he leads me through takes us directly into a modernly furnished sitting room, but I can definitely tell that only a man lives here with it’s sharp lines and neutral colors. It smells like Harry, though, even though he hasn’t been here in awhile, the cinnamon smell of his parents’ house permeating here as well.

“This is the sitting room, and through there is a family room,” he says, beginning a tour. He points to our left where an archway leads to a more cozy, intimate looking room is decorated with photos and warm colors. He pulls me toward a hallways and motions to the right. “That’s the kitchen, and straight ahead is the gym.” He has me follow him up a flight of stairs to the next floor. When we get to the landing, he points left first. “Bedroom I turned into a studio.” Points ahead. “Guest room.” Points to the right. “Extra room I have nothing to do with. No idea what to do with it, honestly. It’s a bit small.” We turn and head up to the final story, which only has the landing and two doors on it. “That door leads to the rooftop patio. Nice to go out there at night.” He takes hold of my hand again and pulls me through the remaining door. “And this is the master bedroom.”

His room looks cozy, with the warm colors and the dark wood of his furniture. It’s manly but also warm and very him. There’s artwork on the walls and a binder on his dresser that looks to be chuck full of something. The room is massive, and the bed in the center is a four poster with lots of pillows and fluffy looking grey bedding. He’s got a telly set up on the wall opposite the bed as well as a small entertainment center that holds a DVD player and a game console. There’s sliding doors that I assume lead to his bathroom, and, judging by the square footage I know is left on this story, it’s massive.

Harry sets our bags down on a leather seat that runs the length of his bed at its foot, then turns and pulls me against him, his hands resting on my hips. He leans down and presses his forehead to mine, our noses touching.

“I’m glad you came with me,” he tells me, his voice barely above a whisper. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now, Harry,” I admit.

Harry presses his lips to mine, delicately cradling my face in his hands. We kiss leisurely and without intent of this going anywhere else. We’re just enjoying the feeling of having each other.

He pulls away when his phone starts ringing in his pocket. He pulls it out and answers it without hesitation.

“Hello?” He listens intently as the person on the other end speaks. “Alright, we’ll be there in twenty.” Harry’s about to hang up when the other person hurries to tell him something, which makes Harry curl his lip up in annoyance. “Couldn’t have sat inside?” Another pause. “Fine. No, it’s fine. We’ll deal with it.” He hangs up the phone without preamble and sighs. “We’re sitting outside, so just be prepared. Shouldn’t be too bad, since no ones knows I’m in London, but it probably won’t take them very long to figure it out.”

“Hey,” I say, grabbing onto his hands and giving them a reassuring squeeze. “I’m not afraid of some silly pictures, Harry. My face is already out there and it hasn’t been that big of a deal.”

He purses his lips to the side as his thumbs stroke over my knuckles. “I know, I just wish I could keep you to myself.”

I smile reassuringly. “I’m all yours, H. No one can take that away form us. We’ll figure it out, remember?”

Harry smiles and kisses me one more time. “Yeah, we will. Just don’t be afraid to tell me if this all gets to be too much, yeah? Your comfort is my priority while you’re with me.”

“I can handle it, Harry. Promise.” I stand on my tip toes and peace him on his nose, making him scrunch it up with a goofy little grin. “Now c’mon. Don’t want to keep anyone waiting.”

Harry parks his car in a lot a few blocks from where we’re set to eat. He twines his fingers with mine immediately, keeping me close to him as we begin to walk the streets of London. He pulls our hands up to his face as we wait at a crosswalk, kissing the back of mine and smiling at me.

“You’re okay with the PDA?” I ask, slightly surprised. It’s one thing to be out together, but it’s an entirely different thing to have him be so openly affectionate in a non-platonic way. The photos of us in New York were pushing it, but there’s nothing about his gesture now that would leave room for question.

“Can’t let the media rule my life,” he explains as we begin to walk. “My fucking life. I’ll love on who I please and not give a shit about who sees. You’re my girl, Mick. Not gonna let fans or paps ruin that.”

My heart swells at his sweet words and his disregard for anyone else’s opinions. I’m not sure his management would feel the same way, but I don’t really care about them. Harry’ll be rid of them in a few month’s time anyway, so there’s not much they can do about it. His fans are a whole other monster, though. But they’re a hurdle no matter what he does, so I’m sure he’s pretty over it by now.

We walk up to chic-looking Indian restaurant that has a few tables outside, right next to a Jamie Oliver’s and a few other places. There’s a group of three already sat at a table, but they seem to be the only ones. It’s only a little before noon, so I’m sure the restaurant has only recently opened for the day. Harry slings his arm around my shoulders as we get closer, and I wrap an arm around his waist so we can walk together comfortably.

The group’s faces become clear as we approach, and I balk a little at who I see. Sat at the table are none other than Nick Grimshaw and a couple of his and Harry’s mutual friends.

“Is that Cara Delevingne and Rita Ora?” I ask, hearing the own trepidation in my voice. Nick I was expecting, because he and Harry are close, and I can handle him seeing as we’ve spoken on the phone before, but Cara and Rita are on another plane. They’re both completely gorgeous and I’m intimidated to be even within twenty metres of them.

“Yeah,” Harry answers casually with a shrug. Then I think he realizes that I’m not also a famous individual and looks down at me. “You alright, princess?”

“Yeah, just gonna be constantly judging myself against a gorgeous model and a beautiful singer. No big deal.”

Harry laughs and presses a kiss to my temple. “They’re just as weird as I am. You’ll get used to them. Plus, you’re every bit as stunning as both of them.”

