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fairyoftbz · 4 years ago

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rêveur | b. jacob

☕ pairing: (shy) pastry chef! jacob x fem! reader (with barista!kevin) ☕ word count: 4.2k (。_。) (oops i got carried away) ☕ genre: fluff, sort of slow-burn (more like jacob and the reader rejecting their feelings) ☕ tw: maybe some occasional swear words and one (1) mention of the reader’s ex but nothing too crazy. ☕ synopsis: you find yourself always coming back to the café down the street where you absolutely loved the pastries and befriended the barista, but you’ll soon discover the culprit of your sweet tooth. ☕ a/n: gosh it’s long but i couldn’t stop myself writing for him 🥺 i’m just too soft for him. ☕ requested: yes! i hope it’s not too bad!

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No matter how hard you tried, the efforts you put to prevent you from coming back, you always found yourself going at the local café every single week. You didn’t understand if it was the atmosphere or the warmth of the place, but you always found yourself there. The fact that it was located just down the road gave you the excuse of hanging around there more often than you should.

You could be busy, studying for finals or hang out with friends, the café was always hidden in the corner of your mind. As soon as the street works ended, your neighbourhood became the most tranquil place you’ve ever lived in. All your neighbours were friendly and polite, sticking a little note in the lift to warn the other neighbours of a potential party or loud reunion, helping each other at any occasion. Some residents, including you, owned a pet, and you were grateful that none of them was a pain in the butt for the rest of the building. When you told your friends how quiet and different it was from your former apartment, they never believed you.

While some of them would have killed to study or sleep at a place like your current one, you always found yourself going back to this local café. This little, Japanese-like coffee shop became your new obsession over the months, randomly finding it once while you wanted to go to a flower shop at the end of this street. The employees were welcoming and caring, completely catching you off guard as you were used to going to Starbucks, where some baristas and waiters could use a good lecture about politeness and respect. In the small coffee shop, their goal wasn’t to make the most money possible, it was more to please people and make them discover new coffee or pastries flavours. Everything was homemade, and that’s what encouraged you to become their number one fan. The workers, especially one, started recognising you by dint of your regular appearances at the shop, remembering one of your visits.

“Morning Y/N! Caramel macchiato, as usual? Nothing else?” Kevin, the barista, greeted you with a smile, which you returned alongside with a nod.

This barista was a social butterfly, always striking up a conversation with everyone. And he didn’t care, he just kept going, even if the customers were rude or remained quiet. You were admiring because you were among the people that stayed reserved yet polite when he started talking to you, but his ease made you comfortable enough to joke and laugh with him, striking a conversation with him whenever you had the chance, quickly becoming friends over your many visits.

“Yes, please! I need a lot of caffeine today,” you murmured, and he sadly chuckled, understanding your great need for energy. “Rough night?” he asked, and you agreed again, chuckling as you realised how lame it was. “I assisted my dog being in pain while giving birth,” you explained, and the barista’s eyes widened, his mouth falling agape in excitement. “But that’s amazing! How many did she have?” he seized your credit card without even telling you the price of your purchase - in his defence, you were so used to coming here that you knew the price of your order by heart by now - and typed on his screen, closing the cash register in a slam as it randomly opened. “She gave birth to four healthy puppies, they’re so adorable,” you replied, and the man in front of you smiled as brightly as you were.

“Those are great news! Oh, by the way, would you like to have a taste of the discovery of our pastry chef? You should have seen how happy he looked when he finished the batch this morning,” he explained, and you followed him to the window display, indicating with his finger what resembled a mille-feuille. “That looks nice, I’ll have one, then,” you stated as you were to hand him your credit card again, which he hesitantly took before looking at the back office. You asked him if something was wrong, but he shook his head with a smile and gave you a tray with your drink and the pastry. “Have a great day Kevin!” you thanked him while he washed his hands, head turning to you before shooting you a friendly wink. “You too, Y/N! And you can always tell me if you need someone to take one of the puppies, I’ll gladly adopt one. I only have to talk with my girlfriend first,” your eyes turned into crescent moons filled with joy at his words, and you lifted your thumb excitedly. He quickly waved before serving the next customer, his signature undying smile plastered on his face.

Comfortably sitting down at an empty table, you took off your coat and gulped a sip of your drink, your mouth salivating at the sight of the food. Grabbing the fork, you slid it against the pastry and brought it to your mouth, the sugary taste melting against your tongue. You ate more and more until you finished, almost tempted to go back to Kevin and ask him for another one. But you ignored your love of good food and started getting to work, getting a book and your computer out of your bag, touching up your project that you had spent a lot of time working on. It was one of the last things you had to do for university, and you were delighted to get it done to finally move on.

“Is everything okay?” You recognised the voice of your favourite barista, smiling as you watched him clearing your tray. “Yeah, thanks! Actually, can you tell the chef that it was amazing? I loved how incredible it tasted,” you explained, and Kevin smiled brightly, nodding. “I promise I’ll do it. Jacob gets so happy when he receives recognition, I’m sure it’s going to brighten his day,” nodding at you, he took your empty tray back to the counter.

Quickly saving your paper on your computer, you turned your head to the side to stare at the barista, smiling as you noticed him disappearing in the back as he called his friend’s name.

“Jacob!” Kevin spoke as he wiped his wet hands on his apron, his friend slightly flinching as the voice filled the silence he was used to working in. “Are we out of something?” the baker worriedly asked, and Kevin shook his head, a chuckle escaping from his mouth. “No, no, I’m just doing my job, being a messenger,” Jacob slightly frowned and stopped spreading yolk on the biscuits. “One of my friends, Y/N, came and ate the mille-feuille you made this morning. She said that it was excellent, and she wanted me to tell you,” Kevin explained, and the baker blinked a few times, the tip of his ears getting progressively red as he processed his friend’s words. “Thank you, I appreciate it,” the baker replied with a smile, peeking out of the back office to try and get a look at the customers. “Is she still there?” he asked, and Kevin peered closer, shaking his head as your seat was now found empty.

Jacob nodded and went back to work, a bit disappointed to not have been able to see you, hence the pout forming onto his face, but he was touched that someone complimented him on his skills. Of course, it was his job after all, but it always felt nice to receive compliments and validation that what you do is fantastic. Jacob wasn’t the most confident person in the world, so your words only brought him the daily dose of happiness and the credits he deserved.

You came back the next week, the atmosphere of the café had changed into something quite hectic, almost stressing you out when you came here to relax and chill out from your day at uni. Now that your project was done and submitted, you had some hours to kill before meeting up with some friends. Without even noticing, you arrived in the middle of rush hour, people jostling one another to get some pastries or a quick coffee before going back to work. You had to put back into place a businessman that tried to overtake you to place his order, feeling your heart hammering in your chest while doing so. The excuse of being in a rush didn’t persuade you, riposting that you also had to go somewhere so he went back behind you, breathing out of frustration to make you feel guilty, but it didn’t work. You only rolled your eyes and waited, smirking to yourself as the man behind you gave up and left, cussing.

A hand settled the pastries in the window display in a rush, people massing together to decide on their order. Kevin was all over the place but still an angel, a tired yet bright smile adorning his face. Once it was your turn, a man walked behind your friend and recognised the thin hands that placed the pastries in front of you a few minutes earlier. “Jacob? We ran out of chocolate chip cookies, we need a new batch asap, bro. We’re selling them like hot cakes.Y/N, hi, the usual?” Kevin said, and you looked up at the name, the baker stopping in his tracks and nodded, a tired look on his face. Kevin seized the opportunity to grab a chocolate croissant from the tray his friend was holding, wrapping it in a napkin.

Your eyes connected with Jacob’s for a second, his light brown pupils holding something warm and gentle towards you. He wiped the flour off his apron before quickly looking back at you, pushing the strands of hair away from his eyes before replacing his baker cap. He looked in great need of sleep, the bags under his eyes enhancing the empathy you had for him. He was handsome and adorable at the same time, your heart not being able to choose what side to fall for. The baker tiredly nodded at his friend’s request and disappeared, hearing him hastily get back to work.

“Oh uhm, yes, please,” you stammered, and Kevin smirked, humming in agreement, and typed on his screen. You shyly cleared your throat as your friend probably understood your train of thoughts since you weren’t so discrete in observing the baker, but thankfully, he didn’t raise it.

Once the rush hour had calmed down, and the coffee shop quieted down again, just like it was when you came last time, Kevin took his break with Jacob. The manager took over, leaving the two employees time to take a much-needed break and breathe for a while, gathering enough energy to make it to the end of the afternoon.

“It was her that complimented your mille-feuille,” Kevin revealed as he motioned to your table with a nod, where you were happily calling a friend and munching on the pastry the barista had placed on your tray.

Jacob followed his friend’s finger, and an honest, tired smile emerged on his face when he noticed how bright and sunny you looked. You looked so soft and nice to have around, making the baker wonder how it was to have a conversation with you. Eyes turning into crescent moons as you laughed at one of your friend’s joke, you failed to notice the employee looking in your direction, his colleague observing him out of the corner of his eye while sipping his iced americano.

“She’s pretty, right?” Kevin mumbled, but Jacob didn’t hear him. “What did you say?” The pastry chef mindlessly asked, gaze trailing on your figure. “Y/N. She’s pretty, don’t you think?” Jacob’s eyes widened and stared back at his friend, who was giggling. “It’s okay, I’ll keep it a secret,” the barista nudged his tired friend in the ribs, finishing his drink. “You better,” his colleague finished his coffee, throwing the paper cup in a bin before going back to work, leaving a chuckling Kevin behind. “Why do I feel like cupid out of a sudden?” the barista mumbled to himself, a smirk appearing on his face as he stood up and went back inside.

The next week, as you hung around, you felt the same way of tension as soon as you stepped into the café as last time. Jacob was surprisingly serving customers, juggling between the coffees and the pastries baking in the back office. “H-hi!” you greeted Jacob, and he slightly froze at your word, greeting you with a bright smile. You were surprised when he didn’t even ask for your order, getting straight to work and wishing him a nice day as you walked to your usual seat. However, as you took your first sip, you felt your stomach churn and a disgusting taste landing on your throat. Shivers travelled down your spine as you swallowed the bitter liquid you recognised that belonged to the iced americano. A wave of memories invaded your mind as you remembered how terrible it tasted once you took a sip from your ex’s drink, who was addicted to this type of beverage.

Jacob got your order wrong, and you swallowed thickly several times, pondering if it were a good idea to add more stress to the poor baker’s shoulders by pointing at his mistake, but you couldn’t bring yourself to drink this no matter how hard you tried. You stood up and walked to the side of the counter, waiting for the people to get served before you caught the baker’s attention. You started to calmly explain the uncomfortable situation you were in to the barista, his ears became bright red as another customer came and seemed to have your drink in your hand. The customer got extremely mad as he was apparently in a rush, yelling and cursing at the baker.

“You are paid for doing this, how could you make an order wrong? It’s not that difficult!” the man exclaimed, and you noticed Jacob’s eyes darkening. You knew that he wanted to talk back to the customer, but he didn’t plan on getting fired, so he just listened and nodded. “Jacob, don’t worry I can wait, serve him first,” you said before walking back to the table after offering him a smile, noticing him nodding again and take the two drinks that you and the other man laid on the counter.

The baker cleared his throat as he arrived a few minutes later with your correct order and a slice of chocolate cake.

“I’m sorry for giving you the wrong order. I am the only one here because Kevin is on holiday and my manager was supposed to come, but he left me in the lurch. So… I’m a bit stressed out,” Jacob explained quickly, earning a reassuring smile from him. He swallowed thickly but felt a wave of relief crash onto him as you didn’t look mad at all. “It’s okay, Jacob, it’s human to make mistakes. If it were another drink, I wouldn’t have said anything but I really can’t drink strong coffee. Thank you for the pastry, and uhm… good luck for today?” you said as he stood up, his tired eyes shining with thankfulness as he got back behind the counter. You quickly enjoyed your food and left after trying to wave at him timidly, but sadly, he didn’t notice you.

When you visited the café on the other days, he disappeared again in the back office, Kevin taking back the lead. There, with your caramel macchiato in hand, you started daydreaming about the pastry chef, his dreamy hands and beauteous face. You imagined romantic dates and activities you could do together, such as baking you new pastries before offering them at the coffee shop or even spending a day at the park together, a lost yet gentle smile on your face.

Everything about him made you dream. He exuded comfort, fondness, and warmth, his eyes always pearly with delight. Even a blind man would not have missed how amazing and passionate he is when it came to baking. You once overheard a conversation between him and Kevin, talking about a new receipt he found on the internet and how excited he was to try it out. His soft voice never failed to make you smile, his fluffy hair making you wonder how soft it was and how good it’d feel if you carded your fingers through his locks as you hugged him.

It was undeniable and inevitable, you had tried to deny those feelings during the past few weeks, but you couldn’t reject the fact that you had a massive crush on Jacob. Kevin gently teased you about this when his friend appeared, making sure to say his name aloud to catch your attention when you sat at a table, only to watch him quickly find a hiding place. You also wished you would see him more often, feeling quite defeated to see him escape your gaze as soon as he saw you. With the number of times you came to the coffee shop and saw your friend, your crush’s brief appearances weren’t enough to fulfil your little heart’s happiness. You wanted more of him, but, much to your dismay – and secretly Jacob’s – you didn’t know what to do.

“Ah Y/N! I talked with my girlfriend today, and I was wondering if I could adopt one of the puppies? I showed her the pictures you sent me, and she is all over the moon for this one,” Kevin said as he placed your order on the tray, quickly getting his phone out after checking whether some customers were waiting or not. “Yeah, no problem!” you smiled as you recognised the crazy, adventurous one. “I asked the vet, and he told me that they are old enough to be adopted. Is it okay if you come with your girlfriend within the next few days? I can’t wait for you to have one, they are precious!” you exclaimed but calmed instantly, heart hammering in your chest as your lovely baker appeared from the back office, visibly in a bad mood. He didn’t even glance at you, his attitude sent a pang in your heart, but Kevin just shook his head, winking at you. “Can we come tonight to your place? I’m excited to meet my future baby boy!” Kevin made sure that his friend heard, noticing that he was listening carefully yet discreetly, hence his movements coming suddenly to a halt. The barista gave you a knowing smile and kept on chatting with you as if nothing happened.

That night, someone knocked at your door, and you excitedly walked to the main entrance, happily greeting the couple, and welcoming them in, eyes widening as Jacob had tagged along.

“What a great surprise!” you awkwardly mumbled, and he nodded, his smile outshining the sun as you let them all inside. Kevin and his girlfriend were quick to follow the yaps of your dogs to her newborns, leaving you with Jacob, who was quick to grab your wrist gently to make you stay with him. You mindlessly smiled, but deep down, you were sure that Kevin did this on purpose.

“I couldn’t help but hear your conversation with Kevin, and I’ve always loved dogs, and since yours gave birth, I wanted to see them,” he explained, and you smiled, heart hammering in your chest. “Yeah no worries, you are welcome here! Let’s go see them before they steal all the puppies.”

With Jacob on your heels, you went to the spare room that became your dog’s nursery, the couple already cooing at the black puppy as you slowly opened the door.

“Look how proud she is,” his girlfriend said, looking at you with twinkling eyes. Your dog walked up to you, tail wagging as she got all the attention on her and the puppies. Since your dog only allowed you to reach inside the box, you were quick to lift the only black puppy out of the four and placed it in your friend’s arms. “I named him Squishy, I had no inspiration for the names,” you giggled as Kevin pet its belly, the puppy trying to lick his finger.

You brought everyone to the living room, where you offered your guests some drinks and started talking together. Your friend’s girlfriend was adorable, over the moon with the dog, just like Kevin had predicted it. Jacob was more on the reserved side, just like at the café, your dog climbing up the couch to rest her head on his thigh, asking for caresses. You felt a sense of betrayal rushing through your veins as she preferred a perfect stranger over you, retrieving her head every time you tried to pet her. Your dog looked at you almost with a mocking look, as if she wanted to show you that she dared to go up to him, unlike you.

It was getting late, but you were having fun, the couple confirming that they adopted the puppy. You helped packing everything necessary for the puppy and got ready to leave, thanking you for your kindness and hospitality. You were happy but felt a bit sad that someone already adopted one of the puppies. It was hard not to get attached to those cute little creatures, but you were reassured that he’d be treated like a king by living with your friends.

Jacob, on the other hand, was stuck on the couch as your dog prevented him from doing the slightest movement.

“She is quite stubborn,” Jacob shyly giggled as he tried to move his leg, only to have the dog whining and yapping. “Luna, stop! Let Jacob go, now!” you walked up to the couch, and she fled, strolling away from you each time you tried to get closer to her.

After many unsuccessful attempts, you managed to lure her into the nursery, shutting the door shut and she barked, but the apartment was quick to fall in silence.

“Finally,” you said as you went back to the living room, where Jacob was quietly admiring the photos on the wall. He gave you a quick smile and went back to his observations, you standing next to him with a slightly embarrassed smile. “It was nice to come here, but I’ll still reconsider my choices. I don’t want to decide on a whim, I wanna make sure that I’m settled and ready to welcome a puppy.” You nodded at his words, throwing him a reassuring gaze. “I completely understand, Jacob. You can take all the time you need. I’m planning on keeping one anyway, so if you change your mind, you can always come and visit,” you said, and an awkward silence installed around you two, Jacob scratching his neck as he avoided your gaze.

“Y-you know. I enjoy… what you bake, really, and I can’t wait for your next pastries,” you shyly mumbled to the man in front of you, who looked up with red adorning his cheeks. “I’m touched by what you’re telling me, thank you so much,” he said and quickly looked outside before inhaling and turning back to you.

“I’m going to go, but… I was wondering Y/N… y-you know, you’ve been friends with Kevin for a while and come around the café regularly, so I was wondering if we could also hang out, but you know… only the two of us? Maybe without Kevin?” Jacob was finding his words, thickly swallowing as he tried his best to tell you what he wanted. You giggled at the way he said things, imagining Kevin on his own while you were together. “Sure! Sure thing! You probably have a hectic schedule, but we can find something that works for the two of us?” you suggested, and he smiled, taking out his phone from his jeans pocket, holding the device with a nervous grip.

“Can I get your number, then? It’s gonna be easier to communicate rather than you coming around the café all the time. I- It’s not what I mean though, I really like having you around the shop, but you know, it’d be easier for the two of us,” you both shyly giggled as he messed up, the tip of his ears glowing bright red.

You were quick to enter your number in a new contact, confirming it before returning the phone to its owner, who gave you the warmest smile you had ever seen on his face.

“I’ll call you tomorrow then,” Jacob said as you walked him to the door, him thanking you just like your friends did. “Drive safe,” you whispered, and he nodded, giving you a soft smile before getting closer to you and softly pressing his lips on your cheek.

Your eyes widened at the sudden display of affection but smiled, feeling a wave of embarrassment invading your body. You waved at him until the elevator arrived, closing the front door with your heart pounding in your chest, doing a little dance of joy in the corridor as something concrete was starting to form between the two of you.

And the best was still yet to come. ♡

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someonestolemyshoes · 4 years ago

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The Keeper’s Introduction

Here is my fic for @levihan-drabbles Fluff Friday!

Prompt: "I know I just broke into your apartment in the middle of the night but there are some bad people after my special power over alternate universes and I've decided to put all my faith on you to save everything."

They looked oddly at home, expertly navigating his kitchen. As though they had been there before. They grabbed the honeypot from another cupboard, and found a spoon in one of the drawers.

"Oi," Levi said. "How'd you know where I keep all my shit?"

The stranger waved their hand flippantly, "Oh, I'm well acquainted with your layout. It never really changes, wherever you are."

Levi had just settled in for the night when a loud echoing crack sounded in the street below.

It was well past midnight, far too late for such a racket. The sudden violence of it was almost enough to make him spill his tea. He waited with his breath held, his heart shamefully hammering in his chest. Levi prided himself on being the type who doesn't scare so easily—but one can't be blamed for being alarmed by an unexpected noise in the dead of night, can they?

The world remained mercifully still and quiet. Levi approached the open window slowly (carefully, not frightfully; there is no indignity in being cautious) and peered out into the night. The sky outside was almost full dark, saved from the pressing black by only a smattering of stars and the moon, a papery sliver of a thing hooked high over the distant rooftops. The window, open only an inch, gave entry to a gentle breeze, still balmy despite the lateness of the hour. The town was drowsy, dozing; only the occasional candle flickered in the darkness, and no sound, prior to or following the thunderous clap, could be heard.

The street, three stories below, was empty. Levi scanned the road, but found nothing unusual. The strangest thing, perhaps, was that his face was the only one peering out. None of his neighbours had deemed the explosion worth investigating.

It was, for all the world, a night as perfectly normal as any other. Levi had seen no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary might occur.

He blew out a breath. Maybe he had imagined it. He had been quite engrossed in his novel, and it was well past time for him to be sleeping. It isn't unreasonable to assume that the sound of a cat, perhaps, rattling the bins in the alley had startled his tired, occupied mind. Resolving to finish his chapter and go straight to bed, Levi gave the street one last cursory glance, and turned away from the window.

He had just settled back into his chair and picked up his tea cup and his book, when the doorbell rang.

The chime in itself was yet another oddity, for Levi received visitors only very rarely, and never at an hour so late as this.

He set down his drink and lowered the book to his lap with a frown. Better, he thought, not to answer straight away. Then they might leave without causing him any trouble—and if they rang a second time, and even a third, Levi would suppose it might be something urgent and might finally be pressed to receive his unwanted guest.

Much to his pleasure, the bell did not sound a second time. Levi waited, poised to stand, but minutes passed by with no sound at all, and eventually, mildly disgruntled now by the persistent interruptions, he settled back and tried, once again, to read.

He turned the page. Picked up his now lukewarm tea, and took a sip. Sunk down more comfortably into the plush armchair. He felt himself begin to settle. The peculiarities of the night drifted from his thoughts as he read, mind too engaged with the story in his hands to think too deeply over the strange events that had occurred.

And then, without any warning at all, a godawful shriek rent the air as Levi's window was wrenched open from the outside, the wood frame protesting with a violent screech. Levi jerked in his seat, book falling from his hands and his tea cup shattering as it struck the stone floor.

There was a person, making no efforts at all to be quiet, unashamedly clambering in through his window. Levi watched, too shocked to move, while they pulled themself over the sill and crumpled in a heap to the floor.

Levi could do nothing but stare as the intruder heaved themself up. They unfurled long limbs, straightening to their full height, and turned quickly to poke their head out of the open window. They looked left, then right, down, and most peculiarly, up, before pulling themself back inside and slamming the window closed. They drew the curtains shut, and turned to look into the room, casting their eyes about the place as though inspecting it.

They walked with a relaxed gate, seemingly unbothered by their rude intrusion. Levi couldn't be sure if they had noticed his presence, for they made no show of knowing he was even there, and Levi was still too stunned to announce it. He watched the stranger rotate in a slow circle, looking everywhere from the ceiling down to the floor. Satisfied, they slapped their hands to their hips and nodded once, and then their gaze fell on Levi, still sitting stiff as a board in his chair. The light from Levi's lamp cast half their face in shadow, glinting off the lenses of their glasses. Their mouth stretched in a wide, manic grin.

Levi swallowed hard. His courage returned to him swiftly, urging him to his feet. He faced the stranger head on with his face twisted in a scowl.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The intruder's grin only widened.

"Oh, Mike was right after all!"

They crossed to him quickly in two great strides. Levi twisted his head this way and that to watch them as they circled him. This close, Levi could better see the sharp hook of their nose, the angle of their jaw and the whiskey colour of their eyes, with strange, dark markings around their irises, like the face of a clock. He could also see the fingerprint smudges on their lenses. They wore all black, from their muddy boots up to the overlarge hood draped over their shoulders like a small cloak.

"Shitty four-eyes, answer me."

They let out a gleeful laugh.

"Oh, Mike my friend, you are a genius!" They said. And then, to Levi, they added, "Mike can sniff out you Guardians half a universe away, I swear."

Levi had no idea who Mike was, or what a Guardian was, and frankly, he didn't care. He levelled his home invader with a sharp glare. When he spoke again, it was through gritted teeth. "I said, what the hell are you doing climbing through my window? How? I’m three stories up!"

The stranger's smile finally faltered. They tilted their head. "I did try the doorbell."

"Why did you want to be in my house?"

"Ah, well, you see—that's kind of a long story." They turned on their heel and strode into the kitchenette. Levi watched on, incredulous, as they filled his kettle with water and set it on the stove to boil. With one hand, they reached into the cupboard above the sink and rifled through the boxes until they found Levi's stash of chamomile tea, and with the other they reached for the draining board, and plucked up two clean cups by their handles. All of this, while they watched the water begin to simmer in the pot.

They looked oddly at home expertly navigating his kitchen. As though they had been there before. They grabbed the honeypot from another cupboard, and found a spoon in one of the drawers.

"Oi," Levi said. "How'd you know where I keep all my shit?"

The stranger waved their hand flippantly, "Oh, I'm well acquainted with your layout. It never really changes, wherever you are."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean, shitty glasses?" Levi tried to inject an air of disinterested anger into his tone, but the stranger’s words, said so plainly, raised goosebumps on his skin.

They chuckled. "I can't tell you how many times we've had this conversation. I'm Hange, by the way."

Hange brought the tea over to where Levi stood, and held one cup out for Levi to take. He clenched his fists by his sides instead. The tea, upsettingly, smelled perfect; brewed at the right temperature, for the right time, and sweetened with just a drop of honey. When he didn't take the cup, Hange shrugged and set it on the little table by the armchair. They spied the broken china on the floor and smirked, "you never have much luck with that one."

"Excuse me?"

"That cup. It's the one with the gold rim, right? And all the little forget-me-nots around the outside?"

Levi said nothing. Hange, irritatingly and unexplainably, for the cup was in many pieces now and the lighting was too poor to see it in any great detail, was absolutely right.

"You still haven't answered my question," he said.

"Right, right. Like I said, it's a long story. Do you want the unabridged version or are you happy with the footnotes?"

"A summary is fine."

Hange took a great slurp of their tea. "Long story short, I pissed off some very bad people, and now they are after me for my, ah—abilities."

"But why my house?"

"Mike told me where you'd be. And boy, am I glad he did! I barely made it in time. I was aiming to land right in your sitting room, but I guess my calculations were a little off…" they trailed away with a frown. Levi watched their lips work quickly, as though they were running numbers in their head. Then they stopped, and shook themselves off. "Doesn't matter now anyway. I didn't wake you, did I? World hopping can be pretty loud."

That, at least, accounted for the sound Levi had heard outside. But...

"Hange," Levi said. "You've explained nothing."

"Give me a minute, Levi. It's complicated! There's a lot of history and I already know you don't want to hear any of it. Besides, we wouldn't have the time. We'll have to leave early in the morning."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Sure you are," Hange said. "I have to meet up with Erwin, and I need you to get me there."

"Where's there? Who the hell is Erwin?"

Again, Hange waved their hand at him. "Unimportant. Look, what matters is this: I might've messed with the timeline in another universe, and that may have caused some….upset, with some very important and very powerful people. I only changed a little bit!! I met this guy, Onyankopon—he's so cool, you know? Smart as hell. He had this idea that—well, it was the base model for an airplane."

"A what?"

"Well, see, that's the thing. Onyankopon asked the same question, and I just...told him. A little bit. I went a little too deep into the mechanics of it all, and he...well he might have developed a model that works. Two hundred years before it was supposed to exist in his universe. And now the Bureau is looking for me, but I’m not done with Erwin’s mission yet and so I am putting all my eggs in your basket. I need you to get me out of this in one piece.”

Hange looked more sheepish about this insane indiscretion than they had about breaking and entering.

"You're fucking insane," he said. Hange let out a bright laugh.

"So you've told me, more times than I can count."

Levi pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He felt a headache coming on.

"You look stressed," Hange said, sounding almost sympathetic. "Drink the tea! It'll help, though it's probably a little cold by now."

"You're the reason I'm stressed, idiot."

"Sorry about that," they said, not sounding very sorry at all. "I know the circumstances aren't...ideal. I'd much rather have come to you another time and explained everything properly, but—well, I was kind of in a hurry, and Mike sniffed you out, said you were the nearest you to my location. I didn't have much of a choice."

"Who the hell is Mike? Some kind of mutt?"

"Sort of," Hange said with a grin. "He's a Seeker. It's his job to locate people like you—people like us—when the Bureau needs us. Fortunately for me, Mike isn't overly loyal to our dear overseers—his allegiance lies with Erwin, as does mine. And Erwin is decidedly less strict about most of the timelines."

Hange circled around Levi and set their hands on his shoulders. Something strange sparked there, a heat that sunk through skin and muscle and settled right in his bones. They had already ushered him into his chair by the time he shrugged them off.

"What does any of this batshit garbage you're spewing have to do with me?"

"You are a Guardian. It's your role to protect people like me from harm."

"The hell does that mean, people like you? I’m not fighting anyone to save your scrawny ass from anything. You fucked up, you deal with it. "

Hange stood up straight and puffed out their chest. "I am a Keeper. I'm supposed to keep order in the timelines. According to the Bureau, at least. Erwin has other ideas—but that's a story for another time. For now, we should rest. Like I said, we've got to leave early in the morning."

"To go where?"

"To Erwin!" Hange said brightly. "I don't have my pocket watch anymore, so we're gonna have to take the traditional route. There's no way I'll make it on my own. And don’t worry, you won’t have to fight anyone. I’ll explain it all on the journey."

"Look,” Levi said. “Can't you just...drop out of the sky whenever this Erwin guy is? I'm sure he's got his own window you can climb through."

