#stop demanding they overwork themselves for your amusement!
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lemmaeof · 1 year ago
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I swear to god if I see anyone doing the "look what modders can do!" bullshit around the mob vote this year I'm gonna fucking lose it
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ladycubes0t7 · 3 years ago
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Required Services
Pairing: Boss!Min Yoongi/Assistant!Fem Reader
Genre: Office/Smut/Boss/Assistant
Rating: Explicit/Mature/NSFW/No Minors
Summary: Are your services required or not? Find out what happens when being an overworked assistant gets you into trouble.
Word Count: 7.27k
Warnings: F/M, Office Sex, Oral (female receiving) , Protected Sex Hint of angst barely, mentions of alcohol.
A/N: This has been cross posted to AO3. Please feel free to comment, feedback is always welcome just try to keep it constructive.
Just one day. One day is all that you ask. One day for your boss to quit pushing all of his work on you. Sure, you get it. He has a lot on his plate. Meetings, interviews, business plans, market reviews, etc. You could go on and on about what he does or does not do.
Let's focus on the latter; that which he does not do. He does not build team morale. He does not care about how much that you do for this company. He sits in his office with that smug look upon his face everytime that you enter. Every hour on the hour, he is buzzing you into his office to assign more duties. Spread the wealth Mr. Boss Man. There are people in this office that are more than qualified to handle these tasks that he'd given you.
Yet, here you were, once again, standing in his office. He sat behind his large black desk, eyeing you with a smirk. He must get off on this. You huffed in clear annoyance while he continued on with his list of "chores". The job was really starting to get to you. Everything about that man, sitting in that high back leather chair, got to you. The way his blonde locks swept to the side and out of his eyes, the way his lips stayed drawn into that smirk, and even the way he breathed.
You furrowed your brow and gnawed at your bottom lip. Seemingly, you were lost in the way his long, slender fingers played with the band of his wristwatch. His fingers, oh how you longed for them to be pumping furiously in and out of you. Wrecking you, disciplining you for all the work that hadn't been completed.
What? Wait. Where did that come from? You flushed all over and tried to blink back your surprise. Mmmm, just look at him. All suited up. You despised the very man in front of you, so how in the hell did thoughts like those even cross your mind? Oh, right, you were overworked and had no time for dick appointments.
"Did you get all that?" Your boss spoke, breaking you out of your daze.
"What was that last part?" You quickly acted like you were taking notes and peeked at him in wait. Your eyes dragged over the entirety of his face and slowly worked their way down. His hands were working to unbutton the bottom of his suit jacket. I bet he really knows how to work a certain button. There it was again that lustful she demon voice in your head. Back away, you sinful beast, your mind pleaded with itself.
Obviously, annoyed, he reiterated, "I've got a formal business dinner to attend tonight and I need a date. You're coming with." There was no asking if you had plans and certainly no care about your opinion on the topic. That demanding tone in his voice had you aching and flustered.
"That'll be all for the moment," he waved you off dismissively. You took a second to look back down at your notes. Your facade set in a scowl as you pondered if you should attempt to decline. I really shouldn't. What if he wants a piece? I'm the perfect person to go to work on him. Those thoughts battled it out. Your inner lustfulness betrayed your sensible side.
"And do wear something���.classy," he added, not even looking up.
You fought the need to roll your eyes and replied, "Yes, Mr. Min." I'll be back, the lust demon part of you sashayed to the corners of your fantastical mind and didn't return for the rest of the work day.
*******
You were standing outside the restaurant at precisely 8 o'clock. The strappy, black high heels did nothing to soothe your aching feet from having been at work all day. You held a matching clutch close to the bodice of your black evening dress. The hem of the skirt was a little shorter than you liked but it was just long enough to keep you from looking like a woman of the night. At this point, several minutes passed and you began to wonder would your boss even show up.
A sleek, gray sedan pulled up next to the sidewalk. Your boss exited. His blonde hair was slicked back to show a prominent undercut. He wore a dark gray three piece suit. It was perfectly tailored to his thin frame. That patented smirk of his adorned his lips when he took place beside you. Inwardly, you shrieked like a fangirl but remained your natural level of cantankerous for appearances sake.
"Fashionably late as always, Mr Min," you couldn't hide the disdain in your voice if you wanted to. He perked a brow at you, amused.
"Bitchy as always, Miss Moody. Are you always this standoffish to a date?" He retorted. Nothing ever appeared to get underneath his skin. Attitudes, kindness, hatefulness, everything rolled off of him.
Your boss held out his arm, "Let's not let your attitude kill the evening. Play nice," there was a hint of warning to his tone before he added, "and call me Yoongi for the night. I need you to play the part of date and not employee."
You looped your arm around his and he led you into the restaurant, his head held high. The maitre d didn't even bat an eye as the two of you strolled by. Mr. Min must come here often. You thought. It was hard to feel like you belonged here, let alone on the arm of Min Yoongi. The whole restaurant and its patrons screamed expensive. Hell, your boss probably owns it, even though you've never seen it listed in his accounts.
After having walked through the majority of the restaurant. You reached a set of double doors. Two waiters opened the doors to usher you and your boss through to a separate dining area. This area was more decadent than the last. Lush, violet and gold drapes adorned the walls. There was a rather large, round dining table set up in the center of the room. Seating and place settings for 14.
The other guests went silent. Talk about an awkward entrance. The six men looked shocked as they looked between your boss and you. Has Mr. Min never brought a plus one? The ladies, accompanying the other men, all gawked at you. All it took was a glare shot in their direction by your boss for the ladies to return to light conversation amongst themselves.
"Yoongi-ssi, this is a first. Who is your lovely date?" The man who sat next to an empty seat spoke. He was bespectacled and handsome with chestnut hued hair cut in a mid-fade. He had a dimpled smile crossing his face that could easily have you eating out of the palm of his hand.
"Ah, this is my girlfriend. You can call her Miss Moody for now, Namjoon," your boss answered, moving to take the empty seat next to him. You must have looked like a deer caught in headlights because Mr. Min tugged your hand to pull you in a seat next to him.
Girlfriend? Now I have to act like a girlfriend? He better give me a raise for this. You were trapped in your thoughts and barely even registered your boss's arm slipping around your waist. You almost flinched but caught yourself. You tried your best to act as normal as possible.It couldn't be so bad.
There were no other introductions made past the point of meeting Namjoon. The waiters began to bring out the first course. Luckily, you didn't have to fawn all over your boss, even though your desire demon was begging to take over. He was perfectly content with you sitting silent while the table enjoyed the first course. Yoongi was even overjoyed when you giggled over his cheesy business jokes while waiting for the second course to be served.
He was looking at you now, a gleam in his eyes that you couldn't quite decipher. Your stomach did a little flip when he took your hand and gave it a small squeeze. The gesture was returned with a soft smile that made him grin. To the outward eye, you two appeared to be lost in one another but, internally, you were struggling. It was like this glimpse into Yoongi's softer side was pulling off a mask that he wore to work. You began to find yourself enjoying his company and that was what scared you but thrilled you at the same time. Maybe your boss would be the one to satiate the hunger growing within you.
The rest of dinner went off without a hitch until dessert rolled around. The conversation between the men turned to business. You did your best to ignore the conversation but the numbers game was off. Everything that Namjoon brought up didn't match up with all the paperwork that you gave your boss earlier at work. Your eye even twitched at the low ball offer being discussed.
Yoongi laughed it off with a wave of his hand. "Namjoon, after all these years, you mock me with an offer like this? Come on man. You and I both know it isn't worth it."
Namjoon wiped his mouth with one of the cloth napkins and nodded, "Yeah, I know, but the boss won't let me go any higher. I knew the figure was laughable."
"Your boss sounds like a miser. My company will more than triple his profits. My fees are non-negotiable," Yoongi sat back and draped his arm around the back of your chair. His fingers absentmindedly rubbing circles on your bare shoulder. Goosebumps erupted across your visible flesh. He was obviously doing this as a distraction.
"Oh, come on. Do me a solid on this Yoongi-ssi. I really need this deal to go through. The boss plans on making me partner," Namjoon implored.
"If I do, you have to promise me something in return," Yoongi stared off in contemplation. His fingertips continued to lightly play at your shoulder. The sensation put you on edge. You needed to refocus.
You played with the rim of your wine glass. It was getting harder by the moment to stay silent. One of your legs, restless now, began to bounce. Yoongi put a hand on your thigh under the table. The touch stopped you in your tracks. Your eyes met his, which gave you a warning look. They were pleading with you to mind your own business. That was just it though. It was your business. You worked so hard to have all the paperwork in order for the negotiation that was being brought up at dinner. You expected this to happen at the conference on Monday but here you were, playing Yoongi's girlfriend and not his employee. It was killing you. You shot him a glare and opened your mouth, about to add in your two cents.
"Miss Moody, you're looking a bit flushed, perhaps you should head to the ladies room to freshen up?" Your boss offered but you could tell that it was more of a demand. Your eye twitched with how hard you tried to keep composure at the hatred you had for the nickname he'd given you. He stood to help pull out your chair and offered his hand. You took it, flashing a smile that never reached your eyes.
"Yes, I really should go powder my nose," you tried to hide the scoff but several of the men at the table heard you and let it be known as you walked off.
"You sure have a feisty one on your hands there, Yoongi-ssi," You heard from behind you. Oh, you haven't seen feisty.
Upon reaching the restroom, you debated whether you should just leave. Did Mr. Min realise how hard it would be for you to not say a word about the business end of the deal? He really did just bring you to keep the focus away from his personal life so that the business dinner could be just that, business.
There's still that chance, he could be setting me up to drop them panties. You rolled your eyes after taking in your reflection. Yeah, fat chance. I am but a means to an end.
Huffing in annoyance, you straightened your dress then washed your hands and tried to make sense of it all. Logically speaking, you knew he sent you off so that he could hide that you were an employee. Not just any employee, but the employee. You were the one who put the whole agreement together. Thoughts speeding through your mind did nothing to help quell the anger that slowly began to rise.
Get it together. You're just the date. You tried to reason with yourself, which spoke volumes to your logical side.
"Alright, let's get back to it," you checked yourself in the mirror and headed back to the dining area.
Many of the patrons took no notice as you came through once more. The double doors opened and you made your way back to the table. The business conversation carried on while you were away, but appeared to have been dealt with because Yoongi and Namjoon were standing and shaking hands.         "Pleasure doing business with you Yoongi-ssi. My boss will be pleased to hear that you settled," the younger man smiled, dimples turned up on max.
"Great, have your assistant send my assistant the new documents for me to sign, and we will get it right back to you," your boss grinned for a millisecond before realizing you were back from the ladies room.
You stood there, arms crossed and jaw clenched. That snake. First, he used you as arm candy, and then sent you away to not hear how the deal that you pieced together went down. This is it, you thought, this is where the other shoe falls.
"I most certainly will not," you said, icily. The room went silent. All eyes were on you.
"Excuse me?" Namjoon looked at you, quizzically.
Your boss, however, glared at you. The palpable tension grew between the two of you. You wouldn't back down this time. Out of all the times that you were expected to shut up and do your job, this time was not it. This time, you were not on the clock and most definitely not being paid.
Your blood pressuring was rising and your cheeks tinted red. "You see, Mr. Min, you will not be accepting the offer. Not yet, at least." You stepped closer, letting one hand rest on your hip and the other point right at him. "You will wait until I've gone over every word of the new contract before it is accepted. How dare you!?" You were getting louder now and Yoongi flinched when you began to poke at his chest. "You knew how hard I worked on that deal?! It's like you just spat on my face! The audacity!" You threw your hands up, exasperated.
Your boss's surprise turned into a smug look. "You can't have everything your way, Miss Moody. It is my business after all."
A sardonic laugh left your lips, "Oh, indeed it is Mr. Min. All decisions are your own, unless you want to run your business into the dirt. I suggest you take my advice. Leave the numbers game to your assistant." The venom you spat was from years of being overburdened at the office and from the amount of lifeblood that you poured into it.
There was something else there, nagging you in the back of your mind. I can think of some numbers that I can handle. Inches that is. Your logical brain did it's best to shove the thought back into the deepest recesses of your mind. Put that inside a box and put that box into another box. Hide it away because in the moment, you needed to remind your boss that you were one of his hardest working employees. However, the lust demon refused to not be heard. Oh dear God look at those lips, still holding that smugness! The way I'd kiss those lips until they were swollen with the memory of me. It wasn't the time for you to be fantasizing about your boss in that manner. You were mad not hot and horny. Straighten those thoughts out.
The other men at the table couldn't stop looking at the exchange. They were taken aback. Yoongi just stood there, hoping that you were finished, and the women of the group whispered words of scandal amongst each other.
Your boss eyed you in silence for much longer than it seemed. "You know, now that I think about it," Yoongi scratched at his chin as if in thought, "your services are no longer required."
Now, it was your turn to be surprised. Eyes wide with shock and hands shaking, you could only stare at your boss. You tightened your lips and inhaled sharply through your nose. "What?!" Did you hear him correctly?
"You can move your belongings on Monday," Yoongi eyed you one last time before sitting down with a bored expression. There it was, the boss that you knew. The one who let everything wash away from him like he had no cares in the world.
"Yoongi…." The gravity of the situation was becoming too real. He really was going to fire you, just like that? He never looked up. That was it. The conversation was over. No time for rebuttal. Namjoon gave you a sad smile, but the others avoided your eyes. A frown marred your lips. You took up your clutch and held it close while you searched for your phone to order an Uber.
"Goodbye, Mr. Min," you said softly. Everything culminated to this, one of the lowest points of your life. You've never lost it before on your boss. You were utterly embarrassed. Nothing you could say now could change anything.
Outside of the restaurant brought a different kind of cold treatment. The artificial light did nothing to bring up your spirit. Traffic whizzed by and life still carried on like nothing happened. You checked the Uber app to see where your driver was. They were still a good fifteen minutes out. That meant fifteen more minutes of holding it together, to think about how much of a bitch you were, and finally just how good Yoongi looked while firing you.
Wait...he fired me. I shouldn't be thinking about how hot it was with that damn smirk of his. Mmm, but yet somewhere deep in that animalistic brain of your's, you knew that you were just as much turned on as you were angry. In that moment, you hated yourself for the arousal that snuck up on you. You tried to reason with yourself that it was just because things got so heated and you had to face it. Your now former boss was so utterly attractive.
The power he held and money he had played no part in the attraction you felt. It was purely a need to fuck that arrogant smirk off his face. Well, that or punish you like the brat that you were. You long since found yourself loving to be choked up by the work that he loaded you down with and that in itself was punishment.
You were secretly in lust with the thought of him and it caused you frustration on the daily. And even though your driver arrived and began its trek to your quaint apartment, the source of your irritation still clouded your mind. Maybe once you reached home you could just masturbate it out of you and call it a night. Only then would you be able to sleep and worry about finding a new job in the days that followed.
*******
The day you dreaded finally made its arrival. The morning matched your mood. Cold, dark, and rainy. You had a short to-do list for the day: pick up belongings from the office, cash your final paycheck, and drown yourself in cheap wine to wash away the hatred for your boss and your actions.
You dragging yourself out of bed proved not such an easy feat as you had gone on a weekend binder. You washed your face and eyed yourself in your tiny bathroom mirror. You made a poor attempt at applying some makeup to cover the dark circles under your eyes.
How you wished that you could just go in your sweatshirt and yoga pants but alas, you wanted to maintain some decorum. You threw on a black pair of dress slacks with a white billowy blouse. The final touch was to pull your hair back in a loose bun. You sneered in disgust at your image before heading out.
As you stood in front of the tall, dark office building that housed Min Industries, you couldn't help but to be thankful that the lustful thoughts disappeared along with your job. You were so wrapped up in being grateful for that, that you didn't notice the building was quiet all the way up to the top floor. You only noticed once the elevator doors parted and there stood Min Yoongi.
There were no sounds of your coworkers clacking away on keyboards, no phones ringing, and absolutely no one running back and forth between the cubicles. There was only Min Yoongi. He was silent with that same smug smirk.
"I was wondering when you would finally grace me with your presence," he said when you stepped off of the elevator. "We have so much work to complete today with the new deal and whatnot."
This was a trap. You just knew it. You were not going to fall into his games this time. "I'm here for my things," you simply stated as you started to move passed him. The key word being started. With one quick movement, he stopped you. His hand wrapped around your wrist. His grip wasn't so tight that you couldn't get away but just enough to get you to look at him.
And that you did and that was the beginning of your real downfall.
"I'm really not going to let my best assistant leave that easily," his voice was calm but his eyes not so much. They held a fire in them that had you questioning yourself.
"I thought you were the one who fired me. Seems to me that means you decided to let me go that easily," the reply rolled off your tongue, coolly. "Besides, you have employees that can handle my job duties. I'm just going to grab my things and see myself out."
Yoongi let go of your hand. "I didn't quite say that."
Surprisingly, you felt a sad pang in your heart at the lack of contact. Your eyes held his and you were even more shocked to see another emotion swirling in his eyes. Was that sadness? Regret? Whatever emotion it was played upon his lips as well because suddenly they were in a frown. Was the normally emotionless boss finally slapped in the face with the reality of firing his best assistant? He walked off to his office in silence.
You exhaled sharply, not realizing you had been holding it. While heading to your desk just outside of Yoongi's office door, you grabbed an empty box that once held reams of paper. The empty office felt as empty as your thoughts while you began to pack away your personal belongings.
Halfway done, you plopped into the swirly chair and ran your hands across your face to massage at your temples. The past several years of memories started to play out in your mind. There were plenty of good memories surrounding your coworkers and even those including your boss. It had only been the past year that his attitude, or lack of, that he started showing less emotion. You began to wonder why.
As if he had read your thoughts, Yoongi made himself known by clearing his throat. He leaned against the door frame, hands in the pockets of his suit pants. There was a fond look on his face.
"You know, I remember the day I hired you," he said while pushing off the frame of the door. Slowly, he made his way to stand beside your seat. "It was five years ago. I, myself, was just as new as you were at the time. My father insisted that my first move as boss was to hire my own assistant. One that could easily learn my needs and wants. One that was dedicated and eager. Someone that was trustworthy."
You perked up, tilting your head to the side. You swiveled around in your chair and looked up at him. You nodded for him to continue. He was silent for a moment.
"I found that in you. You had all of the qualities and then some. Throughout the years, I've watched you flourish in this position. You've handled things that assistants shouldn't do. You've kept your nose clean, and most certainly have kept my company exceeding everyone's expectations," Yoongi fiddled with his fingers, nervousness started to show.
"Well, if that's the case why…." He held up a hand to cut you off. A brow perked while trying to gauge what Yoongi was up to. Your she demon side was threatening to escape the box that you so neatly put her in.
"Let me explain," he dropped to his knees in front of you. "There's a reason why, in this last year, you've seen a change in me and your job responsibilities." He was careful with his words and even more careful in the way that he put his hands atop both of your knees. It was torture. The warmth of his hands caused an eruption of tingles to spread throughout your body.
"Overtime, I felt something pulling me to you. I can't explain it. I started to look at you differently. Suddenly, your every movement caught my eye. The smell of your perfume fogged my senses. Everything about you was taking over me."