There’s a hostess outside who’s eyes widen when she sees Harry and moves to greet him, but he just waves her off with a polite smile. “’S alright. We’re right here,” he tells her, gesturing to the people sitting at the table.

The sole man turns his head round over his shoulder and lights up with a big smile when he spots Harry.

“Baby Harold!” he greets, getting up from his seat to sling his arms around Harry in a hug. “How kind of you to join us. Who’s your friend?” Grammy looks me up and down, his grin never leaving his face.

“Grim, this is Micky. Believe you met on the phone last week.”

Grimmy’s eyes bug out a bit as he looks at me, his grin widening. “The famous Micky. You’re just as stunning as your voice suggested.” He doesn’t hesitate in pulling me into a hug as well, lingering like we’ve known each other for years instead of a two minute phone call and the previous thirty seconds. “Come, sit. Tell me all the dirt you’ve gotten from Harold in the last week. I need more blackmail material.”

I laugh as Harry pulls out a seat for me. As he sets himself down he gestures at the two other women at our table. “Mick, this is Cara and Rita. Guys, this is Micky Bennett.”

Both of them smile at me warmly and greet me kindly.

“Nice to meet you guys,” I say, tamping down the anxiety I feel building in my chest. I’ve had the biggest crush on Cara since I found out who she was, and Rita is so gorgeous and she’s got a great voice, and I feel so insignificant amongst all the pretty faces at the table.

I can feel myself getting hot, so I unzip my jacket and remove it to rest it over the back of the chair. Harry’s reaches under the table and sets his hand on my thigh, offering me comfort when I’m sure he can see I’m a bit overwhelmed.

“Oh, my God,” Nick bursts, hands braced on the table from where he’s sat at the head. He’s gawking down at my shirt, and I’m not sure what he’s on about until he says, “I’m sorry, but you’ve got the best pair of tits I’ve seen. No offense, Cara. Yours are great, but Micky is killing it right now.”

She shakes her head with a shrug. “No, you’re right, they’re great,” she says, looking over my chest. “Like the shirt, too. I’ve got one in red print.”

Harry and Rita laugh at my obvious astonishment at this chain of events. I’m not sure what it is about gay men and my breasts, but I just kind of roll with it at this point. Trevor has a weird thing for them, and apparently Nick has now joined that wagon.

“Uh…thanks?” I mutter, glancing down at myself. They don’t look particularly perky today or anything, though they do kind of pull at the material of my shirt in a way that very obviously shows I’m not wearing a bra. Having worn one for the entirety of the day before reminded me how much I hate them, so I made sure I would not be wearing one today.

“Alright, enough staring at my girl’s chest,” Harry announces. “Let’s order; I’m starving.”

I don’t miss how the other three at the table raise their eyebrows at each other with Harry’s declaration.

EIGHTEEN

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #one direction #No Control

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queerofthecastle · 7 years

Text

GET TO KNOW ME

RULES: ANSWER THE 30 QUESTIONS AND TAG 30 FOLLOWERS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW BETTER TAGGED BY: @marybethpotter

NICKNAME: Ronnie, Nannie Ro, Nan GENDER: nonbinary (they/them pronouns) STAR SIGN: Gemini or Cancer… I think. But I don’t play into star signs at all so I’m not sure (I’ve been assured that I’m a Cancer by some people and a Gemini by others. I personally think I’d rather avoid Cancer so… Gemini?) HEIGHT: 5'7 TIME: 9:56 BIRTHDAY: June 25 FAVORITE BAND(S): ugh so many… off the top of my head: Sex Bob-omb, the Beatles, ACDC, Guns n’ Roses, Pentatonix, the Black Keys, Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Avriel and the Sequoias, the Wicked Tinkers… I should stop now or this will be a page and a half long tbh FAVORITE SOLO ARTIST(S): Beck, Thomas Sanders (who totally counts, fight me), Paul Simon (so many others, but let’s quit while we’re ahead) SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD: Ramona (the Beck version) LAST MOVIE I WATCHED: Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe LAST SHOW I WATCHED: Rick and Morty (s3e2 came out last night!!!) WHEN DID I CREATE MY BLOG: …like April or May of 2017? WHAT DO I POST: Everything. And yet, also nothing. LAST THING I GOOGLED: Song of the Sea Merchandise (if you haven’t seen that movie, it is a spiritual experience, and you should watch it. ALSO anything by that studio (Cartoon Saloon) or by Studio Ghibli is amazing.) DO I HAVE OTHER BLOGS: Yeah I have another blog. It’s a mental health blog that I use as a journal though, so if you’re into that kind of darkness look me up @easywitheyesclosed DO I GET ASKS: lol I wish WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS BLOG NAME: …. It’s a pun with the word queer in it that implies my royalty but only on a petty scale. It’s pretty insanely perfect, let’s be real. FOLLOWING: 61 FOLLOWERS: 8 (what’s up my 8 friendos?) FAVORITE COLOR(S): blue AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP: there is no “average” because either I sleep for an eternity or I don’t sleep at all. There is no in between LUCKY NUMBER: 7 or 3 INSTRUMENTS: I’ve done 13 years of piano and 4 of vocal instruction, I’m handy with a tin whistle, and I’m trying to pick up the guitar (with little success as of yet) WHAT AM I WEARING: Hanes underwear (I’m laying in bed stop judging me) HOW MANY BLANKETS I SLEEP WITH: ALL OF THEM (literally around 14 blankets. I can’t sleep without the weight of them. Also I get cold really easily) DREAM JOB: traveling novelist DREAM TRIP: European tour (I’m almost there, I’m going to college in Europe starting in September *cue happy dance*) FAVORITE FOOD: cheesy lasagna, (or as I like to call it, spaghetti cake) or anything with pasta NATIONALITY: I hail from the USA. At least it’s not an actual war zone (although politically…) FAVORITE SONG: Sleazy Bed Track by The Bluetones (don’t judge it by the title) TAGGING: uhhhhhh I’d tag @marybethpotter but she already did it…………. so… nobody I guess. Yep. But if you see this and want to do it, just pretend I tagged you. I don’t mind.