"No can do," Hange said. "I can only hop between universes. I need my watch to move fast within any one universe, and mine took a dunk in a river, during my escape."

"Magic bullshit technology that lets you, what, teleport across the damn globe? And it can't survive a dip in a river?"

"They aren't watertight," Hange said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And they still run on batteries. Moblit is working on improving the technology."

Levi's head throbbed. He rubbed his eyes and glowered up at Hange, who was watching him with a soft smile. Levi deepened his scowl.

"What's that shitty face for?"

Hange's expression softened further. They looked at him with so much fondness, Levi felt his face grow warm.

"I've missed you, you know," they said. "Well, not you, but—you. It's been...a really long time."

"That makes no sense," Levi said. He meant it, too—nothing Hange had said to him made sense at all. It was the stuff of storybooks, fairy tales; the product of an imagination run wild. And yet, Hange's presence, alarming as it had been and frankly still was, felt oddly familiar. The warmth of their hands still rested on his shoulders. In spite of himself, Levi felt the corner of his lip begin to curl into a small, absent smile. He wrestled it back down.

Hange laughed, a light, lilting thing, and yawned. They crossed the room to Levi's small dining table and dropped heavily into a chair.

"I suppose you're right," they said with a lazy grin. "It doesn't make any sense at all. You'll just have to trust me."

"You broke into my house. You're not selling your reliability very well. And don't even think about it."

Hange looked over at him, surprised. "Think about what?"

"Putting your filthy feet on my damn table."

"Whatever gave you the idea I'd do something like that?"

Levi opened his mouth to answer, but snapped it closed swiftly as the thought, which had come to him thoroughly unbidden, fully registered in his mind. You do it all the time.

Levi pinched his eyes, staring at Hange. They sat with a curious little tilt of their head, watching him with an open, analytical look. Levi squirmed under their gaze.

"I don't know," he said. "Seems like the kind of shit you'd do."

"Like something I've done before?"

Levi flinched, and Hange smiled all teeth at him, a strange mix of impish and pleased. They propped their elbow on the table and rested their chin on their palm. "There it is," they said quietly.

"What?" Levi asked. Too eager. Hange looked thrilled as they straightened up in their chair, eyes gleaming in the lamplight.

"There are a lot of you's, one in every single universe, just like there are a lot of Isabel's, and Farlan's, and Petra's—"

"How do you—you know what, nevermind. Go on."

"But because you're a Guardian, all your you's are linked. And because you're my Guardian," Hange looked weirdly proud at this pronouncement, "it's only natural that you remember me. It'll happen a lot, I'm sure. Try not to freak out."

Levi snorted. "You say that now?"

"Would it have made a difference if I said it earlier?"

Levi mulled that over for a second. No, he supposed it wouldn’t. He’d have thought them completely unhinged either way. Instead of answering, he picked up the tea from the table and drained it in three gulps. When he looked back at Hange, they were smiling brightly at him.

"Just how you like it, right?"

"I prefer it hot."

Hange kicked their heels against the floor and shot him an affronted look. With a petulant pout of their lip, they said, " So unfair, Levi! That's not my fault."

He shrugged them off. He would never admit it to them, but he took some bizarre delight in watching Hange's tantrum. It felt all too natural. They slumped back in their chair, head tipped over the back rest to stare at the ceiling.

"Ah, you're as cruel as ever," they said. "It's good. Very you."

Hange pushed their glasses up to their forehead and rubbed at their eyes. The scene looked painfully familiar; Hange, smiling sleepily, bleary eyed in the low blush of candlelight. Only, in the image forming in his mind, they were resting against a plump, well-fluffed pillow, and their hair was down from its ponytail, still messy and falling over their face. In the image forming in his mind, Levi's own hand reached out to brush a few strands from their cheeks, and Hange turned into his palm, their lips brushing the sensitive skin there.

Levi shook his head, face a little warm. Hange was watching him again. He scowled at them for good measure, gathering up his own cup and theirs, and washing them in the sink. He let the water run cool over his hands for a long moment.

"You should rest, if you're tired," he said. From the table, Hange hummed.

"Good idea," they said. "The bed's big enough for two, right?"

Levi turned sharply to refute them, but Hange didn't give him the chance. They had already heaved themself up out of their chair and kicked off their boots, and now, with the practiced ease of someone who had lived in the house for years, they were wandering down the hall and straight into Levi's bedroom, leaving the door open behind them.

Levi dried his hands slowly on the dish towel. He looked at the armchair, big and well-cushioned, spacious enough for him to recline in for a few hours rest. It wouldn't be the first time, and he had no doubt it would be the last. And then he looked down the hallway, where Hange must have lit the lamp; warm light spilled out into the corridor, and Levi was reminded abruptly of his strange thoughts.

This Hange, they were crazy. Talking the most nonsense Levi had ever heard come straight from another person's mouth. He would be better off resting his eyes in his chair, and kicking Hange out at first light.

That was the logical thing to do. The reasonable thing. That was the desperate plea of his better judgement.

Instead, he blew out his lamp, and stormed down the hallway after them.

"You lie on my fresh sheets in your filthy clothes and I'm throwing you back out the window, Guardian or not."

#levihan #snk #my writing #aaaah I didn't know what to do for this but I ended up having a lot of fun!!!

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julemmaes · 4 years ago

Note

Nesta comes home from the school run and finds Cassian asleep on the sofa with baby Andra asleep on his chest

So At Peace

Nessian modern au set in the The Seven Of Us universe (masterlist)

acotar next gen fan fiction

A/N: just fluff with some boobies jokes for my girls (Maizie, Sayo, Sim and Cass) cause they could sue me for emotional distress every day but they don’t and I call that friendship:)

Word count: 2,445

Nesta felt like she could close her eyes and never wake up again. Ezra and Cal were playing in the back seats of the car, screaming about fantastic animals and people with bat wings, fighting an evil king over some weird pan, but she wasn't paying that much attention.

It had only been two weeks since she had returned to work after Andra's birth, and although she no longer had any kind of physical pain that she could justify with her pregnancy, every now and then she felt as if her whole body was being crushed under a press, repeatedly, until not a single intact bone remained under her skin. And today had not been a light day.

Her boss had sent her so many manuscripts from authors who had explicitly asked for her, and she hadn't managed to finish a single one, when in normal circumstances - where she could sleep for more than four hours straight - she would have read at least two and started editing one.

But being a full-time mother of five young children and working in a publishing house was too much even for her sometimes.

She sighed with relief when she turned right and saw the house in that familiar light yellow. She couldn't wait to leave her two sons with the neighbour for a few hours and enjoy the evening with her husband and her little girl. She couldn't wait to lie down on the couch and sleep for a few minutes while she fed Andra and let Cassian take care of dinner.

The other two girls were at Gwyn's house, who, with all the recommendations and prodding Nesta had given her, had kicked her out of her house yelling not to come back until eleven the next morning. The new mother had stood motionless for a few seconds, blinking at the door they'd just slammed in her face, and then giggled when she'd heard Azriel ask his daughters and hers what they wanted to do first - whether to put on nail polish or play "assassins".

That game wasn't exactly the mothers' favourite, but whenever the three brothers got together on the weekends, all the families ended up picking up one of the fake guns that fired rubber bullets and it was war. Countless times one of the fathers or uncles had hit one of the children in the eye before Lucien hit Dara and Elain decided that if they wanted to continue playing that game, they would all have to wear goggles.

Now, at her front door, she waited for her sons to reach the one at Drakon's house, and as soon as the man waved at her and her children blew flying kisses as they entered the older couple's home, she flopped against the door, closing her eyes.

She sighed again, bringing a hand to her face.

Nesta was so tired that she was seriously considering breastfeeding Andra and then going straight to bed. Cassian would be more than capable of picking up Ezra and Cal later and putting the youngest to sleep. He didn't need her that night.

She slipped the keys into the lock and taking a deep breath entered the house, finding it strangely quiet. She immediately thought that her husband must have taken Andra out for some air because there was absolutely no way that the two of them were here and not singing or dancing together or playing with one of the billions of toys she was given by friends and family. She slipped off her shoes and jacket, setting her computer and bag down on the cabinet in the doorway and smiled.

Cassian had been so patient lately. Much more than usual.

The labour had been long and painful, the delivery excruciating, and Nesta had never been more scared than when the doctors had pulled Andra out and the baby hadn't cried. But they were all fine now. Both she and their last child were alive and breathing and Nesta couldn't have asked for more.

She walked into the living room dragging her feet on the floor, wanting only to lie down and sleep until she had to breastfeed. She groaned thinking she couldn't even take off her bra or she'd stain another shirt with milk, but stopped as soon as she could see over the couch back, in front of one of the scenes Nesta would never tire of.

Cassian's massive muscular body, sprawled out on the cushions taking up every inch of free space on the couch, was dressed in black sweatpants and a simple white shirt that left her husband's tattoos and thick arms on full view, just as big and wide as the little pink and purple bundle curled up on his chest.

A smile broke out on Nesta's lips as she brought a hand to her throat.

Andra's legs were folded under her and one of Cassian's hands against her tiny bottom held her in place while the other was resting gracefully on her back. Back that rose and fell slowly, in time with the rhythm of her father's breathing.

Cassian's hands covered the girl's body almost entirely and Nesta couldn't help but think how relaxed and protected Andra must be feeling, her face so calm and her features drooping as her eyelids flickered. She knew very well what it felt like to lie on the man's chest while he rubbed your back to put you to sleep. Nesta had had the best dreams on that chest.

They looked so at peace.

She shifted her gaze to Cassian's face and felt a completely different emotion take over, but no less important, no less intense. She walked over to them, crouching down beside the couch and getting down on her knees right in front of them.

His dark lashes grazed the skin on his cheekbones and for the millionth time she felt jealous of how thick and dusky they were. Elegant and beautiful. She laid her head on the armrest, careful not to touch his shoulder, and reached out a hand towards Cassian, moving his hair away from his face and brushing the crinkled skin between his eyebrows. His forehead relaxed and he let out a sigh in his sleep, pushing his head against that touch involuntarily.

Nesta smiled again, admiring the beauty in those features, the line of his nose, the contour of his eyes, that pronounced jawline, until her gaze ended on the full red lips of the man who was sleeping so blissfully that he hadn't even realized someone had entered the house.

Nesta's hand moved lower, cupping his cheek, and she moved her thumb to graze his lower lip. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to feel him close. She wanted to taste him.

His lips twitched, as if acknowledging her touch, but he did not wake. She held her breath, feeling the heat pool in her lower stomach, and withdrew her hand slowly. She couldn't think about those things now.

She was tired and Cassian was exhausted, she could tell by how deeply he was sleeping, and he wasn't going to let their first time since Andra's birth be on a night when neither of them would fully appreciate it.

After what had happened with Celia, after she had been pregnant so soon after Nora, they didn't fancy having another child in the immediate future, and Andra's birth had put a fear into her that she had never felt before with her previous children. That was why Cassian had limited himself to using his hands and mouth, why Nesta had done the same.

She shifted her gaze to Andra and her smile doubled. She reached out her hand towards her, but didn't even have time to brush her face when Cassian sprang to his seat, taking the girl with him and bumping into Nesta's arm. He was on his feet in a second as he clutched Andra, who had burst into tears from her sudden awakening, to his chest. The little girl's piercing scream made them both flinch, but they knew she had only been startled by the sudden movement.

When Cassian lowered his gaze to her, who sat with a furrowed brow and her arm still outstretched in the air, he let go of a breath, closing his eyes and moving his hands to settle Andra against him, "God, Nesta," he sighed, laying a hand on Andra's head and beginning to cradle her, then gave an amused dry chuckle, "you scared me."

Nesta pulled herself up in turn, smiling, "Sorry, not my intention."

"Maybe next time don't stand so close to my face," he laughed, his eyes full of sleep but still glowing. Andra screamed again, squirming in his arms, Cassian grimaced. "I thought you were a robber or something."

Nesta shook her head as she moved closer to the two and he took a step in turn, leaning in when they were close enough. He smiled at her, "Hello, sweetheart," he closed his eyes lowering himself more and leaving a light kiss on her lips. Andra moved so much that Nesta felt the little one's head slam against her chest and they broke away chuckling. "I think she's hungry," then he looked to the wall, squinting to read the time on the big clock there. He opened his eyes wide, "We slept for four hours," then looked at her, mouthing a what the fuck.

Nesta snickered, wrapping her hands around her little girl's delicate, slender torso and feeling a sudden surge of affection when finally Andra's clear, huge eyes - full of tears - looked up at her and the crying suddenly stopped. Nesta pushed her nose against the little one's, "Why hello, beautiful creature."

Andra cooed, bringing her small hands to Nesta's cheeks and slapping her gently. She brought her against her side and looked at Cassian, ready to ask him when and how much she'd eaten last time, but the look on his face stopped the words in her throat.

He was smiling weakly at her, the weariness now much clearer in the features around his eyes, his mouth, but he was smiling as if he had never seen anything more beautiful in the world, "This is my favourite time of the day." he whispered softly, bringing a hand to his daughter's head and leaning down to kiss her forehead.

Nesta didn't know if she could still blame the hormones for the strong emotion that hit her, but she knew she didn't want to cry and said the first thing that came to her mind, "Just because I take my bra off and you can see my boobs."

Cassian threw his head back and burst out laughing, startling the little one in her arms, but Nesta smiled at her, giving her kisses on the cheeks as she relaxed again.

"You're right," he breathed and one corner of his mouth curled, "and it's because I don't see them enough."

Nesta snorted through her nose, "What are you talking about?"

"It's true, I don't see them enough. I miss them." he pouted, pushing her back to the couch and heading for the door. He looked over her shoulder, "Shall I fetch your nursing pillow?"

"Yes, thank you." nodded Nesta sitting down with her legs crossed, "And you see them at least twice a day!" she shouted so he could hear her.

"Exactly! Not enough." he shouted back, eliciting a laugh from her.

He adjusted Andra so that she was lying on her lap and began to unbutton her blouse just as Cassian walked back into the living room. He smiled mischievously at her as she lifted Andra up and he adjusted the pillow around her hips.

He sat down next to her and stretched his legs out, putting his feet up on the coffee table as Nesta unhooked the cup of her bra and set aside the breast pad. Andra's head slammed so hard against her breast that Nesta grunted in pain and hissed as the baby began to pull almost fiercely.

"God Cass," she murmured, adjusting Andra's position better so she wouldn't choke, "You starved her." she turned to him with a worried look and furrowed brows.

Cassian looked just as concerned, "She didn't wake up and I didn't think she was hungry." he scratched his head as he turned on the television and turned the volume down to minimum so as not to disturb Andra. She was never going to fall asleep after all those hours of napping, but they could always try and by now it had become a habit to watch TV without volume.

"It's okay," she said, grunting at him when Andra clamped her gums around his nipple, "It's just that she's never been this... aggressive."

He shrugged, "Maybe she's teething?"

Nesta blinked, "When you ask these questions I wonder if you're really the father of four other children or if you've just been pretending to be here for the last ten years," she murmured, "She's three months old, honey, she can't be teething."

Cassian looked at her smiling, put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards him, "Sorry, Miss baby teeth expert." then he looked at Andra and his gaze softened. He sighed and his chest vibrated against Nesta as he chuckled softly.

"What?"

"It's just that she's so beautiful," he whispered.

Nesta couldn't help herself, "Are you talking about my boob?"

Another hearty laugh, then Cassian turned to her again, looking into her eyes and placing a hand on her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb, "You're beautiful too."

"Thank you, you look pretty good too," she murmured to him, shifting her gaze to his lips. Lips that opened in a brilliant smile and closed on hers seconds later.

When they both had to pull away for air, Nesta was panting and Cassian looked more than satisfied to see that her cheeks were flushed. He left a quick kiss on her forehead and then the hand that was on her face slid down and perhaps Cassian didn't realise it, but he brushed her still covered breast with his fingertips and a jolt of excitement went through her entire body.

He placed his hand on hers, which was caressing little Andra's back in circular motions, and stayed there for the rest of the evening, until Nesta's belly began to grumble and he had to get up to cook dinner.

They put Andra to sleep immediately after eating and settled back on the couch, cuddling until sleep claimed them both as Nesta took the place that had been her daughter's until a few hours ago on his chest.

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@sjm-things @kris10maas @awesomelena555 @sannelovesreading @queenamydien29 @ireallyshouldsleeprn @messyhairday-me @ncssian @observationanxioustheorist @my-fan-side @booksstorm @maastrash @sayosdreams @thedarkdemigod @courtofjurdan @thewayshedreamed @ladywitchling @nahthanks @archeron-queen @sleeping-and-books @bri-loves-sunflowers @thegoddessofyou @ghostlyrose2 @claralady @queenestarcheron @oop-theregoesgravity @perseusannabeth @simping4bookboisngrls @anne-reads @fantastypenguins @laylaameer01 @thalia-2-rose @darkshadowqueensrule @bookstantrash

#TSOU #TSOU nessian fic #the seven of us #nesta archeron #cassian #nessian fic #nessian child #nessian children #nesta x cassian #acosf #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acotar fic #nessian fluff

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pregnant-piggy · 3 years ago

Text

Summer Games - three

Blaise Zabini x reader

masterlist

warnings: no pronouns used for the reader,

A/N: I had so much fun writing this part and coming up with all the stupid things! I really hope you like it :)

written for @omgrachwrites writing challenge with the prompts: ‘I can’t have this argument with you again.’ ‘But—’ ‘No, I’m done.’ and ‘Sorry… your hair was in your face… thought I should move it so I could see you better.’

word count: 3.9k

The next morning Blaise awoke before Draco and rather than waking his friend too, Blaise got dressed in silence and slipped out of the room. He walked down to the kitchen, where he found you sitting at the table with a mug in your hands, reading the morning papers.

‘Might rain this afternoon,’ you said without looking up.

Blaise hummed something as he sat down opposite of you and poured himself a cup of coffee. He looked up and studied your face as you read the newspaper. Your eyes scanned the pages quickly, picking out the things worth reading. Blaise watched you for a few minutes until you had finished and looked up at him.

‘What you’re doing?’ he asked when you kept looking at him.

‘Looking at you,’ you smiled.

Blaise chuckled nervously. ‘I noticed that, yeah. But why?’

‘I’m probably not gonna see you all day,’ you shrugged. ‘Don’t wanna forget that pretty face of yours.’

Blaise straightened his back and blinked. ‘Don’t wanna—’

‘Good morning, lovelies!’ Pansy interrupted as she threw open the door of the kitchen and strode in.

Blaise was still turned to you and watched as you hugged Pansy shortly before she sat down next to you. She poured herself some coffee and looked at Blaise.

‘Blaise, stop staring, that’s rude,’ Pansy said and she waved her hand in front of Blaise’s face.

He quickly looked away from you and shot Pansy a nasty look before he turned to his coffee.

‘Pansy don’t bug him,’ you scolded and shot Blaise a kind smile. ‘It’s only morning.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Pansy said and she waved your words away with her hand. ‘I won’t bug him until later this day.’ She took a sip from her coffee and pulled a face before quickly scooping two spoons of sugar in her cup. ‘Where’s Draco?’

‘Still asleep,’ Blaise muttered. ‘I considered hexing him awake, but I still have to sleep here for two nights and Draco with a grudge is not someone you want to sleep next to.’

‘I am not that bad,’ a grumpy voice at the doorframe said. Draco walked into the room and flopped down on the chair next to Blaise. ‘Coffee, please.’

‘Sure, you’re not that bad,’ you snickered as you poured coffee in Draco’s mug.

While Draco drank his coffee, you told your friends what Game today would be. ‘It’s the last day before the winner gets announced. Yesterday while we were at the lake the other half of the teams played games in the fields. Before we set off today we’ll get the ranking so far, so you know what team to beat.’

‘But what are we doing today?’ Pansy asked.

A big smile spread on your face. ‘It’s the best Game of the whole festival. The organisation has put out a big scavenger hunt. It goes through the whole village and we have to solve riddles and collect things. You’ll get a list with things to collect and usually the team splits up in little groups and each group gets a part of the list.’

‘What sort of things do we have to collect? Because I’m really not interested in breaking my back from carrying a lot,’ Draco said.

‘I don’t know,’ you replied. ‘Usually there’s a theme to the hunt. My grandma helps to put it together and previous years she’d tell me what the theme was but she hasn’t this year.’

‘So we’ll just go around town collecting things? Isn’t that boring?’

Your smile faltered a bit and Blaise kicked Draco under the table. ‘Don’t listen to him, he’s a jerk in the morning. It sounds fun!’

You smiled thankfully at Blaise and after Pansy also reassured you that it sounded great, your smile was back on your face, and it stayed there for the rest of the morning.

/\/\/\

The scavenger hunt had officially started. A little earlier the scores of the teams had been disclosed; the Sly Foxes were on top with only two points difference between them and the Red Titans. Next were the Oiled Machines and at the bottom the Raging Angels. But just by a few points so all could change with the scavenger hunt.

The organisation had handed out the lists with the things to collect and the theme had quickly been clear.

Book of Spells … 7 pts

Iron Cauldron … 15 pts

Vial with Sleeping Potion … 12 pts

Witch Hat … 5 pts

Unnecessarily the woman of the organisation had added that the theme of this year’s hunt was ‘magic’ and both Blaise and Draco had had to refrain their laughter at the stereotypical items they had to collect. There was a whole list on ingredients for potions that no real wizard would ever think of using, such as goat milk and rabbit turds. Apparently Muggles still thought of witches as old, weary women in little shacks in the woods.

Blaise and Draco had been teamed up with three other Foxes. Neither of them knew any of the three, but after his little spat with Alysia two days ago, Blaise was more than happy that he wasn’t in her team.

The oldest of their team was Ivanna, a woman of thirty-four with a pale face and sleek brown hair. Despite the heat she was wearing long trousers and a jacket over her shirt. She’d told the rest of the team that she had a little baby of just two months old, so that if she seemed tired it meant she probably was.

The second of the three was the twenty-three year old student Mica. They had a dark golden skin and black, curly hair that had been cut short and dyed blue in the ends. Under the blue bangs lay two dark eyes that glittered with excitement and competitiveness. Mica was a student in London, but they had come back to the town where they’d grown up for the Summer Games.

The last teammate was the very young Raoul. He was the son of the man Draco and Blaise had met the first day of the festival at the stand with the cherry pastries, Hank. Raoul was just eleven years old, but he brought a childlike enthusiasm with him that made everyone in the team energized.

They were by far the youngest team, as all the other teams had the more aged villagers, so they called themselves the Sly Pups. Quickly they set to work and looked at the items on their list.

‘Does this make any sense to you?’ Ivanna asked as she handed the list to Blaise and Draco.

Errn rq srwlrqv … 7 pts

Eurrpvwlfh … 17 pts

Fordn … 9 pts

Fdqgohv .. 10 pts

‘I don’t get it,’ Draco said to the rest of the team and then he whispered to Blaise: ‘You didn’t take Ancient Runes, did you?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Blaise answered and he looked at the sheet in his hand. ‘But I doubt these are runes.’

Blaise looked around at the rest of the Sly Foxes but they didn’t seem to have the same problems, as they were already heading off. Then he looked at the other teams on the field and realised that from each team one group would stay bent over their list while the others took off. In one of the remaining teams Blaise recognised you and Pansy.

‘You don’t think it’s a mistake, do you?’ Ivanna asked with frowned eyebrows.

‘No, the other teams have it too,’ Blaise said and he nodded to the three groups left behind around them.

‘Wait, this one we can read!’ Mica said and pointed out the first line on the paper. ‘”To understand the magic you must always think three steps ahead.” What does that mean?’

The whole team silenced as they thought about the possible meaning of the sentence. Raoul looked around on the ground as if he would find the answer literally three steps ahead of him. For minutes it was quiet and Blaise’s annoyance grew.

To make his irritation even worse two of the other teams around them, including your team, had found the solution to the weird texts and were now running off the field. Blaise let out an exasperated sigh and he shook his head.

‘It can’t be this hard,’ Draco said.

‘It’s some sort of secret language, but I don’t understand the three steps,’ Mica admitted and they rubbed their temples with their knuckles.

‘My dad taught me a secret language once,’ Raoul said. ‘So we could write each other without my other dad finding out. We changed each letter with the one next in the alphabet.’

‘Of course!’ Mica exclaimed and they took the paper from Blaise. ‘Does someone have a pen?’

Ivanna gave Mica a pen and they turned Draco around to use his back. ‘What are you doing?’ Draco snapped but Mica ignored him as they started to write the alphabet on the top of the paper.

‘Look, it’s actually really easy,’ they said. ‘Each letter is swapped for a letter three steps ahead in the alphabet! Just like Raoul said!’

‘So that would mean that the e in the first word is actually a…’

‘A b!’ Mica completed Blaise’s sentence. ‘So the first word is… book… on… pot—potions! We have to find a potions book!’

‘I’ve got one of those in my bag,’ Draco muttered, but Blaise kicked him softly on his leg.

‘We have to go the library!’ Raoul said and he ran off.

‘Raoul! Wait a minute! Not so fast!’ Ivanna yelled after him and the group quickly followed the little boy.

/\/\/\

Your team had quickly figured out the solution to the weird text and found a potions book in the library, accompanied by a little paper with the next clue. Now you were sitting on the wall around the garden of the library with your team.

On your right sat Pansy and on your left Quincy. Quincy was your grandparents’ neighbour and you knew him very well so you were glad he was on your team. He was fifty-five and he had studied philosophy at the university in the nearest big city when he was younger. You hoped his intelligence would be applicable in the hunt, and so far it had for he had figured out the secret language.

Opposite of you stood Chantelle, the forty-two year old town’s librarian. Despite her being in her early forties she looked much older. She had a wrinkled face and neck and always stared at you with big eyes from behind her thick glasses. Her appearance was deceiving however, because her mentality was as quick as that of a young adult.

The last in your team was a teenage boy only a year older than you and Pansy. His name was Christopher and you had known him since you were a small child and you went to your grandparents in the summer. He had dark curls framing his olive face that was always painted with a bright smile. This time there was something other in his smile too and it only made sense to you after he told you that his boyfriend was in the other team and he desperately wanted to beat him.

‘y/n too,’ Pansy had said and Christopher had raised his eyebrow.

‘Really?’

‘No! Blaise is not my boyfriend!’ you’d cried to which Pansy had laughed.

‘Who said anything about Blaise? I merely said ‘boyfriend’.’

Now you were all looking at the new paper in your hand. The next item on the list was an eurrpvwlfh; a broomstick. Though finding out what the next item was had been easy, the real problem was finding the place where. The text on the paper you had gotten from the person in the library didn’t exactly help you very much.

Where I am is always a mystery.

Over mountains I fly,

Or I cross above the trees.

Down on the ground I rest,

Still and motionless I stand.

Pansy sighed and she threw her head back, closing her eyes as she thought about the riddle. Next to you, Quincy was staring at the text as if that would make him any wiser. Every once in a while he would hum but he didn’t come with an answer.

‘We’re gonna lose our lead like this,’ Christopher sighed as he looked around the street for other teams.

‘Surely we’re not seeing something,’ Pansy said and she tilted her head to the side, looking at the paper from a different angle. ‘No offense, but the organisation isn’t exactly a group of highly intelligent people, so maybe we have to think easier.’

Christopher chuckled and you faked a scowl at Pansy. ‘That’s my grandmother you’re talking about!’ you cried and Pansy just shrugged. ‘But you’re right. I am sure there is something clear that we’re overlooking.’

Chantelle cleared her throat and pointed at the text. ‘Maybe we should take a literal approach. You know, look at the text rather than the meaning?’

‘Here,’ you said and gave Chantelle the paper, allowing her to put her full focus on it.

Down the street you noticed a group of people approaching the library. Running ahead of the others was a young boy you recognised as Raoul. He had a big smile on his face and was waving the list with things to collect through the air. In the group behind him Blaise and Draco were walking together, followed by Mica and Ivanna. They noticed your team and Blaise and Draco waved.

‘Not to put pressure on you, but I really hope you can figure it out now because if we don’t win from Blaise and Draco I will be hearing that for the rest of my life,’ you sighed and Pansy nodded.

Chantelle looked up from the paper and winked at you. ‘I got it.’

Your team cheered and Blaise’s team, that was just about to enter the library, looked around. Upon seeing your team so happy, their faces turned sad.

‘See you tonight, boys!’ Pansy shouted. ‘Losers have to do the dishes!’

/\/\/\

Blaise and his team stepped out of the woods with the broomstick in their hand. The broom was old and twitchy and Blaise had to stifle a laugh thinking of how different the real broomsticks were in the wizarding world.

Again it had been Mica who had guessed the answer of the riddle. Blaise wondered where the team would be if they hadn’t been here. Probably still working on the first puzzle. But Mica had figured out that the first letters of the sentences in the little poem formed the word woods, the place where they had found the broomstick.

Now they only had the next word, fordn, meaning cloak, and a silver pin. It was not much to go on but Ivanna had recognised the pin straight away.

‘It comes from Mrs. Heath’s studio!’ she exclaimed and looked at the little pin in her fingers. ‘It’s what she uses for her dresses!’

Unfortunately Mrs. Heath’s studio lay on the other side of the village and it would take at least forty minutes before they’d get there.

‘Forty minutes?!’ Draco cried and when the team set off he turned to Blaise. ‘Stupid Muggles, why can’t we just apparate?’

‘Oh shut it, Malfoy,’ Blaise said. ‘It’s fun!’

‘I’m gonna curse y/n for making us do this…’

Grudging Draco followed the rest of his team and though Blaise would never say it to his friend, he had to admit that his feet were beginning to hurt.

The Sly Pups passed little houses with colourful front yards, full of flowers and bushes. The main street was silent and all the shops were closed, as most of the inhabitants were participating in the Games and there was no need for the stores to be open. They ran into a few other teams, but none of those had the same list as they had.