You exhaled a shaky breath. Yoongi's eyes were trained on yours. You held contact though the heat began to rise and tint your cheeks. A soft smile crept on his lips. "I've had my eye on you for a while and the frustration of not being able to have what I want made me disregard you and your feelings. I should have explained it to you before dinner on Friday night. I didn't mean that you were full on fired. I meant to make you partner that evening. In fact…" he trailed off while he traced his fingers up your thighs, "I meant to make you partner in more ways than one. The things we will do will be so…." He spoke but you were not aware as his voice drifted in and out of your hearing.
Partner? More ways than one? The lustful thought went into overdrive. As his words sank in, realization did too. You didn't hate your boss. It was quite the opposite. You were wildly attracted to him. And people always said that there was a fine line between love and hate.
You couldn't hear the rest of what Yoongi was saying when he continued on. He was still lightly tracing up and down your thighs and it put you into some kind of trance. Your mind was too busy trying to make sense of everything to register the touch. It was a lot to process. Partner and partner? Some of those deep-seeded fantasies started to blossom.
".....and if you're uncomfortable we can always stop." He finished and was gazing at you quietly. The lack of his voice pulled you out of a hypnotic state.
You blinked and both of your brows were raised. You smiled a sheepish smile. "I'm not sure, Yoongi. I may need some more persuasion."
"Persuasion, you say?" The gleam in his eyes spoke a thousand words that the smirk upon his lips did not utter. He rose and pulled you with him. His arm slid to the small of your back to press you against him. The other hand clutched the back of your neck. Naturally, you tilted your head back, eager to meet his lips.
Yoongi descended on them like a man starved. His tongue swept your bottom lip, enthusiastically seeking entrance. Allowing him such access deepened it and allowed a soft moan to escape. The office melted away along with any of your worries. Yoongi's lips made sure of it.
You broke away, both of you gasping and eyes locked on one another. Nothing else mattered in that moment besides the two of you. He admired your lips, swollen and pink from his kiss. He decided that he didn't like your hair pinned back. Yoongi took hold of the pins holding your hair and removed them. Your hair fell in soft curls around your shoulders as he watched in awe.
Yoongi took your hand. He zoomed you to the confines of his office and kicked his door shut with his foot. You helped slide his suit jacket off and were working on the buttons to his shirt with shaking hands. From nerves or excitement, who knew? Flinging open his shirt, you ran your hands down his chest over the undershirt. Why did he have to wear so many layers? You thought when your fingers met the cool metal buckle of his belt. You released the belt and made quick work of the fly of his pants.
When his pants pooled around his ankles, an audible gasp left you at the sight of his hard member straining against the fabric of his boxers. Yoongi pulled off his undershirt while you dropped to your knees in front of him. Your mouth watered at the delicious view in front of you. Pale skin, clear of any blemishes or scars gave onslaught to your eyes, and you couldn't contain the moan if you wanted to. He was even better unclothed, save for the boxers. You palmed at Yoongi's thighs as you ran them from his knees up to band of his underwear.
You only looked up when his hand stopped your's. The other took you by your chin, angling you to get a better look at your face. He thought you looked glorious, like an angel looking up at him with hooded eyes. The want and hunger ever apparent with your lips parted in a pant.
"Not, now baby, this is about making you partner. I intend to vet you fully," Yoongi gave you a half smirk. He encircled your wrist and yanked you upward. In one quick motion, your back slammed against his office door. Breath knocked out of your lungs only for Yoongi to breathe his own back into you. His mouth made claim against your's once more. It was like he was drinking you up. He sucked your bottom lip into his mouth while running his hands the along the length of your torso. He couldn't get enough.
Yoongi was so painfully hard but he intended to take his time. Enjoy you to the fullest as he had fantasized about this day for so long. He gave the entire company a paid day off for this moment and it already paid itself off tenfold. Much slower to your liking, he removed each article of clothing of your's while kissing down your neck. He stopped every so often, sucking, causing purple and red marks to bloom across your skin. He kissed, licked, and nibbled along the swells of your breasts that peeked from the cups of your bra.
Removal of said item was much quicker. Yoongi just had to get his hands and lips all over your breasts. You dropped your head back against the door when his tongue darted out and swiped over one of your nipples. His free hand slipped inside the top of your dress slacks, he wasn't concerned that they were still on.
Yoongi was more worried about feeling the arousal pooling in your panties. He wasn't able to get a good angle, so he settled on using the heel of his hand to press against your clothed mound. His middle finger rubbed back and forth over the cloth covering your slit. The pressure had you swimming and moaning. You ran your fingers through Yoongi's hair as he continued his movements. His lips were latched so perfect on your nipple. He suckled harder for a moment and nipped it before lavishing his attention on the other. The soft moans and sighs coming from your lips spurred him on.
He detached to return to your mouth, the kiss near animalistic. His need only grew as he rolled himself into you, seeking relief, while he tore the fly open to your dress pants. He pulled your ruined panties and pants down in one fell swoop.
Bare before him and trapped safely in his arms, he lifted you up, never once breaking the kiss. You wrapped your legs around his waist and arms around his neck. He walked the two of you to his desk where he perched your ass on top of the edge. You reached on either side pushing off what you could reach.
Yoongi's fingers curled around your neck to push you down across the shorter end of his desk. As you laid back, his hand travelled the length of you and rested splayed across your lower abdomen. "Fuck, you're absolutely beautiful," he praised, taking in your features. Your chest was heaving with every breath.
You let your legs fall open and everything was on display for Yoongi's eyes. His eyes landed on your naked pussy, pink and dripping with want. "Take it, Yoongi. Whatever you want, it's yours."
That's all it took for him, he was on his knees in front of you and the desk, which happened to have your wet cunt in a perfect position. There was no embarrassment about being totally naked before him. In fact, you were a little grumpy because he was taking too long to touch you. "NOW, YOONGI!" You yelled out in frustration.
Yoongi bit down on your inner thigh, earning a surprised 'eep' from you. "Patience, or else Ms. Moody will be your name again," he chuckled in between the small kisses that trailed closer to the apex of your thighs. He continued around kissing the top of your mound, anywhere but right where you wanted. No, where you needed.
You felt him smirk against you, literally smirk when he darted his tongue out just above the hood of your clit. The annoyed whine that followed was proof of his further teasing. "I'll show you Ms. Moody." You trapped his head between your thighs and grabbed tight at the hair on the back of his head.
Yoongi revelled in the action and grabbed ahold of your ass cheeks. Long fingers dug in before slapping at the sides of your cheeks. He brought his hands around underneath where your thighs met your buttocks and pushed them up and apart. His incoming onslaught onto your clit had you keening. He attacked with fervor. An obscene, muffled moan from him shot through your core when he lapped at the arousal pooled inside your entrance. You would have thought you were his final meal at the slurping sound that echoed throughout his office.
"Fuuuuuhhhhck, Yoongi, right there," you groaned as he continued to work you over. He alternated between harsh, flat licks and fast, short pointed tongue licks against and around your clit. Yoongi's right hand joined the fray. There was no preamble to its entrance as he used the gathering saliva and arousal as lubrication and dipped one finger in. It was quickly followed by a second that scissored in and out of your wet cunt. He spent time working you open as he heard your moans increase in length and volume. Your pelvis ground into his mouth and fingers while you were being driven closer to the edge. That ledge was screaming for you to fall off. Yoongi's two fingers turned and curled beckoning your pleasure hither.
Your mind and body jumped off the edge with his name shouting from your lips. Back arching off the desk and hips pressing down, your orgasm ripped through you. Yoongi licked up every bit of your release and savored your taste.
You laid there, in the afterglow, thighs still trembling. The loss of Yoongi's fingers and mouth made you whine pathetically. His warmth returned just as quickly as it had left. He stood between your legs. The magnificent sight before you renewed the lust in your core. Yoongi had removed his boxers and was stroking his length at the sight of your already fucked out face.
You wanted to watch him for days. The way he sucked in his bottom lip and bit at it, and the way the head of his cock was engorged, red, angry, and glistening with pre-cum were both being filed away to memory.
"I'm not finished with you yet," were the promising words that he groaned out, lust heavily lace in his timbre. It was not a threat but a vow to utterly wreck your core. The crinkle of the condom wrapper was unmistakable. Yoongi hissed at the feel of rolling the rubber down his painfully hardened cock. Your eyes pleading with him as he stepped closer. One hand was at the base of his shaft and the other slid down to the back of your knee.
Yoongi's jaw clenched when the tip of his cock dipped into your entrance that clenched at the feeling of the protrusion. "Fuck, baby, I thought you were ready for me," he said, while slipping in another inch. The sound of his voice almost made you cum alone. Shit, he was going to be the death of you. You angled your hips up, allowing him to slide in further
"Please, Yoongi, just fuck me already. Need your cock!" You begged, sounding like a slut just hungry for a good dicking down. He bit his lip again and in one full thrust forward, Yoongi was buried to the hilt. Your walls clenched around him. He nearly rejoiced as if it were homecoming.
Slowly, he drew back and snapped his hips into yours. His hands gripped at either side of your hips, holding you in place. You were likely to have bruising but you'd wear them like a badge of honor.
Yoongi's pelvic bone flush against your clit. "Not only am I gaining a partner but also a cockwarmer. You'd like that, huh?" The confidence in his words had you aching for more. How you begged for him to move, or do anything as you became drunk on his cock.
Yoongi looked down at where you were joined. The sinful vision of your pussy stretched around his thick length. He moaned at such a sight. "Mmmm, baby this pussy was made for me. Heaven sent." He drawled out right as he began a steady pace of thrusting in and out of your sodden cunt. You bent your knees to pull your legs back a little further but this made Yoongi grab your ankles and push your legs together.
He angled your legs to the side and thrust deeply. The new position allowed him to directly batter your g-spot. You moaned out a broken version of his name. Each stroke hit so deep and hard.
Yoongi kept fucking into you with abandon. It was hard to tell when one moan stopped and another one began. God, how he loved to watch your breasts bounce with each thrust. The quick drag of his cock in and out of your pussy was threatening his release but he held on wanting to pull another orgasm from you. He pulled both of your legs up, putting an ankle on either side of his head and held on for dear life. With each pulse of your pussy, around his length, you tightened more and more. The urge to cum was strong in the two of you but neither wanted it to end. Your moans were intermingled in between breaths.
Yoongi dropped your legs to his hips when the need to cum became overpowering. He leaned across your torso, kissing you vigorously, while each thrust pushed you across the desk. Your hands flew to his back in this position and you scraped them in a downward motion. You wrapped your legs around him and arched your back.
"Fuhhhhhck, Yoongi!" You cried out as a powerful snap of his hips combined with him sucking at the pulse of your neck wrecked you. Your whole body wracked with your orgasm that washed over you. Delirious from hearing your pleasure and the feel of your cunt squeezing his cock in time, Yoongi blew his own load. His hips stuttered against yours but one final thrust landed directly onto your g-spot and he stilled.
You secretly wished his cum was painting your walls but the condom held his seed safely from your womb. He stayed like that a moment, resting his forehead against your's. Your panting breaths being the only sound in the office except for the quiet ticking of the clock.
Yoongi stood up, sliding out of your wrecked core. He disposed of the condom and turned back towards you to help you sit up. "Damn, Yoongi, is that how you initiate all your partners?" You quipped with a silly grin.
"Mmmm, not just any partner. Only the ones who put in the work," he answered with a wink. His demeanor was notably different. His lips had a gummy smile plastered to them. One you hadn't seen in ages. He tossed you your under garments before putting on his own. "Normally, I'd help you clean up but as you can tell, I don't normally have visitors in my office." Yoongi was a little embarrased now. His hand rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. It was cute how his cheeks had a twinge of pink across them.
"It's fine. I plan on heading home and taking a nice, relaxing shower. Work was strenuous today," you said while getting dressed. Your slacks were no longer able to be secured. You looked at Yoongi sheepishly, "Can I borrow your belt until tomorrow? I'm afraid I won't make it out of here with my pants up."
"Sure thing," he said, "Let me lend you a hand." Yoongi got his belt and slid it through each of the belt loops. The closeness was still so intoxicating. You began to wonder if you would make it home at all. After buckling the belt for you he asked, "Anything else I can do for you?"
A sly grin crossed your lips and your eyes lit up, "You know, now that I think about it…." You scratched at your chin in jest, "your services are no longer required."
Yoongi held up a hand to his heart in mock shock, "That's a low blow. I am hurt….hurt I tell you." He returned your playful banter.
"Well, I guess I will see you tomorrow, partner," you said heading to the door and opened it. Yoongi was behind you, only dressed in his boxers and undershirt.
On the other side of the door stood Namjoon and the five other men that had been at dinner on Friday evening. They all were drained of any color in shock at the state of Yoongi's undress and your messy hair and hickies on your neck.
"Fuck, I forgot the negotiation conference was today."
The End
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bitter-sweet-coffee · 3 years ago
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Sonic Twitter Takeover fic prompt? Well, here you go:
Their breath was fogging up the glass. The wind which expelled from their lungs could not pierce that invisible barrier, so it clouded instead. How do pilots steer through clouds? Did it hurt when they flew through them?
Cotton candy is sticky, and it smells like blood.
"I don't think this is going to work Maria, we never heard back from them," the hedgehog mumbled, fidgeting with the girl's robin-coloured sleeve that hung from her stiff arm. Despite his concern, Shadow couldn't suppress the glimmer in his eye as he watched his sister tidy up the control panel that she had been toying with.
Maria simply laughed and shook her head, and faded gold strands of hair unwound from her scalp. The cleaning staff was always puzzled that the creature didn't shed, but the human girl manifested tumbleweeds that plagued the barren ARK like it was the wild west.
"They communicate with the planet all the time Shadow, it's definitely possible! I just had to rig this so it could transmit anywhere, and our shuttle is arriving tonight so we'll know for sure if it worked," she explained, before elaborating in words that her alien companion couldn't follow.
Instead of asking questions, he simply nodded as his mind wandered elsewhere. He would go on to regret this in about 50 years though, when his memories of her become sparse.
Maria continued to cover up their tracks, stifling a laugh at the visibly inattentive Shadow. She would never tease him for his lapses in focus, aware of how overworked the poor hedgehog was. "Let him rest," she had insisted with the project coordinators and grandfather but they seemed unconcerned.
"It's the Ultimate Lifeform, if it needs rest then the specimen can always withdraw and accept its termination," someone had told her. The cuts on her palm had yet to heal from the wrath of her jagged fingernails, and the insides of her cheeks were raw as always.
They'd leave, they just had to be patient.
Before Shadow could open his mouth to change the topic to something more comprehensible, an alarm began blaring from the intercom, startling the hedgehog into his sister's side. He was never a fan of loud noises, but Maria's hands were already over his ears— they were used to this series of events.
Just another few days weeks months never before they could get the hell away from this.
Maria was about to shut the panel off and deal with the intercom, but a rhythmic beeping was being transmitted that required her attention, head snapping back down to the source.
Unable to write things since her hands were preoccupied with muffling the shuttle alarm, the girl began tapping on Shadow's forehead, which made the hedgehog wrinkle his nose and squirm.
"Focus on this instead, I need you to double check with me, okay?" Maria whispered calmly, pulling Shadow a little closer to her side.
He did as she instructed and let the morse code beeping merge with her fingertips, the sound of the alarm fading away. When the transmission ended, the alarm truly was gone.
"No fucking way... it worked!!!" Maria cheered, scooping Shadow up and swinging him around, gripping him tight so he didn't get flung across the room like last time.
The hedgehog yelped from the sudden movement but it eventually devolved into giggling, his fists ramming into her back as he shook with laughter.
Shadow eventually regulated his amusement and pulled back to look at the girl, expression faltering when he saw the strain in her smile, eyes glazed. He quickly let go and landed on his feet, steadying Maria as best he could.
"You're not supposed to move that much Mar," he reminded, but she was a Robotnik after all— the stubbornness was genetic.
Maria shrugged and began stumbling out to the hallway, headed for the first floor; "Do you want your pizza or not? C'mon, I want to try cheese and the best way to have it is when it's still stringy!" she cheered, doing her best to mask the whistling from her lungs with her heavy footsteps.
When the hedgehog didn't budge, she looked back with a smug grin, "I know you're curious what crust tastes like, you're not subtle... I see you looking up toasters in the catalogue. If you want the crunch, then follow me, okay?"
Rolling his eyes and growling in defeat, Shadow followed the girl as best he could, their bare feet slapping the ground hard enough to warrant echoes.
Arriving at the main deck, the two snuck their way onto the shuttle that just arrived, taking note of the uncanny box that was haphazardly thrown on top of the better preserved food shipments.
The ARK had its own garden, so produce was never difficult to obtain. Meat seldom lasted and dairy was uncommon, so what was sent up would be primarily starches and other low-moisture foods for budget reasons.
Pepperoni pizza however, was not a dry, meatless, dairy free starch. However, this didn't stop the pair from contacting GUN before the food shuttle left to demand a pizza.
Shadow still worries about the poor intern that was spammed with morse code transmissions until they did what was instructed by the mad scientist and her loyal henchhog. They probably got fired, but that means they got away from GUN, so he considers it an improvement.
Maria snatched the box and grabbed Shadow's hand, ducking behind the pallet of saltine crackers; "Can you chaos control us back to my room?" she whispered, as the unloading team approached their hiding spot.
"I um, well I'm still not good at taking other people, are you sure it's safe?" the hedgehog asked warily, pulling away to adjust his inhibitors.
The girl shrugged, grabbing Shadow's hands back with her free one, "Let's go."
He nodded firmly, and with a quiet chaos control, they were safely pulled away from the crime scene and back in Maria's room, flopping directly onto her bed.
Shadow beamed at his success, but his sister was too busy melting into her comforter with glee, sighing.
She wasn't usually allowed in her room since it wasn't sterile enough according to her doctor. While usually kept immaculately, the duo would leave behind a never-ending generator of crumbs on that bed.
Shadow thinks they're still there today, but he won't go check. He hasn't been back in that room since.
After stuffing themselves with the foreign food, the siblings learned an important lesson on introducing new ingredients into their diet, and how having multiple things you're not supposed to eat at all or in large quantities... has unsatisfactory results.
"Do you think we shouldn't have done this?" Maria groaned, sprawled out and hanging halfway off her bed. Shadow was face first on the floor below her, and merely offered a pathetic thumbs up.
The girl giggled weakly, swallowing the fear that this would cause internal bleeding, and worried that if she cracked for just a second, the fun would be over and she'd be put in isolation again.
Fortunately, this wouldn't be the case, though she'd still bleed a week later as bullets were fired into her back.
"I'm sorry I asked for this, now we feel like shit," Shadow groaned, using his limited strength to roll over and stare up at Maria, a pained expression on his face.
The girl shook her head; "We've been so patient this whole time, what's the harm in waiting a little less for something?" She shifted back towards the wall and patted the open space on her bed, prompting Shadow to join her.
Smiling, the hedgehog crawled up and wiggled under the weighted blanket, sighing into Maria's lavender-scented pillow as she placed a hand in his quills, scratching gently behind his ears.