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babblingbr00k · 5 years

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Inventory in a Pepto Bismal Stripper Room

~I will never forget that first morning for as long as I live. I was told the night before that, Monday through Saturday, all those individuals that couldn't pay the fee to be in the program, must work at the Thrift Store. It's here that we Earn Our Keep. It's also where Character is built.

~I sat up on the edge of my bed and attempted to stand. My heart rate began to climb and was beating about 40 beats too fast. As I stood up, the room began to spin and my eyesight went black. Afraid that I would pass out, I retreated back into the loving arms of my bed and caught my breath.

~Having gotten, both, my eyesight and horizon back, I was now able to focus on my next objective.

~My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to place one foot in front of the other. Making my way towards the closet, dressing, and vanity area. Once there, my next obstacle was to pick out my frock for the day, adhorn said frock, and try my best to appear halfway decent.

~I made my way, in the darkness, to the back of the house where the vanity, dressing, and closet areas were.

~I felt like Dorothy. Stepping from the black and white Kansas world into the Technicolor world of Oz.

~Giant mirrors covered the 3 walls of this world. Above the mirrors were bright iridescent light bulbs. Below the mirrors, at waist height, was a shelf, colored to match the walls. It was on this Pepto Bismol pink colored shelf, that little workstations were sectioned off for each girl. Makeup, curling irons, straightening irons, hairsprays, body sprays, purfume’s, blow dryers, styling gels, lotions, facial creams, hair bows & headbands of every color, as well as brushes, picks, and combs of every possible shape and size, could be seen stuffed into every available nook and cranny.

~The room was wall to wall chaos right now. Each girl bouncing back and forth, borrowing this, using that. Every couple of seconds you could see each girl shove her face into any one of the mirrors, each painstakingly perfecting their very own work of art.

~Fighting back the urge to vomit, I grabbed the only empty chair and made a left into the dark, quiet, and safe confines of the closet. It was in the farthest right corner where I unfolded and placed my chair. I sat down with a sigh of relief and looked up into my designated storage section.

~I glanced over at each of the girls closet space and felt a wave of shame pass over me. Just like the vanity room, here in the closet, every possible corner, cubby hole, and shelf was overflowing some kind of article of clothing. I returned my gaze to my collection and quickly took inventory of everything I owned in the whole world.

Itemized Inventory in Closet

~One (1) medium LSU Tigers T-shirt-Yellow-Small hole right underarm.

~One (1) XXXL Gonzales Fire Station T-Shirt-Faded Blue-Bleach stain on the bottom hem in the back.

~One (1) pair of XL Crocs-Green-Traction on bottom soles worn away due to over use and advanced age of almost 10 years. These Crocs are sentimental to me...I’ll explain later.

~One (1) pair of Fruit of the Loom Bikini Cut Cotton Underwear-Pink Paisley in color-Unsure of size because the tag is too degraded-Clean-Waistband beginning to come apart.

Itemized Inventory on Person (Me)

~One (1) Pair of light blue scrub bottoms-Small-Starting to smell-Needs to be washed.

~One (1) Fruit of the Loom Sports Bra-Grey-Used to be Medium in size but stretched to XL from 3 years of use. Absolutely no support whatsoever. Needs to be washed.

~One (1) XL Plain white Hanes Crew Collar T-Shirt-Stole from Phillip-Dingy from years of wear. Needs to be washed.

~One (1) Hanes Women's Bikini Cut underwear-Faded Purple-Stained-Stretched and Smelly~Needs to be Washed

~One (1) Pink ankle sock with hole in baby toe-Needs to be Washed

~One (1) Black Crew Sock-Needs to be Washed

~These few items of clothing was all that I had left. Everything else I had to leave at the rental house that Phillip and I shared. The cute little cottage house where Phillip abandoned me almost two weeks before.

~I angrily stormed out of the closet and made my way back to my bed. These people cannot expect me to work in this condition. They can’t MAKE me do anything. There is no way in hell these people can MAKE me work. Not in this condition.

~I stubbornly laid there in bed, daring any one of the girls to say one single word to me. I laid there listening to the laughter and happy banter coming from Pepto Bismol Pink Stripper looking Vanity Room. The happier they got, the angrier I got.

~A few minutes before 7 a.m. Amy came bouncing out of the Stripper Room and plopped down on the bed opposite me. She informed me that they were ready and asked if I was. I pleaded with her to let me stay behind.

~“I already asked Stacey. She said that you are not allowed to stay here by yourself. Your going to have to come with us.” She said as she looked at me pathetically.

~I sat there quiet for a couple of seconds, debating on whether or not I should release my own private hell on this unsuspecting girl. But just when I was about to open my mouth, I was interrupted by my roomates exiting the vanity room, making their way to the kitchen.

~“How dare all these girls feel so happy and good when I am feeling so miserable!?! A Plague on ALL YOUR HOUSES!!!”

~It was a short walk across the parking lot to Miracle Place Church. We made our way through the main doors, through the empty, dark sanctuary, into a long hallway, and finally into a room that was decorated in Coca Cola memorabilia. There was a couch and also some chairs.