After forty-five minutes they arrived at the old house of Mrs. Heath. In the garden there was a little path, past pink flowerbeds and a small pond with fish. Halfway in the garden the path split in two. One side led to the bright yellow front door, the other led to a wooden door with a sign on it that said the Heath atelier.

Ivanna stepped through the garden and knocked on the yellow door. A minute it was silent and then an old lady opened the door. She was wearing an orange with blue flowers dress that reached to the ground and her grey hair hung in a braid over her shoulder. Her lips spread into a smile when she saw the five people at her door.

‘You’re the first ones!’ Mrs. Heath smiled and she stepped out of the door. ‘Come, come, follow me!’

Blaise sent Draco a questioning look as they followed Mrs. Heath to her studio. Your team had been far ahead of Pups, having figured out where to find the broomstick before Blaise’s team even had the riddle. In the forest there had been two brooms already collected, but apparently the Sly Pups were the only ones who had found where the silver pin came from.

Inside the Heath atelier stood four mannequins with colourful robes. Each had a different colour and pattern. There was a dark blue one with yellow stars, a green one covered with red flowers and one coloured yellow with orange and red flames. Blaise snickered at the cloaks; the only one he had even seen wearing such colours was Dumbledore and he couldn’t exactly be called a normal wizard.

‘You take this one,’ Mrs. Heath said and she pulled a bright pink cloak with yellow and green crescents embroidered in it from a mannequin. ‘And also—’ she opened a drawer and pulled out a thin object in the shape of a circle ‘—this one. Good luck!’

Ivanna took the object and the cloak and ushered the team outside. In the garden she handed over the cloak to Draco, who took it with a frown, and looked at what Mrs. Heath had given her.

‘It’s a coaster,’ Mica said, raising one eyebrow. ‘Why would she give us a coaster?’

Before anyone of the team could guess, however, another group arrived at the house. You and Pansy were walking ahead, both with tired and sweaty faces, and the rest of your team seemed just as exhausted.

Blaise waved at you and you gave him a weak smile back as you walked with your team inside.

‘Does anyone recognise this?’ Mica asked and they looked around the team.

Everyone shook their head and they sighed as one. Ivanna brought the coaster closer to her face and examined it. She dropped her shoulders and shook her head again. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘It probably has something to do with the next item,’ Mica said and they pulled out the list. ‘Candles. Is there a place here that sells candles or anything?’

‘But what has that got to do with the coaster?’ Blaise asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Mica admitted.

Your team came out of the studio with the green cloak and Pansy had a coaster in her hand. You huddled a little away from Blaise and your team formed a protective circle around the object in Pansy’s hand.

Blaise was standing with his back to your team, but he could hear the whispers. While his team tried to think of a solution for the weird puzzle, Blaise tried to listen to what your teammates had to say. And it seemed like your team had sorted it out as quickly as Ivanna had sorted out the solution of the pin.

‘I know where this is from,’ Quincy said. ‘At Mikey’s they use these coasters.’

‘And that would make sense, because in a restaurant they surely have candles!’ Chantelle added and the rest of your team mumbled approvingly.

Blaise looked around and saw your team leaving the garden and heading for the main street. You caught his stare and smiled enthusiastic at Blaise, making him weak in the knees with the innocent laugh on your face. Butterflies were fluttering through his stomach and he felt bad for eavesdropping on your team.

‘Blaise?’

‘Yeah?’ Blaise tore his gaze from you and turned to his team, finding them all looking at him.

Mica laughed and shook their head. ‘Ivanna said that she knows someone who makes candles,’ they said. ‘I know we haven’t got much time left, but it’s worth a try.’

The scavenger hunt would only last till four, then everyone had to return to the fields, whether they had found all the objects or not. Now there were only thirty minutes left, so they had to hurry.

Blaise looked at his team and thought of what he had heard a minute earlier. If they went to the candle-maker they would never get to the restaurant in time, and that would mean that they’d lose from your team. However, when Blaise thought of you and how happy you’d be when winning, he just couldn’t tell.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sounds great.’

/\/\/\

You were lying in bed, staring at the shapes the lamp cast on the ceiling. Pansy was hopping around in the room, trying to find the pyjamas that she had thrown off this morning. Her footsteps were heavy sounds on the wooden floor.

There was a faint smile on your face. This afternoon your team had been the only one to return with all four of the items on the list. Though that didn’t guarantee that the Red Titans had won the entire scavenger hunt, it did mean that you and Pansy’s team had won from Blaise and Draco’s.

However, there was one more thing that added to your smile.

‘He knew,’ you said and sat up against the headboard of the bed.

‘Who knew what?’ Pansy asked as she was bent over in the closet.

‘Blaise knew where to find the candles.’

Pansy looked up at you. ‘What do you mean? His team didn’t find them.’

‘No, his team didn’t know,’ you said while Pansy took off her shirt and trousers. ‘But he did.’

Pansy neatly folded her clothes and placed them on a shelf in the closet. Then she closed the door and looked around the room. ‘Where the hell are my clothes?’ she mumbled before she looked back at you. ‘How do you know?’

‘He overheard Quincy telling where the coaster came from,’ you said and you lifted the pillow on the bed and revealed Pansy’s pyjamas. ‘He looked at me before we walked away. I could see it in his face.’

Pansy had sat down on the bed and pulled the shirt over her head. ‘So if he knew, why didn’t he tell his team?’ she asked and then a wicked smile spread on her face. ‘He let you win.’

‘He let us win, Pansy,’ you corrected, but even you couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘But yeah.’

‘So that’s why you’ve been smiling so much all evening!’ Pansy exclaimed loudly and you shushed her.

‘Shh! He’s still in the room next to us!’

Pansy rolled her eyes and crawled under the covers next to you. ‘Will you now believe he’s totally into you?’

You turned off the light on the nightstand and lay down, pulling the duvet up to your chin. You stared at the dark ceiling for a moment, thinking back of today. With a smile you took Pansy’s hand and gave it a little squeeze.

‘Perhaps.’

- - - - - - -

taglist

general HP: @harry-pottery-barn @potters-heart @kingalrdy @missswriter @figlia--della--luna@sexysirius @awritingtree @bi-andready-tocry @lilulo-12fanfiction @ananad1 @treestarrrrrrrr @your-hispanichufflepuff @thefandomplace @theeicedamericano @girllety @moonstarrnghtsky @swearingsolemnly @weasleydream @secretsthathauntus @amixedwitch @izzyyy-1 @gryffindorgirl @kitkatkl @catching-the-train-to-hogwarts @nyotamalfoy

MASTERLIST

#summer games #rach's1kcelebration #blaise zabini x reader #blaise zabini imagine #blaise zabini #blaise x reader #harry potter x reader #harry potter imagine #harry potter

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percywinchester27 · 4 years ago

Text

A lot like ‘Us’ (Part-36)

Word count: 5.6K

Pairing: Sam X Reader AU

Warnings: Feels, PTSD, fluff

Series Summary: Y/N Y/L/N is eager and honestly, still in awe that she managed to get herself an acceptance from Stanford Law School. On the face of it, her life seems as put together, mysterious and independent as one might hope for. On the insides, she carries the burden of past that haunts her till date. Seemingly, she’d left it all behind; that is until she sets foot in the class of the Law School’s youngest, most promising professor.

A/N: The story employs two different timelines. The present timeline for the story takes place in 2014. Please let me know what you guys think :)

Beta: @deanssweetheart23. Love you babe <3

A lot like ‘Us’ masterlist

“I’ve decided I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m going home.”

“Jack!” You grabbed him by his elbow just as he turned. “You can’t abandon me!”

He looked a bit terrified. “I can’t do this, Y/N.”

You rolled your eyes. “Sure you can. Jody is awesome and you’re so cute. I know she will like you.”

Jack did not look convinced. A tiny part of you was nervous with him. He was about to meet his girlfriend's mom for the first time. After calling Sam to tell him that you were up for the picnic, the wild optimism in his voice had you wearing out the carpet of your living room, freaking out about messing it up- for Sam and for Max. As a last resort, you had knocked on your neighbour’s door and convinced Jack to accompany you. As it turned out, Claire had been after him for a while to meet her family, and Jack being Jack was worrying the hell out of it.

Now, you stood in front of the gate of your building, waiting for Sam to come pick you up, and not letting each other chicken out of this situation. That’s what friends did.

“It’s not just Jody,” Jack admitted. “It’s also your husband.”

Your heart still lurched at the word. “Sam? What about him?”

Jack groaned, rolling his head. “I don’t know. You’re our Y/N… and then suddenly we find out you’re married. I really want to like him, but he’ll take you away from us.”

You were touched by his words, and the innocence in them. “No one can take me away. In fact, this is just my grand scheme to make sure that you’re stuck with me for life now. I’ve been slowly getting you hooked to the cookies. Soon there will come a day when you’ll realise you can't live without them. And then you just can’t get rid of me. It’ll be too late.”

Jack smiled at you and slung his arm around your soldier. “It’s not the cookies we’re getting addicted to, it’s you.”

A car made the swift turn and came to a stop next to the gate, right in front of you- Sam’s sleek, black Mercedes.

Jack let out a low whistle. “I take it all back. You get back together with this guy and adopt me. Max is so much nicer than Kevin anyway. I'll share a room with him. I’ll do the dishes everyday.”

You were crying because of laughter by the time Sam opened his door and stepped out.

“You alright?” He asked, face startled but amused.

Nodding and gasping for breath, you made the hasty introductions. Jack gave his patented customary hand raise of a greeting with palm facing forward. Sam was going for a handshake but seeing Jack’s wave, he did the same with a smile.

From the backseat, Max called out your name. Without caring about the rest, you opened the door and got in besides him, ruffling his hair.

“Hey, Y/N, aren’t you riding shotgun?” Jack asked, voice restrained to appear casual.

“Nah, you got it. I’m going to hangout in the back with Max.”

Jack might be looking daggers at you for throwing him under the bus, but you knew he’d live. Sam was excellent company. In the next fifteen minutes of the ride, you were proven right, because Jack was busy discussing the mysterious circumstances under which Edgar Allan Poe died, and how The murders in Rue Morgue was actually his best work. Sam was exceptionally well read and Jack was in his element with literature discussions.

You turned to Max, showing him your basket. “Look, what I got for you- your favourite cookies and a pie!”

He let out a squeal of delight and you snuck a cookie out for him.

The car was spotless, rich upholstery gleaming, but you knew Sam couldn’t care less if Max got crumbs on the seats. Right on track, Max dug into the cookie, not bothering about the mess. Secretly, it pleased you that you were beginning to decode their relationship.

“I didn’t know what the others would like, so I baked muffins and some savoury croissants. You think that’s okay?”

“Stop gnawing over it, Y/N,” Sam said. “Everyone’s gonna love it.”

You didn’t think he was even paying any attention to you. Course you were wrong. His eyes were melting in the rearview mirror as he smiled at you.

“Y/N woke up at 4:30 in the morning to get everything set,” Jack added.

You bent forward to look at him. “How do you know that?”

“I could hear your beater whirring. Thin walls.”

“That woke you up? I’m so sorry, Jack!”

Jack snorted. “Was she always like this?”

“Always,” said Sam, with all the warmth. You could feel the heat in your chest.

For the rest of the ride, you happily listened to Max chatter about the badminton racquet in the trunk and Claire’s home bowling set. He was such a joy to listen to when he was just being a kid and not careful. You listened very attentively, picking out the things that were only in the subtext of his words. Max loved these people- Jody, her girls and even Chase. He knew their habits and their natures like a family. Sam must have relied on them a lot and often.

You were so lost in Max’s words, that the car was already silently cruising along the San Francisco bay. The water stretched by one side of the road. Instinctively, you tightened the grip on Max’s hand.

Why hadn’t you thought to ask where the picnic was!

As it turned out, the place they had chosen was very serene… The little landscape was a small distance walk from the highway, secluded enough that it wasn’t frequented, but beautiful nonetheless. Tall, full trees dominated the landscape. The rich fall colours, oddly made the shade underneath brighter somehow, inviting. The shadows of the trees bleeded into an open, grassy area and ultimately into the sandy, pebbly waterline of the bay.

You wrinkled your nose at the sight of nestled ducks. Sam smirked at you. Was he remembering the same afternoon? When you had tried to feed the ducks Sam and Dean’s epic failure of muffins?

Two girls were already laying out an assortment of food on the blanket. The blonde turned at the sound of Max’s hoots and her face brightened at the site of Jack. It was adorable. Alex still had her hand in a cast and Jody was hauling a cane chair from behind. All of them looked in a jovial mood. Maybe the whole sneaking out at night debacle was behind them.

Alex greeted you first when you reached them. “It’s great to see you again, Mrs. Winchester.”

You felt rather than saw Sam’s eyes flash towards you. Smiling, you sat down next to her. “Y/N is just fine, Alex. You don’t have to change names all of a sudden.”

Both she and Claire were a little wide eyed. Your situation had clearly been a topic of discussion with them. This girl they randomly knew as Max’s friend or Jack’s neighbor was now suddenly Sam’s wife. It must’ve been bizarre. After sharing a few pleasantries with Jody, you pulled out your own basket.

You had to admit, the reactions were very mollifying as they dug into the muffins, pies and croissants, moaning with closed eyes. Sam gave you a sideways smirk at their reaction.

“That’s it,” Jody declared. “You’re passing the rest of the semester for legal writing without handing in a single assignment. The muffins alone… mmm.”

“Save me some,” Sam complained. It was mostly aimed at Jody.

She scowled at him. “You stop making those eyes at me, Winchester. I’m not giving up my share.” When you giggled she turned towards you. “Did he always do that?”

“Puppy dog eyes of doom? Yeah… always.”

“You make that shit work for you in the court, don’t you? That’s how you win all of them cases,” she grumbled.

“How rude!”

You turned at the offended sound. Chase stood behind you with arms crossed over his chest.

“You guys started eating without me?” He huffed, sitting down on your other side and turned to Max. “Your dad, I can expect that from. Since when did you turn into such an Iago?”

“I saved you the cookies,” Max said promptly, pulling the bag from behind him. There was a small furor which was mostly the girls complaining about how they didn’t know there were cookies. It ended with Chase clutching the bag to his chest.

“Flee away, children,” he said. “I need the cookies to mend my broken heart.”

“What happened to your girlfriend? Weren’t you bringing her with you?” Sam asked.

Chase threw him a very impressive shade. “She dumped me, Samuel.”

“Why?”

“She couldn’t bear that I was prettier than her.”

You suspected Chase was just playing it out for the cookies. He did not look heartbroken in the least.

Once the food stash was considerably depleted, the girls, Jack and Max, picked up the racquets and divided their teams for Badminton. When Max insisted that you join them, Sam vehemently supported your argument of terrible hand-eye coordination. He knew and much like yourself, did not want to put other people in the way of the harm that you might inflict. In the end, only the group of four ended up on the blankets. Sam, Jody, you and Chase who was almost lying on his side, head resting on his hand, propped up on an elbow. He looked younger in a t-shirt and jeans.

“I still can’t believe you can cook all of this by yourself! No wonder Sam didn’t want to junk the marriage.”

“Chase!” Sam admonished, mortified, but you enjoyed Chase’s unapologetic behaviour, being all too tired of people stepping on eggshells around you- especially Sam.

“No, it’s alright,” you said, grinning at Chase, who returned your grin with a wink.

“You don’t happen to have a sister, do you?” He enquired.

“Well, actually…”

“Someone other than Jo,” he added quickly. “God knows I won’t survive a minute if I went toe to toe with Dean Winchester. One Winchester is enough to keep me in line.”

Sam threw Chase his classic bitchface then went back to his conversation with Jody. Eyeing his absorption, Chase tilted his head towards the side, “Care to join me for a walk, Y/N?”

You chanced a look at Sam, who was busy discussing a faculty matter and nodded. As quietly as you could, the two of you got up and moved away.

“So, did you end up applying? To Acton Gris, I mean?” He asked, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his pants.

“I did, the very evening. I’m trying not to be too hopeful.”

His green eyes regarded you. “Now, whyever would you do that?”

“Because I’m a realist and I know what type of competition I’m up against.”

Chase chuckled. “You’re too idealistic, Y/N. Even more than Mr. Mc-dreamy over there. Never thought I’d see him topped in that category. I’m still hopeful. Looks like I’m the only one.”

“Why do you care?” You asked. “What does it matter to you if I end up in Acton Gris or not?”

“It doesn’t. I think it would be great for your career and it’s my duty being from the same alma mater to further your cause.”

You raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “And this has nothing to do with Sam.”

Chase was quiet for a long time, watching his steps as you strolled along the waterline, a safe distance away from it. You had given up on expecting an answer and were just beginning to wonder what would be a good time to turn around and head back when he finally spoke, “I’ll admit I haven’t been your biggest fan, Y/N. Sam never said a word against you… and that is exactly what pissed me off.”

This was in line with what you had pretty much already assumed so it didn’t come as a surprise.

“I’m telling you this because I know you ain’t a snowflake,” said Chase. “You don’t have the liberty to be a snowflake after everything you’ve been through. I also know you don’t care about my opinion of you.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” you pointed out.

He sighed. “I suggested that you try at Acton Gris not for Sam’s sake but mine. That part I told you about- how Sam’s too high up to be involved with paralegals- is one hundred percent true. But I wanted to get to know you for myself.”

“To see if I was any good for Sam?”

Chase snorted. “This whole deal makes me sound like Sam’s possessive mistress but I am protective of him… and of his boy over there. I’ve been around for the start of that story, and they’ve been hurt enough. I am cad for saying this but I just didn’t trust you enough, and Sam being Sam was pining after you from day one… it’s quite tiresome to watch.”

“And now what? You suddenly approve of me? I passed some invisible test?”

“You guys are already married, who the heck am I to set a test for you? For the majority part I was telling the truth, you know. You’d flourish at Acton Gris. It would make you happy and Sam would be over the moon. But I still want to get to know you better.” He paused. “I haven’t had the best of family life growing up. More money than I could count, but my mother ditched me and my dad before I could spell out her name. I’ve seen him miserable for all his life… and well, it gave me mommy issues to last a lifetime.” Chase winked. “So all the meddling is clearly not me projecting my childhood abandonment issues on you. Clearly!”

Chase’s blunt honesty surprised you. He owed you nothing at all. Yet here he was answering all your questions. While he was at it, you decided to ask one more.

“Now you think I won’t break Sam’s heart?”

He looked at you and shook his head lightly. “I don’t know that. What I do know is that you won’t be able to break his heart without breaking your own first. I’ve only ever wanted him to be happy. Tried setting him up with a hundred girls, the guy just wouldn’t budge. Then you come back and it’s fucking sunshine all over his face. I know when to give up.”

Oddly, you understood exactly where Chase was coming from. He was so strongly rooted in Sam’s corner, all of his thoughts were biased, even if it meant being critical and wary of you. You hadn’t tried to achieve it, but somewhere in the middle you had gained both Chase’s confidence and his liking.

“What’s it like working under Sam?” You asked, changing the topic as well as voicing a curiosity.

Chase gave you a look. “Now or then?”

“Both,” you said after a minute.

“You’ve got to know, I used to look up to Sam when I was at Stanford- not that he knew I existed back then. He was in the final year, I was in the first, and he was everything I wanted to be- Top of his class, valedictorian, popular with the ladies. I applied at Johnson’s because of that.” He paused, continuing only after an encouraging look from you. “He was nothing like I remembered. Every time I faced him, there was a very real risk of being fired for the smallest mistake.”

Chase laughed. You did not. He was describing a Sam you couldn’t imagine, a Sam that shouldn’t have existed.

“Now he’s my best friend. At any rate, he’s about the only person who puts up with my dumb antics.”

“He puts up with a lot from a lot of people,” you murmured, absentmindedly staring at the lake.

A small moment caught your eye. The birdy that had been flying back and forth between the girls and the boys, flew over a bit too high and far. And as a reflex, Max, his eyes up, backed away fast.

“No!” You were already running by the time you realised that the terrified scream was yours.

“No, no… Chirp!” You shouted, but it was too late as the boy’s feet hit the wet slope. He slipped and tumbled back, rolling right into the water.

Your legs were aching from how hurriedly you dove after him, right into the bay, lashing in the water till your hands found Max’s body. Yanking him out of the water and against your body, you backed off quickly. You cradled his body on the sandy shore, frantically checking his face, arms to make sure he was alright. Max didn’t look hurt, just shocked and a bit scared.

“Are you okay?” You asked, too loudly. Max nodded.

Hands landed on your shoulder, your head. Voices told you to let go but you did not release Max, not till another voice murmured in your ear, “It’s alright, Y/N. He’s okay.”

You turned on Sam. “Why did you let him near water? Why weren’t you paying any attention?” You yelled, not relinquishing your hold on Max.

Sam crouched down before you, not attempting to reach out to Max, who was staring wide eyed at you.

“What if something had happened to him?” You wiped at your tears with the back of your hand. “He’s just a little boy! How could you be so careless?”

Sam shrugged out of his jacket and carefully wrapped it around your shoulders.

“Max is alright,” he said calmly, “You can let go of him.”

“No!”

“Y/N, you’re all wet and you’re starting to shake. Get inside the car before it gets worse.”

“But Max…”

“Max is fine,” Sam said in the same patient tone. “Look at the water, it’s not even waist deep. This side of the bay is very shallow for, at least, fifty yards and Max can swim very well.”

The realisation came very suddenly. Max had never been in any danger at all. The girls had sarongs on, maybe they had all intended a swim. You had needlessly created a scene, drenched Max more than he needed to be and yelled at Sam for being an irresponsible father.

The tears spilled over again but because of a different reason this time- shame. You let go of Max the next instant, staring pointedly at the ground.

Max turned in your lap. Small, soft hands came up to wipe away the tears from your eyes. “I’m sorry, Y/N,” he said. “I won’t go near the water again.”

You threw your arms around him again and sobbed against his little neck. The people around you seemed to be closing in but you didn’t want to look up at any of them. Your heartbeat was thudding erratically against Max’s head but he didn’t make a move to leave or get up.

“C’mon, girls, start packing,” Jody ordered over you. “Give Y/N some space to breathe. You, too, lover boy!”

Four sets of feet scampered away.

“Chase, take Max to the blankets. There’s a fresh set of clothes in his bag.”

You did not want to let go of the boy. Doing so would make you face Sam.

It seemed Max was reluctant as well, but with one look at Sam, he disentangled himself. You felt the softest brush of his lips on your cheek and then Max was walking away, his hand in Chase’s.

Sam put both his hands against your arms and pulled you to your feet. He drew his coat tightly around you and started walking you towards his car, his palm firmly planted against your back.

You let him, without another word as he opened the door of the passenger seat for you to get in. Sam got in on the other side and turned the heat up. Only when the car started did you shake out of the quiet.

“Wait. Max?”

“Don’t worry about him. Chase will drive him home.”

Sam’s voice betrayed no emotion. Not anger or hurt. It was as composed as the many lectures he had delivered.

Ashamed of even meeting his gaze, you tipped your head against the window, glad that the side was facing the road instead of the bay and closed your eyes. It felt like floating in bliss if you buried your emotions down- this sensation of gliding on a smooth road, the heat in the car swirling with the scent of Sam’s cologne. It felt familiar and safe.

All too soon you were jerked awake, the car easing into the driveway and coming to a stop. It was already dark outside. Somehow you had slept through the whole ride. Your clothes were completely dry.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered, his voice like velvet in the darkness. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Straightening up, you turned to face Sam who was looking down at you with concern etched on his face. Slowly, you took his hand in yours and spoke through a hoarse voice, looking at them. “Please forgive me.” Those three words did not even begin to cover the regret you felt over what had happened. You were an outsider, looking in on Sam’s life with this strange hunger and desire. You wanted to be a part of his little family so bad, but you weren’t yet. You didn’t know Max the way Sam did, did not understand Max’s choices, and the thoughts behind them. You did not have a right to him or Sam. Ignoring all of that, you had yelled at Sam, the way a wife would yell at her husband for neglecting their child. But, Sam wasn’t neglecting Max. Max wasn’t your son and you were barely Sam’s wife.

“It was thoughtless and stupid to raise my voice at you and say those words. I forgot that Max belongs to you, that you could never be careless towards him. I had no right to yell at you in front of everyone.”

Maybe it was all for good. Let Sam see what you were capable of. If he saw the truth of how broken you were, maybe he would stop wanting you in his life. Everyone knew how hysteric you could get now. So much for Jody rooting for you. So much for Chase’s hopes of Sam getting to be happy. They all saw you for who you truly were.

“You remember what I told you the other night?” Sam asked. “When you came over and we sat by the swing?”

The lightness of his voice made you look up. He should be angry, at least, pissed.

“I told you that I didn’t care what people thought about us.”

“Doesn’t justify what I did… How it must’ve looked...”

“You know how it looked to me?”

Sam’s eyes were clear, no resentment in them. “To me it looked like you ran to protect my son without caring for your life. You didn’t know the water wasn’t deep, you can’t swim and you’re fucking terrified of water. I’m not even talking about what the cold does to you. Why on earth would I care about how this looks to anyone else?”

You were transfixed by the depth of his words.

“Those people either love you or love me. I’m sure they saw it no differently than how I see it.”

“What about Max? I must’ve scared him so bad.” The poor boy hadn’t said anything except apologise to you for stepping in the water. It hadn’t been his fault.

Sam pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t worry too much about him. I think he’s concerned about you the most.”

You put your head in your hands, weary. The fear was still an echo in your stomach despite the sleep, and it was getting stronger every minute- what if something had happened to Max?

“Can I ask you something?” Sam sounded hesitant.

“Mhmm.”

“Do you remember what you said right before you jumped in the water?”

You frowned, trying to remember. “Wasn’t I calling out to Max?” There had been no time to say anything or do anything else.

Sam’s face was tender as he said, “Yeah, you were calling out to Max.”

What a weird thing to ask! You tried harder, failing to remember what Sam was talking about.

Lights flared up behind. You leaned back, not realising just how close you were to Sam. The car coming from behind came to a halt at the start of the driveway. The doors opened and Max and Jack spilled out from either sides. Jack reached your door first. He opened it and pulled you into a hug without waiting for you to turn.

“Hey, hey, I’m okay.”

“You were shaking so bad.”

It was actually nothing compared to what Jack could have witnessed if Sam hadn’t whisked you off into the car and in front of a heater.

Chase’s reaction was a bit more subdued. He looked worried about how you were doing and wasn’t his usual boisterous self. When Sam invited him for dinner, he took a raincheck. So did Jack. Once, Chase had driven away, Sam looked at you expectantly, but you just shook your head. You had intruded on their time too much already.

You crouched down to Max’s level who was uncharacteristically quiet. “I scared you today, didn’t I?”

Max didn’t say anything. He placed the back of his hand against your forehead and then under your jaw.

“I’m alright, sweetie,” you assured him.

Max hugged you around the neck, and you hugged back tightly just for a second. You would jump inside a hundred lakes a hundred times without a single thought if it meant Max would be safe.

“I love you,” Max whispered very quietly in your ear. You were sure no one else had heard it.

Just as quietly, you whispered back. “I love you, too, my little boy.”

“Get inside, Max,” Sam said. “Wash your hands and change out of your clothes. I’ll be there in a minute to run the bath for you.”

With a small sigh, Max went inside, but not before giving you a smile.

“I’ll wait for you right outside the gate,” Jack told you. “It was great meeting you, Sam.”

“Likewise,” said Sam.

You watched Jack almost run out of sight.

“Cool kid,” Sam muttered, eyes in the same direction.

You sighed. “I can’t believe I ruined the picnic and put a damper on everyone’s mood.”

“C’mere.” Sam gently pulled you to him, so that your body was leaning against his. One hand was curled around your shoulder and his other hand was against your lower back. You could feel the tips on his fingers against the little skin exposed between the hem of your shirt and the waistband of your pants. It sent a thrill through your body. “It’s like you have to find something to worry about all the time. Quit doing that. Everyone’s just glad that you’re okay. We’ll do this again sometime, alright? We can push Chase in the water next time.”

You snorted.

“And don’t worry about the yelling. You know I always liked it when you got bossy like that.”

Sam’s words made you giggle.

“There’s my girl.” His warm breath washed over your face.

What you did next was inexcusable. Without warning, you were reaching up on the tips of your toes, kissing him. Sam was surprised, his hands left your body, but you threw yours around his neck, raising yourself up against his tall frame. He was so shocked that he lost his balance and fell back against the wall next to his door. You did not give up, sucking on his lower lip, feeling the roll of his muscles under your hand.

Sam let out a primal sound and the next second you were turning, it was your back to the wall now. He hoisted you up against the surface by your waist with one hand, hitching your leg around his waist. The other hand tangled in your hair as his mouth worked hard against yours. His taste was heady, intoxicating and the way he was kissing you was enough to make you forget where you were, what you were doing. It would make you forget your own name. The hand at your waist travelled under the hem of your shirt, clutching at the skin on your lower back, and his lips started to travel downwards, sucking, biting, along your chin to your jaw and back down again to the column of your neck. Sam wasn’t gentle… and as you gasped, indecently, eyes closed, you didn’t want him to be gentle either.

No, you wanted him to be rougher, go harder and never stop.

“Daaaaaadd!” Max sang from the inside and the two of your sprang apart. Your feet landed on the ground with resounding reality.

"Coming," he said, voice thick.

Sam bent down, hands on his knees, gasping hard.

“Oops!” You muttered.

He looked up at you with a boyish grin, face flushed, looking years younger.

“I better go,” you said, biting your lip. “Jack’s waiting for me.”

You wanted nothing more than for him to ask you to stay and by the looks of it, he wanted the exact same thing.