"Even if we feel gross now, we still had fun, and the pizza tasted good! Even if we're a bit sick now, it proves that sometimes waiting pays off," Maria assured, looking down at her hedgehog as he began to drift off.
The Ultimate Lifeform may have been too tired to say anything back, but both of them knew he agreed— they were used to waiting for freedom anyways.
"So... was it worth it?" Sonic asked, holding his slice of pizza between his fingers like a cigarette.
Shadow eyed his untouched plate, almost tempted by the still stringy mozzarella that he remembered throwing at Maria before remembering that it looked like her entrails.
"Should we keep ordering illegal foods until we can go down there for real?" he asked.
Maria laughed but shook her head, "No, I think we're done for now! We'll be experiencing the planet together soon anyways, I don't want to ruin the surprise. Plus, you never know if this stuff tastes better there, so I don't want to ruin everything with a space bias! We'll just have to wait a little longer, it'll be something to look forward to."
"No," Shadow admitted, "it wasn't worth it."
What he failed to communicate was that it wasn't the fact they did it, but the fact they never did it again.
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ynscrazylife · 4 years ago
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Hi! I heard you were in need of requests, so I would like to propose the idea of Rebekah Mikaelson distracting a workaholic witch reader. (who isn't giving her a lot of attention since the reader is always stuck in her library.) I think that'd be cute 💚 If you ever fulfill this- Thank you 💚
Yes!! I hope you like it!
Working Too Much
Summary: Y/N, being a teacher at the Salvatore School, sticks herself in her and Rebekah’s library, grading papers, answering emails, and trying to pick up the school while Caroline is away and Alaric is off monster-hunting. Rebekah swoops in as her savior from herself.
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When Rebekah Mikaelson entered her and her girlfriend Y/N’s living room, her heart sunk when she saw it was empty. It was 8:00 on a weekend morning and Y/N was already in their library, doing work. Come to think of it . . . Rebekah wasn’t even sure if Y/N had come to bed last night. Rebekah had gone to sleep as Y/N was assuring her she’d be going to bed soon, she just had one last email to read.
The thought of Y/N sitting, cramped up in that library tiredly and non-stop answering emails and questions, sent Rebekah to go check on her.
Deciding to be polite, she knocked onto the closed door, but couldn’t help but listen into the room. All she heard was steady breathing and the sound of the laptop running.
No sign that Y/N had heard her.
Getting impatient, Rebekah just opened the door. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern when she saw her lovely girlfriend asleep, her face on the keyboard and pages and pages all over. She also noted that Y/N was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
That was it, Rebekah decided. Y/N hadn’t gone to bed and she wasn’t going to do work for the rest of the day. The students could wait.
With her vampire speed, Rebekah cleaned up all of Y/N’s papers, stacking them nearly for her. She then carefully pushed Y/N into a sitting position, against the back of the chair, and moved her hair out of her face. Rebekah frowned when she saw a red mark on Y/N’s face foreheard where it rubbed up against the keyboard.
After closing Y/N’s computer, Rebekah carefully shook Y/N’s shoulders. Usually that woke her up, but it seemed that Y/N needed her sleep. “Y/N,” Rebekah whispered, and a little more shaking josstled the woman awake.
“Bekah?” Y/N asked sleepily as she pried her eyes open, feeling instantly exausted and uncomfortable from the position she had been sleeping in.
“Hey, babe,” Rebekah said with a small smile, watching her girlfriend blink her eyes open.
“Oh, god,” Y/N said. “I can’t believe I fell asleep! I probably have so many more emails to answer.” She began to reach for her laptop until Rebekah slid it further away.
“How about you go rest, darling?” Rebekah suggested.
Y/N pouted, and Rebekah bit back a chuckle. Her girlfriend was so cute.
“Look at me,” Rebekah said, cupping Y/N’s chin. “For the past couple of days I’ve watched you work so much. I know you want to help Alaric and Caroline, but it’s on them. You’ve done a lot for them and if they don’t appreciate that, screw them. You deserve rest. You need rest. You can’t continue to help the school and your students if you’re not well, right?”
Y/N smiled and then sat back in her thoughts. Damn. Rebekah had a good point. “I haven’t been giving you any attention,” Y/N pointed out, frowning.
“It’s fine. I just want you to be okay,” Rebekah reassured her.
Y/N shook her head. “If you’re gonna make me stop work-” she paused so they could share a chuckle. “-then I want to choose what I do. And I want to spend time with my amazing and selfless girlfriend.”
“How will you go on with so little sleep?” Rebekah asked.
Y/N smiled and then began to say a spell. “Done!” Y/N said. “I’ve put a spell on myself so my tiredness is gone - temporarily.”
Rebekah just shook her head in amusement until she spotted something and gasped. “Y/N! Your nose!”
Y/N’s hand flew to her nose and felt a little blood start to drip. “Oops?” She said, looking up at her disappointed girlfriend. “I may have done the same spell a couple times over the night. And some more spells to help me with grading.”
Rebekah sighed. “Go to the couch and pick out a movie,” she said softly.
Y/N nodded and immediately hopped up, but sent Rebekah an apologetic look when a wave of dizziness came over herself.
Rebekah watched as Y/N left, a bit concerned, before going to the bathroom. She got a cloth, wet it, and came to the living room, instructing Y/N to put it near her nose. Rebekah then left to grab pillows, blankets, and snacks.
“What movie did you choose?” Rebekah asked as she returned.
“[Your favorite movie],” Y/N said as she giggled, seeing Rebekah carrying so much.
“You love that one,” Rebekah noted before putting a bowl of popcorn and some candy on the coffee table.
Y/N situated the pillows around the couch and the blankets while Rebekah put the DVD in the DVD player. The blonde then sat next to Y/N and draped the blankets over herself, before grabbing the T.V remote and starting the movie.
For 30 minutes the couple laughed and enjoyed themselves, nibbling on snacks and snuggling with the blankets. The rain outside only made it even more cozier inside.
However, when Rebekah made a comment about the movie and looked over at Y/N, she saw her girlfriend fast asleep. Y/N was curled in on herself against the pillow, her hair falling in her face, hand gripping Rebekah’s.
Rebekah thought she looked adorable.
After snapping a picture of her cute Sleeping Beauty, Rebekah’s phone stared to ring. She carefully removed herself from the couch (although it took a bit to get Y/N’s hand out of hers) and walked into her room, anxious that the ringing would wake Y/N.
Rebekah looked down at the Caller ID and sighed when she saw Alaric’s name. The Original Vampire reluctantly answered the call and put her phone to her ear.
“Hello, Alaric.”
“Rebekah! I’ve been trying Y/N’s cell as I’ve noticed she isn’t responding to my emails nor student’s. Can I speak to her?”
“No, Alaric, you can’t. Y/N is resting.”
“Resting? She should be doing work!l
“She has had to pick up practically the entire school while Caroline is away and you left, off recklessly monster hunting! Y/N didn’t have to but she did because she knows you have a lot on her plate. However it’s not fair to call me, demanding where Y/N is, as if she’s not doing enough whilst overworking herself! You should be grateful that she’s doing all this for you because she doesn’t have to. Do your own job.”
Alaric stayed silent for a moment. Dealing with an angry Original Vampire was never fun. “That’s what Caroline told me,” he admitted.
“Then listen to her and give Y/N the break she has earned. In fact, you should give her a raise! And a paid vacation off! For all you’re putting on her and demanding that she do more,” Rebekah said bitterly.
“I’ll talk to Caroline,” Alaric said.
Rebekah hung up the phone and returned to the living room.
She saw Y/N start to wake up, although she was obviously half-asleep. Rebekah smiled and sat down as Y/N said something incohortent, and cuddled with her girlfriend, resuming the movie.
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libradusk · 4 years ago
Text
5 For Fives | (1)
Chapter Title: The Weight of Duty
Word Count: 3,944
Pairing: ARC Trooper Fives x Reader
Summary: Even though he shared the same face with over a thousand brothers, you always thought that his smile shone the brightest across the galaxy.
warnings: chapter has mentions of injury but nothing super heavy, yet.
a/n: First meetings aren’t always glamorous, also sir is used as a gender neutral term. 
Chapter 2
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It should have been no more than another routine inspection - another tour around one of the Republic’s numerous military bases, carried out with bordering identical technique and protocol to the countless others you had been allocated to shadow previously. Simple, painless, easy - especially considering you had been working alongside Captain Rex and Commander Cody for quite some time now and were no stranger to the tight ship they ran between them.
Initially you had considered the Rishi Moon inspection no differently to how you had its predecessors. It had been difficult to view it as more than just another extension of your duties to the Republic war effort. This form of assignment had long since devolved into an almost mundane routine, shoehorned between battles and skirmishes that required the more physical side of your prowess. You couldn’t deny that the visits were far from an unwelcome task, in an odd way they added a sense of rare sereneness to your list of duties as the war raged on. The men you encountered were always in good spirits after receiving praise for their contributions towards keeping the war effort running smoothly. This was especially true for the newer additions to each post, who practically glowed when Cody so much as looked in their direction - and struggled not to pout like scolded younglings whenever Rex pointed out the sloppiness of their barracks. More than anything though, seeing the men at each destination settled into their own close-knit brotherhoods formed a warm contrast to the overly sterilised and bordering artificial atmosphere you had come to witness on Kamino whenever your presence was required by Master Shaak Ti.
You had suspected that your attendance had never been truly needed from the start, so to say. The combined experience and respect both Rex and Cody possessed was ample - they certainly had no real need for a Jedi to oversee them evaluate the competence of their own men. Yet they never showed any sign of protest - and neither did you, outwardly at least. The two soldiers were pleasant enough company, as were the numerous waves of their brothers-in-arms that you had encountered at each stop the starship deposited you at. It had reached the point that the more months that passed by with the war, the more familiar faces you came to recognise the sight, and the absence of during your rarer return visits.
The latter of which was quickly becoming an all too common occurrence as the Separatists continued to grow stronger still and the numbers of casualties rose accordingly.
It was a fact that did little to ease the gnawing sense of guilt that had been bubbling towards the forefront of your mind with a vengeance as of late. Though you understood the importance that the inspections held, the thought that your own attributes as a Jedi would be better served fighting alongside these men - as you had many times before, had begun to rear its head with vicious frequency. As the cycles ticked by your mind had become almost overwhelmed with the sheer number of casualties and missing men you had to report back to Shaak Ti on Kamino each time. You had known how overworked your Jedi senior had become as of late, her involvement with the Kaminoans forcibly entwining closer each cycle - regardless of the outcome of each battle the Republic were faced with. Your kinship with the Togruta, as well as your longstanding dedication to the order and cause had always ensured your cooperation with whatever task you were designated. It was important to you to attempt to ease the workload of your closest peer in whatever way you could. Yet despite this, the longer you had spent within the frontlines of the army, the more you had learnt the multitude of ways that distinguished each clone from every one of his brothers - it had all affected you so deeply that it had become difficult for you to set eyes on an optimistic young rookie and to not automatically think of how the Kaminoans, and the majority of the Republic, saw them more as munitions than living men.
The thought of how the production of the army had swollen to accommodate the demands of the war now turned your stomach and the knowledge that you were due to return to Kamino in the coming few months only aided in forcing the bile further up your throat.
Cody appeared to have picked up on the spike in your uneasiness as you had boarded the Obex that afternoon. He had offered you a tight smile and the reassurance that your visit to Rishi Station would be both short and painless given the size of the base and the tranquility of its barren landscape. Rex had even chimed in to joke that the most action any of the troops ever encountered on Rishi was if one of its native fauna, the giant Rishi Eel, somehow found its way past the blast doors.
How wrong they had both turned out to be.
The atmosphere on the station when you finally disembarked on the moon’s surface had felt unbalanced, insidious even. You had held firm suspicion that there was more at play than simply the assigned troopers being “sloppy,” as Rex had so eloquently put it. The bizarre holocomm interaction a very apprehensive trooper had established while the three of you were in orbit had already made you uneasy. Even when your feet touched the ground of the Republic property you couldn’t shake the warning surge of adrenaline that had you reaching for your saber as you fell into line behind the two troopers.
Your suspicions were all but confirmed the moment the “deck officer” had stumbled disjointedly towards your group, with a pattern of speech that matched the jagged movements of his limbs. As soon as that red flare had cut its way through the navy curtain of sky above you the eerie atmosphere appeared to ignite alongside it. No sooner had Rex shot down the droid that was masquerading as one of your own did the three of you find yourself surrounded on all sides by Separatist commando droids.
You initially managed to hold your own on the small landing platform - noting between deflecting shots that their blaster comprehension and protective armour easily trumped that of an average battle droid. Despite your perceived competence however, you failed to heed Cody’s cry for you to take cover as you lifted a hand to force push an advancing flock of drones over the edge of the platform. This slip up earned you a vibrosword cleaved through the shoulder of your dominant arm, courtesy of a particularly unrelenting commando who had already withstood several shots of the commander’s blaster to ambush you from behind. The resulting blow from its blade was mercifully weakened enough to not sever the joint too deeply, but it ended up being enough to force you to drop your stance and almost your lightsaber in response. You shudder to think what may have become of you had Rex not made the tactical decision to grab your withering form and hurtle you both off the edge of the platform. You can recall the heat of an explosion rippling through the air as Rex had lowered you both to the ground with the aid of his ascension cable, the wreckage of the Obex scattering like meteorites around you as he did so - glittering in the starlight alongside the droplets of blood that trickled from your shoulder.
It was as you had watched them break from your flesh and fall that your thoughts had twisted in dark amusement despite the searing pain stippling across your upper body. Your unspoken wish to provide more hands-on support to the troopers had finally been granted once more - just not in the way you had expected.
And then you had met them. Or rather you had stood back and weakly protested as your comrade had pointed his blaster at the three bewildered men that had stumbled into the canyon space before you. One by one they had scrambled to remove their helmets at Rex’s command, revealing three almost identical faces. Cody’s body had obstructed most of your view as he attended to your injury, but even with the threat that the blood loss posed to your focus, you had easily deduced that these men were not primed for the type of combat you yourselves had barely just escaped. Rex seemed to have echoed your sentiment, as you had practically felt him smirk through the visor of his helmet at the way the rookies visibly flinched once the maws of a Rishi eel broke through the tension of the scene seconds later. The captain had made quick work of the beast, shooting it dead with flawless accuracy - face never wandering from the group of clones that stood before him. You had felt Cody’s body vibrate with a ghost of a chuckle at the way the men all but fawned over Rex’s prowess with a blaster.
Whatever serenity that had established itself was quickly shattered not long after both your groups had introduced themselves. You discovered that this “batch of shinies” was in fact the only surviving remnants of Rishi’s defence: leaving you all hopelessly outnumbered with no transport, limited weapons and medical supplies as well as a shoulder so badly injured that you were barely able to scale back up the cliffside without threatening to tear it open further - nevermind wield a saber optimally.
Eventually the six of you managed to make it back to the main control room through a tumultuous mixture of force and trickery that would have put a Jedi mind trick to shame - it had become apparent to both you and Cody then, that Anakin’s unconventional style of doing things had rubbed off on Rex more than the captain would ever admit aloud.
What small victory you had acquired however was soon dashed as you were called towards the control room’s viewing port. Staring back at you then through the murkiness of space had been an entire Separatist fleet, armed to the teeth and advancing on your location - no doubt in search of the missing signal from the battle droids you had slain prior.
A seed of doubt had planted itself within the depths of your brain at that moment, cultured with the knowledge that even an experienced Jedi knight stood little chance outnumbered by an entire fleet of commando droids likely spearheaded by Grievous himself.
And yet somehow your unlikely group had persevered.
Despite the odds being so heavily skewed against you, the resulting conclusion to the Battle of the Rishi Moon had trumped over whatever chaos the six of you had experienced at its beginning. Though you had ultimately ensured victory for the Republic by denying the Separatist invasion, your victory had nonetheless branded itself a costly one.
Fresh, hot guilt seared through you from the moment you were hauled aboard the Resolute by General Skywalker. It had been a narrow escape for you in particular, having previously resigned yourself to expending what little strength you had left on reinforcing the blast doors shut with the force while the boys attempted to set up an explosion to extinguish the threat of the droid fleet. It had been thanks to the bravery of one clone in particular - Hevy - the most rambunctious of the rookie trio, who had insisted for you all to abandon your post while he bought you the time you needed to escape.
His sacrifice had been the only thing that had ensured the rest of you had time to navigate through the station’s vent system to where your rescue had finally emerged to liberate you from the doomed outpost.
It was the type of guilt you knew would remain branded on your conscience long after the scorch marks had healed over your flesh.
------
Your skin itched as you marched through the corridors of the Resolute, thoughts buzzing so loudly in your mind you were certain you could feel them echo within your bones. You had seen men die in battle countless times before today, yet there was something particularly bitter about this incident that struck you deeper with each step you made towards the medical wing. Five rookie troopers and their sergeant had died attempting to warn you and defend a base that had been left to burn alongside their bodies. Five inexperienced soldiers whose remains were left to char and mangle alongside those of the same droids who had murdered them.
Five men whose lives had been snuffed out of existence just as they were so close to being reunited with their brothers on the frontlines - who were so close to tasting what little opportunity they would have to breathe air that wasn’t as cold and sterile as that on Kamino and Rishi.
But through it all, the thought that cut the deepest was that you knew the lives and sacrifice of these men were no more than an afterthought to the Republic and their kaminoan creators. You had simmered with that knowledge aboard the Resolute climbed upwards and away from Rishi Station, watching with a heavy heart as the outpost shrunk to a burning flicker along with the bodies of its protectors.
Your blood threatened to boil over as you had all but spat your report to Obi Wan and Anakin before the generals had kindly dismissed you to go and treat your wounds. You knew that they felt it too, perhaps for them it was hidden beneath the layers of unfaltering loyalty they held towards the Republic, but it was a bitterness that lived in both of them as well. Their faces spoke where their words did not reach you.
“These men were brave - they were born to be. Their deaths will never be in vain while the Republic still stands. They have done their greatest duty.”
These same words, uttered countless times by more figureheads than you cared to remember, were beginning to ring hollow to you now - more so than ever before. They all but slipped from you in searing strips across your flesh, pulsing in time with the blood that dribbled down your shoulder.
“You should really slap a bacta-patch on that wound, General.”
A familiarly accented voice pulled you from your thoughts. It was as though its owner had obstructed the trajectory of your march with his entire body, forcing your pace to slow as you approached the only other person in the narrow walkway. Your eyes climbed to reach his own from the floor-bound position you hadn’t even realised they had fallen to.
A clone stood to attention before you with a tight-lipped smile, his gaze flinching from your shoulder to your face in time with your movements. It took a moment for you to fight through a sudden wave of lightheadedness that protested across your vision at the abrupt movement, but you soon came to recognise him as one of the surviving rookie soldiers that had escaped alongside you.
His tone was distinctly shaken, but undeniably charismatic - almost oddly casual by clone standards.He spoke to you like you were an old friend, not a Jedi knight that he’d met and battled beside for the first and almost last time in his military career. It struck you as bizarre considering the horrors he had just experienced not even a full day beforehand.
You zoned out as the memories resurfaced. It granted him enough time to lean forward and offer you a friendly pat on your good shoulder. His breathy chuckle whipped through your ears as the contact twisted your body to a sharp halt, the nerves still buzzing even after he retracted the offending hand away with a start.
“I am not your General.”
You winced as at the sharpness of your tone, the words oozing with a venom that seemed alien to you. The shock quickly made way for another flood of shame as you watched him visibly flinch with surprise at your outburst. You knew you had no right to speak so cruelly to a fellow soldier, especially one that had just risked his own life to ensure you kept your own.
The feeling only swelled more in the silence that forced its way between your bodies as he composed himself and stood back to the attention of your tired gaze. A drawn out sigh of frustration left your lips as you mumbled an apology. Your good arm raised slowly to press its shaky digits against your temple in a futile attempt to quell the stress migraine that was knotting itself there. Since when had the ship’s lights seemed so bright that they burned you? The ache behind your eyes almost rivalled the throb of your shoulder at this point.
You squinted through the pain in an attempt to regard the trooper properly. His armour shone a sharp white as he fidgeted under the corridor’s lighting. The plastoid surface was devoid of any severe marring or decoration that you had seen numerous times on his brothers’ uniform. What grime and blaster residue did litter its surface appeared fresh and smeared, as if he had attempted to haphazardly wipe it away with the palms of his gloves in a hurry. The red ribbon of the medal signifying his recent admittance to the 501st battalion served as the only smattering of colour across the entire ensemble. Its medallion hung heavy on his chest piece, the metallic surface reflecting almost painfully in the artificial light. You were grateful to tear your eyes away from it. Instead you pulled your gaze upwards across the plains of his face, stopping once you connected with an all too familiar pair of brown eyes once more. He blinked back owlishly at you, head tilting involuntarily under your scrutiny.
Underneath the dark hairline of his crew cut sat a freshly inked tattoo of the number five, the skin around it still reddened and peeling in places. Everything about him seemed younger than the majority of the other clones you had encountered before, and it all served to twist the blade of guilt further into your stomach. CT-5555, Fives, your assumption had been correct - he was indeed one of the “shinies” that had assisted you, Rex and Cody against the Separatists targeting the Rishi Moon. The same rookie who’s first taste of real battle had resulted in the deaths of all but one of his squadmates.
The guilt twisted deeper still - now it was your turn to flinch like a wounded animal as you curled into yourself inwardly.
“Fives, I’m sorry. I had no right to speak to you like that,” you punctuated your sentence with a sigh, head bowing in apology to the wide-eyed soldier. He deserved more from you than a half-mumbled apology, “No doubt you have even more on your mind than I do after all this.”
To your surprise, the corner of his lips flickered with a playful smirk for just a moment before it pulled back once more into the composed expression befitting of a soldier. He practically buzzed with unspoken energy and you could feel the mirth blossom in his gaze as his eyes flickered between your own, posture visibly relaxing as he did.
“No hard feelings, uh, sir.”
There's still a sense of uncertainty as he addresses you, but the surprising enthusiasm with which he salutes you is somehow able to coax the wisp of a smile from you too. It's almost endearing really and you aren't completely sure how to feel about it.
“At ease, Fives. You’ve more than earned it after today.”
He grins openly then and your eyes draw to the shadow of stubble that peppers his jaw, signifying the beginnings of a beard. A reminder of his individuality, you think. Distracted, you absent-mindedly move to cross your arms until a sharp flash of pain from your shoulder reminds you that there is more to your injury than just a dull ache.
Fives’ grin falls as you cringe, hand quickly extending to brush against your forearm for a moment in concern. The warmth of his gloved fingers barely skims against you before his military protocol seems to beat him back into place this time. Fives bites back a curse as ungraciously stumbles over his own feet with the effort. His failed attempt to save his graces is so comical that you can’t help but chuckle over the sight of him. You’re not entirely sure if the blood loss has caught back up with you, or if it's just because of how animated he is - but somehow he had effortlessly become the only thing to pull a laugh from you in weeks.
The expression he shoots you when you stand back to full height is nothing less than perplexed. You can’t blame him for his bewilderment - after all you were supposed to be a Jedi Knight, a high-ranking member of the military and representative of an ancient order renowned for their serene temperament. Yet here you stood, having snapped between scolding him to laughing at him in mere minutes as you bled out onto the metal floor at your feet.
“Um, should I accompany you to the medbay, sir?” he cocks an eyebrow at you as he speaks, and you’re sure you catch the way his lips fight against the curve of a smirk once more.
A nervous habit? Or did he simply peg you as an amusing fool with overly turbulent emotions? The shake of your head answers his question, yet the smile refuses to slip from your face.
“I’m sure I’ll survive on my own. I’m positive it's nothing so serious that slapping a bacta-patch on won't fix it.”
He tilts his head with a smile as you echo his earlier sentiment, exhaling from his nose and allowing his posture to ease just slightly. It is at that moment you know everything is right between you once more. Content, you offer him a short bow of your head before turning to resume your march towards the medical bay. You continue to feel his gaze on you even as your back is turned, and you tilt slightly to catch his eye again, taking care to support your injured shoulder with your spare hand now.
“...Fives?” your tone is a tad more playful than you intend as your words are thrown across the corridor - you mentally blame his aura as being far too infectious to your weakened state,
“I hope our paths cross again now that you’ve been made part of the 501st. I’ll be watching out for you, you’re interesting.”
The last part slips out before you can halt it, but the way his smile flashes so dazzlingly under those horrible bright lights reassures you that your comment was most definitely well received.
He shoots you another eager salute and his medal clatters noisily to the ground as his arm catches it with the motion. This time the laughter that leaves you is so heavy that you’re positive it can be heard from the other side of the ship. Your bad shoulder protests with the force of it, but it just feels so good to laugh again after so many miserable months of war that you can’t bring yourself to care.
You steal another glance backwards before rounding the corner, catching his eyes one last time despite the distance. He throws you another cheeky smirk, teeth still peeking out from behind his lips as he bends to retrieve the offending medal - and as he raises a hand in a lazy wave you’re sure he flashes you a wink.
“I’ll hold you to that, sir.”
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96harmony96 · 4 years ago
Text
Chapter 2
Her tie was silver and her shirt brilliantly white, the stark absence of color emphasizing those amazing green irises. Standing there with her jacket open and her hands shoved casually into her pants’ pockets, the sight of her was like running smack into a wall I hadn’t known was there.
I jerked to a halt, my gaze riveted to the woman who was even more striking than I’d remembered. I had never seen hair that purely black. It was glossy and slightly long, the ends drifting over her shoulder. That sexy length was the crowning touch of bad boy hotness over the successful businessman, like whipped cream topping on a hot fudge brownie sundae. As my mother would say, only rogues and raiders had hair like that.
My hands clenched against the urge to touch it, to see if it felt like the rich silk it resembled.
The doors began to close. She took an easy step forward and pressed a button on the panel to hold them open. “There’s plenty of room for both of us, Camila.”
The sound of that smoky, implacable voice broke me out of my momentary daze. How did she know my name?
Then I remembered that she’d picked up my ID card when I’d dropped it in the lobby. For a second, I debated telling her I was waiting for someone so I could take another car down, but my brain lurched back into action.
What the hell was wrong with me? Clearly she worked in the Crossfire. I couldn’t avoid her every time I saw her and why should I? If I wanted to get to the point where I could look at her and take her hotness for granted, I needed to see her often enough that she became like furniture.
Ha! If only.
I stepped into the car. “Thank you.”
She released the button and stepped back again. The doors closed and the elevator began its descent.
I immediately regretted my decision to share the car with her.
Awareness of her prickled across my skin. She was a potent force in such a small enclosure, radiating a palpable energy and sexual magnetism that had me shifting restlessly on my feet. My breathing became as ragged as my heartbeat. I felt that inexplicable pull to her again, as if he exuded a silent demand that I was instinctively attuned to answering.
“Enjoy your first day?” she asked, startling me.
Her voice resonated, flowing over me in a seductive rhythm. How the hell did she know it was my first day?
“Yes, actually,” I answered evenly. “How was yours?”
I felt her gaze slide over my profile, but I kept my attention trained on the brushed aluminum elevator doors. My heart was racing in my chest, my stomach quivering madly. I felt jumbled and off my game.
“Well, it wasn’t my first,” she replied with a hint of amusement. “But it was successful. And getting better as it progresses.”
I nodded and managed a smile, having no idea what that was supposed to mean. The car slowed on the twelfth floor and a friendly group of three got on, talking excitedly among themselves. I stepped back to make room for them, retreating into the opposite corner of the elevator from Dark and Dangerous. Except she sidestepped along with me. We were suddenly closer than we’d been before.
she adjusted her perfectly knotted tie, her arm brushing against mine as she did so. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to ignore my acute awareness of her by concentrating on the conversation taking place in front of us. It was impossible. She was just so there. Right there. All perfect and gorgeous and smelling divine. My thoughts ran away from me, fantasizing about how hard her body might be beneath the suit, how it might feel against me, how well-endowed—or not—she might be…
When the car reached the lobby, I almost moaned in relief. I waited impatiently as the elevator emptied and the first chance I got, I took a step forward. Her hand settled firmly at the small of my back and she walked out beside me, steering me. The sensation of her touch on such a vulnerable place rippled through me.
We reached the turnstiles and her hand fell away, leaving me feeling oddly bereft. I glanced at her, trying to read her, but although she was looking at me, her face gave nothing away.
“Camila!”
The sight of Cary lounging casually against a marble column in the lobby shifted everything. He was wearing jeans that showcased his mile-long legs and an oversized sweater in soft green that emphasized his eyes. He easily drew the attention of everyone in the lobby. I slowed as I approached him and the sex god passed us, moving through the revolving door and sliding fluidly into the back of the chauffeured black Bentley SUV I’d seen at the curb the evening before.
Cary whistled as the car pulled away. “Well, well. From the way you were looking at her, that was the girl you told me about, right?”
“Oh, yeah. That was definitely her.”
“You work together?” Linking arms with me, Cary tugged me out to the street through the stationary door.
“No.” I stopped on the sidewalk to change into my walking flats, leaning into him as pedestrians flowed around us. “I don’t know who she is, but she asked me if I’d had a good first day, so I better figure it out.”
“Well…” He grinned and supported my elbow as I hopped awkwardly from one foot to the other. “No idea how anyone could get any work done around her. My brain sort of fried for a minute.”
“I’m sure that’s a universal effect.” I straightened. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”
The next morning arrived with a slight throbbing at the back of my skull that mocked me for having one too many glasses of wine. Still, as I rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor, I didn’t regret the hangover as much as I should have. My choices were either too much alcohol or a whirl with my vibrator, and I was damned if I’d have a battery-provided orgasm starring Dark and Dangerous. Not that she’d know or even care that she made me so horny I couldn’t see straight, but I’d know and I didn’t want to give the fantasy of her the satisfaction.
I dropped my stuff in the bottom drawer of my desk and when I saw that Mark wasn’t in yet, I grabbed a cup of coffee and returned to my cubicle to catch up on my new favorite ad-biz blogs.
“Camila!”
I jumped when he appeared beside me, his grin a flash of white against his smooth dark skin. “Good morning, Mark.”
“Is it ever. You’re my lucky charm, I think. Come into my office. Bring your tablet. Can you work late tonight?”
I followed him over, catching on to his excitement. “Sure.”
“I’d hoped you’d say that.” He sank into his chair.
I took the one I’d sat in the day before and quickly opened a notepad program.
“So,” he began, “we’ve received an RFP for Kingsman Vodka and they mentioned me by name. First time that’s ever happened.”
“Congratulations!”
“I appreciate that, but let’s save them for when we’ve actually landed the account. We’ll still have to bid, if we get past the request for proposal stage, and they want to meet with me tomorrow evening.”
“Wow. Is that timeline usual?”
“No. Usually they’d wait until we had the RFP finished before meeting with us, but Cross Industries recently acquired Kingsman and C.I. has dozens of subsidiaries. That’s good business if we can get it. They know it and they’re making us jump through hoops, the first of which is meeting with me.”
“Usually there would be a team, right?”
“Yes, we’d present as a group. But they’re familiar with the drill—they know they’ll get the pitch from a senior executive, then end up working with a junior like me—so they picked me out and now they want to vet me. But to be fair, the RFP provides a lot more information than it asks for in return. It’s as good as a brief, so I really can’t accuse them of being unreasonably demanding, just meticulous. Par for the course when dealing with Cross Industries.”
He ran a hand over his tight curls, betraying the pressure he felt. “What do you think of Kingsman vodka?”
“Uh…well…Honestly, I’ve never heard of it.”
Mark fell back in his chair and laughed. “Thank God. I thought I was the only one. Well, the plus side is there’s no bad press to get over. No news can be good news.”
“What can I do to help? Besides research vodka and stay late?”
His lips pursed a moment as he thought about it. “Jot this down…”
We worked straight through lunch and long after the office had emptied, going over some initial data from the strategists. It was a little after seven when Mark’s smartphone rang, startling me with its abrupt intrusion into the quiet.
Mark activated the speaker and kept working. “Hey, baby.”
“Have you fed that poor girl yet?” demanded a warm masculine voice over the line.
Glancing at me through his glass office wall, Mark said, “Ah…I forgot.”
I looked away quickly, biting my lower lip to hide my smile.
I looked away quickly, biting my lower lip to hide my smile.
A snort came clearly across the line. “Only two days on the job, and you’re already overworking her and starving her to death. She’s going to quit.”
“Shit. You’re right. Steve, honey—”
“Don’t ‘Steve honey’ me. Does she like Chinese?”
I gave Mark the thumbs-up.
He grinned. “Yes, she does.”
“All right. I’ll be there in twenty. Let security know I’m coming.”
Almost exactly twenty minutes later, I buzzed Steven Ellison through the waiting area doors. He was a juggernaut of a fellow, dressed in dark jeans, scuffed work boots, and a neatly pressed button-down shirt. Red-haired with laughing blue eyes, he was as good-looking as his partner was, just in a very different way. The three of us sat around Mark’s desk and dumped kung pao chicken and broccoli beef onto paper plates, added helpings of sticky white rice, and then dug in with chopsticks.
I discovered that Steven was a contractor, and that he and Mark had been a couple since college. I watched them interact and felt awe and a dash of envy. Their relationship was so beautifully functional that it was a joy to spend time with them.
“Damn, girl,” Steven said with a whistle, as I went for a third helping. “You can put it away. Where does it go?”
I shrugged. “To the gym with me. Maybe that helps…?”
“Don’t mind him,” Mark said, grinning. “Steven’s just jealous. He has to watch his girlish figure.”
“Hell.” Steven shot his partner a wry look. “I might have to take her out to lunch with the crew. I could win money betting on how much she can eat.”
I smiled. “That could be fun.”
“Ha. I knew you had a bit of a wild streak. It’s in your smile.”
Looking down at my food, I refused to let my mind wander into memories of just how wild I’d been in my rebellious, self-destructive phase.
Mark saved me. “Don’t harass my assistant. And what do you know about wild women anyway?”
“I know some of them like hanging out with gay men. They like our perspective.” His grin flashed. “I know a few other things, too. Hey…don’t look so shocked, you two. I wanted to see if hetero sex lived up to the hype.”
Clearly this was news to Mark, but from the twitching of his lips, he was secure enough in their relationship to find the whole exchange amusing. “Oh?”
“How’d that work out for you?” I asked bravely.
Steven shrugged. “I don’t want to say it’s overrated, ’cause clearly I’m the wrong demographic and I had a very limited sampling, but I can do without.”
I thought it was very telling that Steven could relate his story in terms Mark worked with. They shared their careers with each other and listened, even though their chosen fields were miles apart.
“Considering your present living arrangement,” Mark said to him, catching up a stem of broccoli with his chopsticks, “I’d say that’s a very good thing.”
By the time we finished eating, it was eight and the cleaning crew had arrived. Mark insisted on calling me a cab.
“Should I come in early tomorrow?” I asked.
Steven bumped shoulders with Mark. “You must’ve done something good in a past life to score this one.”
“I think putting up with you in this life qualifies,” Mark said dryly.
“Hey,” Steven protested, “I’m housebroken. I put the toilet seat down.”
Mark shot me an exasperated look that was warm with affection for his partner. “And that’s helpful how?”
Mark and I scrambled all day Thursday to get ready for his four o’clock with the team from Kingsman. We grabbed an information-packed lunch with the two creatives who would be participating in the pitch when it got to that point in the process; then we went over the notes on Kingsman’s Web presence and existing social media outreach.
I got a little nervous when three thirty rolled around because I knew traffic would be a bitch, but Mark kept working after I pointed out the time. It was quarter to four before he bounded out of his office with a broad smile, still shrugging into his jacket. “Join me, Camila.”
I blinked up at him from my desk. “Really?”
“Hey, you worked hard on helping me prep. Don't you want to see how it goes?”
“Yes, absolutely.” I pushed to my feet. Knowing my appearance would be a reflection on my boss, I smoothed my black pencil skirt and straightened the cuffs of my long-sleeved silk blouse. By a random twist of fate, my crimson shirt perfectly matched Mark’s tie. “Thank you.”
We headed out to the elevators and I was briefly startled when the car went up instead of down. When we reached the top floor, the waiting area we stepped into was considerably larger and more ornate than the one on the twentieth. Hanging baskets of ferns and lilies fragranced the air and a smoky glass security entrance was sandblasted with Cross Industries in a bold, masculine font.
We were buzzed in, and then asked to wait a moment. Both of us declined an offer of water or coffee, and less than five minutes after we arrived, we were directed to a closed conference room.
Mark looked at me with twinkling eyes as the receptionist reached for the door handle. “Ready?”
I smiled. “Ready.”
The door opened and I gestured in first. I made sure to smile brightly as I stepped inside…a smile that froze on my face at the sight of the woman rising to her feet at my entrance.
My abrupt stop bottlenecked the threshold and Mark ran into my back, sending me stumbling forward. Dark and Dangerous caught me by the waist, hauling me off my feet and directly into her chest. The air left my lungs in a rush, followed immediately by every bit of common sense I possessed. Even through the layers of clothing between us, her biceps were like stone beneath my palms, her stomach a hard slab of muscle against my own. When she sucked in a sharp breath, my nipples tightened, stimulated by the expansion of her chest.
Oh no. I was cursed. A rapid-fire series of images flashed through my mind, showcasing a thousand ways I could stumble, fall, trip, skid, or crash in front of the sex god over the days, weeks, and months ahead.
“Hello again,” she murmured, the vibration of her voice making me ache all over. “Always a pleasure running into you, Camila.”
I flushed with embarrassment and desire, unable to find the will to push away despite the two other people in the room with her. It didn’t help that her attention was solely on me, her hard body radiating that arresting impression of powerful demand.
“Miss, Jauregui,” Mark said behind me. “Sorry about the entrance.”
“Don’t be. It was a memorable one.”
I wobbled on my stilettos when Jauregui set me down, my knees weakened from the full body contact. She was dressed in black again, with both her shirt and tie in a soft gray. As always, she looked too good.
What would it be like to be that amazing looking? There was no way she could go anywhere without causing a disturbance.
Reaching out, Mark steadied me and eased me back gently.
Jauregis' gaze stayed focused on Mark’s hand at my elbow until I was released.
“Right. Okay then.” Mark pulled himself together. “This is my assistant,
Camila Cabello.”
“We’ve met.” Jauregui pulled out the chair next to hers. “Camila.”
I looked to Mark for guidance, still recovering from the moments I’d spent plastered against the sexual superconductor in Fioravante.
Jauregui leaned closer and ordered quietly, “Sit, Camila.”
Mark gave a brief nod, but I was already lowering into the chair at Jauregui’s command, my body obeying instinctively before my mind caught up and objected.
I tried not to fidget for the next hour as Mark was grilled by Jauergui and the two Kingsman directors, both of whom were attractive brunettes in elegant pantsuits. The one in raspberry was especially enthusiastic about garnering Jauregui’s attention, while the one in cream focused intently on my boss. All three seemed impressed by Mark’s ability to articulate how the agency’s work—and his facilitation of it with the client—created provable value for the client’s brand.
I admired how cool Mark remained under pressure—pressure exerted by Jauregui, who easily dominated the meeting.
“Well done, Mr. Garrity,” Jauregui praised lightly as they wrapped things up. “I look forward to going over the RFP when the time comes. What would entice you to try Kingsman, Camila?”
Startled, I blinked. “Excuse me?”
The intensity of her gaze was searing. It felt as if her entire focus was on me, which only reinforced my respect for Mark, who’d had to work under the weight of that stare for an hour.
Jauregui’s chair was set perpendicular to the length of the table, facing me head-on. Her right arm rested on the smooth wooden surface, her long elegant fingers stroking rhythmically along the top. I caught a glimpse of her wrist at the end of her cuff and for some crazy reason the sight of that small expanse of golden skin with its light dusting of dark hair made my clit throb for attention. she was just so…womanly.
“Which of Mark’s suggested concepts do you prefer?” she asked again.
“I think they’re all brilliant.”
Her beautiful face was impassive when she said, “I’ll clear the room to get your honest opinion, if that’s what it takes.”
My fingers curled around the ends of my chair’s armrests. “I just gave you my honest opinion, Miss. Jauregui, but if you must know, I think sexy luxury on a budget will appeal to the largest demographic. But I lack—”
“I agree.” Jauregui stood and buttoned her jacket. “You have a direction, Mr. Garrity. We’ll revisit next week.”
I sat for a moment, stunned by the breakneck pace of events. Then I looked at Mark, who seemed to be wavering between astonished joy and bewilderment.
Rising to my feet, I led the way to the door. I was hyperaware of Jauregui walking beside me. The way she moved, with animal grace and arrogant economy, was a major turn-on. I couldn’t imagine her not fucking well and being aggressive about it, taking what she wanted in a way that made a woman wild to give it to her.
Jauregui stayed with me all the way to the bank of elevators. She said a few things to Mark about sports, I think, but I was too focused on the way I was reacting to her to care about the small talk. When the car arrived, I breathed a sigh of relief and hastily stepped forward with Mark.
“A moment, Camila,” Jauergui said smoothly, holding me back with a hand at my elbow. “She’ll be right down,” she told Mark, as the elevator doors closed on my boss’s astonished face.
Jauregui said nothing until the car was on its way down; then she pushed the call button again and asked, “Are you sleeping with anyone?”
The question was asked so casually it took a second to process what she’d said.
I inhaled sharply. “Why is that any business of yours?”
She looked at me and I saw what I’d seen the first time we’d met—tremendous power and steely control. Both of which had me taking an involuntary step back. Again. At least I didn’t fall this time; I was making progress.
“Because I want to fuck you, Camila. I need to know what’s standing in my way, if anything.”
The sudden ache between my thighs had me reaching for the wall to maintain my balance. She reached out to steady me, but I held her at bay with an uplifted hand. “Maybe I’m just not interested, Miss, Jauregui.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips and made her impossibly more handsome. Dear God…
The ding that signaled the approaching elevator made me jump, I was strung so tight. I’d never been so aroused. Never been so scorchingly attracted to another human being. Never been so offended by a person I lusted after.
I stepped into the elevator and faced her.
She smiled. “Until next time, Camila.”
The doors closed and I sagged into the brass handrail, trying to regain my bearings. I’d barely pulled myself together when the doors opened and revealed Mark pacing in the waiting area on our floor.
“Jesus, Camila,” Mark muttered, coming to an abrupt halt. “What the hell was that?”
“I have no freakin’ clue.” I exhaled in a rush, wishing I could share the confusing, irritating exchange I’d had with Jauregui, but well aware that my boss wasn’t the appropriate outlet. “Who cares? You know she’s going to give you the account.”
A grin chased away his frown. “I’m thinking she might.”
“As my roommate always says, you should celebrate. Should I make dinner reservations for you and Steven?”
“Why not? Pure Food and Wine at seven, if they can squeeze us in. If not, surprise us.”
We’d barely returned to Mark’s office when he was pounced on by the executives—Michael Waters, the CEO and president, and Christine Field and Walter Leaman, the executive chairman and vice chairman.
I skirted the four of them as quietly as possible and slid into my cubicle.
I called Pure Food and Wine and begged for a table for two. After some serious groveling and pleading, the hostess finally caved.
I left a message on Mark’s voice mail, “It’s definitely your lucky day. You’re booked for dinner at seven. Have fun!”
Then I clocked out, eager to get home.
“She said what?” Cary sat on the opposite end of our white sectional sofa and shook his head.
“I know, right?” I enjoyed another sip of my wine. It was a crisp and nicely chilled sauvignon blanc I’d picked up on the walk home. “That was my reaction, too. I’m still not sure I didn’t hallucinate the conversation while overdosing on her pheromones.”
“So?”
I tucked my legs beneath me on the couch and leaned into the corner. “So what?”
“You know what, Camila.” Grabbing his netbook off the coffee table, Cary propped it on his crossed legs. “Are you going to tap that or what?”
“I don’t even know her. I don’t even know her first name and she threw that curveball at me.”
“She knew yours.” He started typing on his keyboard. “And what about the thing with the vodka? Asking for your boss in particular?”
The hand I was running through my loose hair stilled. “Mark is very talented. If Jauregui has any sort of business sense at all, she’d pick up on that and exploit it.”
“I’d say she knows business.” Cary spun his netbook around and showed me the home page of Cross Industries, which boasted an awesome photo of the Crossfire. “That’s her building, Camila. Lauren jauregui owns it.”
Damn it. My eyes closed. Lauren Jauregui. I thought the name suited her. It was as sexy and elegantly masculine as the woman himself.
“She has people to handle marketing for her subsidiaries. Probably dozens of people to handle it.”
“Stop talking, Cary”
“She’s hot, rich, and wants to jump your bones. What’s the problem?”
I looked at him. “It’s going to be awkward running into her all the time. I’m hoping to hang on to my job for a long while. I really like it. I really like Mark. He’s totally involved me in the process and I’ve learned so much from him already.”
“Remember what Dr. Travis says about calculated risks? When your shrink tells you to take some, you should take some. You can deal with it. You and Jauregui are both adults.” He turned his attention back to his Internet search. “Wow. Did you know she doesn’t turn thirty for another two years? Think of the stamina.”
“Think of the rudeness. I’m offended by how she just threw it out there. I hate feeling like a vagina with legs.”
Cary paused and looked up at me, his eyes softening with sympathy. “I’m sorry, baby girl. You’re so strong, so much stronger than I am. I just don’t see you carrying around the baggage I do.”
“I don’t think I am, most of the time.” I looked away because I didn’t want to talk about what we’d been through in our pasts. “It’s not like I wanted her to ask me out on a date. But there has to be a better way to tell a woman you want to take her to bed.”
“You’re right. She’s an arrogant douche. Let her lust after you until she has blue balls. Serves her right.”
That made me smile. Cary could always do that. “I doubt that woman has ever had blue balls in her life, but it’s a fun fantasy.”
He shut his netbook with a decisive snap. “What should we do tonight?”
“I was thinking I’d like to go check out that Krav Maga studio in Brooklyn.” I’d done a little research after meeting Parker Smith during my workout at Equinox and as the week passed, the thought of having that kind of raw, physical outlet for stress seemed more and more ideal.
I knew it wouldn’t be anything close to banging the hell outta ofLauren jauregui, but I suspected it would be a lot less dangerous to my health.
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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago
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What do you think of dick hability to read the body language in new 52 People act as it doesn't exist and it really bugs me because thats one of the few things i really liked from new 52
I actually really like it, and it fits with some longtime headcanons of mine, but it hasn’t been touched on enough that I can understand it rubbing some people the wrong way, due to Cass.
But its like I said in that post earlier this week, about how I think its pointless to be ‘possessive’ of character traits…..I think Dick is an expert hacker himself, but I don’t think he’s on Babs’ level. Nobody is on Barbara’s level. But his own expertise isn’t diminished because he’s not on the level of the pretty much undisputed best hacker in the DC Universe. Neither is Barbara’s expertise lessened by virtue of Dick, as well as Tim, Bruce and most of the rest of the Batclan, all being damn good at it in their own right.
I see it as being the same thing here. I like the idea that Dick is intuitive and highly capable when it comes to reading body language, for a number of reasons, but I don’t think it suddenly makes him Cass, means he’s as good at it as Cass, or that Cass being on a whole other level with that, being like…lessened or threatened because Dick’s own capabilities in that regard are touched on every now and again.
I’ve actually said this many times before, but I think this insistence so many fans have about their faves being the only ones associated with certain traits, stories or characteristics actually does them a disservice, because when you stop viewing things as a competition and instead look at it as a chance for common ground, you unveil SO many possibilities.
For instance, I’ve always felt, long before the New 52, that it makes sense for Dick to have a strong, unconscious understanding of body language….as in, he’s at the upper levels of what humans are naturally capable of having in that regard, which of course still puts him at an entirely different level than Cass, whose mastery of it is deliberately BEYOND peak human levels because of her own backstory.
But if you think about it, Dick having skills in that direction makes sense for him AND opens up a lot of areas for Dick and Cass to bond more AND have occasional conflict.
Dick is one of the only other Batkids aside from Cass AND Damian, who knows what its like to be raised literally from the time he can walk, to be a proficient athlete with complete control of his body as like…a lifestyle. The kind of demands that makes of someone, the way that instills certain work ethics and instincts in someone practically from birth, to such a degree that it probably NEVER becomes something he can wrap his mind around, that for some people, these kinds of habits AREN’T second nature, practically built into him….that’s something that I don’t think even some of the other most highly capable athletes in the DC universe are fully capable of grasping…like Bruce, Tim, Jason, Dinah, etc. Obviously this doesn’t lessen any of their skills or proficiency as athletes, just as professional athletes who don’t start training in their chosen fields until later in childhood can be just as capable as ones who started in early childhood. But it makes I think, for a slightly different mindset.
I think this is part of why Dick understands Damian so much better or more easily than a lot of others do. Because Damian was raised this way too, just with different end goals than Dick. Dick can’t relate to being raised to kill, to stamp down on his urge to show affection, the specific training methods of the League with someone as young as Damian, no. But that unconscious, built in awareness of his own body in ways that even a lot of other athletes or fighters never develop just because they approach their bodies and training so differently…that I think Dick gets, and because of that he gets Damian and his own work ethic, and the way that telling him to not push himself so hard or take it easy at times….like is going to be totally wasted on Damian, FOR THE SAME REASONS those things have so often been wasted on Dick. 
Telling someone to be careful not to strain or overwork their body is not going to carry a whole lot of weight with a twelve year old kid who has spent ten of those twelve years being instilled with a greater awareness of his own body and capabilities than anyone else will EVER grasp….let alone someone who only met them a year or two ago (notice how this applies to both Damian AND Dick).
Similarly, causing people to worry when they go throw themselves into an extremely rigorous workout routine in the name of ‘relaxing or de-stressing’ is always going to be a thing, when other people just fundamentally don’t get that for someone raised from birth to eat, sleep and breathe their own physicality….this IS relaxing.
So IMO Dick and Damian have at least that much in common, which has given Dick particular insight into Damian that others don’t have, and helped him get further in reaching Damian and developing a bond with him. And extend this to Cass and her own backstory, and I think they all three have this in common, and thus could share this understanding between all three of them….thus giving Cass more opportunities and ways to bond with Dick and Damian in particular.
Continue on for ten thousand more words (lol, I wish I was exaggerating. Oh, me) of Dick Meta, Cass Meta, and Dick and Cass Meta, below the cut:
Now, add in the fact that Dick wasn’t just raised from birth to be a world-class athlete, like Cass was…..but as I often stress, just as important….he was raised from birth to be a PERFORMER. This is where I think his instinctive awareness of body language would have come from. Because he was raised to do all of his athletics with apparent ease, to show none of the strain it takes, to make it look like art, like the performance that it so usually was. And he was also raised to not just perform for a crowd, but to command their attention, to draw eyes, to feed off their energy and use that to tailor his own performances, his every action, to achieve maximum impact. 
Don’t forget Dick was a world-class acrobat as a CHILD. He was quite literally a child prodigy….and people LOVE meeting a child prodigy. Something like the encounter with the Drakes’ that’s part of Tim’s own backstory would have been an every day occurrence to Dick. Which means it was every bit as likely a part of his early training to be able to glean from the rich strangers that wanted a photo op with the young, exhausted child performer that probably just wanted to go to bed now….exactly what would go over best with those strangers, expedite this encounter, and enable Dick to move on to the next one or better yet, out of the tent ASAP.
I’ve talked about the classism Dick endures just by virtue of being a circus performer…its never been about how much money he and his parents did or didn’t have, its about the fact that most people look down on circus performers as like…an amusement to enjoy, not athletes to respect. You can’t deny that people summoning to mind an Olympic level gymnast would view that gymnast in an entirely different way than they would a Cirque de Soleil acrobat they called to mind, even if they had similar levels of athletic skill….because as a society, we regard something like the Olympics as a WORTHY pursuit for an athlete of that caliber….whereas one might sit in the audience of a circus and enjoy the performance, but that doesn’t mean most people walk out of that tent thinking of what they just saw in terms of the SKILL rather than their entertainment, because there’s this unconscious bias that like….if one wanted to actually be respected for their athletics, they’d aim for the Olympics, not to wear gaudy costumes and face paint and travel around in a caravan and never put up roots in any one place, etc. 
Our view of the circus goes well back before Dick’s creation, even, but its very much there. You simply can’t argue that most people give circus performers the respect their skillsets deserve and would merit in other situations…..and you bet your ass, someone like Dick who was raised as one, would have been instilled from a very young age with an awareness of how to glean when someone was treating him with disdain…and respond without offending them, but still not necessarily letting them impact him with their disdain.
Because one of the things I don’t think I’ve ever talked much about is how for as much as we talk about Dick’s self esteem issues and insecurities in regards to Bruce…..the boy Bruce first took in as an orphan was NOT overly insecure. If anything, Dick was the complete opposite. He knew EXACTLY what he was capable of, and was not shy about insisting upon it. I would say by all accounts and reading between the lines, the Graysons did a tremendous job in instilling in Dick from a young age an amazing degree of self-confidence….WHICH probably accounts for a LOT of the later conflict between Dick and Bruce, because it was never just a matter of Dick not getting the vocal or visible respect or appreciation from Bruce that he wanted….it was that Bruce wasn’t giving him it in the forms he’d been raised with, and grown accustomed to. 
Its that disconnect that I think Dick has always struggled with…where he KNOWS, on some level, that Bruce loves and respects him, and holds enormous appreciation for Dick’s own skills….but Dick only knows this because of….well, what he gleans from Bruce’s body language and his own awareness of Bruce and his nature. He has to read between the lines, and still be left guessing (since Bruce is himself pretty much a master of obscuring his own emotions and body language, in as much as anyone is, to the extent that only someone like Cass can willfully pierce that shroud). 
But my point is, there’s every reason in the world to think that Dick’s parents were very good at preparing their world-class prodigy son for the pressures of the spotlight he grew up in, and heavily prioritized making sure he wasn’t going to be diminished by the disdain of whatever snobs he encountered during the meet and greet portion of that lifestyle. And to be good at that, to know how to manage people who make you want to put your fist in their face while giving away nothing but a nod and smile, and still manage to seize enough control over the encounter to walk away with your head held high rather than feeling like you were just thrown to the wolves….that takes a high mastery of body language and an instinctive grasp of how to read people and put them at ease, to seize control of a conversation from someone who is used to having control at all times in all places. You have to know how to PERFORM, at all times. And in this regard, Dick was every bit as much a prodigy as he was in his acrobatics.
IMO Dick Grayson on his A-game could make Brucie weep in envy. I think this training, this ability to read people with just a look and adapt himself accordingly, to make the most of the encounter while giving up the least along the way….I think its absolutely nothing that Bruce himself taught him, that Dick already came to Gotham with, and its what ACTUALLY enabled Dick to survive the lifestyle and spotlight that Bruce’s lifestyle and spotlight made Dick grow up in. Its what enables Dick to handle the pressures of leadership and get along so well with his various teammates, coordinate dissenting personalities well enough to create teams that are famous for how well they gel and work together in battle no matter what they’re like when interacting in civilian arenas. Bruce, for all his skills, is notoriously not a people person. He knows how to manage people. He struggles with understanding them. And this has always been where in comparison to Bruce, Dick soars.
He didn’t learn any of what he knows about being a people person from Bruce. But he sure as hell learned it SOMEWHERE.
And I think that somewhere is in the circus, with his parents and whatever other various babysitters he picked up things along the way from. A kid as friendly and outgoing as Dick would have been soaking things up from all the circus performers like a sponge, I bet. Little tips and tricks of the trade from not just the knife-throwers, as is occasionally referenced….but also the fortune teller and ringmaster and clowns and magicians and escape artists. A couple dozen varieties of different masters of their own crafts, with one thing in common of all of them….all their crafts rely on performing. On reading an audience, even audiences of one. And selling that audience exactly what they’re looking for from that performance.
Let’s not forget that for all Dick’s insecurities and self-esteem issues as an adult….those almost unilaterally exist in regards to his family and closest friends. For the same reasons as he struggles with these things with Bruce….because they’re not great at showing Dick the respect and appreciation he needs from THEM, SPECIFICALLY….in the forms he would recognize, the forms he was raised since birth to receive and recognize as such, when his parents and circus family gave him these things.
Outside matters pertaining to just his family and closest friends, however, Dick is not remotely insecure. There’s a huge chasm between the former and the latter, in terms of how Dick acts and conducts himself. And its probably a large part of why Dick is so adept at not giving away to his family that he’s more in need of their acknowledgment and support than they realize….because Dick spends so MUCH of his life genuinely not giving a shit what most people think about him or say about him….he’s that much more proficient at wearing that as a mask when interacting even with his family of detectives, who are pretty good at reading even him in a lot of other aspects.
Because I maintain that Dick absolutely endured a hell of a lot of classism and racism growing up, and still does….which is not okay no matter how well he endures it….but he for the most part clearly doesn’t let this constant barrage effect his general self-esteem, and that is fairly important to note. Just as is the fact that like….he calls himself Dick, by his own choice, because its more important to him that he hold on to what he can of his parents, every last physical reminder he has available to him….and thus I think its especially shitty to write his second family using his parents’ fond nickname for him as a joke or insult, and probably hurts Dick when they do it….but the rest of the time? The general public making him a punchline for it? Dick could give a fuck. Same with general opinions of his costumes and what he looked like as Robin or early Nightwing, etc, etc.
Dick Grayson is not an insecure person overall….and that I credit entirely to his first parents, the Graysons.
All of this feeds into that overall awareness of body language, reading people for emotional cues and ways to survive a lifetime in the spotlight without being consumed by it…and without alienating people in the process, because a performer needs an audience, and growing up in a circus taught Dick early on that he had to find a way to end these encounters with asshole patrons in a way that kept his head held high but DIDN’T cost the circus - his family - their patronage in the future.
(Another reason I maintain Dick’s oh so infamous temper has been vastly more inflated than fits either canon evidence of it OR his overall characterization…..a man who has been raised from birth in the spotlight and constantly exposed to people who look down on him….like, KNOWS how to control his temper. I’m sorry, he just does, lol. This is basic understanding of human awareness. If your entire life is in one spotlight or another, be it the circus then Wayne Manor and Page Six, as well as being one of the most focused on superheroes in the entire cape community….and you’re somehow overall regarded in all public perceptions as charming….you do NOT have an infamous temper. You just don’t. People love to shove public figures off their pedestals whenever possible….and in both his civilian and superhero personas, Dick Grayson is on very high pedestals. There is no way in hell his general reputation in any of his communities would be anything close to what it is if he actually has as short and nasty of a temper as people love to spin him as having, because of a dozen scenes taken mostly out of context, over the course of 80 years as a high profile character. I’ll stop harping on this one when it stops being the first thing to come to mind when people cite a ‘flaw’ of his.)
Going back to reasons for him to have such a mastery of body language in his own right….Dick was also raised from birth to do his routines as part of a TROUPE, a group of athletes, not just singular by himself. Thus, a TON of what he was raised practicing every day….would have included reading his family’s body language for cues on what to do next. Watching for signs that something might be wrong or off even just by a second and requiring that he adjust his own movements to compensate for that, when they’re all fifty feet in the air and with the crowd cheering so loudly they couldn’t possibly communicate with words….this could literally be a matter of life and death for a troupe of performers whose reputation hinged on them being death-defying in their stunts. 
Yes, in most continuities its stressed that his parents didn’t let Dick perform the most dangerous routines with them yet, due to his age…..but that doesn’t mean they weren’t preparing him for them as early as humanly possible, given that its never too early to start working on various skills that are integral to these kinds of things. 
And with one of the most fundamental and essential skills needed to be part of a group of performers who excel at dangerous routines being communication, this is all the more reason to think they were probably teaching Dick from a very young age to pick up on body language and watch for even the slightest hints of different indicators of stress, fatigue, anxiety, fear, etc. 
Because compensating for something going wrong with a partner’s part of a routine can be essential in matters of teamwork. (Again, just gotta give a shout out to the Flying Graysons here, because its not stated enough that everything Dick knows about being a solo vigilante, he learned from Bruce, but everything he knows about teamwork is either instinctive or built in, OR learned from his parents, part of a team). And most of the time, when we’re talking about shifting position just enough while fifty feet above a crowd in order to make a catch of a partner that launched with not quite enough momentum or is overshooting their mark….compensating or cheating one’s own routine just enough to be there for your partner is the kind of thing that needs to happen in a SPLIT-SECOND…..like, with you making the adjustment the micro-second you realize its necessary….which means you have to be picking up the slightest hint of it the second it shows up in their body language, like a….what’s the word…oh yeah. A pro.
And given that these acrobats were all performers as much as athletes, with it being a given that their performances needed to appear as light and carefree at possible at all times, for the sake of the crowd….they couldn’t afford to give away obvious tells of anxiety, stress or exhaustion, had to keep a performer’s mask of total poise and control at all times throughout their routines….which makes it all the more likely Dick’s own ability to read body language and instinctive or hidden cues is exceptional….as he had to be trained from early on to be able to see behind those masks and read his parents and family for tells even while they were doing their professional best to keep those very tells hidden so that nobody would pick up on them…unless they were a master of reading such things.
So all in all, I believe that among however many languages Dick Grayson was taught from a very early age as part of a globe-trotting circus….one of those was body language itself, even if it was never actually couched in those terms, as though it were an actual language being taught the way it was regarded as such for Cass….as for Dick and his family, it was probably just regarded as tools of the trade, a necessary component of the performer and acrobat toolbox Dick was raised familiarizing himself with from as early as he began walking and talking.
Which brings us back to Cassandra…..as stated, I think Dick is exceptional at reading body language, with as much mastery of that as is possible at peak human potential…..but, that doesn’t make him the equal of Cass, whose own skills in that regard are beyond even that, due to the precise and comic book nature of her own origin. And how her father did something similar but for totally different reasons and no regard whatsoever for Cassandra’s well-being.
So I don’t think there’s any reason that Dick being the next best at reading and reacting to body language takes anything away from Cass being the undisputed master of that, and interpreter of the Batfamily’s hidden emotional cues.
In fact, allowing Dick to be acknowledged as adept at reading body language benefits her character….as she’s so often solely used as the interpreter of the emotionally stunted Batfamily’s attempted repression of their emotional cues. Basically just being treated as a plot device rather than a character in her own right.
As much as I project onto Dick and thus talk about fandom’s neglect of various facets of his character, it can’t be denied that the same is true of Cass….times ten.
Fanfics spend WAY more time using Cass to establish or well, tattle on various Batfamily members’ emotions than they spend on giving Cass emotions of her own in regards to whatever situation is going on in a given scene.
 And since Dick is so often used as the family mediator or peacemaker anyway, this doesn’t actually change anything about his own role in things….it merely supplies a concrete reason for why he so often is defaulted into that position, and so good at it, despite his family’s overall emotional constipation. He has to be amazing not just at teamwork, but reading hidden emotions as well, in order to manage his family and their various arguments even just as well as he does already.
(Just a quick clarification…earlier when I noted that Dick’s own insecurities largely stem from the Batfamily and not always knowing or trusting where he stands with them….its not that he has no ability to read them despite their own very well crafted performer masks. Its just that as good as he is, he’s still never going to be as good at this as Cassandra is, and there’s still going to be things he misses, or things he misinterprets. And additionally, the problem remains, that he shouldn’t HAVE to glean any hints of familial love, respect and appreciation from his family’s body language. When he’s constantly relying on subtext and body language to reassure himself that they really do love and appreciate him, its inevitable that sooner or later self-doubts and second guessing are going to start to creep in. So its not that Dick doesn’t ever see these things in his family’s body language. Its that over time, I believe this has progressed to the point where even when he sees these cues, he second guesses himself as to whether he’s actually seeing things that are there, or just seeing what he wants to see. And since none of them are exactly making a point to validate what he sees or thinks he sees with actual validation in indisputable forms, like verbal confirmation of this…eventually, Dick’s own skills reading body language become irrelevant here, since he himself is aware he’s an unreliable narrator when trying to narrate what his family’s body language is saying. He wants it to be saying all the things he uses to assuage whatever hurt he feels for not hearing them tell him these things…thus he’s too aware of his own bias when reading them for cues to actually trust any of the cues he reads, that could otherwise confirm this.)
Anyway. So acknowledging or even emphasizing Dick’s own exceptional abilities with body language would actually be to Cassandra’s benefit, I maintain. Because without expecting anything of Dick that isn’t already expected of him and his role in canon and fandom, it merely provides additional support for the idea he’s good at playing family mediator even with as emotionally repressed most of their family is. Thus freeing up Cass from constantly being looked to as the interpreter for all the things most of their family have trouble saying….and allowing for more focus to be paid to her own emotions. And letting her HAVE them, in the first place.
Because we have to talk about the elephant in the room here: racism in regards to Cass. The quiet, stoic, normally serene and beatific Asian martial arts master is a racist as hell trope, and its one that makes all too frequent an appearance when Cass is used at all in fics. AND canon.
Its not that Cass can’t be all those things at various times. Its that they can’t be ALL that she is. At ALL times. (And that, for the record, she’s not usually ANY of those things in canon that actually tries to develop her rather than use her as a one-note trope in its own right. Cassandra Cain…serene? LOLOL. Please, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it ain’t the Cass I know and love).
First of all, give her a sense of humor, because she has one, and its amazing. You’ll note I make a point whenever I write her to emphasize her having a kind of dry, sardonic wit that is not at all opposed at being at her siblings’ expense, lol. I mean, its not like that’s the only take possible on her, or even just her sense of humor, I just mean…have one. Humor is one of the most telling representatives of a person’s characterization. By that I mean, a person’s sense of humor is one of the things we most initially associate with them in our mind, and a character having a distinct sense of humor is one of the easiest and best ways to develop them as having their own character voice, something that marks them as distinct in your awareness from other characters. Where if you close your eyes and picture them in a scene, what comes out when they talk, like, to make a joke….isn’t interchangeable with just any other character. It sounds or feels like them, specifically.
And just FYI, you might have an easier time writing Cass making jokes if you allow her to form full sentences. She can speak English, has been written speaking English quite well in the past, and the insistence on broken English when writing her that way in canon is shitty and racist in and of itself anyway, so those particular takes on her don’t need to be respected let alone emulated in fanfiction. Let Cass Speak English In Complete Sentences 2KForever. She’ll still be Cass, I promise you. But the changes made to her brain in canon that allowed her to finally learn spoken languages years after her brain had finished developing, like, that happened early enough after Cass’ debut that there’s really no excuse for writing fic where she’s been part of the family for years and still hasn’t picked up a strong grasp of English. 
Y’know how I’m always saying the entire Batfamily are ALL Mary Sues, they are a family of Mary Sues, that is pretty much their high concept as a group, that they’re a composite of the most otherwise competent people in the world and completely emotionally incompetent at the same time? Like, it applies here, because as I also harp on a lot about, I think all of the Batfamily are actual literal geniuses, and I do mean all. Cassandra included. She’s a master of her own many areas of expertise and thus IMO more than capable of picking up languages fairly quickly once the canon barrier to her doing that earlier in life is removed. It just looks and sounds weird and suspect, to insist on writing her as never moving past broken English, IMO. 
And also, like, she doesn’t need to ever be as talkative as Steph, nor do I think would it fit her to be written that way either, but there’s a very wide range of options between that and hardly ever talking at all. I do think she defaults to being one of the more quiet ones in a room, as in one of the last to speak….but give her reasons to be that way, instead of just more imitation of our media’s racist insistence on treating Asian characters as the quiet, all-knowing keepers of sage wisdom who only share their truths once you’ve made the trek up to their mountain top. 
So again just in terms of my own personal take, I tend to write Cass as being one of the last to speak up when around people she’s not as familiar with, because its her version of keeping her back to the wall of a room so no one can sneak up behind and surprise her. She’s only quiet at first in my stuff because focusing on using conversations to glean as much information as she can about the people in them before jumping in is just like, a form of intel-gathering for her and her past left her with a tendency to be as overly cautious in her own way as the rest of her family, and this is what her way looks like. 
(Dick puts on his performer’s mask, Jason blusters and leads with bravado, Damian adopts a position of superiority and will only climb down once you sufficiently peak his interest, Tim recites facts and trivia and likes to bore people he dislikes into submission so you give up and go away, Duke is the family member who really makes friends so easily that any time he makes enemies, his friends have already plotted to destroy you before Duke even gets around to trying to do that himself, Babs has already hacked your bank account and credit rating by the time you open your mouth and thus feels no social anxiety whatsoever as worst comes to worst, she can always just tank your credit score to make herself feel better, and upon meeting you for the first time, Steph either adopts you or punches you in the throat, depending on which way her gut is leaning. As for Bruce, well. He’s terrified of pretty much all social settings, but he’d have to actually admit to that for the first time in recorded human history before anyone could actually cite what ‘his way’ of dealing with social interactions he’s wary of might be. I mean, its basically just ‘Brucie’, but you get what I mean.)
So I mean, its not inherently bad to write Cass as being quieter than the rest of her siblings, and you don’t need her quoting Shakespeare back and forth with Jason in order to prove you’re not writing her speaking broken English. Its just. Do some digging in her head before settling in and writing what you’ve found there. Actually TRY getting in her head in the first place. Spruce it up a bit, redecorate your surroundings, make it feel lived in and homey. Give it CHARACTER. Whenever you write a character choice, in my personal opinion, you should, if asked, be able to back up that character choice by having a reason you feel the character would choose that. 
For me, I write Cass being the quietest of her siblings in social settings simply because she’s doing recon first, and of her various skillsets, spoken language is the one she’s mastered most recently and thus she has the least familiarity with….and thus is the last thing she turns to in any given situation, because she’d rather go down the list and run through every other skill she has to see if it could apply here, before resigning herself to having to converse with the person in front of her because she doesn’t think Bruce would accept “I didn’t know how else to change the subject” as a justification for stabbing someone in a non-vital and easily healed location that had the fringe benefit of rapid bloodloss leading to them passing out fairly quickly.
And of course, none of this applies with Batfamily, because she is comfortable with her family for the most part, and thus when I write her being the most quiet in those group scenes, its because she prefers listening their just purely because she finds her siblings’ antics entertaining. And also because I view her as being as batshit competitive as the rest of them, so IMO she’s always plotting the perfect conversational one-hit KO to have at the ready before she wades in. Because in the Batfamily, even ordinary conversations are something you can and should win. Otherwise, what’s even the point? LOL.
Also in terms of my own stuff, I tend to write Cass and Tim as having very similar forms of wit, and my personal take on them is that they both have just slightly different degrees of that same dry, sardonic kind of commentary, as their primary display of humor. This doesn’t necessarily always match their canon characterizations and how they display humor there - but its due to the fact that they’re two of the characters canon most rarely allows to show a sense of humor in recent years, and it tends to be all over the place more often than not. This is a major departure from how they both were portrayed in the 90s, where Tim’s humor was much more consistently in line with what I’m describing…and thus, so was Cassandra’s, when she debuted and developed her own primary characterization. 
So basically, I consider Tim to be a major influence on Cass’ humor….or more accurately, in the shape her own sense of humor more commonly takes. Because it was with and around Tim that Cass first started to pick up a lot of social cues and explore her own sense of self for pretty much the first time in her life. 
Stephanie’s humor, by contrast is a lot more loud and gregarious and in your face….which when you put the three of them in scene together as a trio, like they once spent a lot of time as, positions her as an extremely different version of the ‘straight man’ to their comedic duo. Because Steph doesn’t need anyone to back up or appreciate her own humor, she’s already landing the punchlines way before anyone else has even had time to think of any, and she doesn’t care what the reception is, the lovable loudmouth goof that she is. Which allows for Cass and Tim to sigh behind her and exchange sidelong glances and kinda….narrate her theatrics in that ‘faces the camera like they’re on The Office’ sort of way, which I mean, I personally find hilarious when they do it, and she’s not remotely bothered by, because like, she’s fucking hilarious and anyone who doesn’t get that is simply wrong and needs to be pitied, if you ask her.
Anyway, that’s just why my own depictions of Cass and Tim share a lot of their humor in common and some of their other characteristics….they’re the ones Cass either consciously or unconsciously picked up from Tim, as he was one of the first people for her to genuinely feel comfortable around and thus someone she trusted to both have knowledge of and mastery over the various social cues she was now finding she needed to learn because of her new environments. 
(Of course, this is one of the times where Cass was dead wrong about something, IMO, as she might have overestimated Tim’s mastery of certain specific social cues and her body-language reads have her aware people aren’t responding her own attempts at mimicking them in the way she’s fairly confident they should be, and she’s not sure what she’s doing wrong there. Oh well. She’s still better off than if she’d picked Bruce to emulate there. When she asked him, he’d stiffened and radiated such intense discomfort, even Steph froze in mid-ramble as she sensed it on even the complete opposite side of the Cave.)
ANYWAY. Wrapping up THAT particular tangent and cycling back around to Dick and Cass having skill with reading body language in common….I think this could also be a huge opportunity to write Dick having a dynamic with Cass that’s unique to just the two of them and distinct from the dynamics they have with the rest of their family. Not to give them a super special bond but just because I mean, all the sibling dynamics between the various individual Batkids should ideally have their own flavor, because nobody interacts with two different siblings in the same way. Each sibling is their own unique individual, and thus should have their own unique dynamic when interacting with them.
So I like to headcanon Dick and Cass in private being the family gossips. They love dishing on the rest of the family with just each other….and being the two most skilled at seeing behind their family’s masks (and thus what their family most wants to keep hidden, to varying degrees), they have more dirt on everyone else than most intelligence agencies have on their nations’ enemies. Of course, they’re both staunchly moral, so they would never ever use their powers here for evil, or to hurt or embarrass their family.
They would, however, occasionally indulge in snickers and giggles about it behind closed doors. Look, shut up, they’re BONDING, they have childhood trauma, its fine.
And if Cassandra’s superior skills with body language means she inevitably has more gossip to share with Dick than vice versa, that’s okay, she’s still more than happy to share. He’s the one who introduced her to the joys of gossip, after all, so if anyone’s entitled to it, its him.
I also headcanon that because they’re both the best at reading body language, there are occasions when in group environments or just at the dinner table with the whole family, they both happen to pick up on certain cues or be aware that a sibling is lying through their teeth about something or being full of shit, and then catch each other’s eye and give the faintest of eye rolls or ‘can you believe they’re falling for this.’ Which sometimes other siblings catch, because Cass and Dick have forgotten to be subtle about it. Or did they not forget anything, and are just being trolls and instigating shit for the giggles? Who can say. Probably just them, which they find quite fun.
In fact, its slightly possible that the rest of the family, ever since Cass joined them, have developed a slightly inflated estimation of Dick’s own skills with reading body language, and now credit him with more of a mastery of it than even he actually possesses. 
See, I have this one headcanon that every now and then, just to mess with their family, Dick and Cass make a point to hold a silent conversation in front of them. You know that thing people who know each other really well do with just their eyes, like managing to convey certain impressions to each other just by being expressive enough in ways and about things they’re pretty sure the other person will get and be on the same wavelength about?
Yeah, that, but Cass and Dick do it without exaggerated facial expressions. And for like. Ten whole minutes. Meanwhile, Tim’s like: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not buying any of this” and then determinedly ignoring them. Jason’s annoyed because he can’t actually ever seem to ignore them, and then this builds into something like: “You guys better not be talking about me behind my back. Or I mean, right in front of my face. Whatever. And you definitely better not be talking about Tim right in front of his face and not including me!” Steph just keeps continuing on with whatever she’s doing, entirely unbothered, because she knows if they’re actually communicating anything important (or even slightly of interest to her), she’s sure she can get Cass to tell her later. And she’s not wrong, of course. Duke just shakes his head and feels better about being slightly jealous due to how funny it is watching it get under everyone else’s skin, but in the name of not feeling left out, he joins in on shit-talking Dick and Cass in order to have Vengeance. “B, didn’t you ever teach them its rude to exclude people from your conversation? You know, some people would say its never to late to ground your children.”
Damian, by stark contrast to the rest, completely abandons whatever else he’s doing to watch them both as intently as he can for as long as they persist. As he’s probably third in line behind the two of them when it comes to instinctive grasp of body language, due to the whole ‘being raised to read/scan others for as much information as possible just from their movements. Y’know. In case you have to kill them.’ In his case, his full grasp of it was hindered by seemingly being taught to dismiss certain specific emotions as irrelevant or a weakness, and though Dick and the rest of the family have by now done a pretty good job at getting him slowly but surely past all of that, its like retraining himself, trying to consciously now pick up on cues that he spent a decade discarding and moving past the second he saw them. 
But he’s determined to become as adept at reading body language now as even Grayson is, at least, even if his implicit acceptness that he’ll never have the same mastery their sister does is fully internalized and something he’ll never admit to, even on pain of death. Both Dick and Cass have at various times offered to help him with it, but he refuses as a point of pride….he wants to do it himself. So every time they have one of these ‘conversations’ in front of the family, he drops everything else he does and scrutinizes them for the whole thing like he’s a codebreaker sure that in time, he’ll crack the code and all its secrets will be revealed. (Mostly, its more like he dreams of the day he’s become good enough at it that he and Dick can hold silent conversations like this and he can rub it in Drake’s face. Hah! It will be glorious, Internal Damian insists).
Even Bruce himself isn’t entirely sure whether or not Dick and Cass are fully communicating the whole time they converse like this, or just faking it for funsies. It frustrates him to no end that he’s yet to figure out a way to just…ask them, without giving away that he doesn’t actually already know the answer, and that’s BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF HIM, C’MON!!
(Of course, both Dick and Cass have fully picked up on his frustration and thus realized he’s as clueless as the rest of the family, and its this precise thing that they spend most of these ‘conversations’ silently giggling about to each other).
And in terms of fleshing Cass out…..part of what frustrates me so much about the excuse people give for focusing on certain negative fanon takes on Dick, that its done to make him more interesting, because no one’s perfect….
Its never been that this claim, in and of itself, is untrue. The problem I’ve always had with it is they add in ‘flaws’ in the name of making Dick more realistic, while at the same time ignoring plenty of material that’s already present in Dick’s character…but which focusing on, would require people spend more time and insight on him than they want to. Just making Dick angry and ‘remind people he has a temper’ is quick and easy, in comparison.
However, the other part of why this claim bugs me so much is because it IS valid and applies to fanon’s two dimensional takes of two other characters….who are never written with any kind of flaws which is part of why they come across as fairly superficial in a lot of works. And that’s Duke and Cass. When they show up at all, their usage is VERY superficial, and like….I don’t think I’ve ever read something with either of them, where they were written having a conflict with another member of the family, other than just sometimes Cass not liking Jason because of his stance on killing. (And usually this is in Jason-centric fics, so its not really in the name of fleshing out Cass so much as making Jason more misunderstood and Cass the bad guy for not respecting that okay he kills people, but only because he’s very sad, she should be able to see that, ugh have a heart).
So, I also headcanon there is a slightly negative dynamic between Dick and Cass specifically, albeit one Dick himself is not aware of. 
(And also complicated by the fact that as much as I gripe about Dick being perceived as having negative dynamics with the rest of his siblings that are all his fault, Cass is the ONE sibling this is ACTUALLY true of, even if it was only really in one story, Redemption Road. I go into that in more depth in another meta, but long story short it was after she was brainwashed by Deathstroke and killed because he made her, and Dick was written as wary and untrusting of her return, not because he didn’t like her - they’d already spent a lot of time in years before this bonding - but rather because he didn’t trust that they could be totally sure the brainwashing was gone yet, and thought Bruce was being too relaxed about that. I maintain this is a callback to his own issues with that time he was brainwashed by Brother Blood and people were a lot less great at understanding in the aftermath that a lot of his choices hadn’t been his to actually make, and that there was bitterness here on his part for Cass getting the understanding and support from Bruce that we never saw Dick get when it was him in a similar position. Kinda a Prodigal Son type vibe. But point being, this was a brief period and it didn’t last, but it is there so there’s interesting potential to have Dick and Cass not DISLIKE each other by any means, but just at times be slightly uncomfortable around each other and trying their best to hide it...from the one other person in the family most capable of/likely to pick up on it).
So what I think it is on Cass’ part, the discomfort/slight ‘not quite sure how I feel about this’ aspect of things.... Like, its just a headcanon, and one where in my head she’s put a lot of effort into making sure he never ever picks up on this particular thing from her. Because she’s not proud of it. At all.
Even if pride is really the problem. 
See, I’ve long believed that out of the entire Batclan, Dick is the only person who can ever beat Cass in a fight. Even compared to Bruce.
And to be clear, its not like Dick can always beat Cass. Or even often. At most, its still maybe like, two fights out of ten. And its not deliberate, like something he can do or capitalize on consciously.
But for someone like Cass, who otherwise is pretty much undefeated unless she’s going up against her own mother, Lady Shiva….even two fights out of ten is a lot.
And it bugs her, more than she cares to admit.
Because she is as competitive in her own ways as the rest of her family. She does have her own ego about certain things, like everyone else does. And David Cain, monster that he was, raised her to be the best there is, at one thing and one thing only: fighting. As much as she hates him, as much as she hates her childhood and what was done to her, how much she missed out on and the things she still feels left out for not understanding or grasping the way she thinks she should…..alongside all that has always been at least an awareness that at least there is one thing that came out of it: she is the best. Absent her mother, who one day she will fully and consistently surpass, everyone including Lady Shiva believes…as much as Cass hates her father and everything he did to her and why, she’s still at times taken a certain sort of pride in her skills in fighting. At least in that one slight respect, even if its not something she would have chosen, had she ever been given a choice….at least it had worked, had done what it’d been intended to.
Except for when it comes to Dick. Who will probably always be able to beat her, maybe two times out of ten. No matter how much more she grows in her skills. There’s that one or two times every now and then, where it will always be a toss-up, as likely to go to him as to her.
And its not something that Dick’s even aware of giving him a specific edge when it comes to fighting her, and its not something he could capitalize on even if he were aware of it.
See, as much as fighting is second nature to Cass, as instinctive as breathing…it goes hand in hand with her ability to read body language. That’s her edge, the one variable that no one else can compete with or match her on, the thing that will always put her in a class of her own…..the one result of specific training that was crafted specifically to create this one result.
You can’t separate Cassandra’s fighting prowess from her ability to read body language. They are one and the same, even if she can use the latter for other things too, and even if her fighting prowess isn’t JUST due to her ability to read body language. Which its not, by any means. BUT, regardless, she can’t train herself out of a reliance on body language while fighting….especially not to fight one person in specific, her own brother, and even there pretty much just out of pride.
Because the slight advantage Dick has over everyone else when facing her, is that like her, he’s one of the only fighters out there who was trained from birth to have an almost inhuman mastery of his own body, to be at the peak of human capability in specific regards. Even though his training wasn’t at all in the arena of fighting, at least not before he was taken in by Bruce. For Dick as well as Cass, there are certain things that are so fundamental to him, so ingrained into his movements because they were taught to him at the same time as he was taught to walk, the one being every bit as natural as the other.
And acrobatics was only one of these things. Performing was the other.
Y’see, the one variable Cass can’t totally account for every single time she spars with Dick….is that Dick’s body lies.
Like I said earlier on….its not just reading body language that Dick was likely raised to do, albeit in different, less rigorous ways than Cass. He was also taught from an equally early age how to DISPLAY body language. Or rather, a specific kind of body language.
My headcanon is that because as early as he began learning acrobatics, Dick was taught acrobatics with an eye towards performing, specifically. Since that was what his family did. And the one thing performers like the Flying Graysons always, always have to do…is perform with a smile.
So it was probably drilled into Dick from an early age, even if it wasn’t couched in these terms or even consciously thought of in this specific way…..but while taught the fundamental components of a flip, breaking it down into each individual micro-movement expected of his body in order to achieve the optimal flip for performing in front of a crowd…..one of those micro-movements, for Dick…was a smile.
Its as fundamental to his acrobatics as every other command his conscious AND subconscious mind sends to the various muscle groups he uses in his routines and now in his fighting even. I think its a large part of why quips and banter and grins are so intrinsic to his fighting as well. He doesn’t KNOW how to be anything else. Bruce probably tried to train it out of him before realizing or accepting that focusing on just making Dick not smile while backflipping over an opponent was detrimental, if not merely just unnecessary. Its just second nature to Dick, as much as reading body language is to Cass. 
His own training from the time he could walk, put just as much emphasis on ensuring that no matter how he felt during a performance, no matter how exhausted he was or how stressed, whether he was having a bad day or was just cranky or mad at his parents or mad about something someone in the crowd said or just didn’t feel like practicing his routines today….he did it all with a smile, an easy, effortless grin, as though he was lighter than air and nothing he did was taking a toll on his body, it was all equally effortless.
Combine that with the fact that for Dick, because of what his training was FOR….because it was all done in the name of being with his family, being like his family, it was so he could do what nobody else could do, so he could fly….unlike Cass, Dick’s early training instilled in him an intrinsic pairing of movement and joy. To him, movement IS joy. Its essential to his core, to who he is. 
Where other people see him throwing in unnecessary flips to his fighting to show off, Dick’s always just grinned and shrugged his shoulders at this, unable to explain what’s not even a matter of conscious thought….to him, saying he added an unnecessary flip is like saying to someone else they took an unnecessary breath. He can understand what they’re saying….just like you can take note of taking an extra breath that you don’t really need…but he can’t link that to the ‘show off’ part of things anymore than you could understand someone accusing you of showing off for taking shorter, quicker breaths than you need to. 
Because Dick doesn’t throw in unnecessary acrobatics while fighting because he wants to show off, IMO. Who is he showing off for? The people he’s fighting? Why on earth would they be more impressed by him doing an extra fancy flip than they would just by virtue of knowing his reputation as a fighter and seeing it proven true as he kicked their ass? No, I think he does it because he’s not even thinking about it, and he certainly can’t think of a reason not to. Its just what he does. Flipping out of the way of an incoming punch in such a way as to make that flip as aesthetically appealing as it is functional, is every bit as instinctive to Dick as every other part of the flip.
Because that’s WHY he was trained to do all this. That’s what its for. Not fighting and superheroics. Those are what he adapted it to do. First and foremost, it was done, taught to him, perfected by him…..so he could fly. And show everybody just how much he loved doing that, when you get right down to it. Because he loves being able to do that. For Dick, the heights he can reach are his higher power, and every single movement he makes is like an individual prayer given in thanks of the gift given to him, that enables him to do that in ways nobody else can match.
But in terms of fighting, and in terms of body language that Cass reads on an equally unconscious level….this has the unexpected and accidental side effect where every so often…Dick’s body lies. At least, I imagine that’s how Cass would describe it, if she ever put it into words for someone. Because he links his joy, his happiness and pleasure at being able to do the acrobatics he does with the movements themselves, because its so ingrained in him to do it all with a smile, to sell for the crowd that its all done with the greatest of ease, and because its inevitable that on some basic level, there are some flips or techniques that the mere act of doing brings to mind - even just his subconscious - memories he associates with that movement, that are largely, more often than not, pleasurable memories….Dick’s body language every so often doesn’t quite read the way everyone else’s does. The way Cass expects it to, knows how to interpret.
And this is nothing deliberate on his part. Nothing he could capitalize on, even if Cass did ever tell him what it reads like from her perspective. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t train himself to use this to his advantage in fights against Cass, any more than Bruce for all his mastery of his body, can effectively train himself to not broadcast certain body language tells when sparring with Cass. Because Bruce’s training, as extensive and intense as it was, and as he commits himself to it, still only started later in life. When his movements and how they pair with each other and his emotional states, they were already set in stone. Because those things go deeper than conscious control….even if Bruce made an effort to hide his next punch from Cass, she’d see the indicators of him preparing to deceive and adapt just as instinctively.
But Dick, because his training began as early and was so 24/7 in its own way as Cassandra’s, when they were both just learning their basic fundamentals and their body was building connections between their muscle movements and emotions they felt when using each precise combination of each specific muscles to achieve each specific end result….with Dick, the times his body language misleads Cass is as unconscious as breathing to him, as instinctive as every other of these movements, and the urge to smile while doing it. He’s not aware of doing it, couldn’t consciously command himself to do it more without giving that away in micro-expressions in his face….but its there, nonetheless. Because its not like it was done or trained into him in order to lie to Cass or someone like her….that’s just an unanticipated side-effect. It was done for one reason only: to make even the most rigorous of efforts look as effortless as skipping.
And it being that instinctive is WHY Cass occasionally falls for it, every now and again. Even when she tries to prepare for it sometimes. Because its like a lie spoken in her own first language. Every so often, she misreads how exhausted or worn out he is while in the middle of a spar, because Dick’s body language while flipping around so often reads as easy, light-hearted, happy. None of the things associated with being on the verge of his legs giving out, even if they are. And every now and again, a punch catches her off guard, because its not telegraphed in any of the normal ways, his body language is too focused on what’s coming after the punch, the preparation to make a leap or a vault that its particularly excited for, that always paired with anticipation, from as early as he could attempt it. Every once in awhile she fails to capitalize on a moment of weakness he has or an injury he’s nursing…because she’s missed the signs for it, its so buried deep beneath the performance mask he was trained to wear specifically while continuing through a routine even while feeling an ache or pain in that particular muscle group.
Even if no one else entirely knows why, Dick can beat Cass every once in awhile, even more often than Bruce can. Because the LESS Dick focuses his conscious thoughts, the MORE instinctive he makes his movements, basically when he MOST relies on just muscle memory and lets his body take over on autopilot, trusting it to get him safely through a fight while his conscious mind and troubles might be otherwise distracting him…..that’s when Cass has the hardest time reading him reliably. Because when he gets like that, everything else vanishes. Its like no other emotions exist for him. Even while being otherwise miserable or unhappy or grieving or tired….when he just lets go and trusts his body to do what its been trained to do so often and extensively its just pure instinct at this point….all of her brother’s movements at that point just sing. The brutality of a fight gets lost in the beauty of his acrobatics, even on the very same level and in the very language she most relies on…because they were meant to be ‘spoken’ even that bone-deep, they were meant to look like and indicate pure joy of movement in even the most primal of languages.
On a certain level, Cassandra has always been the least surprised of any of their family, why people like Deathstroke and the Court of Owls and countless other villains have always been so intent, so focused on making Dick specifically turn to their side, become one of them…become a killer. She understands the draw they feel towards him perfectly, probably even better than they do. Because the language these villains speak most naturally is violence. And her eldest brother takes violence and makes it art.
And even villains are drawn to art that speaks to them in a language they can understand.
So, even though she doesn’t want it to, even though it shouldn’t bother her, even though it ultimately doesn’t even matter that much….it bothers Cass, a little bit. That Dick has just enough of an x-factor in sparrings specific to just the two of them, that no matter how much Cass tries to adjust for it, she can still be thrown or fooled as easily as anyone else can fall for a lie spoken in a shared language. Its actually probably for the best that her own unique form of Kryptonite belongs to none other than her very own big brother, protective to a fault. Someone who would never hurt her.
Except…
Even with all that, she can’t help herself. Every once in awhile, she looks at Dick and can’t help but be wary. She doesn’t like having a potential blindspot she knows full well is there and can’t do a damn thing about. She doesn’t like that it bugs her so much either, but it does. She doesn’t like that the fighting and body-language reading that are the end results of her father’s abuse have become in different ways just enough of points of pride that she finds her pride pricked at the reminder she’s still fallible. Still human. Can still be fooled, even if unintentionally, even if not that often. 
Because given the price she paid - that she never asked to pay, never was asked if she WANTED to pay it - to be so foolproof, at least where everyone else is concerned, she at least wished the damn training had worked as intended, instead of one specific monkey wrench her father hadn’t accounted for. All because who was prepared for an acrobatic vigilante who’s happy and gleeful on a primal level even when fighting for his life, because his body can’t help but be glad it can fly?
So she fights that feeling down any time it arises, becomes all the more determined for it not to create a wedge between her and the big brother she honestly adores and she knows honestly adores her too.
But sometimes when he smiles at her, Cass hates the way she is. What it makes her. Because all of them by now are used to people like the Court constantly trying to repurpose Dick, turn him against everything he holds dear. And each time everyone else is reminded of that, they turn to cast glances at Cass, without even thinking about it. They’re all just as aware of Dick’s own fighting prowess, after all. And how deadly he could be if he ever put his mind to it and set aside his morality.
She knows full well that if that ever happened, if any villain ever did manage to get their hooks in deep, she’s the one it would ultimately fall to. The Break Glass in Case of Emergency, Plan Z, final failsafe. She was who they would sic on the big brother that’s always drawn the darkness like moths to his flickering flame.
And she alone nurses the knowledge that if it ever came to that….she’s not quite as certain as the rest of their family, that she could infallibly win.
It bothers her more than she can say, more than she will ever dare say….that one of her greatest fears wears her doting eldest brother’s face.
Because if the Court of Owls ever did make a Talon of him for real, there’s no one who could sink a fatal blade past her guard more easily than he. She might never see it coming, too busy looking at him and seeing nothing but poetry instead.
Dick held her once while she came down from a lungful of Fear Toxin. Even as she shook the last of it from her system and looked at him with fresh, clear eyes again, she couldn’t help but flinch. He asked her what she’d seen while under its influence. She didn’t answer, and hated how sad he looked while covering up. No doubt thinking that it was because even now she didn’t trust him, her own family, wouldn’t let herself be completely vulnerable with them.
Still, she’s certain he would have looked far sadder if she’d told him the truth.
So each and every time her big brother’s body tells her a lie, she tells him one right back.
After all, the flip side of being the two best truthseers in the family, is there’s nobody better at being lie-tellers at the same time.
Who else is ever going to know?
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inadaydream99 · 5 years ago
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Hey! I was wondering if you would do an Ateez scenario where their S/O is a university student and they notice that they're overworking themselves so they try to distract them and make sure they take a break? Sorry of this is a weird request.
Hey, thank you for requesting! 😁 I loved writing this so I hope you enjoy it!
Hongjoong
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Hongjoong was concerned. You hadn’t been answering any of his texts or calls for the last few days and it was making him worried for your well-being.
He knew you had a lot of work, deadlines for essays and assignments approaching fast. But he didn’t want you to overwork yourself. So he decided to pay you a visit and make you spend some time with him so he knows you are relaxing.
Knocking on your door he waits for a few seconds before you answer, your head poking out between the small gap to see who is disturbing your studying.
“Oh! Hongjoong, what are you doing here?” You question in surprise, not expecting him to be visiting you.
“I came to make sure you aren’t overworking. Can I come in, I bought food?” Hongjoong lightly teases as he lifts up a bag filled with an assortment of snacks. You giggle and open the door fully, stepping aside to allow your boyfriend to enter.
You both settle on your bed, all the snacks scattered around you as you tuck in and enjoy each other’s company. It’s been too long since you had just hung out like this and you hadn’t realised how much you had missed it until that moment.
After finishing the snacks you snuggle up to Hongjoong, his arm resting securely around you waist as he presses some light kisses to your forehead.
“Thank you for doing this. I really needed to have a break.” You softly speak, the comfortable silence surrounding you making you feel sleepy.
“You’re welcome baby. Let’s get some rest now.” He fondly looks down at you, his chest full of complete adoration for you as you drift off to sleep in his warm embrace.
Seonghwa
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You had been stressing over your finals for weeks, wanting to get the best results as you could. So with that, you were constantly studying, your head barely ever leaving a book, as you try to absorb copious amounts of information.
Your boyfriend Seonghwa had been checking up on you every day, wanting to take care of you as he could see your regard for anything other than studying was basically thrown out of the window. However, his numerous attempts weren’t having any impacts. You have barely even been acknowledging his presence.
Seonghwa was on the verge of snapping, his annoyance at your disregard for everything testing his patience. So he decided to try a new tactic to get you to take a break.
While you were out at a lecture, Seonghwa snuck into your room and hid all your textbooks that you had left behind. He was also surprised to see your laptop left on your bed, thinking you would have taken it with you, but you hadn’t. So he took that too, hiding it in his room, with him.
He was a little nervous to see your reaction, knowing you can be feisty when you are stressed. But now all he could do was wait until you figured out what he had done. And he didn’t have to wait long.
Loud banging on his door jolted him from his daze as he carefully gets up and slowly approaches the door with caution.
“Seonghwa! I know you are in there! Stop being a whimp and open this door!” You demand, your tone harsh and filled with anger.
As he answers the door he is met with your unamused expression, arms folded and foot tapping on the floor impatiently.
“Where is my laptop.” You state completely unimpressed. Seonghwa only smirks at you and shrugs his shoulders making you feel even more aggitated.
“I know you have got it. I need to work!” You continue, the last of the very little amount of composure you have fading.
“I just wanted you to take a rest. You’ve been working non stop for ages and I was starting to get worried. I mean, think about it. When was the last time we hung out, just us and no distractions?” Seonghwa explains calmly, his face full of genuine concern which melts your anger.
“I don’t know.” You mumble feeling defeated. It is true, you had been overworking yourself. Seonghwa was only trying to help you because he cares.
“I’m sorry.” You meet his eyes with your glossy ones, tears threatening to spill at how tired you are. Seonghwa pulls you into a hug, his arms protectively wrapped around you as you bury your face into his chest.
“It’s ok. Let’s go and cuddle for a while yeah? You deserve some rest.” Seonghwa whispers as you slowly lift your head and look at him. A meek smile on your face as he pulls you into his room.
Yunho
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Anyone could see that you weren’t taking care of yourself. Your droopy eyes and slumped body screaming for some rest. But you just don’t have any time, your assignments being due in a few days meaning there was no time for rest.
Your boyfriend Yunho hasn’t seen you in a few days due to work, but he decided to check up on you because he wanted to make sure you are ok. However, since he has arrived you have been typing away on your laptop, telling him that you will only be a few more minutes. And that has turned into almost two hours now.
“(Y/N), if you don’t give me some attention right now then I’m coming over to tickle you.” Yunho warns as your eyes remain glued to the screen.
“Just a few more minutes.” You absentmindedly mumble, the excuse sounding so monotone Yunho was sure you hadn’t even listened to what he just said.
Huffing, he stands up and approaches you. His hands landing on your waist, just holding you for a minute to see if that gets any responce. Nothing.
You screech as his hands tickle your sides, your body jolting around in your seat to try and get away as you laugh uncontrollably. Yunho smiles at your responce, feeling triumphant at getting you attention away from your work.
“Ah! Stop! It tickles.” You exclaim through laughter as you manage to stand up and create some space between you both, you attention now falling on your boyfriend.
“What was that for?” You playfully narrow your eyes at Yunho as he smirks back at you.
“You need to take a break. So I’m distracting you.” Yunho states simply, a soft chuckle at the end at you rolling your eyes.
Yeosang
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Yeosang is usually quite, not wanting to interrupt or disturb anyone, especially you when he can see you are busy. But for your own sanity, his partially his, Yeosang decides to try and distract you from your work.
“Hey! (Y/N)! Give me some attention.” Yeosang whines like a child as he flops on your bed and flails his arms in distress. You turn around to face him with an amused expression at his uncharacteristic behaviour.
“Yeosang I’m trying to work, stop acting like a child.” You state flatly, trying to hide your giggle at the scene in front of you. At this, Yeosang stops and looks at you, a smirk replacing his whiny face as he gets up and walks over to you.
“Oh no, what are you doing.” You laugh as Yeosang takes hold of your hand and pulls you up. You fall into his chest as you struggle to get your balance. Yeosang’s arms tight around you so you can’t get away.
“Give me attention.” He suddenly becomes serious as you look up at him.
“You’ve been working too much.” He whispers as your foreheads rest together, both of you enjoying each others presence as you stand in the middle of the room.
San
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You haven’t taken your eyes away from your laptop screen for hours. To San it felt like years and it was beginning to make hin very concerned. No one should be concentrating that hard for hours on end, espically when you are clearly exhausted. So he decided it’s time for a distraction.
Slyly moving over to you, San places his hand gently on your shoulder in an attempt to get your attention. When that has no effect he realises that he’s going to have to do this the hard way.
Snatching your laptop from your desk as you are typing away San makes a run for it, opening your door and sprinting down the hallway leaving a trail of giggles in his wake. It takes you a minute for everything to sink in, your eyes blinking to get moisture back into them after staring at the screen for so long.
You abruptly stand up and race out of your room, desperately trying to catch your cheeky boyfriend. Entering the living room you notice San is sat casually on the sofa looking as though nothing has happened and your laptop no where in sight.
“Alright, what have you done with my laptop.” You ask, arms folded to show how unamused you are by the situation.
“I’ll tell you once you’ve had a break and spent some time with me.” San smirks at you from the sofa. You don’t want to give in but cuddling with San is very inviting and you do feel very drained.
You huff in defeat after a moment of contemplating and flop down on the sofa next to San, a wide grin on his face as you give in.
“I knew you couldn’t resist me.” San mocks and you roll your eyes in responce.
“You better have saved my work before hiding my laptop.” You warn with a raised brow.
“Oops.” San pretends to look guilty. You see through his act and grab the pillow beside you, hitting him with it as he laughs, exclaims of “I did, I saved it!” heard as he try’s to get you to stop.
Mingi
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Mingi had accompanied you to the library at the weekend because he wanted to spend some time with you. He was hoping that you would at least pay him a little attention, but he was very wrong. You are determined to get a lot of work done for your classes and nothing was going to stop you. Or that’s what you thought.
You see, Mingi had his own ideas and one of them was to get you to stop working so he could take you for lunch.
As you walk through the isles of books searching for one that you need in order to finish your work Mingi sneaks up behind you and makes you jump. You jolt forward in shock before turning around to find Mingi on the floor laughing.
“Ugh, Mingi! I’m trying to focus.” You whine as your boyfriend stands back up and grabs gour hand.
“I’m sorry. It’s just, don’t you think you’ve done enough work. I want to take you for lunch.” Mingi looks down at you with puppy eyes as he pulls you closer to his chest. Your hands make their way around his neck as you look at him sympathetically.
“Alright, let’s go. I can finish my work later.” You give in as Mingi smiles back at you happily.
Wooyoung
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“What do you mean you don’t have time? I’m your boyfriend, you should always have time for me.” Wooyoung states defensively as you tell him for the 100th time to leave so you can focus on your work.
“Woo, please.” You whine at him, becoming impatient as you wait for him to finally comply with your request. But he is relentless and stays sat firmly in your room.
“Come on (Y/N). If you have a break now I’ll buy you whatever food you want?” Wooyoung try’s to persuade. You pause thinking about his offer, you are feeling hungry and you haven’t eaten yet.
“Ok, fine. But you promise after this you will let me work.” You compromise. Wooyoung nods enthusiastically as you chuckle at how proud of himself he looks.
He waits by the door as you put on your shoes before taking your hand in his and leading you out.
Jongho
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After having no luck in getting a responce from you by bribery, Jongho decides to make you take a break. After all, you look half dead from sleep deprivation and it is worrying him.
You yelp as you feel strong arms wrap under your legs and lift you from your seat.
“Jongho, put me down!” You demand trying not to let the smile on your face be seen by your boyfriend.
“Ok.” Jongho says as you are dropped onto your bed, him climbing in next to you and holding you to his chest so you can’t move back to your work.
“Now get some sleep.” Jongho looks at you affectionaly as his hand caresses your cheek. You want to make a snarky remark and get back to doing work but you’re so comfortable in his embrace that you feel your eyes become heavy.
“Goodnight.” Jongho whispers as your eyes flutter shut, a soft kiss pressed to your forehead.
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lavidademarimar · 7 years ago
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HEYA! Here’s the pretty masterlist with all previous days. Talk to me and let me know what you think <3 
Summary: Jack won the battle but hasn’t won the war.
Warnings: none
Day Thirteen - What if we’re making a mistake?
‘I am so excited!!!!!!!’ Oli screamed. 
Lucia and Elena looked aghast. 
‘What is the purpose of me whispering these things to you if you’re going to shout it from the roof?’ Elena was annoyed. ‘I don’t even know how to whisper properly! I am making a huge effort!’
The girls had gone a little further away from the group. Fionn and Harry were taking their mid-afternoon naps.
Oli hugged her. ‘I love this so much. Finally. This guy is crazy about you. This has so much potential to be life changing and amazing. Can you imagine what you’ll tell your children?’
‘Whoa. Stop right there,’ Lucia finally intervened. Olivia’s madness needed to be reined in. ‘No one is going to have children anytime soon, especially the one that’s been fucking a guy for twelve days only.’
‘You two take me way too seriously. I was only joking,’ Oli huffed. 
Elena and Lucia stared at Olivia, knowing perfectly well she wasn’t joking. She never joked about marriages and parenting. 
‘Anyway… If you’re sure this is what you want to do, then I support it. I really like these guys, and Jack has proven he’s worthy. I just think you need to address the Harry thing at some point,’ said Lucia, being the sound friend, as always.
‘Yeah, that was a bit of a red flag. And it should be a red flag for you because you have so many guy friends. Who says this doesn’t happen again with one of your friends? With your roommate?’ Olivia sobered up from her motherly high and went back to business.
Elena almost cackled. ‘Jack has no life against my friends.’
‘Does he know that?’ Oli asked.
‘Well, he’ll find out when he meets them. Poor thing. He must think you two are the most intimidating friends he’ll have to deal with,’ Elena giggled. 
Elena actually hadn’t thought about Jack meeting her friends. She hadn’t thought about anything regarding going back home. She sighed, her new reality kicking in. She’d said she and Jack would give it a go. Jack had no idea how hectic Elena’s life in Brussels was. There it was again. The doubt. The voice. He’d leave her after a month of begging to see her, to talk to her, to have her give him just a few minutes of her time. It just wasn’t sustainable. They’d both end up hurt. 
Elena didn’t realise she’d stopped talking and stared blankly ahead of her for about five minutes. 
‘Hey? Hello? Come back from Saturn,’ Oli slowly waved a hand in front of her. 
‘I’m sorry. I…drifted.’
‘Are you okay?’ Lucia asked.
‘I’ll be right back.’ Elena stood up and walked towards the ocean. It had been two days since she almost drowned but she needed to clear her head. 
She was alone again, but walked carefully. The waves were manageable and soon she dunked herself and started swimming. The beach made her sound. Her time was up. Tomorrow they’d leave around noon to their regular lives, and Elena had a knot in her stomach. How the fuck was she going to balance her real life with this pseudo-boyfriend? Jack was time-demanding and possessive. How was that going to translate into her mobile? She had so many fucking questions that she wanted to answer herself, and she might have managed to get ahead had not a pair of large hands grabbed her waist and wrapped themselves around her. Jack’s beard was out of control at this point and her neck was ticklish even before he’d started kissing it.
‘I know why you’re here and you don’t have to worry about me. I’m way better. I’m okay,’ said Elena without even turning around. 
Jack laughed in her ear. ‘Ye know me too well already.’
She smiled. ‘I can’t believe we leave tomorrow.’
‘I know. I feel we’ve been here for months. I don’t really want to go back.’
‘Me either.’
She still didn’t turn around. She was staring at the ocean; how vast it was. How endless. She took deep breaths.
‘Are ye okay, Birdie?’ Jack started to worry. 
‘Yes, I’m fine. I just want to take all this in.’
That didn’t reassure him anything. He didn’t let her go. They stood in silence for a bit. Jack rubbed Elena’s neck softly, as if he knew her mind was in another dimension but her body was still there, and he needed her to come back. 
‘What if we’re making a mistake?’ Elena blurted it out. 
Jack sighed and almost chuckled. He knew. As soon he saw her by herself, he knew her mind was poisoned with doubt, and he cursed whatever or whomever had made Elena seem unworthy of having a man devote himself to her. If there was a person in the world who deserved it, it was Elena. 
‘I think the mistake would be if we go our separate ways tomorrow and leave it at that,’ Jack spoke softly, avoiding all type of confrontational tone that could put Ellie off. 
‘You’re going to hate me. You don’t know what my life is like in Brussels. I am overworked and underpaid and it’s hectic.’
‘Ye just described the life of any person of our generation that’s in the labour market, Elena. Do ye think I wake up and wank all day?’ He thought she was amusing at this point. He was no longer mortified by her. 
She faced him laughing and put her head on his chest. He felt warm and the smell of salt water had stuck to him. 
‘I am an idiot, aren’t I? Elena asked. 
‘Aye, ye are, but I want to be with ye anyway, so that makes me a bigger one.’ He wrapped his arms around her and put his chin on her head.  
Everyone had picked up on the change in Jack. It was too obvious how he just let the façade drop and been quite pleasant to be around. No more beard scratching and fidgeting and obsessively hovering over Elena. It was like he could finally relax completely. Jack wasn’t an arsehole, but he was the one that had made less of an effort to include himself in the group. The girls had noticed it, but hadn’t said anything because he made Elena happy, and that was more important than having an extra card player after dinner.
Olivia and Jack were the only ones in the house, watching a film. The others had gone to make last-minute purchases and get dinner. A barbecue to remember. Jack was surprisingly upbeat and chill. After that moment at the pier, he knew the war wasn’t won yet, but he was in high spirits anyway. He would see her soon in Belgium and he’d prove to Elena they could manage it. 
‘When are you going to Brussels?’ Olivia asked. 
‘In a fortnight,’ he said, not even looking at her. 
‘You’re ignoring what she’s asking.’
Jack pondered briefly exactly how much Elena had shared, but dismissed it quickly. He realised he didn’t give a fuck. He shrugged. ‘I’ll say it was impulsive and I just had to see her. Can ye give me her flatmate’s mobile so I can have some backup on what I want to do?’
She smiled. ‘Sure.’ 
‘Are ye going to tell her?’ he asked.
‘No. She deserves to be surprised,’ she grabbed his arm in a rare show of affection and approval. 
‘Aren’t ye going to threaten to kill me if I do something to yer girlfriend?’ He was doubtful of how Olivia was on his side. He’d also learnt by now how the dynamics were between them. If Adam found it funny that Elena and Olivia said they were girlfriends, he wouldn’t have a problem with it either. It was funny.
‘You’ve seen me handling knives. I don’t need to threaten you. Just know that it won’t be just me when we come for your head,’ she said calmly but with her crazy eyes very much out of orbit. 
He nodded. ‘Understood.’ 
Olivia would never be on his side.
Olivia grabs her phone and Jack’s vibrates. ‘There. I sent you Carlos and Andres’ contacts. She lives with Carlos but Andres and his girlfriend live in the same building and they’re always together.’
‘Thanks, Olivia,’ he said, hugging her unexpectedly.
‘You better be nice, Kevin McKidd.’ 
‘Did ye lot google Scottish actors just to spite me?’ he asked.
‘Of course we did,’ she smiled.
Tom opened the door and Elena came in carrying grocery bags. Jack took them out of her hands quickly.
‘Why are ye making any effort? I told ye to not let her do anything!’ he told Tom off.
‘Mate, you try telling the bird she can’t do something, yeah?’ said Harry, carrying a box of wine. 
‘I am fine!’ Elena was annoyed. 
Jack grabbed her face with both hands. ‘Let people help ye, Elena. Please. Yer not 100% okay yet.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she gave him a peck and followed Harry to make the sangria pitcher. 
He shook his head. 
‘You wanted to date the bird, eh? There you have her,’ said Fionn, shaking him back to reality. 
Jack laughed and scratched his beard. ‘I’m in way over my head, mate.’
Fionn put his arm on Jack’s shoulder and pressed it. ‘You are, but we like her more than we like you.’ 
Jack pushed him and Fionn almost fell to the floor. They laughed.
Harry and Jack were sat outside with a couple of beers. Whatever had happened previously was forgotten. It was always like this. Fionn and Tom were playing Heads Up! with the others, but these two weren’t in the mood. 
Jack also wanted to give Elena some space. He didn’t want her to feel smothered, but there was also a part of him that knew he needed to start preparing himself for the goodbye. She was right. It wasn’t going to be easy. Two weeks of sex and wine and laughter and overwhelming joy were now coming to an end, and he really wasn’t ready to wake up to an empty bed again. 
‘So, you’re going to go to Brussels even though she asked you not to go until you figure out how everything is going to go along between you lot?’ Harry shook his head.
‘Olivia gave me her flatmate’s number so I can tell him when I’m going,’ he said, looking into the house. 
Elena was sat on the floor, trying to guess something Tom was mimicking.
‘Well, if the girls approve, then all right. If not, you can ask her new best mate Thomas for any insight,’ Harry pointed at them. 
Jack laughed. ‘I bloody know, mate. Even if I’d done nothing with Elena, they’d still been best mates. It’s absurd. Ye want to know the worst part?’
‘What?’ Harry asked.
‘That fuckin’ walloper is going to Brussels next week for work, and guess where he’s going to stay?’ Jack shook his head. 
Harry burst out laughing. ‘Tom is going to see Elena before you are? What the fuck?!’
‘I know, mate. He’s the reason I’m not there next week.’ 
‘What about the flatmate?’ Harry asked.
‘She lives with one of her best friends from school, who is a lad,’ Jack shrugged. 
‘Another one that’s not going to get his nose broken,’ said Harry, shaking his head. 
Jack punched him in the arm. ‘Ye keep asking for it, mate. Anyway, I’m treading lightly there, I’m trying to wrap my head around that fact.’
‘Why don’t you ask her?’ asked Harry, stifling a laugh. 
‘Ye bloody arsehole. She said yes to dating me. I don’t give a fuck about anything else,’ said Jack proudly.
‘Sure you don’t, mate,’ Harry was sceptical. And he should be. He’d been on the receiving side of Jack’s jealousy to think that this was an on and off switch. 
‘Doesn’t she have some friends she can set me up with?’ Harry winked. 
‘I am very sure she could set ye up with a friend of hers.’
‘I may go after you get back then. I’m tired of London girls,’ Harry laughed.
NEXT: Part Nine
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