~"Brook? Why don't you lay down on the couch and get a little more rest while we have Devotion. You can listen and follow along but you don't have to join in." Amy told me. "Devotion lasts an hour." she also said.

~I took Amy's advice and laid down on the couch and just tried to relax a little. My heart was still beating about 40 beats faster than what it should have been. I could hear it in my ears. This made me winded and I felt even more anxious. I wanted to come out of my skin. I wanted to be anywhere but in my body. The nausea came and went. Irrational thoughts and paranoia invaded my brain. I knew I had to try to calm down. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and tried to go to my happy place. I knew that if I went to my happy place and concentrated enough, my heart rate would come down to a more comfortable level. Once I could get my heart rate down to a comfortable level, the anxiety, nausea and uneasiness would subside.

~My "Happy Place" has always been the same. I'm on a deserted beach. There's absolutely no sign or noise of anyone else being there. It's night-time and I'm laying on the beach just enough into the water so that it laps over my body. I focus on the night-time sounds that my "Happy Place," has to offer. The sounds of the waves as they crash into beach. I focus on the distinctive yet individual sounds that each ones makes as they come onto shore. The sound of the wind as it comes in from the ocean, and the sounds of the insects as they are preparing their nightly ritual.

~I concentrate on each part of my body. First, the muscles in my feet. I flex the muscles in my feet by moving my toes. Once I feel the muscles in my feet relax, I move onto my lower legs. I move onto each part of my body until, hopefully, my entire body is completely relaxed.

~I'm not sure how long passed but I was brought back to that Coca Cola room as I felt each girl lay their hands on me. From my head to my toes there was a soft little hand. I kept my eyes closed and nervously waited. Waited to see what weird stuff they were going to do to me. For a few seconds I was imagining some weird little spiritual ritual that I was about to be party to.

~Another couple of seconds passed and just as I was about to open my eyes, Amy began a prayer. Amy was praying for me. My mind, body and soul. She prayed for supernatural healing. She asked God to, please, heal my mind and body of all nausea, anxiety, panic, fatigue, depression and uneasiness. She prayed for God to take away any and all withdraw symptoms. Take away my craving for the drugs.

~Emma's prayer began just as Amy's ended. Each girl took turns as they prayed for my body and mind. I focused on each prayer. I focused on each lovely word that came from each mouth of these lovely ladies.

~Can I be honest with you? I expected it to work. I listened to these prayers and expected all of my pain and discomfort to go away. I expected to open my eyes, get up, and be able to run a marathon. I expected to open my eyes and all of this was going to be over.

~I opened my eyes and still felt like crap. I opened my eyes and felt a wave of anxiety and panic rush over me. I sat up and wanted to die. In my head I TOLD God to kill me. I was always considered to be a very strong person, but this was too much. There's just so much a person can take and I had reached my limit. I had made up my mind that if God wasn't going to put me out of my misery then I was going to do it myself.

~I began crying as I started my own prayer. Verbally asking God to kill me. The girls listened to me beg God to put me out of my misery.

~"Please release me from the pain of this miserable existence." I told God.

~I got angry. Accusing God of taking the wrong person. He shouldn't have taken Coleson. Coleson was the better person. He would have done more for this world than I ever would have. Why take Coleson, such an angel, when he could have taken someone who actually deserved death, like me? The girls let me vent. They let me say what I needed to say. My prayer ended. I'm not sure how long passed but I eventually passed out. And when I woke.....it wasn't my body that was healed.....It was my attitude.

~When I opened my eyes I saw these lovely ladies, all sitting around me. I knew that God had sent each one. Each one was going to help me get through this. I knew from that moment on that I wasn't going to be alone. These women were praying for me. They were pulling for me. Each woman was behind me and they were going to fight for me if they needed to.

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kungfubreakfast · 5 years

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All The Goddesses

So so so so so many lovely ladies today with nine new sets including three multi-muse sets! Time is going by so fast this year. I’ve can’t believe we’re already halfway in to March. I have a cold this week so that’s a bummer but tomorrow I’m planning on making the journey to Lake Elsinore to see the Super Bloom. SoCal so rarely gets its rain but when it does (plus a few other conditions) like this year then the fields are littered with wild flowers including the poppies. Two years ago I got a chance to do my one and only shoot with Mandee Leslie in the superbloom in Antelope Valley so I’m stoked to do it again. Keep your fingers crossed my cold is gone by then.

First up we have a new set with Sister Bonez. The good Sister has really been one of my absolutely favorite Muses to work with over the past year. She always has killer looks, poses, great ideas, etc. It’s been so rainy here lately that I was a bit worried we might get rained out but luckily the worst we got was a sprinkle during the opening portion of our shoot in Pomona. We shot some cool urban stuff and then Sister Bonez treated me to a cup of a coffee at this cool Mexican coffee place called Mi Cafecito Coffee where we both got marzipan lattes with oat milk. They were seriously to die for. After that we headed to a beautiful botanical garden for the second leg of our shoot. I had never been to this particular botanical garden so it was fun to check out. They had some really interesting structures and art pieces. We also caught some sunset vibes that really brought out our best. Finally we spent the third part of our shoot over at the bartending school where Sister Bonez learned to mix drinks. We shot some photos and a short video of her doing some mixology and then took some sexy photos in their Playboy themed bathroom. As usually we got a lot accomplished and had a blast doing it.