“Uhhh yeah…” Sam huffed, shifting slightly, trying to adjust his jeans furtively. That made your face grow hotter.

“Bye!” You ducked out of the porch, not looking back, least you should turn around and attack him again. What had gotten into you to react so wildly? That must’ve been highly inappropriate!

A small voice in your head told you that it was anything but inappropriate… technically, at least.

Jack’s face lit up when he saw you and then it immediately dropped.

“What happened?”

“Y-Your hair!” He muttered, looking anywhere but at you.

“Oh!” It was mussed up in all directions. Hurriedly, you ran your fingers through it, hoping for some semblance. “Sorry.”

After a minute, Jack sneaked a glance and then smiled impishly. “I’m sorry. It’s just the idea of you making out with someone gives me the heebies… You’re like my sister!” He screwed up eyes into slits to show the cringe.

You laughed.

At the door, Jack gave you another hug. “I gotta say, Y/N, I wasn’t convinced about this whole Sam business before today. Neither was Kev. You know we would always support you with whatever you decided, but seeing you with him was very relieving. I won’t worry again.”

It was heartening, how much everyone cared for you.

You had to take a cold shower once inside, despite your composition. It was regretful, because the water washed away the remnants of Sam’s smell off of you. Idly, you wondered if you could steal the shirt he had lent you and keep it for yourself, climb into it when you went to bed like you used to.

The shower was necessary to reign in the utter chaos that was your brain. The evening had been eventful enough, but what had happened on Sam’s porch? How were you ever going to keep your hands away from him now? Abstaining was your idea to begin with. Sam had bared his heart to you, and this was your decision to keep your hands to yourself till you said the three words back to him.

So much for self control. But the way he’d looked at you, angels would have fallen for less. You were only a human. Besides, nothing would ever compare to the feeling of Sam’s lips, his fingers digging in your back, his body pressed against yours.

You got into the bed, missing the warmth of his body when your phone pinged. Rolling on your stomach, you reached out to grab it from the nightstand praying the text was from the one person you wanted it to be from. It was.

*I missed that. I missed us*

Hugging the phone to your chest, you sighed like a teenager back from her first kiss. The incidence with water should have shaken you, the way you were wrecked anytime you got drenched, instead you were laying in bed grinning like an idiot.

*I missed us, too*

His reply was instantaneous.

*It’s been a while…*

What an idiot! You knew what he was implying. As if he could ever be less than perfect at anything, especially at that.

You typed your response quickly.

*Oh, Mr. Winchester, you always knew how to show a girl a good time*

The tightening in your stomach which refused to go away despite the cold shower was proof enough. Your skin still tingled.

*That’s comforting… and encouraging ;)*

Yes, it was going to be really hard to go back to keeping your hands off each other now. Being around him was like breaking dams. Once you broke one, it was impossible to put that barrier back up again. The class tomorrow was going to be excruciating. For tonight, you let the wildest fantasies mingled with old memories take up all of your brain space. Even if it left you writhing in your sheets.

*Good night, Mr. Winchester*

You saw the three dots following one another and then disappearing as Sam typed. Once, twice, thrice. Finally the little pop up bubble appeared.

*Good night, Mrs. Winchester. I love you*

**********************************

A/N 2: I quite like this part. Gave me the chance to explore how delicate, confusing, dependent and volatile emotions can be at the same time. I think if I hadn’t had the backing of 35 chapters, I’d never be able to pull of the conversations in this chapter, Sam, Chase, Jack... all of them. They wouldn’t have been as funny, emotional or exciting. That’s just me thinking maybe.

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scpnightwing · 3 years ago

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whumptober 2021: The Bone Road (1/31)

By night, Robin was his partner in crime, but once the sun rose, all Dick could be was a mirror of his tragedy, haunting his halls and asking for more than Bruce had in him to give.

{The early days of Batman and Robin, and the many mistakes therein) [on AO3]

Chapter One: “You have to let go” | Barbed Wire | Bound

Every day, between three o’clock and five o’clock, Dick would take his schoolwork into the unused sitting room at the very front of the Manor. It was the sort of room they would have taken guests to, if they ever had any, and although Alfred kept it spotlessly clean, it had a bereft air to it; a car left to rust in a garage, a piano silently gathering dust, a performer without an audience. A purpose left unfulfilled.

Much of the Manor was that way. Even after living at Wayne Manor for four months, it still struck Dick as absurd that there were only three of them in that great big house, with its endless rooms dedicated to overly specific things that none of them seemed to do.

There was a music room, but he had never seen Alfred or Bruce pick up an instrument, despite his suspicions that they both probably could play something.

There was a games room with several pool tables and a darts board and cupboards full of old board games, the likes of which Dick had never heard of, but even Dick soon tired of trying to play snooker by himself.

The ballroom particularly offended him. Why on earth would any house need its own ballroom, and if you were going to have a house with a ballroom, then you may as well use it. He had been scolded by Alfred for skidding across its marble floor in his stocking feet, and when he had asked if they would have Bruce’s birthday party in there, Alfred had only nudged him back out the door.

Dick didn’t know the word excessive yet, but he recognized its definition when he saw it, and such a grand house was, in his eyes, utterly wasted on three people, especially when two of those people spent their evenings skulking through the city’s poorest places only to come back to such opulence.

The dissonance of that made Dick uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite put into words, not that he would have shared the thought even if he could, afraid that his discomfort may be misinterpreted as ingratitude. He was, it felt, always one wrong word away from being as superfluous to his new guardian as his many neglected rooms.

Dick perched in the window seat, scattering his books and worksheets around him to create an illusion of studious diligence, and began his daily vigil. In the last four months, he had scoped out only a fraction of the front-facing rooms, but he had decided that this one had the best view of the winding driveway up from the front gate.

All the better to spot when Bruce’s car arrived home.

He chewed on the end of his pencil, half-listening out for Alfred’s footsteps, his cue to look appropriately absorbed in today’s math problems. Alfred was still trying to find Dick’s level, and he had finished the worksheet so fast that he was a little offended at where Alfred had set the bar, so low on the ground that Dick could step over it. At least that freed him up for when Bruce got home.

Not, Dick thought glumly, that Bruce was likely to give him much more than a perfunctory hello before he hid himself away in his study. He bit harder on the pencil at the thought. Four months in his house, and two months since he had first declared himself Robin and saved Bruce from the infiltration in the cave on Halloween, yet Bruce seemed to only have time for him when they were wearing masks. Once they were simply Bruce and Dick again, masks hung up until the next patrol, all the camaraderie of the night seemed to fall away.

It stung in a way Dick didn’t quite understand.

It was quarter to five before the gates at the end of the drive parted for the sleek black Lamborghini Bruce favoured, and Dick hurried to the vestibule just in time for Bruce to walk through the door, shrugging off his coat.

“Hi Bruce.”

Despite this having become a daily occurrence, Bruce still looked surprised to find Dick waiting in the entryway, or perhaps he still wasn’t used to having someone other than Alfred in the house. He managed an absent little smile.

“Dick, how was your day?”

Dick dogged his steps into the main hall.

“Boring. I could answer the sums Alfred’s giving me in my sleep! Was work okay? You look all tired.”

“It was work.”

He always said that, like it was an answer in itself. Dick had no idea what it was he actually did when he went to the Wayne Enterprises building, or how it was any different than what he did when he holed up in his study for hours on end, but Bruce never offered any more details and Dick wasn’t sure if it was nosy to ask.

“Are we gonna go out tonight?” Dick asked instead, jogging a little to keep up with Bruce’s longer strides. “I finished all my schoolwork, and I’ve been practicing my leg sweeps.”

“Not on Alfred, I hope,” Bruce said, but nothing more, and Dick’s stomach sank.

They were coming to the study door now, and as Bruce opened it, he looked down at Dick with that same absent smile he gave reporters and waiters and everyone else who didn’t really matter.

“Why don’t you go see if Alfred needs any help with dinner? I’ve got some calls I need to make.”

Dick darted forward as Bruce made to shut the door.

“Actually! I, erm, had a little trouble with the last question. I don’t really understand how Alfred explained it. Could you help me with it?”

It wasn’t that Bruce was cold, necessarily, but to a boy who had grown up surrounded by doting, affectionate people, the absence of outright warmth from him was glacial. Dick’s heart thundered as he waited for an answer, a little part of him irritated that so small a request even needed to be questioned.

“I thought you said you could do those sums in your sleep, hm?” Bruce said lightly, but he at least had the good grace to look a little guilty as he gently nudged Dick back from the doorway. Dick stepped back, the worksheet crumpling in his fist. “Sorry, kiddo, I was stuck in meetings all day so there’s a couple of important calls I need to return. If you’re really struggling, I’m sure Alfred could help you. Why don’t you head down and ask him? He won’t mind.”

It was fortunate Dick had experience shamming smiles for the crowd, as he did just that now, feigning indifference as he was gently but adamantly dismissed.

“Sure. Sorry for bothering you.”

“…You weren’t bothering me, Dick. I’m just busy.”

“It’s okay. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Dick was halfway down the hall, shoulders hunched and bottom lip caught between his teeth, when he heard a weary sigh from behind him.

“Wanna try that leg sweep out on me later before we head out?”

Dick instantly lit up, spinning back around to grin at Bruce.

“You’re taking me out with you?”

“For a little while, at least. Alfred’ll have my head if I keep you out ‘til morning, but considering you don’t have to be up for anything special, we can get a couple hours in together. But only if I finish these calls, okay?”

Dick knew a bribe when he heard one, but if it meant he could suit up and spend time with Batman later, then he could bear a few more lonely hours.

They fit together better in the masks than out of them. Never exactly verbose, Batman at least made an effort to keep up a stream of conversation with Robin, having spent the last two months of training instilling in him the importance that they communicate effectively with one another. The drive into Gotham always meant at least fifteen minutes of Batman briefing him on what cases they were looking into, or if there was nothing live at the time, the plan for their patrol route. Unlike Bruce, Batman encouraged questions, and despite his surly countenance, he wasn’t afraid to play along if Dick tried to joke with him.

More than the excitement of protecting people, it was that brief window of time where Batman would speak to Robin that Dick looked forward to the most, well worth the odd punch he didn’t dodge fast enough or the overtired, pinching headaches the following morning.

That didn’t mean Batman couldn’t be just as cold as Bruce, of course, and for all that he would play the straight man for Robin in the privacy of the car, once they were in the field, there was no room for levity or, more importantly, disobedience.

Dick perched on the lip of the warehouse roof, his fingers curling around the cool cement as he watched the shadows of men moving below. The arms shipment had come in as expected, but that wasn’t all that was passing through the docks that night, and Batman had slipped off to the neighbouring dockyard to investigate the chain of cars they had seen driving in through unlocked gates, leaving Robin to watch their original targets. The time to strike was slipping away as they loaded the last of the crates into an idling van, and Dick’s feet were itching to spring forward.

Not without Batman. That instruction had been delivered with a firm hand on his shoulder, which meant Batman really meant it.

“Batman, they’re getting ready to leave,” Dick whispered, index finger pressed to his ear piece. “Are you almost back? We’re gonna lose them!”

There was a fuzzy silence on the other end before Bruce’s voice came though, breathy and almost drowned out entirely by a flurry of gunfire.

“Robin, go wait in the car for me.”

Order given, the connection immediately went silent, and Dick’s heart thundered in his chest as he waited for more, for a chance to hear that background noise again and assure himself that it wasn’t gunfire, that Bruce wasn’t getting shot at alone over there.

Dick touched his ear piece again; “B, are you alright?”

Nothing, not even static.

Down below, the rear doors to the van slammed shut, the men climbing up into the front seats. Dick teetered at the edge of the roof, torn between seeing through the night’s work and doing as he was told. He groaned quietly as the van pulled away, its rear lights growing smaller down the long stretch of road, but he stayed where he was, double tapping his ear piece to switch to the other channel.

“A, I’ve lost contact with Batman. Can you get through to him? I - It sounded like there were guns.”

More silence, but the dull crackle of interference in the connection told Dick the line was live. Distant clicking as Alfred typed at the computer, before, “Bear with me, Robin, I’m accessing the cowl-feed.” More silence, heavier, telling. “…Batman has been outnumbered. It appears he has been hit.” Dick had never heard Alfred sound afraid before, but there was certainly a difference in his voice as he spoke now. “Robin, return to the car. I’m sending a tip-off to the GCPD.”

“What good will that do?!” Dick demanded, pacing the edge of the roof with fistfuls of cape bunched up in his hands. The van had long since vanished from sight, and all his focus was on the distant, dark dockyard where Bruce had disappeared to. Outnumbered, potentially shot, and there had been so many cars heading in that direction. What had Bruce been thinking, engaging when there were so many?! It was the exact thing he told Dick to never, under any circumstances, do. The hypocrisy of it only fanned the flames of Dick’s frustration, and his pacing took him across the roof in the direction Bruce had gone, the complete opposite direction from the Batmobile.

“The sound of sirens will send them running, which will give Batman the opportunity to remove himself from —!”

Alfred’s line cut out.

“Agent A? Are you still there?” Dick switched channels again. “Batman, can you hear me?!”

Perhaps if either of them had answered Dick then, he would have done as he was told and gone back to the car, but if he were being honest with himself, he had already been planning his running leap from the rooftop before Alfred’s line had gone dead. He couldn’t even enjoy the moments of free-fall as he usually did, too consumed with the mental image of Batman at the center of a circle of men, all pointing guns at him.

He was halfway to the other dockyard, sprinting through shadowed alleys between the warehouses, when Alfred’s voice returned.

“Master Ri — Robin, that is not the direction of the car.”

“Did you get through to B?”

“…No. The situation has escalated, and… well, I have alerted the GCPD to a disturbance, but I fear their arrival will not be timely enough to prevent further harm.” Dick didn’t waste breath on answering, crouching at the corner of a building and surveying the open space between him and the chain-link fence ahead. It was topped with barbed wire, stretching as far as he could see in both directions, and there was no convenient hole in the fence to slip through. Only over. “Robin… Batman has been restrained, and it appears to be their intention to throw him into the harbour.”

Dick’s chest clenched, a light-headed fuzziness washing over him. The picture in his head changed from Batman surrounded by guns to Batman sinking into darker and darker waters, bubbles rising from his mouth until they stopped.

“I - I can help,” Dick said, or perhaps it came out as a question, uncertainty thick in his voice. He didn’t realize until Alfred spoke again that he was waiting there, poised at the corner of the building, for permission to move.

“It will be a very narrow window of opportunity,” Alfred began, any trace of that earlier fear absent now, firm in his focus, “You are not to engage the miscreants, Robin. I will guide you to a safe location to hide, and only when they have submerged Batman will you enter the water to sever his bonds. You will then both be free to swim to safety. Is that understood?”

It was reminiscent of a briefing from Batman himself, and Dick wondered how much of Batman’s no-nonsense attitude was cribbed from Bruce’s own experiences. Dick found himself nodding, though Alfred couldn’t see him.

“I don’t have anything to cut with, though. Br - Batman said I can’t have weapons yet.”

“…Batman should be suitably armed, though he will be unable to reach for his tools at the moment. From your current location, head straight until you come to Warehouse Three. We will need to be careful to keep you out of sight from that point on.”

It was all the permission Dick needed to dart forward. As he neared the fence, he reached up to unclip his cape, wrapping one of his hands completely. His momentum fed into his leap, and he sprung up the fence, clambering hand over foot to the top where he used his enshrouded hand to flip himself over the barbed wire. Though he felt the sharp press of its points, the cape was reinforced enough to withstand the pressure, and as he touched down on the other side, there wasn’t a single tear.

He clipped the cape back on and made for the warehouse with the big off-white ‘3’ painted on its side.

Following Alfred’s directions, Dick soon found himself crouching behind a forklift truck, peering from behind its massive wheels at the scene ahead. There were a lot of people milling about the open yard. Not the scruffy, poster-child sort of thugs Dick had spent the earlier part of the night watching, but the sort of people who hid their guns in suit jackets and blended into the crowd when the police went hunting. Besides them, there were other people, and Dick's chest ached at the sight of them; kids, mostly, no one quite as young as Dick, but kids nonetheless. They were being inspected one-by-one by some of the more expensively dressed men, their hair rubbed between forefinger and thumb, their jaws pressed open to expose their teeth, their hands turned over under torchlight.

Like show dogs.

“The police are on their way, Robin,” Alfred gently reminded him, no doubt checking Dick’s lens feed and seeing exactly where he was looking. “No such sales will be going through tonight. We must focus on reaching Batman.”

Dick nodded jerkily, and with difficulty, he tore his eyes away from the line of dull-eyed children awaiting inspection.

At least now he understood why Bruce had broken his own rule and jumped in when so badly outnumbered.

A distance away from the men and the children was a fenced-off area where the boats offloaded. A boat was already growing smaller across the bay, no doubt having completed its inhumane delivery, but though the boat was gone, there was still a gaggle of people at the water’s edge.

At their centre was Batman, ensnared by loops of thick, dock-line rope from his shoulders to his waist, arms pinned behind his back. Dick touched the side of his mask and his lenses zoomed in on Batman’s face. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open behind the cowl, but his mouth was slack, lips parted.

“He’s out cold?” Dick asked, and though he knew the answer, he very much wanted Alfred to tell him otherwise.

“He took a bad knock to the head. The cowl bore the brunt of it, but the attack damaged the cowl’s in-built security. We didn’t realize until one of those people,” it sounded like a different, fouler word in that tone, “attempted to unmask him, and the emergency shock affected them both.”

Dick zoomed back out and belatedly noticed there was at least one man unconscious to the side of the group.

“Good,” he said, more than a little vindictively. “I’m going in.”

“Wait!” Dick froze, still hidden behind the forklift truck. “Tell me your plan of action.”

“I’m gonna go left and keep to the shadows, back around the side of the warehouse, and climb the fence there where they can’t see me. Then, I’ll wait until the police come and these guys all get scared off so I can untie Batman and hide us until he wakes up.”

There was a contemplative silence on the other end of the line, and Dick waited for a thorough critique, for Alfred to propose problems for Dick to counter as if this were a logic puzzle assigned for homework, but in the end, there was only a resigned sigh, and, “Please be careful, Robin.”

The plan lasted as long as it took Dick to get to a part of the fence where he could climb over unseen. That was when the police sirens approached, sending the group into a panic. Startled by the noise, Dick’s foot slipped on the chain-links as he was halfway over the top, and he thanked whatever gods were watching over him that he had thought to lay his cape over the barbed wire, as that was all that protected him as he lost his balance and tumbled down over the other side. The cape itself wasn’t quite as lucky, one of the barbs embedding in its weave, and as Dick grabbed at the cape to right himself, the wire snapped, plunging alongside Dick and his torn cape.

Dick hit the ground with a muffled yelp, glancing in the direction of the group guarding Batman. They hadn’t seen him yet, but they had heard the sirens, and Dick watched the moment they decided to cut their losses and shoved Batman’s bound, unconscious body over the edge of the dock and into the dark waters below.

“No, no, no!” Dick jumped to his feet and made to move forward, only to be jerked back by his ensnared cape, losing his footing completely. With a frustrated grunt, he unfastened the cape altogether and ran ahead without it, uncaring if the fleeing goons looked back and spotted him diving into the water after Batman. He had barely sunk by the time Dick reached him, but even as he clung to the concrete lip of the dock with one hand and tugged at the tail of the rope binding Bruce, he couldn’t keep Bruce’s head above the water. Beneath the sound of the enclosing police sirens and Dick’s own frantic splashing, he heard a splutter. “B, are you with me?!”

The weight at the end of the rope slackened as Bruce came to, instinctively kicking his legs in the water. With his arms bound, however, treading water was the best he could do, and the weight of the Batsuit was pulling them both down. Dick managed to scrabble up the edge of the dockside, sopping wet and trembling from the cold, and with his feet braced against a bollard, he put his all into pulling at the rope, so thick he could barely get his hands all the way around it.

“Robin —“

Dick couldn’t tell if he heard Bruce’s voice through the comms or out loud, but the sound made his heart soar, uncharacteristically reedy as it was.

“I - I got you, B! Hang on!”

Even as he said that, the sole of his boots slipped against the bollard, too wet to gain purchase, the weight pulling against him too strong. He felt the first burst of pain in his shoulders and couldn’t quite bite back the gasp, white flashing across his vision. The rope just kept slipping, and inch by inch, Bruce sank deeper beneath the surface. For all that he kicked up, the water was splashing over his face, into his mouth, his words a gurgle.

“Let go,” Bruce managed before he disappeared beneath the water again. Dick scrabbled desperately as one of his feet slipped off the bollard altogether, and without its leverage, he staggered forward, dropping to his knees and getting dragged across the concrete towards the dock’s edge. He still pulled as hard as he could, feeling the strain like a taut wire across his back. Bruce’s head broke the surface again, only long enough for him to spit out a mouthful of water and exclaim, “You have to let go, Robin!”

If he let go, Bruce would sink. The ropes were bound so tightly around his torso that Dick had no hope of getting his hands under to free a batarang.

Dick sacrificed some length of the rope to scramble back across the ground, grabbing what he could of it to loop around the bollard. The loose knot wouldn’t hold for long, but he knew he had no hope of pulling Bruce up, no matter how hard he tried. Already, his hands were red raw from the rope, and every twitch of his arms brought a lash of pain all down his back.

Desperately, Dick cast his eyes around, a part of him hoping that one of the fleeing criminals would have dropped something useful. A knife would have been a blessing, but no such luck. There was nothing in their wake but the sound of squealing tires and a line of abandoned and traumatised children. The police cars were trying to block the gates, but several of the black cars had already broken through the barricade.

Nothing, there was nothing! Behind him, Dick couldn’t hear any splashing anymore, and panic seized him like a hand around his throat.

A flash of yellow caught Dick’s eye; his cape fluttered in the wind, still caught on broken link of barbed wire.

Dick barely gave the idea a second’s thought before he was sprinting back towards his cape, gathering the material in both hands and wrapping it around the end of the barbed wire. Like unfurling a cotton reel, Dick ran and pulled the chain of wire with all his strength, throwing himself back as hard as he could to separate the barbed wire from the top of the fence. It sprung off jerkily, resistant to Dick’s yanks, and his cape could not hold up against the strength of his grip.

Barbs broke through the material, biting into the meat of his hands. He barely felt the metal sinking in, so focused on pulling down a long enough chain that it would reach Bruce. He couldn’t even feel the pain in his shoulders anymore, mindless of anything but how many seconds had passed since Bruce had last broken the surface of the water.

Tearing away the cape and clutching the end of the length of barbed wire in his bare, bleeding hands, Dick dove back into the water. Bruce was still fighting the pull of the water, legs kicking and lips pressed shut. Dick pushed aside the fleeting thought that his kicks were getting limper, looping his legs around Bruce’s waist for leverage as he began hacking at the topmost rope with the sharp barbs.

Blood blossomed through the water as he worked, his lungs beginning to burn.

The rope was just so thick! The sharp edge of the metal was fraying it, but slowly, too slowly, Dick’s frantic pace staggered by trying to move through water. Bruce was going to drown, and he was going to watch it happen, utterly useless.

As if sensing his growing distress, Alfred’s voice returned to his ear.

“Keep going, Robin. You’ve almost gotten through it. Just a little more.”

Alfred’s air of calm, however forced, was a balm to Dick’s nerves, and he doubled his efforts even as dark spots began to dance across his vision. He couldn’t feel his hands at all any more, just focused on moving his arms, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So intent on his task, he didn’t notice when the barbed wire finally bit through the last thread of rope, the other bands wound around Bruce going slack.

Instantly, Bruce’s struggle redoubled, and it was Dick who went limp in the water, legs losing their grip around him. The next thing Dick knew, he was on his back on the dockside, hidden behind a storage crate with Batman crowded over him. He was wheezing too, swaying where he knelt, his cape so drenched that it dripped like rain over Dick.

“B… ‘kay?”

Bruce pressed a hand down over Dick’s mouth just before footsteps ran past their hiding spot. Only when their footsteps receded did his hand fall away, but only so that he could pick Dick up as if he were a baby, hoisting him up against his shoulder before running from the cacophony of the police surveying the scene behind them.

Each stride jostled Dick badly, the missing pain returning with a vengeance. Hanging over Bruce's shoulder, he raised his hands to his face and winced at the state of them, lacerated from fingertip to wrist. Blood oozed so thickly that Dick could smell it, and his stomach roiled, only made worse as Bruce leaped a gap between berths and the damage to Dick’s shoulders made itself known.

Bruce set him down gently when they finally made it back to the car, setting him atop the bonnet and pulling a ribbon of bandages from one of the pouches on his belt, thankfully waterproof. He didn’t say a word as he carefully wrapped Dick’s torn hands, nor when he pressed two tablets against his lips to help with the pain.

It was only when Dick leaned forward, catching Bruce’s wrist between his two bandaged hands, asking again, “Are you okay?” that Bruce looked him in the eye.

Dick didn’t need to see past his cowl to recognise Bruce’s disapproval.

There was a part of him that dared to hope he was wrong, that perhaps Bruce might be grateful that Dick had helped him, might even compliment his resourcefulness in finding a way to cut through the ropes.

That hope died as Bruce said, “I told you to go back to the car.”

And that was it. He rounded the car and slammed the door shut behind him, the engine idling while Dick swallowed his hurt and slipped off the hood, fumbling with the door handle between his bandaged fingers.

Quietly, Alfred said over their direct channel, “You did well, my boy.”

They were the words he was desperate to hear, but from the wrong man.

#whumptober 2021 #batman fanfiction #bruce wayne #dick grayson #i haven't posted a fanfic in over six years ;;;#each chapter incorporates at least two if not all three of that day's whumptober 2021 prompts #and the story follows Bruce and Dick's early days together #aka: Dick is grieving and lonely and Bruce didn't sign up to be a father #(except he kind of did)#enjoy!!

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twilitty · 4 years ago

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Moonlit ch.2

This is the second chapter in my new fic Moonlit, it will be posted on Tumblr, ao3, and ffnet. New chapters uploaded every week and a half. Message/comment to be added to my tag list.

3.9k words

previous chapter

big thank you to my beta reader @effervescentlyirrevocable who has given me the absolute best criticism and helped make this chapter so beautiful :)

Bella Swan is introduced to a possible new friend and receives a gift. The doctors new family may not be as well adjusted to small town life as Charlie would like.

Chapter Two

The next morning I wake up to a growl of thunder beating against the inside of my skull. I had a night of thankfully restful sleep for once, only waking up to get a glass of water. My hands are clasped against my chest, fingers knotted in annoyance as I hold back what likely will be a spill of expletives. Why must there always be noise? Why can I not sleep soundly and awake soundly, just once?

I open one eye experimentally, hoping the sun has already arisen and I won’t be missing out on any leftover sleep. My room is shrouded in darkness. The expletives, swear words crude enough to make a priest gag, spill out in a muttered breath and my hands squeeze against each other once more before reaching for my alarm clock. The red numbers blink back at me and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the light before I read the time. Nine in the morning. I look back to the window where my blinds are drawn closed, but still no light, even filtered through the canopy of clouds, peaks at the edges.

The thunder, which had gone quiet after waking me up initially, rolls again for a moment before silencing itself. Only, was it thunder? It sounded heavy, like machinery but with a deeper growl. Was there construction nearby? I didn’t recall any on my few trips up and down the street, and I question why there would need to be any construction anyways. It’s not as if this is a booming neighbourhood with a subdivision being built.

Charlie knocks against my door, quieter than yesterday. “Bella, it’s time to get up.” You’d imagine that with my age being nearly twenty and my status as a legal adult I’d be allowed to choose my own time to wake up. My annoyance dies down quickly when my thoughts bounce back to Phoenix, waking up early each morning to drive Mom into her early morning classes. Nine in the morning really isn’t that early, in fact, it allows me time to get some chores done before class. “Someone has dropped by.”

My lips contort into an annoyed pucker. Who would have stopped by? Mom had warned me before the move that nothing but rumours and nasty mold comes from Forks. Apparently her quick marriage to Charlie, and even quicker pregnancy with me, was enough gossip to fuel conversations for years. I remember a trip to Forks at eight years old, a woman had stopped my mother in the grocery store and asked her over for coffee. “They just want the inside scoop,” Renee had told me afterwards, “Give them anything and they’ll find a way to make it ugly.”

My bare feet brush the ground and a flash of cold spreads up my shins. Apparently, even in spring, the weather is dangerously cold. I tell Charlie I’ll be downstairs in a moment, pulling on a pair of jeans and thermal socks. I was hoping for a relaxing day alone, just me, my sweatpants, and the laptop. I compromise on the socks, regardless of who is downstairs, my toes will not be cold today.

I pull the blinds open, the lawn stretching out beside the house is bathed in shadowy darkness despite the morning hour. The forest that lines our property, secluding us from the neighbours, is eerie and mysterious. The green tones that I initially found alien and too bright are now gone and replaced with navy. I wait a moment, staring into the trees, my thoughts rambling into fairytale imaginations.

My brain conjures an image of a man, tall and insidious, stepping out of the tree line, long claws attached to his fingers and a nasty grin revealing pointed teeth. His shirt is ripped in the front, a long tear reaching from throat to navel and from inside the shirt tufts of hair stick out. No, not hair, fur. He growls menacingly.

I close the blinds quickly and blink against the pictures my brain throws at me.

The landline rings downstairs and startles me, a jolt of anxious adrenaline surging through my cold feet and up into my heart. Maybe one of the reasons I enjoyed Phoenix’s barren, plain landscape was that I would not be subjected to such terrible thoughts. I remember being twelve and watching Scream with my mother, she was on a horror movie kick and had rented a whole stack of DVDs for us to watch. That night when I was tired but my eyes refused to close as I didn’t want to imagine what could be lurking outside my bedroom window. Crawling into my mother’s bed, she ran her warm palm against my forehead and hummed a song until I calmed down.