Up next is a new set with long-time muse Lina Savanna and she brought her friend Hollixberri. Lina and I are good friends and text as friends do. She told me her friend Holli was visiting her from out of town so I offered up the idea of shooting with the two of them. I figured it would be a fun, low-key, hang out with the homegirl and her homegirl kind of situation. Of course it was all of those things but also much more! They ladies put together some great looks and really brought the fire. I absolutely loved the energy Holli brought to the shoot and I hope she comes and visits again. We started our day in Chinatown kind of just exploring around. We really hit a highlight when we found this practically abandoned shopping center near where we had parked. After that we travelled to nearby Elysian Park where Lina showed us a part of the park I had never seen before. It was a bit cold and windy but we powered through and even got a shot of a wandering coyote. Finally as it got a bit too cold for shooting we made our way to Holli’s AirBnB where we shot some fun and sexy lingerie looks. Major fun vibes on this shoot.

For our third set I’d like to welcome back someone near and dear to my heart, the lovely Chelsea Hanes. Portland-based Chelsea was in town visiting so we made some plans to catch up and do a little shoot at one of my favorite spots, Stoney Point. Chelsea adorned herself in rose petals and cannabis leaves (courtesy of Aesthetic Cataclysm). Chelsea always brings the Goddess vibes but this was really on a whole other level. We kept the shoot relatively short due to weather conditions but still got in a full set’s worth of amazing shots. Not too much else to say about the shoot other than that it was magical and we found a graffiti sign telling us the point at which no muggles were allowed past.

From Green Goddess to Rock Goddess we have a new set with Alicia Vigil. Fresh off of a European Tour with her band Vigil of War, Alicia Vigil is back with our second set together. I wanted to really switch gears with Alicia from our first set in the woods, so I took her to maybe my favorite spot to shoot, Angels Gate Bunkers. Not surprisingly, Alicia really brought it with some cool looks and a fun interaction with the environment. Going to The Bunkers with a new person is always a wild experience and makes me feel like Hammond on the helicopter turning to the others and say, “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” After the Bunkers we stopped by The Korean Bell of Friendship for a few more dope shots. Really been loving working with Alicia and hoping for another rad shoot in the near future.

Spooky girl love continues with a KILLER new set featuring the lovely Lady Krondor. Lady Krondor have had some of my favorite shoots when we’ve shot in her various homes. In Lady Krondor’s current place we shot our last set in her home photo studio and once again decided to make some work there. Part of the inspiration was that our mutual friend Necro Natalie painted this spooky backdrop for her. We had a fun time playing around and then ventured out to the mean streets of West Hollywood so shoot a bit more. Sometimes the best shoots are the simplest ones.

I feel my heart swelling as honestly this series of sets covers some of my favorite humans including Fablechan. Fable and I have been talking about a new set since our last set but it’s been way a bit too chilly since our schedules really only like up for late afternoon/evening shoots. Luckily we found a slightly warmer day. Once again I headed down to deep Orange County for our shoot. We started off in this cool woodlandish park for a very glamorous look. When we were coming out of the park we met some guy from Arizona that REALLY wanted to show us his photos he had taken of girls in bikinis. We probably would have talked with him more but we were racing the sun to our next spot just outside of a cool drain pipe tunnel. We did a drain pipe tunnel in our last shoot but I will always been down for things off the beaten path. The little area outside the tunnel had some fun graff including a Rick and Morty piece but inside the tunnel was for me where the real magic happened. We finished off the shoot with some nighttime park stuff including a bit of nudie time. I’m sure as the weather gets nicer there will be more nudity for all my pervy followers.

Up next is a mini set with my loves Miss Chaos and Liza. Sometimes I shoot sets simply because I have plans with my friends that are also my Muses and why not? Well on this very evening the three of us headed to Bar Sinister’s newish event appropriately named Wednezdays. We shot some cute photos in the bar, I almost lost my glasses, the night was a little crazy and then we went back to Miss Chaos’ place where she busted out the whip and paddle on Liza. Pretty typical evening.

So when I say all the Goddesses, this next set might take the cake. Brittny Nicole hit me up asking if I’d like to tag along with her on a shoot for her friend Adrienne’s brand Little Black Diamond in San Diego. Of course my answer was yes so we made our way down to San Diego (which means “A Whale’s Vagina”). This wasn’t technically my shoot, which is always a weird situation as I don’t like to step on other’s toes, nor do I allow people to take photos on my shoots, but it was a really chill time. The shoot happened at this cool psychedelic art bar called Kilowatt in the neighborhood of Ocean Beach. There was something like 8-10 girls on the shoot and one main photographer so Brittny and I started shooting in spots while she wasn’t being used and other models that weren’t being used at the time followed. Adrienne and I clicked right away as Brittny had been telling both of us about each other for a while. Adrienne and all the girls were super stoked to have me there and we had a really cool time. I wasn’t sure if this should be a solo set with guests or a multi-muse set but ultimately I decided that this was still Brittny’s journey and if I ever shoot with any of these girls again (which I plan to) then of course this set will be listed on their pages. I really think my story isn’t even doing this set justice so just go check out the photos.

And to wrap things up is a new solo set with Miss Chaos. It seems like every time I post a set with Miss Chaos that it’s actually two sets but she’s one of my closest homegirls. Despite her namesake, Miss Chaos actually really helps me keep my sanity. She’s a loving, supportive friend, a great Muse, and an ear for me to vocalize my thoughts, good or bad. One of our mutual loves is for abandoned places. Back in the Fall she found on Instagram photos of an an abandoned airplane in Ontario, CA (just about an hour outside of my place in Highland Park). It was a little tough for our schedules to get out there until now but we finally did last week and it was WELL WORTH IT. We got some directions how to find the place from an awesome artist on Instagram named Chuck Hodi who had been there before. Once we arrived it was actually really easy to find (like too easy). Not only did we find the plane but there were actually TWO PLANES! We had an awesome shoot and no one bothered us. This was by far the easiest and yet strangest abandoned shoot I think I’ve ever done. I mean two abandoned planes in the middle of a small airport and not one person told us to leave (big ups to Ontario Airport I guess!) After that we found a cool little park to shoot in and Miss Chaos rocked her 90’s No Doubt look while we played on a kids playground. Afterward we stopped for the delicious marzipan coffee at the same Mexican coffee shop that Sister Bonez took me to in the beginning of the set. Everything truly comes full circle. Until next time, enjoy!

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suzanneshannon · 5 years

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Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

In late 2016, Gartner predicted that 30 percent of web browsing sessions would be done without a screen by 2020. Earlier the same year, Comscore had predicted that half of all searches would be voice searches by 2020. Though there’s recent evidence to suggest that the 2020 picture may be more complicated than these broad-strokes projections imply, we’re already seeing the impact that voice search, artificial intelligence, and smart software agents like Alexa and Google Assistant are making on the way information is found and consumed on the web.

In addition to the indexing function that traditional search engines perform, smart agents and AI-powered search algorithms are now bringing into the mainstream two additional modes of accessing information: aggregation and inference. As a result, design efforts that focus on creating visually effective pages are no longer sufficient to ensure the integrity or accuracy of content published on the web. Rather, by focusing on providing access to information in a structured, systematic way that is legible to both humans and machines, content publishers can ensure that their content is both accessible and accurate in these new contexts, whether or not they’re producing chatbots or tapping into AI directly. In this article, we’ll look at the forms and impact of structured content, and we’ll close with a set of resources that can help you get started with a structured content approach to information design.

The role of structured content

In their recent book, Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton define structured content as content that is “planned, developed, and connected outside an interface so that it’s ready for any interface.” A structured content design approach frames content resources—like articles, recipes, product descriptions, how-tos, profiles, etc.—not as pages to be found and read, but as packages composed of small chunks of content data that all relate to one another in meaningful ways.

In a structured content design process, the relationships between content chunks are explicitly defined and described. This makes both the content chunks and the relationships between them legible to algorithms. Algorithms can then interpret a content package as the “page” I’m looking for—or remix and adapt that same content to give me a list of instructions, the number of stars on a review, the amount of time left until an office closes, and any number of other concise answers to specific questions.

Structured content is already a mainstay of many types of information on the web. Recipe listings, for instance, have been based on structured content for years. When I search, for example, “bouillabaisse recipe” on Google, I’m provided with a standard list of links to recipes, as well as an overview of recipe steps, an image, and a set of tags describing one example recipe:

A “featured snippet” for allrecipes.com on the Google results page.

The same allrecipes.com page viewed in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The pane on the right shows the machine-readable values.

This “featured snippet” view is possible because the content publisher, allrecipes.com, has broken this recipe into the smallest meaningful chunks appropriate for this subject matter and audience, and then expressed information about those chunks and the relationships between them in a machine-readable way. In this example, allrecipes.com has used both semantic HTML and linked data to make this content not merely a page, but also legible, accessible data that can be accurately interpreted, adapted, and remixed by algorithms and smart agents. Let’s look at each of these elements in turn to see how they work together across indexing, aggregation, and inference contexts.

Software agent search and semantic HTML

Semantic HTML is markup that communicates information about the meaningful relationships between document elements, as opposed to simply describing how they should look on screen. Semantic elements such as heading tags and list tags, for instance, indicate that the text they enclose is a heading (<h1>) for the set of list items (<li>) in the ordered list (<ol>) that follows.

HTML structured in this way is both presentational and semantic because people know what headings and lists look like and mean, and algorithms can recognize them as elements with defined, interpretable relationships.

HTML markup that focuses only on the presentational aspects of a “page” may look perfectly fine to a human reader but be completely illegible to an algorithm. Take, for example, the City of Boston website, redesigned a few years ago in collaboration with top-tier design and development partners. If I want to find information about how to pay a parking ticket, a link from the home page takes me directly to the “How to Pay a Parking Ticket” screen (scrolled to show detail):

As a human reading this page, I easily understand what my options are for paying: I can pay online, in person, by mail, or over the phone. If I ask Google Assistant how to pay a parking ticket in Boston, however, things get a bit confusing:

None of the links provided in the Google Assistant results take me directly to the “How to Pay a Parking Ticket” page, nor do the descriptions clearly let me know I’m on the right track. (I didn’t ask about requesting a hearing.) This is because the content on the City of Boston parking ticket page is styled to communicate content relationships visually to human readers but is not structured semantically in a way that also communicates those relationships to inquisitive algorithms.

The City of Seattle’s “Pay My Ticket” page, though it lacks the polished visual style of Boston’s site, also communicates parking ticket payment options clearly to human visitors:

The equivalent Google Assistant search, however, offers a much more helpful result than we see with Boston. In this case, the Google Assistant result links directly to the “Pay My Ticket” page and also lists several ways I can pay my ticket: online, by mail, and in person.

Despite the visual simplicity of the City of Seattle parking ticket page, it more effectively ensures the integrity of its content across contexts because it’s composed of structured content that is marked up semantically. “Pay My Ticket” is a level-one heading (<h1>), and each of the options below it are level-two headings (<h2>), which indicate that they are subordinate to the level-one element.

These elements, when designed well, communicate information hierarchy and relationships visually to readers, and semantically to algorithms. This structure allows Google Assistant to reasonably surmise that the text in these <h2> headings represents payment options under the <h1> heading “Pay My Ticket.”