“Bella,” she had said quietly, the nurturing lilt of her voice expanding my heart, “We live in a desert. You can see for miles and miles and miles, if some bad man was coming we’d see him from forty minutes away.” I giggled quietly into the comforter, our bodies pressed against each other in near sleep and my mother’s hands maneuvering through my hair with expertise.

Now, I look out at the grassy lawn from a crack between the blinds. It resembles the set of a slasher movie, the forest borders it with every possibility my imagination can muster. I can see a man from four seconds away, not forty minutes.

There's a chorus of male laughter from below and I sigh, assuming this is my cue to go downstairs and meet with whoever has stopped in.

Charlie is sitting in the living room, facing me and his back to the television which is decidedly blank. On the couch is a head of glossy, black hair. Beside him is a wheelchair with an older man sitting in it, a mug clasped between dark hands. I curse whatever forces brought these strangers into the house so early, I am not in the mood for interaction. I was hoping for a bowl of oatmeal and a quiet morning.

“Hey!” Charlie braces his hands on his knees and pushes out of the armchair. His face is split in half with a grin. I can’t recall him smiling this large in the past week of my stay. The two men turn, facing me with warm smiles.

One of them is older, perhaps Charlie's age, his mouth creased with smile lines and his eyes wrinkled with sun damage. His skin is a warm russet brown, his eyes deep-set behind pronounced brows and a large smile. Bright white teeth stare back at me as my brain picks over his features, how do I know this man? I know almost immediately that he’s Quileute, from the Reservation to the west of town. I vaguely remember trips to the beach with Charlie and eating hotdogs over fires with some of the children from the area.

“Do you remember me, Bella?” He asks in a deep, commanding tone. His voice transports me back to the beach, collecting colourful rocks with the other kids and being called to dinner. Billy Black. He lives in a small, red house with a large kitchen perfect for gatherings. He’s older than I remember, but my last time being here for any substantial time was nearly four years ago.

“Dad, c’mon,” the boy says with a sarcastic eye roll. He stands from the couch, his height towering mine by a few inches and his broad shoulders slumped forward happily. I wonder how tall he’d be if he stood to his full height. His voice is deep, not as deep as his father’s, but still an indicator of the family resemblance. Where his father is strong and sure, this boy is aloof and casual. Jacob Black. “She hasn’t been back in ages, she probably blocked your nasty attitude out of her memory.”

I bite back a smile, but Billy laughs and shoots Charlie a look that says, kids, am I right? I step forward and extend my hand to Jacob, who takes it gratefully in his own and gives a soft shake. His hand covers mine and is most definitely a few degrees warmer than I am. “Jacob Black, we used to make mud pies together.”

“Best in town,” Charlie adds in from the back of the room. I smile.

“No, no, I remember you guys,” I tell the Blacks. “It just took me a moment.” Charlies sits back down in his chair and motions for me to take a seat.

“Billy and Jake just stopped by,” my father explains. I sit beside Jacob on the couch, a cushion between us. But, even with the provided space and the lack of physical contact, I feel heat come off of him in waves like a radiator. I wonder if he’s sick. “Jake here is a mechanic.” A furious blush settles under the boy's brown skin as his mechanical skills are brought up, this is my first time hearing of his expertise. I remember his sisters being twins, both tall and beautiful with matching smiles. They were almost two years older than me, Jacob had followed closely behind and was only born in the same six months as me. Of course, now that I try to remember, the date falls short in my memory. It’s possible he has a career as a mechanic somewhere on the Reservation, but he mustn’t work in Forks. I hadn’t seen a single mechanics garage in town.

“No, no,” he looks between me and my father with an apologetic smile, “it’s just a hobby. Something for fun.” Billy tsks at his son, shaking his head in a way that makes me believe this conversation has occurred before.

“Hobbies can bring in money, hobbies can turn into jobs,” the older man says with a scolding tone. Jacob just shakes his head crookedly, not responding. Charlie takes this as his cue to interrupt the trajectory of the conversation, and I’m grateful. I haven’t spoken to these men in nearly four years, that last place I want to be is in the middle of a family feud.

“Well, now, there was a reason I brought up Jake’s skills,” Charlie interjects with a wave at the large boy next to me. “Bells, go take a look outside.” My fingers twitch anxiously in my lap at being thrust into the center of the conversation. I was hoping I could slide under the radar here, not end up in the middle of it.

It takes great restraint for me to get up from the couch and not stumble over my ankles in the act, my clumsiness reaches new heights when I’m being watched by a room of people. Even if there are only three people in the room. The window at the end of the room is open, the curtains pulled to the side, and when I reach it my gaze falls on a group of kids biking down the street with a rainbow of helmets. Apparently, the dark sky doesn’t scare them the way it does me.

They pedal quickly, little screams of delight just barely audible through the thick glass of the living room window. They pass the porch and disappear behind a large red truck parked out front of the house. I blink. It’s still there, rounded fenders and shiny door handles, long bed, ancient grill adorning the hood. It’s beautiful. “Is that your truck, Billy?” There’s a chorus of laughter behind me, the men’s baritones mixing and producing a flaming blush starting at my neck and creeping up into my face. I turn to look at them, my stomach clenching as I turn away from the beautiful vehicle. “What?”

“It’s yours, Bella,” Charlie tells me. The breath I was holding leaves my lungs through my gaping mouth, I struggle to close it and take an experimental inhale. “Bella?” I turn and look back out the window, the glorious truck still sits there staring at me from across the dark lawn. I can only imagine how beautiful it is in the sunlight.

“I- it’s mine?” I ask. Another series of laughs echo through and then footsteps come up beside me, Jacob stands looking out the window. “You made it?” I question, looking up at him.

His shoulders shake silently and his lips press together as he tries to compose himself, I’m not sure why he finds my comment so funny but it reignites my blush. “I fixed it up, yeah. But, don’t get too excited. The thing runs at sixty miles max, push her further than that and you’ll be walking home.”

We all go outside quickly, me leading the pack with an excited skip in my step. It’s a miracle I didn’t fall on my face or stumble over my words as I spoke my thoughts aloud. “It’s so pretty, I love it! Jake, I have no idea how you could make it look so perfect.” The truck sits against the curb, its red paint flaking in places around the tires, but even more perfect than I could have imagined.

The sky is a disturbing shade of grey, a fact that irritates me more outside than it did in the house. Why does the weather have to ruin such a perfectly good moment? But I spend the majority of my time on the vehicle, petting its sides carefully like I might damage it. Finally, seemingly having had enough of me quietly admiring the vehicle, Billy tells me to hop in and check it out on the inside.

Jacob produces a set of keys, no automatic locking mechanism, and twists it in the truck's door handle. He holds the door open for me, producing a hand to help me in. I take it gratefully, stepping up into the driver’s seat and letting myself sink into the seat. Jacob closes the door on me, but my thoughts are lost and focused only on how much I love this truck.

“So,” he says after opening the passenger door and climbing up next to me, “You ever driven a truck before?” I shake my head, fingers curving experimentally around the thin steering wheel. I can see myself now: driving down the empty highway, the sun blinding against the dry pavement, window down and hair blowing, radio blaring. It’s exactly what I needed, a way for me to get around without needing to borrow the cruiser (which, yes, is illegal) or have Charlie drive me around.

“I can give you lessons,” Jake offers, fingers clasped in his lap, drumming a tune against the opposite knuckles. “If not that’s cool, but she drives a little funny.” “She?” I ask, eyes leaving the steering wheel momentarily to watch his face. He notices, the serene expression dropping from his face and replaced with a quick upturn of his lips.

“Uh, yeah.” He palms the back of his neck roughly and seems almost apologetic. “I have a thing for cars, y’know, so naming them is kinda part of the deal.” I can barely make out a faint red tinge over his cheeks. “Wait, hold on,” I can’t contain the giggle that slips out but firmly press my lips together before trying again. I can only imagine the toothy smile I’m giving him, a girl all too excited over some old truck. Only, this is the perfect old truck. “What’s her name?”

“Betty,” he responds sheepishly, his hand still massaging the back of his neck. “But if you tell anybody that I’ll have to kill you.”

“That’s okay, Betty is our secret.”

And, just like that, I now have a secret with someone. Does this make us friends? Regardless of whatever it makes us, my heart sings happily from within my chest, excited to think that maybe Forks won’t be as lonesome as it’s been this past week. Maybe Jacob and I will become friends and bond over Betty and I won’t only have Charlie and school and books.

“Well, before you accept her turn the keys,” Jacob instructs. I oblige, setting the keys in the ignition and giving them a gentle twist. A roar of mechanical thunder envelopes us. I nearly leap out of my seat in surprise, the loud rumbling of the engine settling in my ears and blocking out all other noises. Jake says something but I can barely hear him from over the thunderous growl of Betty. I turn the keys back and the truck dies down with one last rumble. “She’s loud,” he says obviously.

“She’s perfect.”

Jacob hands me a spare set of keys after we get out, telling me that he’ll be back the day after tomorrow to give me my first driving lesson in the truck. Charlie was all too excited with that idea, even though I already have my license and know how to drive. In fact, other than illegally borrowing the cruiser with Charlie’s permission, I have never committed an illegal act involving a vehicle. If memory serves me correctly, Charlie has two speeding tickets from his youth.

But, I don’t argue against Jake's offer. In fact, I thank him profusely and promise to pay him for the lessons. “Bella,” he says in an exasperated way, as if we’ve known each other for years and I always say such supposedly outlandish things. “Why would you pay me for something I’m offering to you?”

We’ve stopped in front of the Blacks vehicle, a large brown and beige truck which seems to only be a decade newer than the red one. This isn’t saying much for the brown vehicle as the red one could be from the fifties. Billy is wheeling his way down the driveway with Charlie walking beside him, laughing emphatically at something his friend had said.

“That’s crazy,” I respond with a shake of my head. “That’s like me not paying you for the truck.”

“Yeah, I know.” I take pause at this, the words welling up inside my brain and the meaning lost to me for only a moment. Then, like finally finding the missing puzzle piece under the table, I understand what this means and the picture is clear.

“You- I- This truck isn’t free.” The words stutter out of me, the first two the beginnings of messages I abandoned immediately after starting them. This truck, though old, is not cheap, and neither is Jakes’s skill. I should pay him for labour if nothing else, but I know he doesn’t want to include that in the bill. He doesn't want to send me a bill.

“It’s a gift,” he states simply with a shrug of his wide shoulders. Billy pulls up beside me, slapping away Charlie's hand as he tries to adjust his chair for him.

“Careful, Swan,” the older Black warns with hostility. “I have more muscle in these arms than you do in your entire body. Touch the chair and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Jacob helps Billy into the passenger seat, folding up the wheelchair and securing it into the truck bed with quick hands. Charlie stands beside me, shooting fiery threats back and forth with his friend until Jacob climbs behind the wheel. “Storm coming through,” Jacob says with a wave towards the dark sky. “If you need any help with anything, tying stuff down or moving let me know.” Charlie thanks him for the offer and I lean in to thank him again for the truck and the lessons. I also assure him that the argument over billing is far from over and that he’ll get an earful the next time we meet.

The rest of the day is spent restlessly. I log into my online classes but my attention is continuously claimed by my truck in front of the house. The sun never shows itself, content with hiding behind the cloud coverage. I’m sitting in the living room when Charlie gets home for dinner, my book discarded on the couch somewhere beside me. I reach for it once I see his cruiser pull into the driveway, deciding it would be better to look busy than to look like I’m obsessing over my new means of transportation.

“Bella?” He calls, the door shutting behind him with a creak. At some point I’ll have to oil all the hinges in the house. It’s that or I go clinically insane from the constant noise.

“Yeah, just in here.”

He comes in bearing a brown bag with the Forks Diner logo written on the side. “I brought dinner, it’ll be on the stove.” I nod and thank him, telling him that we can eat together once he’s down and out of uniform. “Well, actually, I won’t be eating until a bit later.” His moustache twitches irritably and he disappears into the kitchen to drop the food off.

“Are you meeting with Billy?” I ask, knowing this isn’t the case. It must be an issue with work causing him to feel stressed. And when he comes back into the living room from the kitchen I’m able to see the tension holding his shoulders in place. “Did something happen at work?” “It’s nothing to worry about,” he assures me, but his words do anything but. So much for police chief being a boring job. “Just those new kids in town, the doctors children,” he waves a hand in the air as if trying to gather his thoughts. “Kicking up trouble in their first week here, something about racing.”

“Oh.” I pull my knees under me and turn to face him fully, my arms hanging over the back of the couch like a child.

“Anyways, no big deal I’m sure they’re just used to city life or something.” But, my fathers tone indicates that he most definitely does not believe his own words. In Charlie's books a bad apple is always a bad apple, and he’s probably dreading all the other trouble these kids will kick up. “I’ve just gotta go check-in with them, make sure it doesn’t happen again.” His hand moves towards my arm, as if to pat me goodbye but it stutters midair, falling back to his side awkwardly.

I pull my bottom lip into my mouth, biting on it as he mutters a goodbye and leaves through the front door without looking at me again. I wonder when this will get any easier.

Renee left Charlie a year into their young marriage, taking me away to live with her in Arizona. She had given me partial reasons over the years for her leaving, talking of them being too young, the weather too wet, how she wanted a life where she could be free from responsibilities. I’m not sure whether it dawned on her that a child constitutes a responsibility, but she took me to every yoga class and rarely left me with a babysitter.

My mother was never too keen on Forks, not that I fault her for it, the weather leaves much to be desired and there’s virtually nothing to do. But, because of her disliking I rarely visited my father, my first extended visit being when I was twelve and stayed the entire summer as Renee travelled with her then-boyfriend. I came back to a scrapbook of kissy photos and pressed leaves from her travels, all I had to show for my trip was a runny nose and a strong distaste for hamburgers. One can only eat so many burgers before the novelty wears off.

taglist: @musingsofvenus @maybesandohnos

#twilight #edward cullen #bella swan #jasper #the twilight saga #carlisle #twilight saga #smeyer #2008 #twilight renaissance #fanfic #jacob/Bella #Bella/Jacob #Jacob x Bella #Bella x Jacob #twilight fanfiction #twilight fanfic #mine

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sleekervae · 4 years ago

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The Neighbour [0.1]

Masterlist

Everything had played out like the rising action in a horror movie. And before the whole world's eyes, life on Earth had slowed to a snail-like crawl. Covid 19 was ravaging through cities and countries faster than a salmonella outbreak at a restaurant even Gordon Ramsay couldn't attempt to save. It was terrifying to watch, and even more terrifying to see work and interaction dry up so quickly. Especially for those who relied on social interaction to stay sane.

Luckily for Remington, he happened to be stuck with his brother when quarantine measures went into full effect.

It was no big deal living with Emerson, if anything, it was relatively more calm with two out of the three of them sharing a space. Sebastian and Larissa were staying well and safe in their own house, popping by now and again at the gate to check in on his little brothers. No doubt, it sucked. The album was pushed back, the tour called off, the only thing keeping the hype for 'The Bastards' release was social media.

At least Remington had comfort in the fact that he wouldn't have to endure this quarantine alone. Living in his own house all by himself, he'd probably drive himself up the wall and find himself hanging off the rafters (literally).

Tuesday morning was bright and warm, as they tended to be in LA. Emerson was sat comfortably at the kitchen table, drinking his usual cup of tea and reading the depressing headlines coming out of the news. Pepper was curled up at his feet, snoring softly and her little marshmallow body rising steadily. The neighbourhood was quiet, it always was, but it was especially tranquil these spring days in April. He simpered sardonically when he read the latest quote from the president, promising that the pandemic would pass come July.

His attention was gripped suddenly when he heard the low squeal of car tires. The youngest brother glanced outside the window, his dark eyes falling over the little blue Waivecar that had pulled up at the opposing apartment complex. Those cars had been coming back and forth for the last four days, with the same girl coming and going. And at night, the apartment facing the house would keep the lights on until two or three in the morning, but she wasn't partying. The most noise this girl made was the hum of her radio drifting out of an open window.

Clearly, whoever she was, she was still in the weeds of moving. Perhaps when she was settled, Emerson would go by and introduce himself, make her feel welcome. Considering how warm the climate was, this particular neighbourhood had a tendency to be quiet cold and private towards neighbours. No doubt many of them weren't a fan of the band and their at home antics.

Emerson was startled when his brother came bounding in, dressed in the same moppy grey sweats he had been practically living in for weeks. Thank goodness he wasn't wearing his heelys this time around; the other day he had crashed into the couch and flipped over onto the cushions, nearly smashing his head on the coffee table.

"The guys will be by in about half an hour," he said. Emerson narrowed his eyes at his older brother.

"He says as we're under strict orders from the state health officials to not see anybody," he murmured.

Remington pouted, running a hand through his evidently growing blonde hair. He pulled up a seat next to his brother, "Hey, you were the one who said it's getting too quiet around here. And besides, it's not like we're coming from opposite counties. Seb lives like four blocks down from us,"

"I'm just getting a little nervous, is all," Emerson shrugged, showing him the article on his tablet, "The numbers are still going up,"

"And they'll keep going up until they find a cure. And while they're doing that, we're going to be in the backyard playing soccer and eating pizza," Remington smiled.

"Who said we're having pizza?"

"I did. I just decided,"

"Maybe I want Mexican? Did you think about that?"

Across the street in the fresh red brick and black-trimmed apartment, three floors up from the ground and in direct line of the sun sat Eva. The twenty-four-year-old literary bachelor sat comfortably at her newly furnished desk, typing away at her laptop that was due for a battery change -- Eva just hadn't found the time to physically take it into the store. On her right she had a lukewarm cup of coffee, on the left her speaker which was softly blasting Tove Lo's new album. All the while, her bony fingers flew over the keyboard, her big stormy blue eyes skimming the words that sprinted across her document.

Eva got by as a writer, not a novelist or a poet, but as a ghost writer. She was hired to write materials for would-be authors and journalists, all of whom either didn't have the drive or commitment to write to the extent Eva did. Surprisingly, she made some pretty good money just off that. And while that work tended to be dry and bleak, Eva had spent her free time writing various fanfictions -- mostly for Hannibal and Criminal Minds. She happened to be quite prolific on Tumblr because of her literary fantasies.

And while her work was often isolating, Eva didn't live alone by any means. She had her pale tabby, Pluto, to keep her company. He was snoozing on the couch, despite how often Eva had trained him not to do that when he was a kitten.

She had just returned from an early morning run from the grocery store -- having learned the hard way that despite the pandemic, people will continue to flock to the stores in droves and it's almost impossible to social distance within them. As if moving out of her old apartment wasn't hard enough, now she had to deal with hastily late movers, jumbled lease agreements, and a pandemic.

In the throws of bittersweet silence, Eva's concentration was broke when a shrill alarm had her nearly jumping out of her seat. It was only her phone, the screen lighting up with a 'Blocked' ID. Eva smiled wickedly and declined the call.

The young writer pushed her rolley chair away from the desk and did a stretch, her head turning towards the house across the street. She figured a couple of frat boys shared the place, they had a few of their friends over from time to time but they were relatively quiet. The most she would hear out of them is some smack talk coming from the backyard.

Pluto's head popped up from the couch, then he leapt onto the floor and trotted over to the window sill, hopping up to spy on the unfamiliar car that was pulling up to the house. Eva could hardly care less. There was a statewide order to see only a small group of people as little as possible, and as long as the neighbours wouldn't bother her, she wouldn't bother them.

It was a shame, as if having to meet new people wasn't difficult enough for her...

A few hours passed and soon the silence in the Los Angeles neighbourhood was broken by the grunts and thwacks of a backyard game of pool basketball. The boys and a few of their friends were all the more engaged in their game while their girls sat aside on deck chairs under the beating sun. Under the shade of the pergola, their friend Andrew was grilling some sausages -- beef and tofu -- on the barbecue.

Remington was taking the piss out of Sebastian for being all over his girl, but who the hell could blame the kid? There was a new rush of life in the guitarist's face whenever the topic of Larissa came up. The same could be said for Emerson and Shy. Remington wouldn't dare admit he was a little jealous of his brothers' happiness, so he'd settle for loving his brothers but torturing them at every opportunity.

Breaking out from the cold water, Emerson gripped tightly to the rubber red ball in his hand. Just as Sebastian came to take a running dive into the pool, he reared the ball back and hucked it at his older brother, nailing him square in the chest. Instead of a graceful dive, Sebastian flailed sideways and crashed into the water. The ball ricocheted onto the deck and bounced away towards the front yard.

"Oh my God!"

"Emerson!" Shy scolded, a little horrified and yet not surprised at her boyfriend's actions. Sebastian broke out of the water and shook his hair out of his eyes. It was more his pride and the laughter of his friends that hurt than the fading sting of rubber against skin.

Emerson meanwhile just giggled happily as he high-fived Remington.

"You guys fucking suck!" Sebastian glowered at the younger boys.

At the same time, Eva had given up on work for the day. As random as it was, she decided she'd try to make bread: the apparent trend that was surging during this quarantine. She bought all the things she would need this morning.

Stepped a few feet into the kitchen, she pushed open the window a brisk breeze flooding in and freshening up the air. Her attention was skewed to the house across the street, hearing some mild echoes of conversation and the thrum of a radio in the air.

She went to gather her ingredients and tools, however, as she turned to fetch an apron she realized something was missing: the patter of feet behind her. Pluto was usually Eva's shadow whenever he was in the kitchen, always the opportunistic cat he was. However, he wasn't on the couch. He wasn't in his bed. He wasn't snooping around in her closet or hiding under the desk.

"Where'd the ball go?" Daniel called, clinging to the ledge of the pool.

"I'll get it" Remington swam to the ladder and pulled himself out of the water. He shook out his sopping blonde hair, unintentionally shaking his ass in his colorful swim trunks. Their friend, Michael, whistled from the pool. Remington only smirked on him.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, hunny," he sassed, waving his hand and ducked off to fetch the ball.

Puzzled, Eva grabbed Pluto's favorite bag of cat treats and shook it, the sound was always able to bring him out -- when he was within ten feet of the treats. The fact that he didn't appear told Eva that he must've gone out the window once again to wreak havoc.

With an irritated huff, she switched out her house slippers for her sandals and hightailed it out with the bag of treats.

The red rubber pool ball had rolled across the grass and lodged itself into a bush at the fence. Remington was awash in frigid goosebumps, not even the California heat could will away the pool's chill quick enough. Nevertheless, he crawled down and retrieved the ball from the brambles, swatting off what little dirt he could. However, his fixation swerved to the complex across the street when he heard a heavy slam.

"Pluto!" a young girl came charging out of the apartment complex, dressed in a slightly wrinkled white t-shirt and her jaw-length hair swivelled smoothly around her face as she frantically looked up and down the street, "Pluto!" she was shaking a little yellow bag.

Remington looked up and down the quiet street, almost expecting to see Pluto the Dog standing at the corner like Cartoon Cat. He glanced down quizzically at the ball, then back at the young woman.

Eva rubbed the stress lines on her forehead out of pure frustration. This wasn't the first time Pluto ran off, he always came back. However, the damn cat would always find ways to stir up trouble; rowling up dogs, plucking fish from little ponds, scratching at hanging laundry.

"Pluto!!" she shook the bag of treats.

"Hey!" Remington called, waving his hand to the stranger, "You alright?"

Eva glanced at the owner of that soft, yet scratchy voice. She hadn't even noticed the bleach blonde kid standing in the glint of the sun. Eva crossed the street and stood a few feet from the gate, keeping more than two meters distance.

"I'm sorry. Have you happen to see a cat running around? He's a pale tabby, couple black stripes, likes to chew shoes," she shrugged.

Remington only shook his head, "Sorry. I'm afraid not," he smiled sheepishly, "Did -- did you say he was a cat?"

"Yeah,"

"And you named your cat 'Pluto'? Like -- the dog?"

Eva smirked, but shook her head, unable to help but glance at the tattoos that crossed over this boy's torso, "He's named after The Black Cat," she said, "You ever read Edgar Allan Poe?"

Remington smiled sheepishly, "Oh right, right! I haven't read that in a while, actually. He named the cat after the Roman God for death,"

Eva smiled pleasantly, not having pegged this boy to know so much about EAP, "That's right. I wanted a black cat to fit with the theme but the damn tabby stole my heart,"

"He knew what he was doing, obviously," Remington grinned, "I'll keep an eye for him though, if I happen to --" he was cut short however when he heard Pepper start yapping from the backyard. The yapping was followed by the clanging of metal and a screeching yrowl.

"What the fuck?" Andrew suddenly shouted, “Where’d this cat come from!?”

Panic flooded over Eva's face and Remington didn't think twice to open the gate and let her in. Social distancing aside, they two of them rushed into the backyard to find a tray of sausages had crashed onto the floor, the meat had rolled everywhere. Shy clung to Pepper as the little pomeranien yapped and growled incessantly at the scruffy tabby on the patio table, back arched and hissing at the dog while he guarded his captured sausage.

Eva was understandably horrified.

"What the hell happened here?" Remington asked, just as in shock over the mess.

"Cat came out of nowhere and dive bombed our lunch!" Daniel replied, having just crawled out of the pool.

"Pluto!" Eva ran to the table and scooped up the snarling cat, Pepper was still yapping away, "What is the matter with you?" she scolded at Pluto before turning to Remington and Andrew, who still wielded the metal tongs in his hand, "I am so frickin' sorry!"

"No, no, it's okay," Andrew shook his head, glancing at the lost sausages longingly, "I was kind of craving sushi, anyways,"

"It's no big deal, honestly," Remington assured her, "Five second rule applies, I'm sure,"

"It's been about thirty-seven seconds," Sebastian spoke flatly.

"Since when were you counting?"

Larissa was the only one who didn't seem annoyed or surprised at the feline intruder. She smiled warmly at the young girl, "Is this your cat?"

"Unfortunately," Eva grinned sheepishly, "I should know better. He's in a new area and he tends to get into trouble. Also, if anyone happens to lose a shoe, he did it, and I'm apologizing in advance," she pointed a finger at the now calmed tabby.

Shy smiled, "Well, Pepper's no better. She tends to think she's a way bigger dog," she held up and coddled the fluffy pomeranian. Eva smiled awkwardly, only now noting that she forgot to grab a face mask. And here she was: in a backyard full of strangers in a pandemic.

"Wait, I recognize you," Emerson said, "You just moved across the street, right?"

"Yeah, that's me. Eva," she nodded, "Great first impression, right?"

"You couldn't do any worse than Curcio over here," Sebastian grinned, "Remember the split pants?"

"You're going to hang that over my head for the rest of my life, aren't you?" Daniel glowered.

"Maybe," Emerson turned back to Eva, "I'm Emerson, that's Sebastian, Daniel, Larissa, Michael, Shy, Andrew... and you've already met Remington, I see,"

"The best looking one," Remington grinned.

Eva nodded, "Well, it was very nice meeting you all, I should get going, though. And again, I'm so sorry about the cat,"

Remington shrugged, "It's just sausages. We can get more," he assured her, "Here, I'll walk you out,"

"Thanks," Eva smiled, keeping Pluto close to her chest as she passed Shy and Pepper. Pepper gave one last fleeting bark as the cat passed by. Pluto simply licked his lips.

Michael couldn't help but lean over as he caught one last glance at the new neighbour, then turning to Emerson, "How come you get the pretty neighbour?"

The drummer shrugged, reaching over to grab the rubber ball that Remington dropped at the end of the pool, "Dumb luck?"

#palaye royale #Palaye Royale imagine #Palaye Royale fic #remington leith #Remington Leith imagine #emerson barrett #sebastian danzig #boy bands #band imagines #band imagine blog #original story #original female character

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kurodachimagic · 3 years ago

Text

Chocolate and Cherries - Chapter 1

Summary: When Adachi falls into the arms of a kind stranger his life changes for the better.

Rating: Pg 13

Tags/warnings: Fluff, getting together, au, Writer Adachi, Chef Kurosawa.

Word count: 6.2k

A/n: This story was written for the cherry magic mini bang! Thank you @hiwatari-art for inviting me to join! Had a lovely time working with you as always. Thank you to my other artist over on twitter guacagabs. The entire story is being posted right now. Thank you to @schnaf for being a great friend and beta!

Read on ao3

Adachi dragged his feet on the pavement as he made his way home from work. He was already too exhausted to start his writing day with the best mindset but it would have to do. He’d already skipped four days this week and if he didn’t actually sit down to work on his book, it would never be published. He let out a deep sigh and shook his head slightly.

The situation was not ideal by any means, he was not great at cooking and it was already too late to start dinner, but he definitely needed to eat something or his mind would absolutely quit on him, he knew that much.

Adachi knew he should probably get something healthier but he refused to waste even more time walking to the store, so he decided to stop by the food cart near his flat for his usual emergency menu: two tuna onigiris with mayo - along with a can of soda in the hopes that the caffeine would boost his creativity. He was not too happy about it, but he didn’t have much time to contemplate his choice because as soon as he had paid, the first few droplets of water hit his shoulders. Looking up, he felt the next few drops hit his nose and his forehead. He cursed inwardly and simply took off awkwardly running the last few blocks home, trying his best not to slip and fall, his dress shoes nothing but a hazard in this particular situation.

The building door was so close, he could see it through the pouring rain; just a few meters and he would be home. Adachi rushed, his hand extended already to grab at the door handle when his body collided with something - someone - and fell backwards. It was as if time had slowed down; he could see the face of the person he ran into frozen in shock, his eyes widening as he saw Adachi falling, while Adachi could only think about the pain this would cause him, physical, yes, but mostly emotional. He always managed to get himself in embarrassing situations and now -

His neighbour extended his hand just in time to catch Adachi’s and pulled him upright effortlessly, his expression switching from shock to a relieved smile. “Are you ok? I’m so sorry, I hadn’t seen you.”