While this use of semantic HTML offers distinct advantages over the “page display” styling we saw on the City of Boston’s site, the Seattle page also shows a weakness that is typical of manual approaches to semantic HTML. You’ll notice that, in the Google Assistant results, the “Pay by Phone” option we saw on the web page was not listed. If we look at the markup of this page, we can see that while the three options found by Google Assistant are wrapped in both <strong> and <h2> tags, “Pay by Phone” is only marked up with an <h2>. This irregularity in semantic structure may be what’s causing Google Assistant to omit this option from its results.

Although each of these elements would look the same to a sighted human creating this page, the machine interpreting it reads a difference. While WYSIWYG text entry fields can theoretically support semantic HTML, in practice they all too often fall prey to the idiosyncrasies of even the most well-intentioned content authors. By making meaningful content structure a core element of a site’s content management system, organizations can create semantically correct HTML for every element, every time. This is also the foundation that makes it possible to capitalize on the rich relationship descriptions afforded by linked data.

Linked data and content aggregation

In addition to finding and excerpting information, such as recipe steps or parking ticket payment options, search and software agent algorithms also now aggregate content from multiple sources by using linked data.

In its most basic form, linked data is “a set of best practices for connecting structured data on the web.” Linked data extends the basic capabilities of semantic HTML by describing not only what kind of thing a page element is (“Pay My Ticket” is an <h1>), but also the real-world concept that thing represents: this <h1> represents a “pay action,” which inherits the structural characteristics of “trade actions” (the exchange of goods and services for money) and “actions” (activities carried out by an agent upon an object). Linked data creates a richer, more nuanced description of the relationship between page elements, and it provides the structural and conceptual information that algorithms need to meaningfully bring data together from disparate sources.

Say, for example, that I want to gather more information about two recommendations I’ve been given for orthopedic surgeons. A search for a first recommendation, Scott Ruhlman, MD, brings up a set of links as well as a Knowledge Graph info box containing a photo, location, hours, phone number, and reviews from the web.

If we run Dr. Ruhlman’s Swedish Hospital profile page through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, we can see that content about him is structured as small, discrete elements, each of which is marked up with descriptive types and attributes that communicate both the meaning of those attributes’ values and the way they fit together as a whole—all in a machine-readable format.

In this example, Dr. Ruhlman’s profile is marked up with microdata based on the schema.org vocabulary. Schema.org is a collaborative effort backed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex that aims to create a common language for digital resources on the web. This structured content foundation provides the semantic base on which additional content relationships can be built. The Knowledge Graph info box, for instance, includes Google reviews, which are not part of Dr. Ruhlman’s profile, but which have been aggregated into this overview. The overview also includes an interactive map, made possible because Dr. Ruhlman’s office location is machine-readable.

The search for a second recommendation, Stacey Donion, MD, provides a very different experience. Like the City of Boston site above, Dr. Donion’s profile on the Kaiser Permanente website is perfectly intelligible to a sighted human reader. But because its markup is entirely presentational, its content is virtually invisible to software agents.

In this example, we can see that Google is able to find plenty of links to Dr. Donion in its standard index results, but it isn’t able to “understand” the information about those sources well enough to present an aggregated result. In this case, the Knowledge Graph knows Dr. Donion is a Kaiser Permanente physician, but it pulls in the wrong location and the wrong physician’s name in its attempt to build a Knowledge Graph display.

You’ll also notice that while Dr. Stacey Donion is an exact match in all of the listed search results—which are numerous enough to fill the first results page—we’re shown a “did you mean” link for a different doctor. Stacy Donlon, MD, is a neurologist who practices at MultiCare Neuroscience Center, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Multicare does, however, provide semantic and linked data-rich profiles for their physicians.

Voice queries and content inference

The increasing prevalence of voice as a mode of access to information makes providing structured, machine-intelligible content all the more important. Voice and smart software agents are not just freeing users from their keyboards, they’re changing user behavior. According to LSA Insider, there are several important differences between voice queries and typed queries. Voice queries tend to be:

longer;

more likely to ask who, what, and where;

more conversational;

and more specific.

In order to tailor results to these more specifically formulated queries, software agents have begun inferring intent and then using the linked data at their disposal to assemble a targeted, concise response. If I ask Google Assistant what time Dr. Ruhlman’s office closes, for instance, it responds, “Dr. Ruhlman’s office closes at 5 p.m.,” and displays this result:

These results are not only aggregated from disparate sources, but are interpreted and remixed to provide a customized response to my specific question. Getting directions, placing a phone call, and accessing Dr. Ruhlman’s profile page on swedish.org are all at the tips of my fingers.

When I ask Google Assistant what time Dr. Donion’s office closes, the result is not only less helpful but actually points me in the wrong direction. Instead of a targeted selection of focused actions to follow up on my query, I’m presented with the hours of operation and contact information for MultiCare Neuroscience Center.

MultiCare Neuroscience Center, you’ll recall, is where Dr. Donlon—the neuroscientist Google thinks I may be looking for, not the orthopedic surgeon I’m actually looking for—practices. Dr. Donlon’s profile page, much like Dr. Ruhlman’s, is semantically structured and marked up with linked data.

To be fair, subsequent trials of this search did produce the generic (and partially incorrect) practice location for Dr. Donion (“Kaiser Permanente Orthopedics: Morris Joseph MD”). It is possible that through repeated exposure to the search term “Dr. Stacey Donion,” Google Assistant fine-tuned the responses it provided. The initial result, however, suggests that smart agents may be at least partially susceptible to the same availability heuristic that affects humans, wherein the information that is easiest to recall often seems the most correct.