“Thank you! I’m so sorry,” Adachi said, feeling the heat rise to his face, partly because of his clumsiness and partly because his neighbour had not let go of him yet. In fact, Adachi could have sworn that the guy was rubbing his thumb on the back of his hand. He didn’t know what to do, so he tried again. “Uh, sorry. I should’ve been more careful.”

“It’s ok, I’m glad that you didn’t get hurt.” The man seemed to suddenly remember they were standing in the pouring rain and pulled Adachi to the door. “Come, you’ll catch a cold in this weather.”

No matter how hard he thought, Adachi couldn't remember ever catching his name but he had seen this man before in the elevator and in some of the common areas. He seemed to be a bit of a recluse, much like himself.

The man opened the door and finally let go of his hand before ushering him in. “After you, Adachi.”

Adachi’s eyes widened; he didn't know how the man knew his name, but he didn’t mention it. He walked inside and called the elevator, followed closely by his saviour. Once the doors opened, he stepped in and turned around, pressing the button for the fifth floor and finally facing the man. "Thank you, again…" he trailed off.

"Kurosawa. My name is Kurosawa." He pressed the fourth-floor button.

Adachi smiled and bowed to him. "It was nice seeing you, Kurosawa. Have a good night."

The elevator dinged and Kurosawa bowed with a smile before exiting. “Good night, Adachi,” he waved.

Adachi hesitantly waved back as the elevator doors closed. Before he knew it he was one floor up, opening the door to his flat, throwing his work bag on the sofa and taking his wet clothes off with a groan before going to the bathroom.

What a day. Not only had he stayed late to finish on that project Urabe had handed to him but he also made himself look like a fool in front of his very cool neighbour, and to add insult to injury now he needed a hot shower to hopefully avoid catching a cold. He shook his head and hopped under the stream, washing himself thoroughly and letting the hot stream relax his muscles.

Feeling in a bit of a better mood, Adachi got out of the shower, wrapped himself in a towel and went about getting into a comfy set of pyjamas. He finally sat at his desk and opened the white doc of doom, checking the time and cursing as he realized it was 9 pm already. He slouched in his chair, throwing his head back with a groan. This book was going to take a million years at this rate, he really needed to prioritize his schedule, put on some good hours into it each day, especially during the weekend, he needed to -

Adachi’s stomach growled loudly, reminding him that his emergency dinner laid abandoned in its bag. He got up and stomped over to the sofa, unwrapping the onigiris and eating them without so much as a thought before returning to his spot. He promptly sat down to continue with the daily task of staring at the document while he begged his brain to type something - anything - out. But his mind had other plans though, Kurosawa’s face and gentle smile kept popping in his mind. Maybe it was because of the way he moved, how he had kept him from falling with his sharp reflexes, or maybe it was how elegant he looked even when he was soaking wet, how well his suit fitted him. Kurosawa was like some sort of superhero, or… no, he was more like a Prince Charming from an epic battle world. That was a start - it was not the murder mystery he had thought about, but it was definitely a start.

The sound of Adachi’s footsteps worked like a metronome, helping his mind settle into a rhythm. He was starting to see things in more detail: The brave prince paced in his castle, his sword close by his side, the problems his kingdom was facing were almost too much to bear and with his father on the brink of death, it was all on him. A shadow appeared above the citadel - the… the… ‘kingdom x’ was being attacked by a three-headed dragon. How would he fix this and save his people? Had someone sent the dragon or did it act with free will? Did the soon-to-be king have secret magic powers? Maybe they were a secret even to himself!

With renewed energy and excitement, Adachi sat down to work. This new world just wanted to be written, to become a reality, and he was not going to stop it. Aided by the occasional sip of soda and a few “stretching breaks” that were more like actual pacing, he managed to draft four thousand words by 5 am, effectively breaking his 3 thousand word record from just a few months ago. If he could keep up the pace he could finish the book within the next month and send it to Tsuge for editing and review. He sent a quick text to his friend to tell him the good news and got into bed; he would probably regret staying up so late tomorrow, but now he didn’t have it in him to care. Writing was definitely his call - even if he was very close to missing his goal of being a published author by 30.

---

The commute to work was nothing short of hell. The morning started with Adachi missing his usual train and having to take the next one during rush hour - not that he ever managed to avoid rush hour, but he usually took the first train during it so it wasn’t as crazy as later in the morning. This resulted in him having a very unpleasant ride, squeezed half to death between the sea of people, feeling like a canned sardine with a bad case of insomnia. That was the other issue, the previous writing night ended up being a success but even though he’d been exhausted by the time he was done, it had been impossible to fall asleep. Now he was on his way to a long workday with a pounding headache and a sour mood. If given the opportunity, Adachi would’ve chosen to take the day off to sleep and feel refreshed enough by sundown to continue writing.

His job was definitely a necessary evil, but sometimes he couldn’t help but resent it. On the verge of thirty, Adachi spent most of his day at the office, writing his reports, Urabe’s reports, and occasionally picking up the slack of some of his colleagues. There was barely any time for hobbies or relaxing and least of all to be an aspiring writer. To be completely honest, Adachi had started viewing his day job as his second career in the past year. His heart and soul were focused on his new goal, what he really wanted. In the end, if writing didn’t become his main income, it wouldn’t matter, he was passionate enough about it to continue no matter what. After all, living in the fantasy worlds he created was more than enough for him.

Adachi made it to his desk just on time, but running those last few blocks only served to make his mood even sourer. He pulled at the collar of his shirt with a small huff, still thinking about his writing and leaned back in his chair until it touched Urabe’s shoulder, startling him.

He turned around swiftly, blush already rising to his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Senpai.”

Urabe nodded and waved him off. Then, he cocked his head and looked at Adachi in more detail. “What is going on with you, Adachi? You look tired.”

“I just had trouble sleeping last night, that’s all,” Adachi said with a heavy sigh. He could picture so many things he would rather do than give explanations about his personal life, but he would feel too guilty if he was rude to Urabe when he was only worried about him.

“Hmm, are you sure that’s all?”

“Yes. I’m ok.” He attempted his best smile. “Thank you for asking.”

“Adachi,” Urabe pouted, his brows burrowed into a childish frown, just like every time he would ask Adachi to take on more work, any semblance of concern already gone out the window. “Can you finish this report for tomorrow? The boss is really piling stuff on my shoulders and I already had other plans for today.”

Sometimes Adachi wished he was a bad person, or a bad colleague even, but he couldn’t help taking on the extra work when it was needed, after all, he didn’t have much of a life. He rolled his eyes but nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Oh, wait. Is your birthday today or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And you’re turning 30, right?”

Adachi nodded once again, hoping to end the conversation as soon as possible; he didn’t want to be reminded of the passage of time or how much he hadn’t achieved by now.

Urabe rolled his chair closer and elbowed him. “Aaah, you sly weasel. Do you have a date?”

“Of course not. I’m just looking forward to getting home and sleeping.” That was literally his birthday plan.

Urabe frowned and gave him a quizzical look. “But you have... ‘dated’ before, right?” He winked.

Adachi shook his head slightly and saw the same look many people gave him, a mix of pity and judgement.

“You should ask one of the girls out. I’ve heard Yui is single and she’s very pretty!”

Adachi slowly turned his chair towards the copy machine and saw Yui across the room. She was, in fact, very pretty, but… she didn’t spark anything in him. She looked like a work of art, pleasant to look at, but not for him. “No, I don’t think that would work.”

“Adachi, if you don’t date someone by the time you turn 30, you will turn into a wizard!” He whispered.

“What? That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s true, you’ll see!”

Adachi rolled his eyes and turned back to his desk, finally starting on the reports needed. The sooner he was done with that, the sooner he could return to his writing.

The elevator opened its doors for Adachi and the ding that followed made his muscles relax instantly. Only a few more minutes and he would be up in his flat, taking his shoes off and cooking something quick before sitting down to write. He felt inspired by the beginning of this new story and he wasn’t about to let a bad day at work ruin that for him.

Just as the doors started to close, someone put a bag between them to keep them open. The first thing Adachi saw was a girl with a cute and gentle look, a black wispy fringe framing her face and a sweet smile. She nodded at Adachi and he smiled and nodded back. He wondered if he would ever date a girl like her, if sharing his life with a partner and doing things together would be so different than what he did now. The answer was probably not, since he assumed nobody would be supportive of him working all day and writing all night; if he was honest with himself, he didn’t really have time for a relationship, even if he sometimes yearned for a bit of company - theoretically. Adachi blinked repeatedly, suddenly crashing back into reality when he saw the looming presence of Kurosawa behind her, giving him a weird look he couldn’t quite place as he ushered the girl into the elevator.

Out of sheer awkwardness, Adachi nodded and mumbled a quiet hello at him, looking away as a blush crept onto his cheeks. Was that Kurosawa’s girlfriend? He groaned and let his head fall back against the elevator wall. He’d been caught staring at his neighbour’s girlfriend like a creep. He ventured a sideways glance and realized Kurosawa was still looking at him with a weird expression.

Thankfully, the ride was short and only a minute later, Adachi was home, barely paying any attention to his basic needs as per usual. He made some instant ramen and added a bit of egg to it before eating it mindlessly, daydreaming of his new story and the magic system involved.

Perhaps it was quickly becoming a much more ambitious project than he had anticipated but as long as the writing flowed, everything would be ok. What was supposed to be a long writing session soon turned into an early night after Adachi’s brain decided to shut down mid-sentence, putting him to sleep sitting at his desk, his head hanging down and his spine hunched over.

#cherry magic #cherry magic fic #mine

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literameera · 4 years ago

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White Sails

2433 words

The oceans going to swallow him whole some day and only then could he die happy.

Caspian already gave his soul to the sea, his first great love. Initially I was excited for him and how he got to live out his dreams. He’d write to me about his exploits, I’d gasp and laugh when appropriate, as if he can see, and finally when the stories ended, I’d write to say that I’ve been living the same way: wake up, work, eat, sleep and mostly anticipate. He’d tease that I live like a widow refusing to believe her husband's dead, wasting away staring out the window, hoping for him to someday return to her. Like the ship of Theseus every time he left a part of him had been replaced, how long has he been a man I couldn't recognise, a ghost wearing my lover’s skin.

Only the wooden planks stepped on by Theseus himself belong to the original ship, the rest are imposters high off the glory of His name. Your skin cells regenerate every twenty-seven days – and it’s been longer than that since my hands held his, the wind already swept all memories of my words from his mind. He can only belong to one and she’s infinitely larger than me. To him, her cold embrace feels like coming home. It’s selfish – I’d remind myself – selfish to want to steal what makes him happy all because I feel lonely, he’s loved the ocean long before he’s loved me, and he will long after. I can only hope she’s kind when she does finally take him. I’ve heard that saltwater burns your lungs and that a body only sinks for a moment and as it fills with water it floats to the top, I don’t want them to find his body, he wouldn’t want them to either. I hope his clothes weigh him down and 80% becomes all of him, that he sinks to Atlantis and the sun never feels him again, we don’t deserve it.

But then he comes home, the wind in his hair, salt clinging to his skin and horribly chapped lips, he kisses me hello and I get a taste of what he feels. He tells me he’s missed the warm water from the shower while I wash his locks, that his land legs haven’t grown back yet so can I hold on just a little tighter ‘to make sure I don’t fall of course’. I tell him our neighbours' gossip and he laugh and gasps when appropriate and says that he’s missed the shop at the end of the street, in the morning he’ll grab groceries and those chocolates he’s loved since he was a kid, and some things never change. When it’s quiet and we lull we watch the sun set, sitting on a linoleum countertop in the kitchen, he glows orange in its light and tells me he’s missed me.

When a whale dies its body sinks to the benthic zone, there where there’s no sun, no blood, no heat, no me, or him the oceans creatures eat on its flesh, their entire life's sustenance reliant on an animal they’ve never seen alive and blobfish get their namesake feature from the rapid shift in pressure, they essentially burst while being pulled up by fishermen. The universe is kept spinning by forces we don’t know and can’t name and one day the sun could burst, and we wouldn’t know until 8 minutes later when its light should touch us and won’t. But it did that day, the light travelled through a solar system to shine on him, and shine on me, and that’s how we met. It was fate. Eight years later it’s still fate when Caspian wakes up beside me, his skin a warm brown, like the terracotta pots he brings back to accommodate my ever-growing garden, and his tousled hair a sun-bleached orange, the roots betray their natural umber colour (the same as the eyes he was currently hiding behind tired palms), men like him are born out of stardust, and they can’t help but to replicate its heat. He’s looking at me now, his warm hands place a stray strand of my own umber hair behind my ear and pauses on my cheek, my bronze skin a slight contrast to his, brown eyes reflecting brown.

‘Let’s go over the plan, alright Leya?’ He breaks the silence, ‘we’ll lock up, give the keys to Theo and Honora, they promised to water our plants and dust the place while we’re gone, we pick up your jumper from the market –Eilidh promised it’ll be done by then- and then it’s me, you and wherever you can land your finger on a map.’

‘Yeah, I can’t wait. Me, you and The Caspian’ the smile I give him falters and my bottom lip trembles. He frowns.

It was my idea to come with him, I was tired of being alone and he was tired of forgetting synonyms of vast for his letters home, I knew he exhausted all the ways to say I love you when he started to transcript theology to me:

‘They believe that next to Christ, that’s what they call him, there was a man that lived in sin, two in fact but only one of them matters. They don’t know anything about this man, not even his name, except for his last words. And they were that of forgiveness and salvation. A man whose entire history is left out of the book that chronicles it. We know nothing of his home, his family, his life, not even his crimes, but we know that he loved and was loved in return. I don’t believe a lick of it but by God these people are good storytellers.’

I did want to go. Maybe the second I see the flickering reflected crescent moon on the ocean waves I’d decide I never wanted to leave, that the past 25 years of living and four years waiting can all be justified by that one experience. But I also couldn’t just leave. He was the one with adventures and loose ties and sea salt, and I’m the one that waits. The diligent partner with a cup of tea and open arms for him, who were we if not that? Who am I without anticipation and loneliness? For years, my life was contingent on feeling and watching a ticking clock, and now I just get to be free? It doesn’t sound real. It doesn’t sound fair on the woman I used to be, the one still waiting. He knows how I feel, he must, from the furrow of an eyebrow I know he’s got me pegged.

‘Remember the night before I left- the first time that is- and I kept going over lists, obligations and checking everything twice, I even meal prepped your food for months in advance. And you told me everything will still be here when I get back...’ He pauses to hold my face in both hands, brown eyes locked on brown eyes to make sure I was listening, ‘everything will still be here when we get back. If you don’t want to go that’s fine, we won’t, I’ll spend the next six months right here with you, and every day after that if you want me to. I’m tired of you being alone. But if you do want to go... We lock up, see the world and come back, it’s that easy.’ With that he kisses my temple -the most delicate part of the head – and climbs out of bed.

Honora and Theo promised to give all the leftover perishable foods to the family around the corner, they have seven kids and not enough to feed them all. They also ensured once a week every plant will be watered, all letters brought in, and the surfaces periodically dusted. The jumper Eilidh had made was beautiful, she told us wool is preferable when wet because it resists water and keeps you warm. She made it green, in case I miss the trees, and Caspian paid her double. I had hoped the air would be electric, brimming with something, as if it knew I’m leaving this time too. Everything was the same, same as it's always been and same as it always will. And I won’t be, I’ll go out there, replace my ships planks and come back me, but not wholly or maybe as more, and if Caspian’s with me the whole time who would notice the change, all of my red strings connect back to his.

It was half a day's journey to the port, and I felt it all. At some point my head was pulled to rest on his shoulder and every time the sun shone particularly bright he held a hand over my eyes to shield them. When we were close to enough to the sea to smell it, the briny tang light in the air, he came into himself, as if he swallowed sunlight, and grinned.

I hate this. Caspian told me I will at first, I haven’t got the familial love he has. A runaway father that was only 19 when he met his future wife at the port. The family was forcibly moved to a landlocked town when opportunities dimmed and Caspian's childhood was spending every holiday possible making the hours long treks to the beach, with just enough time to wiggle his toes in the sand and swallow lungsful of water when learning to swim, and when he was older it was learning how to sail with his father. Finally, it’d get too cold to continue so his mother would swaddle him in towels and place him on her lap, until he eventually grew too big for her, together they’d watch the sun set. He told me once that it was like the water was just a mirror and everything radiated pink and orange and golden hues until finally... darkness, and there was twice as many stars as usual. Then they’d go home and count down till the next summer. His love was intergenerational, it’ll grow on you, trust me. But it won’t, I hate this. I feel sick & disoriented, it’s too loud and quiet at the same time. Like when people move from a bustling city, heavy in smog and movement, to a quaint village, and there they find the crickets and pollen too much to bear. There was none of the sounds I was accustomed to and all too many of ones I wasn’t. I can’t even swim.

How did we plan for weeks and not think that I would need to know how to swim?

Caspian had finished prepping the sails and letting us go in the wind's direction, promising he’ll take us as far East as he can find – and then carry on. He had tried to explain all the terms to me, but words like ‘jib’ and ‘hull’ and ‘tiller’ easily slipped out of my mind like water. Instead, I stood by the helm and just watched him work, focusing on the beads of sweat running down his forehead and pushing supper down as far deep as it goes, as to not ruin this for him. When he had finished, he gave me the tour, showing me the saloon, where to cook, where to rest, where to pray, how to store in such a small space and when I was overwhelmingly exhausted from the information swimming in my head, he grabbed some pillows and blankets and led me back to the cockpit. There he prepped everything like it was our bed at home and laid down, gently pulling me down with him, our knees were bent awkwardly, and we were closer together than usual. That’s when I understood When I was younger my mother would bring me to visit her friends and after the initial gasps and hugs and ‘my how you’ve grown!’ they would largely ignore me to talk to each other. One of her friends, Mariam, had a baby boy that would sleep in a wooden bassinet pushed to the wall closest to where I was sitting, when he did stir, they’d finally address me again and tell me to rock him slightly, let him be lulled back to rest. Here, we were lightly rocked side to side by Poseidon himself and entire galaxies shining down on us, like a sleeping baby in a bassinet. I didn’t know there could be so many stars and still such a vast darkness. Caspian told me about the constellations he knows and the ones he’s made up, his own mythologies mapped out above us. And when I was too tired to listen, eyes drooping and his words bleeding into each other he tenderly held my elbow to help me up, shifting so I could rest my weight on him, and walked me to the bed, trying as best he could to push my dead weight into the cramped space. Leaving only for a moment to bring the pillows back in, before climbing into bed besides me.

The next morning, we stopped on still waters, and he taught me how to swim. In the afternoons, after I showed him my grandmothers' recipes for the cold, he tried to teach me more sailing terms and by the evening I’d read to him under the dimming light, I’d have to stop after a moment, too nauseous to read the words. It was a routine we near perfected in a month. I could tell he was happy; he was drowning in it. Shockingly, I was too, a saloon that smelled like garlic and spice, secured down potted herbs, dry storage spaces filled to the brim with my books, and his slow breaths when I should be asleep, was enough. On days the wind was too bad to pause he’d make me use the knots he taught me and shout what I need to do if we tip over, the exhilaration was more than anything I’d ever known.

Resources would run low, and he’d dock in the port of a country I'd never heard of, a culture unfamiliar and language unknown. With limited communication and lots of points & smiles we’d buy what we need and when our food was restocked, I’d ask to stay a few days more. We’d integrate ourselves in the local community and learn how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ and plan to return in the holiday season. We’d make pocket communities across the world and relish in hot water and write letters to the people back home.

#tw religious themes #tw death mention #tw drowning #writing #writers #writers on tumbr #prose #writeblr #studyblr #white sails #ask to tag

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irwinkitten · 5 years ago

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quarantine and chill | poly!lashton

notes: so as some of you may know, i got hit with covid-19. i’d kept socials updated with my symptoms and how i was dealing with it but i’ve been quite on the aftermath of what i went through. so i did what i do best, i wrote. similar with teulu, i decided to write it out in the form of a fic. a lot of what happens is what i’ve had to struggle through with regards to recovery and what i’m still struggling with. there is a lot that i haven’t really talked about with it either, however i got the main points down and just wrote. if i was feeling better, i’d probably have shifted it to an oc but this felt much too personal to do. i was debating on whether or not this was going to be posted. at first i wasn’t, then i wasn’t sure. i finally decided to because i enjoy writing and i enjoy giving people something to read, something to enjoy. i also decided on poly!lashton mostly because of the interview on one of the instagram lives where ash said he cooks and i think it was with @sexgodashton where were talking about how ashton would mother hen you when you’re sick lmao and then i got daydreamy because i’ve been dealing with the whole situation alone and it’s difficult when your loved ones (both friends and family) are too far away and unable to be with you. i’m rambling at this point but yeah, tldr; this is really personal on how i recovered from that godforsaken virus. warnings: talks of dying, depression, sickness word count: 9k (oops)

donate to my ko-fi here

When you’d come home from closing up the store, it had been an almost nightmarish day for you. It felt surreal that the store was closing until further notice and you had no idea when you were going to even be back in your job again.

What frustrated you was the fact that you hadn’t been able to book a flight out to LA before the travel bans kicked in, leaving you to be self-isolating in your apartment for the duration of the lockdown, alone.

Luke and Ashton had both voiced their complaints, but no amount of money being thrown at the problem wasn’t getting you back to LA with them.

“How are you feeling?” Ashton asked over facetime whilst you tidied up. The simplicity of living in communal housing meant that you only had two rooms to tidy and keep clean. Luke and Ashton loved it for the fact that it afforded the three of you some privacy away from prying eyes of the media because you were tight-lipped about where you lived.

“Tired. I’ve cried a lot and I’m missing the both of you.” You admitted quietly as Luke popped into the screen, his head resting on Ashton’s shoulder. His lips wore a tired smile, one that you could match.

“We’re missing you too, love.” Luke’s voice was comforting. You finally settled down on the couch, your body sinking into the cushions and sighed.

“You know you don’t have to worry right? Ash and I are gonna help you.” The reassurance from Luke made your lips twitch up.

“I know. I’m just frustrated. They should have made this decision well over a week ago.”

Neither of them could say much against that. You’d told the company bosses that you were at risk, you’d warned them that the store wouldn’t pull in enough money to warrant staying open for the week.

But they’d simply said that they were following government guidelines. It had been nothing but frustration for the three of you.

“Are you both home finally?” Your question was much quieter and Ashton grimaced.

“Because I have a cough, they’ve organised us to be quarantined since we’re together. They’ve done the tests but I don’t think it’s anything, I think it’s just allergies playing up since I’ve been sneezing non stop.” Ashton explained and you sighed.

“Irony at its finest.” You received sad smiles in return from your boys.

“I’ve got some last minute paperwork to finish up and send off since I couldn’t do so at the shop. How about I call you both tomorrow?” Luke pouted and you giggled at the expression, your heart lifting that little bit.

“Fine but next time I’m hogging the phone.” Luke muttered and you laughed before blowing them both a kiss.

“Love you both, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The paperwork was easy to finish off and left you a few hours to shower and change whilst tidying up around.

When you crawled into bed, you checked your phone to see a photo of the two of them snuggled up together, Ashton practically smothering Luke. You sent them one back of you with the bear they’d gotten you, sprayed in their cologne.

When you woke up the next day, there was only a slight difference, your blocked nose making you groan.

“Fucking allergies.” Was muttered as you made your way to the bathroom, waving to one of your neighbours who was just leaving the kitchen.

You’d decided to stock up on food, making quick work of the short walk. It was nice to be able to still move about in the fresh air at least, offering a small, yet nervous smile at the cashier as you paid for your shopping, packed it in your bag and made your way home.

Before you even realised it, you’d settled on the couch and fallen asleep, wrapped up in your fluffy blanket, eyes heavy as you set an alarm.

You slept through the alarm and when you next woke up, there were three missed facetimes from Luke. You called him back immediately.

“There’s the love of our lives.” Luke crowed when he answered, making you laugh. It was followed by a cough which made Luke pause, his eyes studying the screen. “Said love of our lives doesn’t look too well.” The concern was evident and you rolled your eyes.

“It’s probably allergies and my body finally relaxing from the last three weeks of stress.” Luke didn’t look convinced but you managed to switch the conversation. “Did you find out the results of Ashton’s test?”

“Yeah, he came up negative. Since we’ve been quarantined for what, three weeks now? We’ll probably be on the next essential flight back home. But that won’t be for another week from what they’ve said. We both agreed to hang back long enough to let other people go ahead.” You frowned at that.

“But baby, you guys need to be back for the launch.” He shook his head.

“Ash was quite forceful with management on this one. There isn't going to be any kind of physical launch so we’re cleared to be delayed, just as long as we have a good wifi connection for the weekend for the various streams.” You sighed but understood their concerns.

“How is our no longer sick drummer boy?” You finally asked and as if he was waiting for the question, he all but piled himself on top of Luke, a muffled whine escaping as he tried to shove Ashton off him.

You laughed.

“Behave children otherwise no rewards.” You teased them, making the two of them laugh as they settled themselves down on the sofa they were on.

The conversation was easy between the three of you as they both excitedly discussed the possible plans they had for the album release, relying on them being home on time to do so.

“It wouldn’t do well to be still in the air when we do the release party, but knowing our luck...” Ashton trailed off, making you snort.

“Knowing our luck, that’s what would happen.” You grinned and he rolled his eyes.

“Probably.”

The three of you talked until you were dropping off, and despite voicing their concerns, you waved them off, pointing out that you always got like this during allergy season. Ashton didn’t argue the point, but Luke still frowned in concern.

“We love you, sunshine. Get some decent rest please.” He’d pleaded with you and you gave them both a gentle smile in return, hoping that it was at least semi-reassuring.

“I’ll be fine, but I’ll go to bed. Love you two.”

“Love you more.” Came the unified response before the call dropped and you settled back asleep.

Part of you knew that you should’ve realised that they had every right to be concerned when you woke up the following morning.

Your entire body was aching. And what concerned you most was the tightness across your chest coupled with the pain radiating across your body.

When you checked your temperature, you felt your stomach sink at the fact that your fever had crept up and was alarmingly high. So you called the helpline, putting the phone on speaker whilst you waited to get through, sending a text to the group chat you had with your boyfriends.

‘Woke up with fever and body hurts. Struggling to breath too so checking in with the helpline to see what i need to do. Don’t know if I’m gonna be up for calling later bc I wanna sleep.’

You felt bad but you could already feel the drowsiness pull at your body.

When you got through and described your symptoms, the lady on the other end advised you to self-isolate and upon the symptoms getting worse, to call the emergency services.

You relayed the information back to Luke and Ashton before falling asleep after taking some medication, trying to desperately ignore how much your body ached as you slept.

The first few days, it felt like you’d been run over with a truck repeatedly, but what concerned you was the pain that was radiating from your kidneys. Both Luke and Ashton knew of your previous history with kidney failure and both had been urging you to go into the hospital, but you’d couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t that bad.

By day four, both of your boyfriends were worried because you’d mentioned to them that you were unable to breath properly. It was late at night, but with the pain reaching an overwhelming point, you knew it was pointless to argue. Even your friends had been urging you to contact the helpline once more.

You’d been on hold for over an hour as the pain got worse. You were struggling to focus and it was everything you could do to try and breathe through the agony that was radiating through your body, so you cut off from the hold music and contacted the emergency services.

This time fear started to settle into your stomach as you answered the questions posed to you, trying to get across that it wasn’t a block of flats but a shared home.

The operator understood and urged you to get help from your neighbours to at least let the crew into the building. You were nervous enough about standing up by yourself but you managed.

When you stood from your bed, the walk to the door, even though it was five steps away, the agony that shot up your legs had you stumbling into the door.

Pulling it open, despite your neighbour’s door being six feet away, you knew you weren’t going to be able to stumble that far. The pain was steadily getting worse and tears started falling down your cheeks.

“Can someone help?” You finally got out, gasping for a breath once the words were out. Your neighbour was quick to open the door and knew something was wrong.

“What’s happened, are you okay?”

“Can’t breathe. Called medics, but need someone to let them in.” You gasped out and he nodded, taking a step closer.

“Lets sit you down and I’ll get one of the others to go and wait for them.” The firm grip on your arms supported you, your own hands grasping his arms to keep you from falling as he slowly walked you back to the edge of your bed, setting you down gently.

The pain receded slightly.

“I’m gonna prop the door open and get one of the others to come and give me a hand, is that okay?” And you could only nod tearfully as you tried to take in slow breaths, despite the pain that was radiating from your chest.

With the door propped open, you could hear him banging on the other doors, calling for help and explaining the situation. The hallway wasn’t very long but their voices carried down to you as you tried, and failed, to calm down.

And then the medics were there, pulling the blanket from your shoulders despite how cold you were feeling.

“It’s because of the fever, your body is already warm, you won’t be helping yourself with the blankets.”

They asked various questions and you tried to answer in the gasping breaths, but then the pain shot up and it felt like you couldn’t breathe.

“Okay, we’re getting you to the hospital.”

You could barely move, but between the medic and your neighbour, they managed to get the things you needed and help you down the stairs. It took much longer, but you knew that rushing wasn’t going to help and the pain was pushing close to hitting 10 for you.

Once in the ambulance, you had a cannula inserted, laughing breathlessly between your tears at the first failed attempt and the second attempt to find a vein.

When you reached the hospital, waiting to hear where you needed to be taken, you finally got out your phone, the morphine hindering your ability to focus, hitting the audio button instead to send a voice note to your now worried boyfriends.

“At the hospital. Been given some morphine but still hurts. Missing you and love you lots.” You could barely keep your eyes open, the words slurring together. The medic gave you a kind smile.

“Partner?” You nodded, the motion making you feel nauseous.

“Need to drive to the other side, they’ve got a specific ward set up.” You heard and realised belatedly that the driver must have turned up. The drive was short and finally you were helped from the vehicle into a waiting wheelchair. You were too tired to protest and you knew it would be quicker for you to get situated.

You could hear them talking, explaining your medical history and the symptoms you were displaying. Part of your mind was listening but the other part of your mind was wondering how Ashton and Luke were.

You missed them.

Once in a room, the nurses took over and did some more tests. Eventually you were left alone, your fever creeping higher despite the fact that you felt so cold. You were tired, but the pain that was radiating from your kidneys and joints, it was enough to keep you awake, unable to relax to sleep.

Your phone was going off every few minutes, various people messaging you, making sure that you were okay. The only ones you were really replying to were Luke and Ashton, but even then it was sparse.

It didn’t stop them from worrying.

When the doctor on shift came into your bare room, it took every effort to focus on her words.

“We’ve taken some bloods to help rule out any other possibilities, despite displaying symptoms of the virus. When we have the first results of your bloods back, we’ll be moving you onto one of the wards, so it should be another hour or so.”

You nodded your head, eyes heavy as you let out a tired sigh.

“Any idea of how long I’ll be here for?” Despite the mask in place, you could see her cheeks lifting up into what you assumed was a smile.

“Less than 24 hours, I’d assume. Try to get some rest, another nurse will be taking some obs in about an hour, before you need to be moved hopefully.” You nodded tiredly, curling up on your side. It seemed to be the only relief you could find.

You drifted in and out, the stark quietness of your room so different to the usual noises you had of cars passing by or Ashton and Luke’s steady breathing.

When the nurse came back in, you were beyond exhausted. You felt nauseous and the pain wasn’t receding.

“We’re going to be moving you instead, they’ll do all the obs that they need once you’re settled in the room. I’m just waiting on the porters.” You nodded tiredly as she unplugged your phone charger and placed your bag at the bottom of the bed.

You kept your face turned into the pillow, the lights hurting your eyes.

“Sensitive to the light?” Came a kind voice, you could only let out a muffled noise of agreement. When you were wheeled into the room, the light was dimmed down and you felt more relaxed.

Glancing at the time you hadn’t realised it’d been so long. The numbers read 7am and you could feel your body shaking, your mind taking a minute to catch up with the fact that you were cold.

The next few hours were difficult. You went from being too hot to freezing cold, the pain creeping up as you tried to curl in on yourself to warm up. Even with additional blankets, you were still shaking, teeth chattering when you tried to talk.

When they took the second round of bloods, you didn’t offer any argument, simply holding out your arm for them to take the blood from. Things were getting hazy and you couldn’t focus on the nurse as he spoke to you about what was going to happen.

You knew some of it was tiredness. Despite the mini naps you were having, you hadn’t slept solidly in nearly 48 hours.

“We’re going to be coming in to do the test in a moment.” You found yourself confused as a different nurse explained what was going to happen and she took her time to make sure you understood each part.

Once it was done, your cough having flared up after having the swab hit the back of your throat you noticed that you had missed calls.

‘How did I not hear them?’ You thought to yourself, confused. You clicked on the notification and realised it was Luke that had been calling.

“Hi angel, we were just checking in.” His voice seemed to set off the tears, unable to understand why you were so tearful. But he heard the sniffle.

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. You know we’re here for you.”

“I just wanna be home with you two.” You choked out, a cough escaping, the motion making you feel sick.

“I know angel, what have the doctors said?” You tried to steady your breathing so you wouldn’t set your coughing off again.

“Two weeks self quarantine.” You finally got out, wiping a few stray tears away. You heard the two of them sigh in unison.

“Maybe we could—”

“Ash no. If they are sick with the virus, it’s likely to just pass between the three of us.” Luke interrupted and you had to hold back the sob.

“I’m scared.” You finally admitted quietly and tried to stop the sob that was crawling up your throat. You knew that if you’d started, you were most likely not going to stop.

“Baby.” Ashton whispered and you sucked in a deep breath, determined not to ask the question.

“Lu’s right. It’d just pass between the three of us. I should have maybe another week of symptoms.” Your voice was quiet but they heard you.

“We’re not going home.” Luke’s voice finally filtered through. “Not with you being in hospital and not with you being so sick. We’re staying in a hotel till your symptoms die down and then we’re gonna come and look after you.”

You couldn’t even argue with them. They were both as stubborn as mules and having them would make the recovery easier with some help.

“How are you gonna get here?” You finally gasped out.

“We’ve got a rented car. We extended it the day you got sick.” You felt your heart warm at their words.

“Okay.” You finally muttered.

Eventually you were discharged with medication for the fever and a reminder to keep your fluid intake up at least.

The journey back was exhausting.

The medic was kind enough to chat to you about your job, about Luke and Ashton. He didn’t bat an eyelash when you mentioned them both. He was quick to help you figure out where the turning was, especially in the dark. And he helped you to the door of the building.

Just the journey up the stairs was tiring, and your neighbours heard you arrive, the three of them checking that you were okay.

“Until my breathing gets worse, I can self manage at home. However, I need rest and my body currently feels like I’ve been run over multiple times.”

One of them checked about collecting your food shop the following morning and you smiled in return before getting into your bedroom and collapsing on the bed.

You made sure that your phone charger was plugged in before sending a text to Luke and Ashton saying you were home. It was barely another five minutes before you fell into a fitful sleep.

The following day you were woken to a knock on your door, but you could barely move. Sleep had been scarce and your joints felt so heavy.

“Don’t try and get up! Just letting you know that I’m off to get your shopping! I should be back in an hour or so.” Your neighbour called through the door and you felt a little bit of relief flood you at that.

“Thanks!” You called back before coughing, twisting sharply to the side where the bowl lay, your body aching when the coughing stopped.

You’d had the bowl lay there since the night before you’d gone into hospital, terrified that the coughing would lead you to throwing up. You weren’t good with vomit at the best of times but this was another level.

Collapsing onto your back, taking in slow deep breaths as you tried to calm your heart down, you took a few moments before taking some meds, pulling the covers off your body to help you cool down. This was the one thing about fever that wasn’t fun for you.

You ended up napping on and off, unable to pay attention to your phone at the various texts coming through from concerned friends before there was another knock on the door which jolted you awake, despite feeling disorientated.

“I’m leaving the bags just outside your doors! Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll have them all up.” You didn’t reply as you heard the hallway door shut, and instead slowly moved to collect one of the face masks you’d been given, slipping it on with ease before grabbing disinfectant wipes.

You ignored the dizziness that caught you off guard, taking a steadying breath as you waited, leaning heavily against the door.

“Right, they’re all there for you chicken!” Your neighbours voice was more distant and you hesitantly opened the door. He was standing halfway down the hallway, a kind smile on his face.

“How are you feeling today?” The concern was genuine and you could only shrug.

“A lot of pain. Not sleeping well.” You got out breathlessly. He frowned.

“Well if you need anything, you’ve got my number now, so just give me a text, especially if you need any drinks. You take care of yourself now.” You lifted your hand in acknowledgement before propping open the living room door and heading in there where your fridge sat.

When the food was put away, you were half staggering the few steps back to your bed, barely getting your mask off and on your desk before you half collapsed on your bed.

Glancing at your phone there was a missed call from Ashton.

“Hi love, you weren’t responding so we figured to call you.” His voice was hesitant when you’d accepted the call.

“Everything hurts Ash.” You finally sobbed, your body protesting the movement, but in that moment you couldn’t care. You missed them both and with the combined pain, it didn’t help.

“Baby.” Luke’s voice was soft and you knew they were worried, but you were too far gone to understand their worries. You just wanted them.

“Want you both, and can’t even have that because of this fucking virus.” You got out a cough ending the sentence as you tried to catch your breath and not choke.

“Calming breaths sweetheart. You’re okay.” Ashton soothed immediately and you tried to follow his instructions. But everything hurt. There was a sharp pain in your chest, coupled with the pain in your lower back as well as the joint aches. It practically burned you.

“Do you think you can manage a shower later, love? It might help.” Luke’s voice was hesitant once you were calm enough and you took in a deep breath.

“Maybe.” You got out, your voice quieter and they knew you were tired.

“Rest for a bit angel, see if you can try and get a few hours at least.” Ashton encouraged and you could feel the heaviness wash over you as you settled down.

“Love you both.” You tiredly got out before you let yourself sink into sleep, taking a slow deep breath as you did.

You didn’t hear their returned words or them cutting the call, you’d fallen asleep easily and your body relaxed just a little bit as you slept.

When you next woke up, it was dark. Making sure that you were at least drinking, you had another glass of juice followed by some water before pulling yourself up to take a shower. You texted them both and your best friend to let them know you’d slept some and you were about to attempt a shower.

It was slow going, trying to keep yourself upright, but the steam helped clear your sinuses, making sure you got every part of you with the scrubber before just standing under the shower, your hands pressed into the cold tiles to keep you upright.

It’d been thirty minutes by the time you’d returned to your room, feeling more tired than when you’d first woken, so you took the opportunity to try and get more sleep.

That was when the coughing became so violent at two in the morning that you felt like you were practically choking on air, unable to catch a breath until you’d rolled onto your side and something cleared enough for you to take a gasping breath, your heart racing so fast that you had to call your best friend to calm down.

It became frightening as days began to pass and you could barely recall them, your mind confused and muddled with exhaustion mixed in with the hunger that was plaguing you. But when you’d eaten, your body had rejected the food immediately so you didn’t try again.

By day ten, you were struggling. You’d cried far too much and your body felt like lead. You knew that both Luke and Ashton were concerned at this point, knowing that this was the point where either you’d start to get better or it could get worse.

Two days later, between fitful nap and gasping breaths after a coughing fit, your phone went off.

It was Ashton.

“Baby?” You got out tiredly, keeping measured breaths as you sat up slowly.

“Take a look outside your bedroom window.” You frowned, moving to the otherside of the room, leaning enough to peer out of your open window before a sob escaped.

They both stood there, arms laden with bags. Both were looking up at you.

“Reckon you can come let us in angel? Lu and I are gonna commandeer your living room ‘till you’re better.” It took everything in you not to go racing down the stairs. You knew it would set you back further so you took hesitant breaths before looking back to your phone then you heard a voice in the hallway.

You were quick enough to catch your neighbour as he was heading back to his room.

“You alright there petal?” His voice was concerned and you held your hand up indicating you needed a moment to catch your breath. He waited patiently.

“My, my partners, they’re downstairs with some shopping and taking over my living room till I’m better. Could you let them in for me please?” You were hesitant in asking, but the pleading eyes you had seemed to have his shoulders wilt as he took a step forward.

“I take it they’re gonna be self-isolating for the two weeks they need to?” You nodded.

“I’ve got to wait seven days after my fever stops as it is before I can even be in the same room as them. I know that they’re worried and being so far hasn’t really helped.” He smiled kindly.

“Got you, petal. Get back in and I’ll go get them for you.”

You could hear their voices get closer and it took everything in you not to throw yourself out of the room at them. You didn’t want them to get sick.

“Delivered safely petal, feel better soon.” Your neighbour called and you tried not to let out a sob.

“Hi angel.” It took everything in you not to open the door. You had to clench your hands into a fist, head resting on the door.

“I don’t know what’s harder. You both being away, or you being so close but I can’t even see you.” You let out a choked cough and Luke let out a soothing noise.

“Well we’ve got you some good wifi now, and we’re here for you angel. We’ve got a couple of streams and you best be watching when we go live.” You let out a breathless giggle. They were there.

The first few days were the hardest. They’d leave cartons of juice and bottles of water outside your door. It finally added to fruit when you managed to keep an orange down.

Watching them do the streams from your living room was strange, but it seemed to settle your anxiety that they were so close. You could see it was being brought up about their shared change of scenery which prompted them to explain after you’d texted Ashton and told him that it was okay for them to know about your situation.

“So our partner, well they got pretty sick at the start of last week. We were already stuck in the UK at this point, so we just extended it so that we’d be with them when they got better. None of us handle being sick alone very well.” This made the other three laugh. You grinned.

“I think that extends to the rest of the band too.” Luke piped up, making the other two complain loudly. You giggled before coughing violently.

“Oops. As you can probably hear, it got real bad and real close by the end of last week. It’s why we were so distracted on the live because we were so worried. When they told us that they’d slept for a solid six hours last night, we made the drive back to theirs, shopping in tow to help look after them. We can’t see them, and Luke and I are stuck on the couch for the next two weeks at least, but we couldn’t just fly out and leave them alone.”

Ashton’s explanation had well wishes pouring in for you and it warmed your heart to see that there were fans that cared.

Part of you wished you could at least be watching them, or better yet, be cuddled up with them, to hell with the stream. But you knew they were trying to keep the focus on the album. You’d already had texts from the others to check in with you and you took your time to reply to them and settle down, your eyes heavy as you snuggled under the covers.

It was nice to watch them, seeing the ease in the way they joked about. You knew they worried but it was obvious to anyone who saw them when you’d gone into hospital that the tension that was sat on the both of them was both obvious and heartbreaking.

You could see the shadows under Luke’s eyes and you wondered if they traded the nights between each other to make sure they wouldn’t miss an update or a call.

You tried to squash down the guilt instant that reared up. They were doing this because they cared. There was nothing in it for them, apart from the possibility of you getting better. But you knew they expected nothing back.

Your eyes were tired and you took in the time. It was creeping closer to midnight so you closed off the stream and texted the chat to let them both know you were going to sleep. Had you stayed on the stream a few moments longer, you’d have seen Ashton’s face relax as a gentle smile crept onto his lips, causing the two that were still stateside to tease him.

The following morning was better in some way but also worse. Your cough wasn’t easing up but your fever seemed to have broken in the night.

You weren’t overheating but you weren’t cold either. You took a few moments to move your limbs and regretted it almost instantly. But you knew that if your fever stayed down, it would be a further week until you weren’t contagious.

Part of you wanted to practically sing in joy, but as you took in the early morning, you decided against that, knowing your men would be fast asleep still.

Slowly you got yourself up, collecting your shower stuff before making your way down the hallway to the shower. The warm water felt almost luxurious on your skin as you took care in washing your hair, still leaning against the cold tiles to keep yourself upright, your legs trembling as you did so.

It took the same amount of time as the previous shower, but once you were clean, you knew it made a small amount of difference as you stumbled back to your room, crawling under the covers to take a well deserved nap.

You missed the text from Luke asking if you were awake.

Now that you seemed to be stomaching food, Ashton kept it simple with dry toast, not willing to push your body too far. And you agreed with his judgement after he’d placed it in front of your door and you waited for the other door to close before you opened yours.

“Love you.” You felt your heart melt as he spoke through the door.

“Love you too Ash. Thank you.” You returned quietly before stepping back into your room. It was getting harder to stay in, especially when your cuddle monsters of boyfriends were just in the next room.

It hurt.

They FaceTimed with you to keep you company, both of them making a strong effort to not only keep you company but to also stop you from giving into temptation to just join them.

Ashton was practically insistent on that.

You knew by the time that you would be allowed to have them back in your room, their own self isolation would be over.

It didn’t fail to amuse you how Ashton started cooking once you started being able to stomach more than dry toast. It took a few goes but he kept it plain enough to not make your stomach complain but changed it up so you didn’t get bored of it.

What made it even better were the small notes of affection they left for you on the tray which held your food. You had them pinned up to your cork board without a second though, the small pieces of heaven from them only making it feel that much cosier.

Something to ward away the bad days in the future.

Luke snuck you some of your favourite snacks, even after the scolding Ashton gave him when he tried sneaking you a chocolate bar.

It’d made you giggle and they’d both paused to hear it.

It was a sound they hadn’t heard in nearly a month and it made their hearts soar.

Despite the pain you were in, it felt like you could at least breathe with the both of them with you. Even if you couldn’t see them.

By day nine after your fever had broken, you were beginning to feel semi human once more. You still had issues with exhaustion and light sensitivity, but you certainly felt more better than you had done in weeks.

Luke had given up on waiting.

“Ash, they said a week after the fever went down, they’d no longer be contagious. This is killing me.” You’d chosen to curl up on the side that was proclaimed as Luke’s side.

Your heart was feeling heavy again.

“I mean. We’re what? A week and a half?” Ashton’s voice was hesitant. You missed the mutter in return before the door opened and there was a knock on your door.

Luke stuck his head in and you wanted to cry.

“Reckon you can put up with some self care cuddles?” You simply nodded your head and shuffled into the middle of the bed. Luke wasted no time, his arms wrapped around you and you could feel every part of you seemingly shaking.

Ashton followed a few minutes later and your memory seemed to fail you in that moment. You could barely remember the last six weeks, but the feeling of comfort was something entirely different as they held you.

That was when you began to sob in earnest because you’d missed them. And they knew it.

When you’d calmed down, part of you felt torn because you wanted to hold them both, not let go and just lay there. But they didn’t protest when you’d snuggle up to one, legs tangled and arms wrapped around tight and eventually switch to the other.

If anything, it amused them both.

As the day got later, Ashton untangled himself, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. Luke was your current cuddle buddy of choice.

Turning your head, your confusion must have shown because Ashton smiled gently.

“We need to keep up with the meals, love. I’m gonna make some soup for all of us, how does that sound?” You hummed in agreement.

“It’s allowed I guess. But you gotta come back.” And he chuckled, leaning over to kiss your forehead, doing the same to Luke before disappearing out of your room.

“You realise that he’s going to mother hen you to death, right?” Luke teased and you shrugged.

“He’s here. You both are. That’s more than enough for me.” You murmured softly. Luke held you that little bit tighter.

“You up for a shower sweetheart?” You hesitated, your mind drifting back to the previous two times you showered. The hesitation must have been obvious because Luke pressed a kiss to the top of your head, not willing to push you.

“Will you, will you help? It’ll be a tight fit but, I struggled the last two times.” You finally admitted to him and he smiled.

“C’mon. We can let the chef know as we pass him.” You giggled at his words, allowing him to help you out of the bed and making your way slowly across the room. Luke didn’t push, but he kept his arms available and easy for you to grab if you needed him.

You’d made it to the kitchen before you relied on him a bit more, your joints achy and your legs shaking.

“Gonna get this one showered and clean.” Luke called into the kitchen where Ashton was cooking. He glanced back and grinned at you both before turning back to the food and you two carried on.

Luke was nothing but patient with you as you climbed into the shower, his tall body fitting into the rest of the space. He was gentle as he helped you and it took the pressure off you, focusing on keeping yourself upright as his hands started working the shampoo into your hair.

You’d forgotten how well he massaged your scalp when washing your hair, and you only protested when he rinsed it out, making him laugh.

“I forgot how nice your head massages were.” You groaned as he worked the conditioner in. You carefully washed your body with the shower gel, cleaning Luke’s body whilst you were at it.

He tried to stop you but you gave him pleading eyes and he relented easily. Using the time whilst your hair was soaking in the conditioner to wash his own hair quickly whilst you cleaned his body.

And then his fingers were back in your hair, cleaning out the conditioner and you had to stop yourself from leaning into him.

Once you were clean and dried off, dressed and the towels over Luke’s shoulder, you could feel yourself begin to flag again, leaning heavily on Luke for the short trip back to your room.

“I’ve got you sweet.” He murmured as you passed the kitchen. Ashton was talking with one of your neighbours who gave you a small wave but didn’t stop you to talk. Part of you felt guilty, but the larger part felt relieved because you were almost certain once you’d eaten something, you were going to be asleep.

Once you were back in your bedroom, you scooted so that your back was resting against the headboard whilst Luke let the towels hang so that they could dry and put everything back in its place. He understood your need for everything in its own place, whilst Ashton understood, but still sometimes made a small game of moving things to see if you’d notice.

Luke could see that you were too tired to even be playful.

When Ashton returned, he frowned for a moment before resting the first bowl on your lap, spoon already in the bowl.

“Don’t worry about eating it all. Just try to eat something for us.” He encouraged gently, handing Luke his own bowl before heading back to retrieve his own.

You were slow and methodical before your stomach protested and you left the spoon in the bowl, your head resting on Luke’s shoulder.

“M’ready for sleep.” You muttered and he hummed in acknowledgement. He’d long since finished his bowl, as had Ashton.

“You alright with Ash for a bit, love? Since he cooked, I’ll clean.” Luke murmured and you just nodded before shuffling till you were laid down. Ashton followed and you snuggled into him.

You barely heard his murmured “sleep well” before you were fast asleep.

It was the first night that you’d slept for eight hours and it felt almost refreshing, especially after having the shower the previous night.

You were still nestled into Ashton’s side, Luke’s arm was slung over you both, his hand resting on Ashton’s stomach. You felt very safe between your men and you were so grateful that they were with you in that moment.

It was another hour before either of them stirred, but you’d been resting in that hour, not really awake but not asleep either. Luke was first to move, pressing a kiss to your shoulder as he moved off the bed.

“Morning, love. How are you feeling today?” He murmured as he stretched. You shifted onto your back and gave an experimental test of your joints. They weren’t so bad and your cough had eased up that your chest no longer hurt if there was the occasional cough.

“Better, I think. It’s only a dull ache, the kind I get when you two put me through the paces at the gym.” You admitted softly and Luke grinned as Ashton stretched out, almost like a cat before turning on his side to face you.

“Nice to hear that, angel. And good morning.” You grinned at him and kissed him gently before glancing at the time.

“What are we doing today?” You asked quietly as Luke continued to stretch out his muscles. Part of you felt bad for them both to be stuck inside with you, but you were much too selfish to let that bad feeling linger.

“I’m gonna do some exercises and then Ash is probably gonna do his own. And then a movie day for the rest of the day?” He posed the question and you paused before nodding your head. It sounded good to you and it meant you had some individual time with each of them.

The morning passed by easily. They did their exercises and showered before returning to your room that Luke had playfully dubbed ‘The Den’. Ashton had laughed at that as he went to set up in the living room for another live, but this time Luke was staying with you. They’d been trading off which had bothered you first, but then Ashton explained their reason.

“We don’t really want to leave you alone. Not that you can’t take care of yourself,” he hastily added on upon seeing your look of outrage, “but being so far away whilst you were so ill, it kinda scared us. We don’t want to leave you by yourself yet. It’s more to ease our own anxieties.” And you relaxed before shoving any negative thoughts to the back of your mind.

Luke was napping when your phone went off-Ashton was still on the live-and you answered the No Caller ID hesitantly.

It was the hospital that you were at, a nurse confirming who you were before she’d go any further. It took a few moments before she got to the point of the phone call.

“So we’re calling you about the various tests. I’m assuming that you know you were confirmed with COVID-19, correct?”

“Yeah, about two days after the test, someone called to let me know.” You responded hesitantly. You wondered what this was about.

“And how are you feeling?” You were confused.

“I mean, I’m coming up to two weeks of no fever and starting to feel a lot better. I’m just more exhausted but I suspect that’s because of what my body went through.” You explained quietly and you heard her hum in agreement. Luke shifted beside you and you noticed that he was awake, only because his hand had started to drift up and down your spine.

“That’s good to hear. What I’m calling about is that you’d said your kidneys had been hurting upon admittance, correct?”

“Yes.” You were worried now.

“So when we looked at the numbers, we noticed that they’d started dropping. Not drastically enough for us to have you in intensive care, but that was why we moved you to the ward. It was as a precaution.” You felt your heart race at her words.

“They’d started failing again, hadn’t they?” You whispered and she sighed.

“Yes. However, because the numbers were back on the rise when we took your second blood test, we felt that we could discharge you safely. Had they dropped further, you’d have been admitted to intensive care. The only reason why you weren’t told immediately was because we didn’t want you to panic or go into further distress which could’ve made it much more worse.”

It hit you like a ton of bricks what she was saying.

“Is there anything I need to worry about?” You finally choked out, your hands trembling.

“At this time, no. When things ease up, we will request you get another test just to confirm you’re clear of the virus. Otherwise for now, just rest up and feel better soon.”

“Thank you.” You got out, ending the call. Luke took the phone from your trembling hands and he sat up, pulling you onto his lap, his arms around you.

“What happened, love?” You were trying to take in slow deep breaths to stop the panic attack, knowing that it wouldn’t help you.

“They’ve just told me, when I went into hospital, my kidneys were failing.” You whispered and his arms tightened around you tighten enough that he understood the implications.

You’d told them both of the previous two times when you’d been so ill that your kidneys had started failing and as a result you’d been on death's door.

You didn’t realise you were hyperventilating until Luke began to rub his hands up and down your arms to try and distract you, but your mind was too focused on the fact that you’d escaped death, again.

“Ashton!” Luke called loudly, a tinge of panic in his own voice.

Ashton practically crashed through into your door and his face was ashen as he took in your state, a look of relief followed by concern filling his features. He clambered onto the bed, his hands cupping your face gently. When you didn’t flinch away, he ducked his head to catch your eyes.

“Slow deep breaths sweetheart. We’ve got you.” It took you a while before you could finally focus on Luke’s hands which were still rubbing your arms gently.

“How’s your sense of smell?” Ashton teased as he noted that you were fighting to keep your breathing under control.

“Smell you and Luke, favourite smell.” You muttered and he grinned. You closed your eyes for a moment, leaning into his touch and he let his thumb brush across your cheeks in comfort.

“What happened?” Despite the question being directed at you, you knew that Ashton was also asking Luke.

“A nurse from the hospital phoned I think. They explained about the blood tests they’d run. Apparently their kidneys were failing when they’d gone in, but not enough to alarm the hospital staff or get them rushed to intensive care.” His voice was calm and you needed that.

You knew that Ashton understood what he wasn’t saying, but also you weren’t too sure if you could voice it properly without crying.

“Come here sweetheart.” Ashton’s tone brokered no arguments and you moved so that you were cradled in his lap, his back resting against the headboard. Luke was nestled as close as possible.

“Part of me knew something was wrong, but, not that.” You whispered finally. Ashton made a soothing sound as you let your head rest on his shoulder, face pressed into his neck.

“It’s one thing to guess, it’s another thing to be told, love. You’re allowed to cry because it’s a frightening thing to be told.” His voice was one of reason and you finally let it out, allowing them both to comfort you as you processed what had been said.

He wasn’t wrong. It was one thing to guess, but to be told that your kidneys had started failing once more, it was frightening.

Neither of them moved away from you as you got it off your chest. You couldn’t pin how long had passed until you finally took a steadying breath, lifting your head from Ashton’s neck. Luke was first to move, his thumb wiping the tear tracks and you gave him a weak smile.

It dawned on you then that Ashton had been on a live.

“Ash, I’m sorry.” You finally whispered and he gave you a confused look.

“What are you sorry for? You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” He murmured, pressing a kiss to your temple.

“The live you were doing...” You trailed off and he shrugged.

“They’ll get over it. You’re more important and we’re doing more radio interviews on the live so it doesn’t matter.” He muttered and you didn’t push, relaxing in his hold. Luke glanced at the clock and gave you a gentle smile.

“My turn to make lunch. Nothing cooked unfortunately, but I make a damn good sandwich.” He teased playfully which made you giggle, a sigh escaping your lips as he left after giving you both gentle kisses.

“Just think, tomorrow we can take you out for a short walk.”

“Freedom.” You muttered deadpan, making him laugh as his lips found yours.

“Even for half an hour, it’ll help. Home stretch now.” You mustered up a smile for him before stretching your legs out and he moved with you, his arms not quite leaving your body.

“Am I not allowed to lie down?” You queried and he shook his head, a playful grin on his lips as he pulled you flush against his body, his lips finding your neck.

“No, all mine to have and feast on.” The cackle like laugh that he let off had you giggling as he blew a raspberry on your skin. This earned a squeal from you, laughing as he rocked you back and forth. “No one can take you from me!”

You were still laughing when Luke returned with three plates, an amused grin on his lips as he raised an eyebrow.

“Save me Lu! Ash is gonna feast on me!” You shrieked again as he blew another raspberry into your neck, the ticklish sensation making you laugh as he held you tightly.

Luke set the plates down before climbing on the bed, his lips curving into a smirk, making you pause.

“Can I feast with you Ash?” And you groaned as Ashton laughed as Luke straddled the both of you, his body causing the three of you to fall back onto the bed, effectively trapping you between the two of them as Luke left gentle kisses along your neck and you held back your moan, knowing that if he started to pull at the skin you were a goner.

Pulling back, he had a cheeky grin on his lips and you groaned as Ashton laughed.

“You two are the worst. Let me eat, you monsters!” You cried out playfully, making them both laugh as Luke shifted himself off you to get the plates once more and Ashton loosened his hold on your waist.

The rest of the day passed quietly, Ashton had apologised for having to ditch and the three of you settled watching movies long into the early hours of the morning.

Despite the lack of sleep, you were still up early excited that you were finally allowed to go for a walk today, and both of them laughed at your excitement.

Once you were dressed, they followed your lead and got ready. And then you were out of the building and the fresh air felt glorious, even if there was a spattering of rain. You didn’t care.

You led them both to a small pathway that led to the river that ran through the town, the edge of the river filled with cherry blossom trees. Both of them were taking as many photos as they could and you couldn’t hide your smile if you tried.

Ashton managed to get a nice selfie of the three of you under one of the trees and before long, you realised that the half an hour had gone by and you were beginning to struggle, your legs becoming a little bit shaky.

But it didn’t deter from the fact that you’d been able to go out for a walk and enjoy it. Both Luke and Ashton could see the immediate difference.

“We’ll go out every day and stay an extra five minutes longer. Build you up. How does that sound?” Ashton asked as you walked up the driveway, arm in arm with the both of them.

“That sounds good. Onwards and upwards from here and I am so going to kick your butts at Mario Kart now.”

Their laughter rang around the empty drive as you reached the building and you felt much more positive with them by your sides.

if you wanna be added to my taglist just hmu!!

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newobsessionweekly · 5 years ago

Text

You are my home

Miguel Bernardeau x reader

a/n: I’m back bitches 😂 Yeah so I hope you like it. It’s the second part of ‘Be my home’. It took me ages to finish it, but I loove it. Anyway, enjoy it and tell me what do you think. 🌿❤️

Y/n is still adjusting her life in Madrid. She finds it a welcoming city, with smiling people immediately accepting her and embraced her with so much love. It’s not different from Seville, it has the same vibe; maybe Madrid is bigger and more modern. In Seville she was living her historical story, waiting for her Prince Charming, riding a white, beautiful horse and immediately falling for her. But instead a Prince Charming, she bumped – she literally bumped – into a blonde guy, with blue eyes, more restless than the sea on a stormy night and beautiful little freckles painting his skin.

Miguel is the best thing that happened to Y/n, that’s what she’s been telling him and everyone. She had the opportunity to glow up thanks to him, and because of him, Y/n had seen so many interesting places she always dreamed of. She was there for Miguel and watched him became the successful and adored man he is now. She knew he is working so hard, even before they moved together, but now, having the chance to see him the first thing in the morning and the last one late in the night, she understood that she didn’t knew even knew half of his hard work. He wanted to hide it from her, he wanted Y/n to see him only smiling, joking and only when he’s been able to show how much he loved her.

But the love for him only grew stronger. First night he had came home exhausted since they moved in, and tried to ignore her, not wanting to taint her with his tiredness and negative thoughts. Despite the fact he pushed her away, Y/n didn’t allowed him to distance himself too much and wrapped her arms around him. They just stayed in the middle of the living room, on the floor, hugging each other and creating a bridge so that their feelings could melt into each other’s. That moment, he understood that his pain, tiredness and negativity would go away with only one touch and wave of her magic hand. She brings so much happiness in his life that Miguel really wonders all the time if she’s got any left.

Their house is literally a living hell, with all the windows wide open and the heat felt all day long that hasn’t decreased even a bit. Madrid is a city of extremes when it comes to its climate – cold in winter and swelteringly hot in summer. And today is no exception. Y/n felt like melting in their own house, no air conditioning working and too much humidity flying around. Ten post meridiem, the city has no intention on standing still, while Y/n – with her legs crossed beneath her small body, in front of her laptop – tries to wipe away the sleep.

She’s been up since Miguel left for work early in the morning and hasn’t closed her eyes for even a minute. Working from home has its ups and downs, but she didn’t have the chance to it too much, moving in with Miguel was maybe too sudden and rushed for Y/n. She don’t like being closed between four walls seven days a week, in Seville she preferred walking to her office, grabbing the coffee she loves from Starbucks and – the most exciting part – choosing the perfect outfit. Y/n’s agency has no subsidiary in Madrid, so from the distance she still runs the one from Seville and it’s even harder.

During the dog-days of summer – which she is somehow surviving – her only concern is Miguel. He’s working hard and though he doesn’t have more scenes to shoot, they are all located under the ruthless sun of Madrid.

Focused on finishing the assignments for today, Y/n is no longer paying attention to the noises around her. She got used to the loud engines running down the streets and the restless dogs around the neighbourhood. The door unlocked and opened at Miguel’s gentle touch and as soon as he saw Y/n concentrated on the little screen in front of her’s eyes, he took as long time as he needed to observe her. Standing on a bar height chair at one of the counters with the kitchen’s door wide open and the wind blowing like crazy through the house, he found her hotter than ever, even hotter than the weather outside and there are only a few things that can beat that up.

“I’m home!” Miguel announces himself and takes his shoes off as she switched her eyes from the laptop to the clock that indicates eleven and five minutes already.

“Kitchen!” she called and stretched her back as he walked into the little kitchen.

Y/n smiled instantly at the sight of him. Miguel is beautiful, even with his head shaved and his tired eyes; he has that magic vibe constantly circling around and with a small, weary smile, he could light up everyone’s day. Her day is certainly better now.

“Hello, lovely!” Miguel greets and she sits up to wrap her arms around him tight. Their bodies connected like they are made for each other and all the heat and worries that bothered both of them through the day, disappeared as soon as they touched. His hands runs down on her exposed skin, making her shiver of longing and desire.

“Hi, handsome!” Y/n pulls apart from the hug just to get up on her toes to face him properly. Miguel is tall, Miguel is a giant to her and Y/n loves that. She loves to feel his big arms wrapping around her waist or to rest her head on his big shoulders. His hands stops from aimlessly wandering on her back and holds her tighter as she presses her forehead on his and smiles bright at him. Miguel smiles back and soon enough ends the teasing game she’s been playing and their lips touches and dances in a passionate waltz.

“Quite interesting the clothes you’ve chosen to wear today!” he teases her and slowly moves his hands up and down her spine making her shiver under his touch. Miguel is not used to Y/n walking in bra and shorts around his house, though she told him she has this habit back at home. He could just imagine her, with bare foot circling the apartment and the sun shines caressing her uncovered silhouette.

“I’m sorry, I’ll go get changed immediately. I thought it’s a good idea since you’ve been gone all day.” Y/n agitatedly stepped back from his touch and turned around to find her way, still dazed from the staggering feel of his fingers tracing the shape of her. He just stares at her with a stupid smile on his face – the reality of her wandering partly naked on his house is even more intoxicating than his imagination.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll get changed.” Miguel stopped her and under her beautiful eyes, he quickly crossed the living room. As he entered the bathroom, he slowly stripped the clothes he had been wearing all day and kept only his boxers. “We’ll have dinner in underwear. It’s gonna be fun.”

He wickedly smiled and abandoned the items on the floor as Y/n shakes her head. It’s a bad habit Miguel has. She doesn’t say any word about it because she knows how tired he is and the always-on-the-run life doesn’t have ‘orderly’ as synonym. Miguel turned to grab one beer from the fridge and rested his body on the window frame as he lighted up a cigarette and placed it between his fingers.

„Sorry I missed lunch, I’ve hangout with the boys. Are you upset?”

Miguel is concerned because Y/n looks tired than usual. Holding still a business from more than five hundred kilometres away is hard and she’s a hard worker. Y/n is working since sunrise until sundown with only small breaks and few bites of leftovers. Due to the fact of their busy lives, they are trying to spend any pause together, talking about everything, sharing their feelings and thoughts.

„No, no!” she shakes her head and turns to look at him while extinguished the cigarette and scrolled down his phone. ”I’ve got some work to finish anyway.” Y/n yawned and stretched her back.

„Oh, do you want me to help with dinner?”Miguel asked as he approached her and caressed her arms. Small drops of water start to hit violently the ground as a chilly wind invades the kitchen.

„It’s ready, I just need to set the table.” Y/n shakes her head and closes the laptop, reaching the cabinet for some plates.

„It’s fine, I can do that.” Miguel pushes her away and moves back and forth through the kitchen to set the table for them. At least that he could do for her. Y/n kisses his cheek on her way to close all the windows from the house and as she trapped over his t-shit – soaked with his cologne and a scent of body perfume – she covered her body with it.

„Thank you,love!” as she returned to the kitchen, the table was already arranged and ‘Fideuà’ is already on the plates. Y/n sat down in front of Miguel and started eating the large amount of noodles and seafood. “So, how was your day?” Miguel smiled at her, chewing before grabbing her free hand, intervening their fingers.

“I had a good time with the boys outside the set. They all miss you, especially Omar.” He laughed, playing with his fork. “We should go to the club soon. I think Arón said something about going to some club this weekend. We’ll see. How was your day? ”

“Gladly not as boring as the other ones.” Y/n chuckles and lifted her feet on his lap under the table. “I was around at María’s place.”

“María Pedraza?” he asked, surprised by her words. Not that it is a bad thing that they spent some time together – in fact María is one of his dearest friends and she likes Y/n really much – but he knows María is filming for a new Spanish TV show on Netflix in Marbella.

“No, no! Our neighbour. Only two houses down the street.” She is trying to explain him, but he’s paralyzed with that questioning look stuck on his face. He doesn’t know what to say or how to act, a million of thoughts flying inside his head, not knowing which one he should listen to.

“What?” he absently plays with the fork in his plate.

“Yeah, yeah.” She swallowed the food before speaking again, with her eyes searching for his, wondering what was going on with him. He knows her – Y/n is very sure they are friends, she saw them talking several times – but the lost look on his face and the distance he took after hearin her talking, made her thinking it was a bad idea telling him. “But she’s really sweet. I had a great time there, and Marco, the little one, is so smart and fascinating.” She smiled under his sight and continued: “She told little stories about when you moved in and-”

“What did she said? What did she said about me?” Miguel interrupted, agitatedly looking at her. If she’d knew, she’d be mad at him, but Y/n is all a smile and really showing she had a great day, killing the boredom socializing and it was good for her. But he couldn’t accept her hanging out with María.

“She said nothing. Is there something to say? Or more precisely, to remain untold?” Y/n placed her fork at its place when she stopped eating because the lump from her throat grew bigger, and watched Miguel as he sat up and walked to the window to light another cigarette.

“There’s nothing to be said. I just don’t like you hanging out with her. So please don’t do that anymore.” Miguel took a sip from his glass of red wine and looked at her between his eyelashes. He is speaking calmly, showing off a blank expression and trying not to make a big deal from this situation. She’s a grown up, she will understand that – or at least that’s what he taught.

“What?” she stood up from her seat and, confused, and shakes her head in an attempt to clear her head and understand better what he just said. But there’s nothing better to understand, there is no other implied in that sentence. “You can’t be serious.”

“Yes, I am very serious. I don’t like her, you shouldn’t be spending time around her. She’s not a good influence. ” Miguel explained and his hand moved up and down at his every word. He extinguished the cigarette on the window sill and threw it outside as he finished his drink.

Y/n doesn’t have many friends here in Madrid. Between arranging her life in the new city and maintain the order in the office from far away, she hasn’t found any time to make new friends. Her best friends are spread into the world and they barely have time to see or talk to each other. So the only friends she’s got in Madrid are Miguel’s friends and she feels the need to have her own friends. Spending some time with María – the only girl around her age in the neighbourhood – made that place feel more and more like a home. Being away from Miguel, even for some talks, felt right and like a breath of fresh air.

“Ah, your friends got the best influence over you, right? Your friend Omar influenced you to start smoking and Arón convinced you to try those shitty things, that joint that made you threw up a whole night.” She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest as a defence. Y/n’s voice is a little bitter, but the last thing she wants is to offend him and his friends.

“That’s not the same! I did that because I wanted to for a long time. They just gave me some courage. Besides that, why are you attacking my friends? You like them!” Miguel pointed his finger at Y/n as he grabbed a beer from the fridge.

She loves Omar and Arón. Omar in fact is one of her closest friends, she trust him almost as much as she trusts Miguel. Y/n knows that they have their best intentions, she doesn’t have the right to make comments to their address, but she’s hurt. His words hurt her pretty bad, the fact that he’s telling her with whom she should be spending her time, it means only that he thinks she’s not capable of taking care of herself. She’s a grown up, she moved all the way from Seville through Madrid and now it’s not the time to let her guard down and let him telling her stuff like that.

“Yeah, I like them. Also I like María. You like her too, you talk to her sometimes!” Y/n lifted her hands and let them down again in frustration. She shook her head at him and turned to admire the street lights and the empty road beneath them.

“No, I just talk to her so that she mind her own business and stay away from you.” He’s very free and easy despite the shocking words coming out from his mouth. Y/n felt nothing but astonishment and anger increasing in her body. They haven’t start to yell at each other for now, but she’s couldn’t make any promises.

“You told her to stay away from me? Why would you do that? I can take care of myself very well, you know!” Y/n looked him in the beautiful blue eyes that she fall for. She find them calm and softening despite the fact that they look nothing less than restless as the ocean itself.

“She’s a fucking whore, Y/n! She doesn’t even know who’s the father of that child!” Miguel’s voice suddenly sounds louder and annoyed and Y/n could do nothing than feel her chin dropping. Miguel is the sweetest person alive and she never saw him losing his temper. Even of the screen, he found it hard to get mad, shout at one of his dearest friends and fake a fight. They don’t usually fight and even when they do, everything is so calmly and calculated. His burst made her step back a little and look at him.

“That’s not true. Maybe yes, she’s got several boyfriends, but that doesn’t mean she’s a whore.” She felt the need to defend her though they’ve been knowing each other for maybe a few weeks. But how he could talk like that about her?

“I paid to fuck her, Y/n, trust me, I’m not talking in vain!” he shouted and it was too late when he realised the actual words that came out from his mouth.

The house filled with a deafening silence, only the clock’s ticking is animating the place now. Y/n has her eyes fixed on an invisible spot somewhere on the floor, words couldn’t find the way to came to the surface. Her face is blank for the first time tonight and Miguel can’t read any emotion. He could see the bright happiness that was painted on her face the moment Y/n saw him home, slowly fading away and melting with the confusion and anger. He wanted anything, to scream, to cry – well maybe not to cry – to see her face turn red and even see her showing off the disappointment he knows she feels right now. But it’s torturing him to see the woman he loves, standing silent in front of him, thousands of thoughts running through her mind and not knowing what kind of thoughts.

Miguel tried to reach her hand, but she stepped back and looked him in the eyes. She’s not crying, she’s not screaming, she’s just digesting the news with an indescribable calm. Miguel on the other hand, wants to shake her shoulders, to beg her in his knees to talk to him, to kiss her worries away. But he knows best it’s better for the both of them if he wouldn’t cross the line.

“I’m sorry. It’s not like that. It’s-“

“Hold it. I don’t want to hear or see you right now.” Y/n raised her hand and placed it in front of him, blocking the visual contact. Although she interrupted him, he wasn’t mad. At least he received some comunication from her side.

“It was a long time ago, before I even met you.” Miguel tried to explain himself, biting his lower lip desperately before he would find out what could possibly mean the fact that she doesn’t want to see him.

She hasn’t tought properly before she opened her mouth and let those words out. Indeed, Y/n does want some space and some silent place to think and think before she could talk to him again. But here in Madrid she doesn’t have anyone. She’s been out far too few times to know where to go and she’ll get lost immediately. She can’t go anywhere than the little market down the street all by herself and that made her angry.

“It’s fine, Miguel.” she talks softly and delicately squeezed his cheek. “I don’t want to see you right now, ok?” she smiled sweetly at him before sidestepped Miguel and grabbed a bag of gummy bears from the shelf.

Miguel should have shut up from the first place or shouldn’t have let her go that way. He should’ve said something, anything, he should’ve explained her about all that. It was about when he first started to work at the Elite project, it was just a one time thing. He paid for her services one time, when he felt lonely and so pissed that he couldn’t get one specific scene right. But soon enough, Miguel met the girl that changed his mind, the girl what was beside him for the day one and showed him a kind of love he never thought he would ever experience. He doesn’t know if she’s the one, but he does want to make things right. He wants her to be the one.

While he was trying to figure out the best way to explain her everything, Y/n was watching the ceiling with the bag of gummy bears beside and quietly playing on the background some random episode from Elite. She’s not mad at him. It would be stupid for her to be mad for every girl he dated or fucked in the past. She’s just having a hard time, staying to much locked in the house, working and keeping the house, it’s getting her on the verge.

Is she mad at him? Of course she is. He interdicted her to see someone, he’s being unnecessary protective over her and he don’t trust her enough, maybe, to know that she’s not going to did something like that. Is she hurt? Maybe she is. Maybe she is because she doesn’t know if that happened before they met, or after or maybe if it’s still happening.

Maybe she wouldn’t even care if he just fucked her; maybe she would’ve agree to him to not hangout with that girl again if he have had just told her that she’s an ex. But he told her he paid to fuck her. That’s what had shaken her. How could’ve done such thing? It would take just a little bit of respect from him to not buy a girl’s intimate parts. He didn’t treat that girl with the respect she deserved, maybe he’ll treat Y/n with the same lack of respect at some point.

Her eyes are hardly staying open and she can feel her body slowly beginning easy. A soft blast of cold air scattered into the living room and made her curl up on the small white couch. This room is her favorite, all white and black, they are the only people that could bring some colour into it. She loves it because it’s usually her office and every time Miguel enteres the room with a plate of food, it reminds her that the days, however bright or dark, she’s going to have him, the most important colour palette to animate her life.

When he entered the rood after he knocked a little on the door, he found her standing on the couch, her back facing the door and some episode from Elite playing on the TV. He smiled a little at the sight of her admiring his work. Elite is one of her favorite TV show, she watched it three times and never got bored of it, not a single time.

As he silently approached the couch, Miguel saw her beautiful eyes siled and a frowning painted on her angelic face. Although both of them are a restless whirligig spinning around all day, she has the most peaceful and motionless sleep. She’s not moving, and she’s barely breathing; Miguel on his late nights with no sleep, likes to stay as quiet as possible and listen to her quiet breathing. Y/n is an angel moving,is an angel sleeping, is an angel existing.

But he couldn’t just stare at her now, he couldn’t let her sleep on the chilly couch, curled up in a ball to warm herself. He tapped her shoulder repeatedly until Y/n slowly opened her eyes. She looked at him confused, and then it hit her – she fall asleep on the couch.

“Let me get you in bed, amor. Alright?” Miguel wrapped his hands around her little body and carried her through the house. Y/n rested her head on Miguel’s shoulder and slowly but surely she understood that her place is inside his arms.

Y/n is not mad anymore. Y/n is not angry at him, she’s just tired, she’s had a long day and all she wants is to stay inside his arms and fall asleep properly. She loves him very much and wonders every time if he’s the one. Maybe he is, maybe she wants him to be the one. Maybe Y/n and Miguel are made for each other, or maybe she wants to believe that way.

“I’m sorry we fight.” sleepy, she placed a kiss at the base of his neck as he opened the door of their bedroom and placed her gently on the bed.

“I know I am a jerk sometimes. I’m sorry I said that kind of things to you. You can hangout with whatever you want, amor. I am sorry.” he sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her cold body, in trying to warm her. Miguel ran his hands up and down her back as he placed a kiss on Y/n’s forehead.

“It’s okay.” she yawned and sticked closer to his body. “I love you, you know? You are my home. You could’ve told me nicely the reason you don’t want me to hangout with her and I would’ve understood.”

“I know. I am sorry.” he keeps her closer to his body. “I love you too. Very much actually.” he chuckled and rubbed his nose against her neck.

————

tags: @ang-26

#elite #netflix #elite imagine #imagines #miguel bernardeau x reader #miguel bernardeau imagines #miguel x reader #miguel imagines #miguel bernardeau #miguel #elite cast imagine #be my home #you are my home #aron piper #omar ayuso #elite fan fiction #fan fiction #miguel fan fiction

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mordoriscalling · 4 years ago

Text

The Shrike and the Lark (pt. 6)

Jaskier and Renfri are disaster twins ruling Creyden. When the Warlord of the North knocks at their door, Queen Renfri and King Julian are at an advantage - they know him. As in, they know him. (Inspired by the Warlord AU and “the heart is a winged beast”).

(Pt. 1) (Pt. 2) (Pt. 3) (Pt. 4) (Pt. 5)

Creyden, 1237

The hour is late and most of the people inside the walls of the royal castle are asleep. Silence reigns over its numerous corridors and rooms. Yet, the Queen’s chambers bear witness to some noise – the sounds of a heated conversation, coming from the bedroom.

“It’s not our fault,” Queen Renfri cries, frustration colouring her voice, “It’s the fucking Council!”

“I know,” Lady Yennefer growls back. “But it’s been three weeks and we’re about to turn rabid. We want this matter to be settled finally.”

The two ladies are seated by a small table in the middle of the room, holding goblets of wine. The fireplace is burning low, but not much heat is needed to ward off the chill of the summer night. The Queen and the sorceress sit opposite each other, their faces cast in the flickering light of the candles lit around the room.

“We all do,” Renfri agrees.

The treaty between Creyden and the Warlord’s empire is ready. Over the course of the past weeks, the twin monarchs and their Council, together with the White Wolf and his advisors, have been poring over the terms and conditions of the alliance. It has been agreed that Credyen will share three ports with the Warlord – Tridam, Pont Vanis and Yspaden – for whatever use he might have of them, most generally the transportation of people and goods. In exchange, the White Wolf has pledged to offer military support to Credyen whenever necessary.

At this point, every article and section of the deal have been refined to the point that it cannot be improved any more. Yet, the royal Council of Creyden does not allow for the contract to be signed, each day finding new details that they believe should be discussed with greater care. This continuous postponing tires both sides, but the Council distrusts the Wolf. They still have not devised to hold him to his promise in a way that would prevent him from threatening Creyden.

“Why not tell simply them to fuck off?” Lady Yennefer suggests.

“They are too competent to be disregarded, unfortunately,” Queen Renfri replies, “I’d rather not have them turned against me.”

The sorceress sighs heavily, messaging her temples with her long, beautiful fingers. “There must be a way to shut them up,” she mutters.

The two ladies then endeavour to coin some kind of solution to the problem. Their conversation overflows with ideas – but they do not deem any of them appropriate enough – as well as some witty remarks and instances of biting humour. Time passes, the darkness outside steadily giving way to the greyness of early dawn, but Queen Renfri and Lady Yennefer scarcely seem to notice anything but each other. That is until a noise disturbs their discussion.

“Hiacynt?” King Julian calls from the neighbouring chamber.

The Queen and the sorceress still in surprise.

“Hiacynt?” the King calls again, the sound of his voice drawing closer, “Aren’t you –”

When King Julian enters his sister’s bedroom and beholds the Queen’s guest, he stops dead in his tracks. For a moment, no one says a word. The King stares between his sister and the mage, his mouth hanging open in shock. Finally, Queen Renfri speaks as she rises from her seat, worry twisting her features.

“Jaskier!” she exclaims. “Has something happened?”

Jaskier regains his composure, clearing his throat. “Nothing serious, don’t worry,” he reassures. “My apologies for the interruption.”

“It’s all right,” Queen Renfri dismisses.

Lady Yennefer stands up as well, straightening her skirts. “I should take my leave anyway,” she says in a brisk manner, “I need my beauty sleep.” As she directs her gaze at the Queen, her countenance is suddenly serious. “Thank you, Renfri,” she adds.

“Thank you too, Yennefer,” Renfri answers quietly.

With a court nod towards the monarchs, the sorceress then conjures up a portal, walks into it, and disappears.

“Renfri?” the King echoes incredulously after the magical circle closes. “Hiacynt, what the fuck?”

Nonchalantly, his sister goes to refill her goblet and drinks from it. “Yennefer and I decided to get better acquainted,” she replies at last.

“Why?” he scoffs, “She’s a mage.”

“Exactly,” Renfri retorts. “We should stop fearing them. Just look at Geralt – the moment he had mages in his service, his empire fucking grew tenfold. Portals are too damn useful.”

“I know,” Jaskier concedes in a long, petulant whine. In an overdramatic fashion, he plops down on the chair that the Wolf’s sorceress has just vacated. Renfri rolls her eyes fondly.

“But Lady Yennefer? Really?”

Renfri shrugs. “She’s a decent company.”

At this, Jaskier seems bemused, but then a playful glint appears in his eye. Before he can reply, however, his sister beats him to the teasing.

“What are you doing here,” she asks, “Away from Eskel’s embrace?”

Jaskier smirks, not showing an ounce of shame. For the past fortnight, the Wolf’s second-in-command spent each night in the King’s chambers. King Julian has done precisely nothing to hide that fact.

“Tell you what,” he replies and then pokes his tongue at her.

Renfri responds in kind. Jaskier laughs; seeing the formidable Queen indulge in his childishness is amusing indeed. His sister chuckles at their foolishness too. When they calm down, she looks at her brother expectantly and demands, “Well?”

“One of those dreams again.”

She stills, frowning in concern. “Something bad?” she murmurs.

“Not bad at all, actually.” Jaskier smiles, his gaze distant and dreamy. “I heard... giggles, and boyish voices. I also saw... many little feet running around the courtyard.”

Renfri gasps and promptly sits down.

“Impossible,” she breathes out. “How could it be possible?”

“I have no idea,” he replies, shaking his head. “Maybe the dreams have turned to another form of cruelty. To give hope only for it to be shattered.” He huffs a laugh. “But gods, I so want to hope.”

“Let us hope, then,” his sister replies and moves to her brother’s side to take his hand.

Jaskier grins, squeezing her palm in his, and Renfri smiles back. They share a quiet, warm moment of allowing themselves to envision a future that could last. Then, the spell is broken – Jaskier yawns suddenly, making his sister laugh.

“You should go back to sleep,” she tells him, “I need a bit of rest too.”

“Ah yes, the hunt.” Jaskier rises from his seat and pats his sister on the shoulder in an affectionate gesture. “Enjoy a little killing, my sweet Hiacynt.”

Renfri’s smile is sharp as she replies, “That I will.”

When the hunting party sets out from the castle two hours later, it is not the loud and showy affair that courtly sports tend to be. No horses, hounds or even horns are involved. This time, Queen Renfri has decided to hunt in the manner of witchers – silently, as true predators do.

The royal gamekeeper and his three grown sons, each armed with a crossbow, lead the group to the nearest location where deer is most likely to be found. Apart from the Queen and four of her guards, the party also consists of the three witchers who remain in Creyden at this point: the Warlord himself, his right hand Eskel, and their School-brother Lambert. King Julian is absent, but that is to be expected. Unlike his sister, who indulges in hunting often, the King does not care for this sort of entertainment.

On this particular early morning, however, Queen Renfri does not seem to be enjoying herself. Her posture is stiff, showing signs of weariness, and she does not talk to anyone. Her attention is turned solely to her surroundings and thus, she quickly takes note of the lingering gazes which Eskel directs at her. Whenever she catches him staring, he looks away, but then the situation repeats itself again and again. Finally, with an irritated sigh, Queen Renfri approaches the witcher, falling into step next to him.

“What have I done to deserve your scrutiny?” she asks outright.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Eskel replies, bowing his head, “I forgot myself.”

“This doesn’t answer my question,” the Queen says sternly.

“You remind me of someone,” the witcher admits, quietly enough for the other humans in the party not to hear.

Queen Renfri smirks. “I have a good idea of whom you speak,” she teases.

Eskel chuckles but shakes his head. “I don’t mean Jaskier,” he answers. At the Queen’s inquisitive look, he explains, “I used to know another Black Sun Princess. Deidre Ademeyn.”

The Queen seems taken aback. She watches him closely for a moment, then asks, “How did you know her?”

The witcher does not answer at once, only walks alongside the Queen. The hunting party now treads a forest path running uphill. They split into pairs, one following after another, with the gamekeeper and his sons at the head, the guards in the middle, and the Queen and the witchers at the tail of the group. Around them, the forest is quiet.

When Eskel finally speaks, the words are murmured, not breaking the hush of the surroundings.

“She was my Child Surprise,” he confesses.

The revelation stuns Queen Renfri and she does not say anything, her expression betraying a contemplative mood. After a while, she remarks, “Deidre wasn’t a welcome surprise for you, I’d reckon.”

“Not because she was born under the Black Sun,” Eskel replies, “but because being bound to a witcher is not a good fate.”

“Her fate was not good anyhow,” the Queen counters. “She was killed by mages like the rest of my kind, wasn’t she?”

Eskel mouth sets into a grim line. “Yes,” he confirms, great pain echoing in his voice.

If Queen Renfri wants to ask about the hurt the witcher carries in his heart, she does not get the chance to do so. A moment after Eskel answers her, Lambert calls out from behind them.

“Halt!” he barks.

Everyone stops and turns to look at the fiery witcher, who points to something down the hill.

There, at most fifty yards away, stands a massive bear. It is a mother – two small cubs accompany her.

The people and the animals go completely still as they stare at each other, calculating the threat.

Then, very slowly, the witchers, the Queen and her guards draw their weapons. The mother bear growls.

She is not far below them. The hill is steep but the forest is not dense, with scarce undergrowth. Lambert and the White Wolf are the ones closest to her, while the hunters with the crossbows are the farthest away. They could shoot to kill her. Yet, in order to do that, they would have to go to the side – the rest of the party stands in the way – and even the slightest move could prompt the animal to attack.

The mother bear gives another warning, stomping in place.

“Protect Her Majesty,” Eskel says to no one in particular, “I’ll use Axii.”

Then, he moves, pushing Queen Renfri back. The bear charges with a roar.

The Warlord yells, “Stay back!” to the people behind him. He and Lambert stand their ground, while Eskel rushes towards the bear. At the same time, the guards run down to defend the Queen and the gamekeeper jogs to the side. He aims his crossbow at the animal.

When only three yards or so separate Eskel and the furious mother bear, the gamekeeper releases the bolt. It would have been a good, clean shot, but then, the Warlord moves.

He now stands directly in the way. With his back to the rest, he is unaware of it. The bolt cuts through the air, going straight towards the White Wolf’s neck. Queen Renfri, a short distance above, notices it. Her guards have not yet managed to surround her. She is free to act.

“Geralt!” she cries, throwing herself to shield the witcher from harm.

The bolt pierces through her light armour and buries itself deep into her flesh, under the right collar bone. With a scream of pain, Queen Renfri falls to the ground, blood flowing heavily from her wound.

Then, she bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds.

Read the test on AO3

#myfic #geraskier #jaskier/eskel #the accidental warlord and his pack #jaskier & renfri are disaster twins #this fic... might turn out to have yenfri in it #and I ain't mad at that AT ALL

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