There’s not enough evidence in this small sample to support a broad claim that algorithms have “cognitive” bias, but even when we allow for potentially confounding variables, we can see the compounding problems we risk by ignoring structured content. “Donlon,” for example, may well be a more common name than “Donion” and may be easily mistyped on a QWERTY keyboard. Regardless, the Kaiser Permanente result we’re given above for Dr. Donion is for the wrong physician. Furthermore, in the Google Assistant voice search, the interaction format doesn’t verify whether we meant Dr. Donlon; it just provides us with her facility’s contact information. In these cases, providing clear, machine-readable content can only work to our advantage.

The business case for structured content design

In 2012, content strategist Karen McGrane wrote that “you don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.”

This statement was intended to help designers, strategists, and businesses prepare for the imminent rise of mobile. It continues to ring true for the era of linked data. With the growing prevalence of smart assistants and voice-based queries, an organization’s website is less and less likely to be a potential visitor’s first encounter with rich content. In many cases—such as finding location information, hours, phone numbers, and ratings—this pre-visit engagement may be a user’s only interaction with an information source.

These kinds of quick interactions, however, are only one small piece of a much larger issue: linked data is increasingly key to maintaining the integrity of content online. The organizations I’ve used as examples, like the hospitals, government agencies, and colleges I’ve consulted with for years, don’t measure the success of their communications efforts in page views or ad clicks. Success for them means connecting patients, constituents, and community members with services and accurate information about the organization, wherever that information might be found. This communication-based definition of success readily applies to virtually any type of organization working to further its business goals on the web.

The model of building pages and then expecting users to discover and parse those pages to answer questions, though time-tested in the pre-voice era, is quickly becoming insufficient for effective communication. It precludes organizations from participating in emergent patterns of information seeking and discovery. And—as we saw in the case of searching for information about physicians—it may lead software agents to make inferences based on insufficient or erroneous information, potentially routing customers to competitors who communicate more effectively.

By communicating clearly in a digital context that now includes aggregation and inference, organizations are more effectively able to speak to their users where users actually are, be it on a website, a search engine results page, or a voice-controlled digital assistant. They are also able to maintain greater control over the accuracy of their messages by ensuring that the correct content can be found and communicated across contexts.

Getting started: who and how

Design practices that build bridges between user needs and technology requirements to meet business goals are crucial to making this vision a reality. Information architects, content strategists, developers, and experience designers all have a role to play in designing and delivering effective structured content solutions.

Practitioners from across the design community have shared a wealth of resources in recent years on creating content systems that work for humans and algorithms alike. To learn more about implementing a structured content approach for your organization, these books and articles are a great place to start:

Content Everywhere, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

“Content Modelling: A Master Skill,” Rachel Lovinger

Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane

Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 5 years

Text

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

The role of structured content

A “featured snippet” for allrecipes.com on the Google results page.

The same allrecipes.com page viewed in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The pane on the right shows the machine-readable values.

Software agent search and semantic HTML

The City of Seattle’s “Pay My Ticket” page, though it lacks the polished visual style of Boston’s site, also communicates parking ticket payment options clearly to human visitors:

Linked data and content aggregation

Voice queries and content inference

longer;

more likely to ask who, what, and where;

more conversational;

and more specific.

The business case for structured content design

In 2012, content strategist Karen McGrane wrote that “you don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.”

Getting started: who and how

Content Everywhere, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

“Content Modelling: A Master Skill,” Rachel Lovinger

Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane

Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 5 years

Text

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

The role of structured content

A “featured snippet” for allrecipes.com on the Google results page.

The same allrecipes.com page viewed in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The pane on the right shows the machine-readable values.

Software agent search and semantic HTML

The City of Seattle’s “Pay My Ticket” page, though it lacks the polished visual style of Boston’s site, also communicates parking ticket payment options clearly to human visitors:

Linked data and content aggregation

Voice queries and content inference

longer;

more likely to ask who, what, and where;

more conversational;

and more specific.

The business case for structured content design

In 2012, content strategist Karen McGrane wrote that “you don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.”

Getting started: who and how

Content Everywhere, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

“Content Modelling: A Master Skill,” Rachel Lovinger

Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane

Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 5 years

Text

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

The role of structured content

A “featured snippet” for allrecipes.com on the Google results page.

The same allrecipes.com page viewed in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The pane on the right shows the machine-readable values.

Software agent search and semantic HTML

The City of Seattle’s “Pay My Ticket” page, though it lacks the polished visual style of Boston’s site, also communicates parking ticket payment options clearly to human visitors:

Linked data and content aggregation

Voice queries and content inference

longer;

more likely to ask who, what, and where;

more conversational;

and more specific.

The business case for structured content design

In 2012, content strategist Karen McGrane wrote that “you don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.”

Getting started: who and how

Content Everywhere, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

“Content Modelling: A Master Skill,” Rachel Lovinger

Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane

Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 5 years

Text

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

The role of structured content

A “featured snippet” for allrecipes.com on the Google results page.

The same allrecipes.com page viewed in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The pane on the right shows the machine-readable values.

Software agent search and semantic HTML

The City of Seattle’s “Pay My Ticket” page, though it lacks the polished visual style of Boston’s site, also communicates parking ticket payment options clearly to human visitors:

Linked data and content aggregation

Voice queries and content inference

longer;

more likely to ask who, what, and where;

more conversational;

and more specific.

The business case for structured content design

In 2012, content strategist Karen McGrane wrote that “you don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.”

Getting started: who and how

Content Everywhere, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

“Content Modelling: A Master Skill,” Rachel Lovinger

Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane

Designing Connected Content, Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes