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sweetsubharry · 4 years ago

Note

hey ! sorry to bother you but could you reccomend me some fics of footballer louis?? thank you !! love your acc

Hiya!! 💖you can never bother me!! ^-^ ohmgosh I’m so glad you like my blog! I love footballer louis djskasdhjag tysm(sorry it took soooo long!)

please make sure you read the tags and stay safe everyone!💖

Also these are not in any particular order, however I will say the first two are probably my favourites ;) I have to read them again right after this!

freeze this moment in a frame and stay like this by rosesau

Harry (not so) secretly crushes on the cute footie player and fills pages with sketches of him.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by 1Diamondinthesun

Harry spends most of his time in an empty house or a lonely darkroom, dreaming of leaving his small town for art school. He's invisible to most people. And then Louis Tomlinson sees him. Life will never be the same.

Or, the American high school AU loosely inspired by She's All That.

Definition of Beauty by zanni_scaramouche

“Your book is upside down.” Harry nods at Louis’ book, his history text now that he sees it too.

“I’d rather study you.”

They both blink, startled by the slip.

“With you. Study with you,” Louis rushes to say. “Liam says I’m shite at history, can you help?”

Louis’ caught off guard by an omega he nearly takes out with an errant footie ball. It’s not that Louis’ never seen Harry before, it’s that he can’t stop looking, and he’s desperate to figure him out.

Coffee Cups and Football Boots by kimtaedumb

Harry’s stood behind the counter again, but this time he’s painting his nails. Louis strolls up to the counter and, thanks to his no brain-to-mouth filter, blurts out, “Isn’t that a little girlish, Haz?” leaning closer to inspect.

Harry lets out a little huff as his hand slips, “Oh, damn, now I’ve messed it up,” he pouts and turns to Louis, “Why should making myself feel pretty be girly?”

Louis holds up his hands in surrender, “’M not judging, jus’ curious is all.”

(The entirely cheesy and cliché Christmas AU, in which Harry doesn’t give a damn what people think about him – mostly – and Louis may be a little bit in love.

Alternatively, the one in which Harry owns a café that’s barely scraping by and Louis is a footballer and he takes Harry away for Christmas.

Featuring Zayn as a cocky little shit that most definitely needs to be put back in his place, Niall as the loveable Irish dude who drinks too much and flirts with Zayn more than the average girl, and Liam who loves everyone but hates them all at the same time.)

Way in the World by flowsque

When Louis Tomlinson enters the waiting room, Harry can distinctly feel his heart sinking to his stomach. The man's hair is ruffled and dishevelled and his red jersey, damp with sweat from training, clings to his perfect and chiseled body. He stands there, almost unreal, against the glass door, peering inside the office. Harry knew this would’ve happened, sooner or later. That he would have bumped into him. They play for the same club after all, even if they’re in different leagues. It’s not weird. It is not. Except it totally is. - Or, the one where Harry has a knee injury and an embarrassing crush on Manchester United's pretty number ten.

I Long For You by AnotherAnonymousWriter

Thirty minutes later, he's sat on a bench in Hyde Park with a book in his lap and a travel mug with hot tea in his hand. Not far from where he's sat, a group of boys are playing football and a bunch of children are chasing each other. Life is good.

Or at least, life is good until he hears a familiar “LOOK OUT!” and sees a football flying in the direction of his face.

And then everything is black.

(Harry gets hit in the head by various objects and falls for a boy with blue eyes.)

ease the quiet and talk me down by cabinbythesea

Harry's a model and Louis' a footie player.

(Louis teaches Harry some football and Harry is insanely good at giving a lapdance).

Baby, It's You by Bearandleonardwrite

"Oh, yeah. Um..” Harry lets his hands fall to his sides. His brows furrow, face full of concern, and he asks, “You’re not, like, stalking me, are you?”

Louis can’t help the loud cackle that escapes his lips and immediately slaps one of his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound. “Oh my god, Harry, no!” Louis tells him, a little breathlessly, giggles still bubbling out of his chest. “Lottie’s one of the makeup artists here today and she somehow got me to agree to come. I had no idea you modeled for, uh.. this brand until I saw you walk.”

“Oh,” Harry says dumbly, eyebrows still pinched. He lets what Louis just said sink in before a bright grin takes over his face and he goes back to doing up the buttons on his shirt. “Well, that’s alright, then. I’m glad you could make it.

(Basically, Louis' a footie player for Man U and Harry's a YSL model. They meet at a masquerade.)

Touch by kotabear24

Harry's shy and virginal with a past, new on the football team; Louis' the (experienced) popular star of the team and Harry's new mentor.

Come In and Change My Life by lightswoodmagic (sarah_writes)

He’d had the same neighbours since he’d moved into the building, a lovely, wealthy couple in their late sixties who had always invited him around for tea on Sundays. Martha had dropped off homemade biscuits the day he’d moved in, so Harry figured he may as well repeat the sentiment. He could hear someone getting closer to the door just as a flush ran through his body; oh fuck. His heat was close, too close to be knocking on a potentially unknown alpha’s door, but it was too late. The door swung open, and Harry’s mouth dropped. He’d never been overly interested in football, couldn’t find the fascination in watching men run around after a ball for hours aside from their uniforms, but he knew who this was. Louis Tomlinson, alpha, captain of Manchester United, star in a number of Harry’s heat addled fantasies, was his new next-door neighbour.

Or, Harry and Louis become friends when Harry looks after Louis' cat during away games, until one night at a party changes everything between them. It's just a shame Louis' going to be away for the FIFA World Cup for three months.

see the truth (it's me for you) by orphan_account

If you asked Louis the first day of his French Literature class what he’d be doing on the last, he’d probably never have guessed it would involve helping a poorly Harry Styles study for the final exam. Good thing he’s not a betting man.

(Or the one where Louis and Harry spend an entire semester ignoring each other after a one-night stand, only to come face to face when Harry manages to catch the stomach flu during finals week. Sometimes fate is funny like that.)

Use Your Words by zedi

based off this prompt: collage au where jock!harry always serenades flowercrown!louis with love songs in their music class. what nobody knows is that harry actually kinda means the words he sings.

But instead it's Louis as the jock and Harry as the flowerchild because I do what I want.

Stop The World (I Wanna Get Off With You) by ilikepianos

"You like this, don't you?", he asks breathlessly.

What? Sucking cock? Being dominated? Yes, all of that. A big fat yes.

Harry nods, lips still wrapped around Louis' throbbing dick.

Louis' lips curl into a smirk. "Keep going then. You're doing amazing, love."

OR: The uni-football AU where Harry may or may not have a minor crush on the captain of the team and suddenly discovers that the feeling is very much mutual.

Picture Perfect by LittleBubbleStyles

an AU where Louis Tomlinson is a misunderstood football player, and Harry Styles is a misunderstood photographer. Somehow, they're understood together.

I just think about my baby; I'm so full of love I could barely eat by mercutionotromeo

Harry and Louis are six hundred miles apart, but they have the same solutions to the same problem.

Or: a masturbation drabble featuring pillow humping, locker rooms, and copious amounts of dirty talk.

into another (another) serotonin overflow by mercutionotromeo

Harry wants this year to be different - wants it to be the year that he finally gets over this stupid crush. He’s going to uni, he needs to decide what he wants to do with his life.

Instead, he’s deciding what he wants to do to Louis Tomlinson.

Or: Sweet first time sex wherein Harry's adorably awkward, Louis is achingly cool, and Harry rides Louis wearing his jersey.

note: it says it in the tag but this is the edited version written in 2019, rather than the 2017 original- so there’s two put I put the link for the newest one :)

need a little sweetness in my life by mercutionotromeo

Harry's always liked feeling desperate and small when Louis touches him, but when he sucks Harry off...it’s fucking otherworldly. Desperate’s not really the word at that point - it’s helpless. Like… like the fucking world could stop spinning and Harry wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until Louis finished him off with his lips and his tongue.

Or, Harry and Louis go to university together. Harry really likes it when Louis sucks him off, and Louis really likes it when Harry calls him Daddy.

(Sequel to "into another serotonin overflow")

I made a map of your stars by brightbluelou

Harry does not have a crush on Louis Tomlinson. Yes, Louis is very pretty and funny, and Harry may have had more than a few inappropriate thoughts about him, but he certainly doesn’t like him. (Except for the fact that he totally does.) or, Harry is the shy boy in the back of the class that no one really notices. Louis is the loud, outgoing football player that everybody likes.

We Made These Memories for Ourselves by supernope

Breath held, Harry squints his eyes open and focuses on the first stick. A blue line. Harry breathes out an unsteady breath. He’s pretty sure he read that one blue line is a negative, but he fishes the box from the bottom of the pile just to make sure.

“Negative,” he confirms, voice echoing around the small room. “Next.”

Now that he’s feeling a little less shaky, he scans the rest of the tests at once, is met with a headache-inducing mixture of pink plus signs and blue double lines. His heart rate picks up until it’s pounding triple-time in the base of his throat and the pit of his stomach, thundering in his ears and throbbing in his temples. He flips over the rest of the boxes slowly, but he knows what they’re going to say before he even looks.

[or, Louis is a footballer, Harry owns a bakery, and they're having a baby.]

Kiss Me on the Mouth and Set Me Free by ls2k14

Louis has his head thrown back in a laugh, his wet fringe hanging in front of his eyes, and a beautiful flush to his cheeks. From this angle, the sun hits his face just right to where the beams of light are shining in between the spaces of each individual clump of watered down eyelashes. His chest is showing through the soaked material of his white jersey and it seems that his biceps are attempting to break free from the sleeves that are clinging to his skin.

And Harry can do nothing except take it all in. He doesn’t even think he’s breathing at this point. He is literally stuck in place, admiring the true beauty of Louis Tomlinson, while being surrounded by fit footballers and generally attractive people. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in love before, but if Louis let him, he’s pretty damn sure he could change that in the matter of a few nanoseconds.

#ask lots #Lottie fic rec #fic rec #larry fic rec #larry stylinson fic rec #larry fanfic rec #fanfiction #larry fanfiction #larry stylinson fanfiction #bottom harry #top louis #sub harry #dom louis #footballer louis au

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voidstilesplease · 4 years ago

Text

Fandom/s: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Heroes of Olympus

Pairing/s: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Percy Jackson

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Tags: Alternate Universe - Mortal, Cheating, Friends to Lovers, Friends With Benefits, Jealousy, Angst, Bad Decisions, OOC Characters, a significant amount of Taylor Swift references

Chapter 3

But the possibility that Piper knows about it didn't cross her mind. Percy had mentioned being back in town for a few days now, but Piper could not have known that, right? If Piper did, she would have told Annabeth right away because if anybody knows about Annabeth's broken heart pining after Percy all these years, it's Piper. She would've said something.

III.

And soon enough, you're best friends.

Laughing at the other girls who think they're so cool.

/./

Annabeth jerks awake from disturbances originating in the general vicinity of her kitchen. In her half-asleep state, her usually sharp mind turns to a useless mush. So with what mentality she can grasp, she concludes that it's possibly just her cutlery deciding to worm their way out the drawer to skydive to the kitchen floor. Her dream-silly brain likes the image she conjures. After all, not everybody's cutlery would be as adventurous as hers if that should be the case.

Maybe they want to remind Annabeth that they still exist, and she can use them sometimes. Good point, she thinks, but between blueprints after blueprints shoved to her at work, she doesn't have the time to be guilty about using only one spoon for her morning mashed potatoes. Unless it can wash, wipe itself dry, and put itself back to the drawer, she's sticking to her one-spoon-morning routine, thank you very much - that's all she can spare the time to clean.

She squints one eye open and sighs in relief to find that her entire bedroom blanketed in the same comforting darkness that engulfed her to sleep the previous evening. Yesterday morning had been hell. The sun had glared at her accusingly like she had done something wrong by sleeping it through past her alarm after a murderous evening at work. Usually, Annabeth scares people away when she glares at them, so she tried to glare back at the sun, and if she didn't have a degree in architecture and a line of buildings credited to her name, she'd have doubted her own intellectual capacity. She had hauled her ass up from the bed and went about her routine like she'd swallowed an entire pack of Sour Patch in one go. That morning would have sucked completely if it weren't for Percy.

Percy. Who's back in town. For good.

Whom Annabeth is going to have dinner with this evening.

A smile automatically tugs at her lips. In her kitchen, something clatters again, and she sighs. She moves her head to peek up at the alarm clock on the table. It's only fifteen minutes past seven.

She groans.

Now she can hear the blender whirring to life and the unmistakable 'ding' of her toaster. Any sane person who is aware of not having a roommate should already be springing off their bed and grabbing the nearest weapon they can use to bonk the intruder's head.

But Annabeth is used to the intrusion - this is her life now. So, she calmly gets off the bed and folds her sheets. She opens the door to her room and walks the short distance to her kitchen. As the whirring continues, she remembers the first time she woke to the noises. Annabeth wishes she can say that she was calm then, but she wasn't.

She had jumped out of bed, heart drumming so fast in her chest, and took the only item she could find in her room that could bash anybody's brains out - a baseball bat. (She didn't like the sport. It was just a souvenir from a memorable day. Her heart belonged to swimming. Or, though it wasn't clear to her at the time, to a specific swimmer.) As stealthily as she could, she tiptoed on the cold floor to knock someone out who thought they could use her kitchen while robbing her blind.

As it turned out, she had almost bashed her friend Piper.

Piper, bless her, had been unfazed. Not even after seeing the raised baseball bat and Annabeth's wide, frantic eyes. Piper gave her an innocent smile and a chirpy good morning, then went back to chopping celery, ignoring Annabeth's confusion and gaping mouth.

Piper grins as soon as Annabeth appears in the kitchen. "Good morning, Annie!" she lowers the cup of coffee she's holding on the table in front of Annabeth, who immediately reaches for it.

"This smells amazing," Annabeth closes her eyes and inhales. It is why she loves having Piper around for breakfast. She doesn't remember when Piper decided to be her mother, but as long as it benefits Annabeth with cooked meals and non-Starbucks coffee, she's not complaining.

But she can't exactly complain about Starbucks coffee, though. Not when Starbucks brought Percy back to her life - sort of. She realized that if Piper had come yesterday, she'd have missed Percy. But the fates brought Piper to her apartment today so she could meet Percy yesterday. She smiles contentedly at her coffee.

Piper doesn't miss her dopey smile. She raises a brow, pouring the contents of the blender on a tall glass. "Is it that good?"

"No words," Annabeth answers with a silly grin.

Piper draws her eyebrows in suspicion, "Why do I feel like we're not talking about the coffee?"

Annabeth shrugs.

Piper narrows her eyes but lets it go. Knowing Annabeth, it's probably a work-related high. Piper sets her glass of smoothie on the table and sits beside her friend. "Hey, I remember," she says, taking her phone out and starts browsing. "Juniper asked me to show you these." Piper swipes image after image as Annabeth waits curiously. Finally, she passes the phone to Annabeth.

Annabeth takes it and promptly gasps. "Are these for the wedding?" She draws the phone closer to examine the picture. It's of a forest-painted canvas with a man and a woman in the center, holding each other's hands as they walk side-by-side in the middle of a flower-field surrounded by butterflies. Annabeth looks up to Piper for confirmation. When she nods, Annabeth shakes her head in amazement. "That is beautiful."

"I know!" Piper takes the phone from Annabeth, glancing at the picture again before putting it down on the table. "When Juniper sent the picture to me, my eyes goggled."

Annabeth chuckles, "Grover and Juniper commissioned the right artist."

Piper nods in agreement, "And they're even getting it for, like, half the usual price. I suddenly want to get married." She smiles dreamily, reaching for her smoothie.

Annabeth laughs. Jason and Piper have been together since they were in High School. To be fair, they are practically like a married couple - sharing an apartment, sharing bills, considering the possibility of sharing a dog. They've even met each other's parents and got one another's mother or father smitten with them. It's perfectly sensible if they decide to legalize it. With that in mind, Annabeth asks, "So why don't you?"

Piper stiffens, and she briefly averts her eyes before giving Annabeth a wan smile. "He hasn't asked me yet," she says softly, looking away from Annabeth, slurping half-heartedly at her vegetable smoothie.

Annabeth bites her lower lip, mentally reprimanding herself for her careless asking. She didn't mean to poke on touchy subjects. She didn't even know it was a touchy subject at all. "Well," she begins awkwardly. "I'm sure you'll get there anyway." Annabeth offers a smile, hoping to ease the sudden tension.

Piper shrugs, "I'm not in a hurry. Jason's it for me." she pauses, then adds with uncertainty, "I just hope I'm it for him."

Annabeth frowns at the statement. "Now that's ridiculous, Piper." She reaches to touch her friend's hand a bit forcefully. She looks her dead in the eyes and says in total assurance. "Jason's head over heels for you, okay, it's almost criminal that you think you're not it for him."

Piper lifts her eyes, a hint of smile ghosting in her pouting lips. "You think so?"

"You're an idiot for even doubting,"

That seems to alleviate Piper's insecurity, at least for the moment, because she smirks at Annabeth. "Yeah, I guess I'm an idiot. Of course, Jason can't get enough of me. I mean, come on."

Annabeth rolls her eyes. Piper's weird sometimes.

She happily slurps at her smoothie now, humming a chipper tune. She reaches for the plate of toasts and passes it to Annabeth along with a jar of strawberry jam. Annabeth just watches her with amusement.

They eat in silence for a moment before Annabeth hears a clearing of a throat. She looks up to see Piper looking at her intently. Of course, Piper didn't come into her apartment early in the morning just to accompany her to a lovely, peaceful breakfast.

"…Yes?" Annabeth prompts with resignation. If this is happening -and it is- because it's Piper's business now to harass Annabeth, she wants to get it over with sooner than later. She mentally prepares for the onslaught of Piper's usual intros. But, instead of saying "There's this spa that we should check out," or "Do you remember Mark Castillo from 10th grade? Did you see his Facebook status change to Single last night?" or "We should shop new underwears for you, Annie. What you have are boring me to death", she said:

"How's work?"

That certainly catches Annabeth off-guard. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

At Annabeth's incredulous expression, Piper says defensively. "What?" she reaches for another toast. "Am I not allowed to ask about your work?"

"You're not interested in my work." Annabeth deadpans.

"I'm asking, aren't I?" Annabeth detects the unspoken 'duh'. "And I know a little about architecture, mind you. I just want to know how you're doing at work."

Annabeth hums unconvincingly, taking another sip of her coffee. She decides to ride along with it. "Well, for starters, I'm up to my neck busy. As always."

Piper nods for her to go on.

"We've contracted a new project for downtown."

Piper hums.

"It's nothing major, but the area is swarming with water pipes -many of which are old ones- so we have to be extra careful with the planning."

Piper nods, "But you aren't the only one working on it, right?"

"No. I have a team." Annabeth confirms.

"So," Piper stretches the 'o', studying the toast in her hand a little too casually. "That means that even if you weren't around, say you went out or something, a whole team is still gonna work on it?"

Annabeth narrows her eyes skeptically, "…I suppose. I'm not the project head." Annabeth answers slowly.

"So…" Piper looks away again, picking at the toast. "There's no reason to cancel Friday night, right?"

Annabeth purses her lips. She sets her cup on the saucer and folds her arms together, "I already said I would go."

Piper blushes crimson and gives up the innocent, interested-in-friend's-work scheme, "I just want to make sure!"

"I'm going, okay?" Annabeth huffs in mild exasperation. "And, if I ever go back on my promise, you have the permission to drag my ass over to the club."

"Deal," Piper quickly agrees. "Do we seal this oath with blood?"

Annabeth shakes her head as Piper starts laughing.

Piper is weird but a wonder. Annabeth is ever so thankful for having Piper as a friend. They have been friends since the 10th grade when the Cherokee girl transferred to Goode. They didn't particularly become friends instantaneously because she came around the school as Drew's half-sister.

Drew wasn't exactly Annabeth's favorite person on campus. She was a cheerleader who penned herself as the queen of Goode High, dated around, and clung to different guys when her grade couldn't even hang on to a C minus. And her face, always caked in make-up, always smiled condescendingly at everybody as if they were lesser beings. She made Annabeth want to punch something. Anything. Drew's annoying face would have been good enough.

When rumors scattered about Drew having a half-sister on campus, Annabeth was sure she'd be a clone of Drew, and Goode High was doomed. Frankly, their school had had enough mini-skirt, crop-top, belly-button girls who thought the ground they stepped on was sacred. Another one to add to them and Goode would have crumbled. After all, what else could they expect from somebody blood-related to Drew? Annabeth loathed her guts.

As it turned out, though, her half-sister hated Drew's guts just as much if not more. Literally.

She proved that during P.E. class in a volleyball game when she purposely spiked the ball straight towards Drew's midsection hard enough that Annabeth was surprised why Drew hadn't spewed her entire digestive system all over their gym court. Drew doubled over, wheezing in pain and yelling about how Piper tried to murder her. The teacher had to give Piper detention since the girl didn't deny the accusation and refused to apologize. When they took out Drew, who glowered at her sister the whole way out, Piper smirked at her unapologetically and waved her goodbye by flicking her fingers and blowing her a kiss.

Annabeth wanted to slow clap and pat her in the back for a job well done. She didn't need to anyway because the matching gleam in their eyes spoke enough for both of them. Piper and Annabeth became good friends, bonding over a mutual hatred of Drew. Then Piper started hanging out with Annabeth's group of friends, and the rest is history.

"You've got to be honest, though, Annie. You love it when I come by." She sips from her smoothie. "Because then, you won't have to eat packed mashed potatoes again."

"I love mashed potatoes," Annabeth says defensively, reaching for a toast and slathering it with strawberry jam.

"No, you don't." Piper also eats her toast with avocadoes. She gestures at Annabeth's food. "I hope you like strawberry jam."

"It's okay," Annabeth chews. It's decent enough, she thinks. Strawberry had been her favorite jam when she was younger, but that has changed now.

"I just thought maybe you should try a different flavor. All I ever see you have is blueberry. I figured maybe you miss your old favorite."

"I don't. Blueberry is everything to me."

Piper probably doesn't mean to sting Annabeth when she mutters, "Took you long enough to realize it, though."

But Annabeth is stung. And Piper is correct.

Blueberry is Percy's favorite. She had never appreciated it until Percy was gone from her life. She just one day found herself picking blueberry jam instead of strawberry at the grocery. Because, somehow, it made her feel closer to him. It was a futile act, but it was all she could cling to.

They ate in relative silence for a while before Annabeth remembers the conversation over the phone the previous day. It's time to question Piper about it. "Hey," she waits until Piper is looking at her. "You wanted to tell me something."

Piper's brows scrunch up.

"Yesterday," Annabeth clarifies. "Over the phone?"

Piper draws a blank.

Annabeth elaborates, "We were talking about Friday night, and I said yes to going, and then it's like you hesitated over something?"

Annabeth can tell when the realization hits. Piper's eyes widen a fraction. "Oh,"

Annabeth stares expectantly.

Piper looks down, breaking their eye contact, "It was nothing," she says with a small voice.

"You're lying."

Piper doesn't deny the accusation, but her eyes remain downcast.

"Piper, what are you keeping from me?" Annabeth asks, feeling that the playful air around them has been replaced by tension yet again. Piper bites her lower lip, only spurring Annabeth's curiosity. "Piper,"

"Annie, I'm sorry." Piper whispers. She raises her head to look at Annabeth with wide, desperate eyes.

"I can't accept your apology if I don't know what it is for," Annabeth's gaze doesn't leave Piper's. They look at each other - Annabeth urging and Piper trembling.

Finally, Piper sighs in defeat and quietly utters. "It's Percy."

Silence immediately follows Piper's statement. Because for the first time in many years, Piper openly mentions Percy's name in her presence.

Annabeth answers, trying to keep her voice level, "What about Percy?"

Piper gnaws at her lower lip, "I've wanted to tell you, but…"

"But?"

Like a dam breaking, Piper begins barraging. "I don't know if I should be the one to tell you this. I mean, yes, of course, I'm your best friend, but I'm his friend too. And after that-that," she wrings her hands. "I mean, he's been gone for so long, and maybe if I tell you, he's just going to disappear again. He never said anything about not telling you, but I - or, or maybe you're going to disappear this time and I - we can't have any of that, you know? Especially not now. So I decided to wait for the right time, but I don't know if there's ever a right time for anything, really-and, and,"

Piper is talking so fast that Annabeth struggles to catch up. "Piper, you're rambling."

"I know!" Piper whines in frustration. "And I hate to be turned into a blubbering fool, but I… but I want you to know that I kept my mouth shut because I didn't want either of you running away in different directions when the wedding's in a week!"

Annabeth grabs Piper's swinging arms. "Piper," she snaps to get her friend's attention and stop her from ranting anymore. "If you would just tell me-"

"He's in New York!"

It makes Annabeth pause. Well, she knows that. But the possibility that Piper knows about it didn't cross her mind. Percy had mentioned being back in town for a few days now, but Piper could not have known that, right? If Piper did, she would have told Annabeth right away because if anybody knows about Annabeth's broken heart pining after Percy all these years, it's Piper. She would've said something.

But Piper is in her kitchen with a guilt-stricken face. "How long have you known?"

Piper blinks, confused. "You don't sound surprised. Do you know he's back?"

Annabeth nods, "Only yesterday. We saw each other at Starbucks."

"Oh,"

"Piper, how long have you known that he's here?" Annabeth repeats her question, impatient to hear that Piper only actually found out the same day Annabeth did.

But Piper grimaces, hunching in her seat to make herself small. "Since he told Jason that he was coming home," she finally admits. She draws a shaky breath, hanging her head in guilt.

Something inside Annabeth collapses. She leans back in her seat in disbelief, "You all knew?"

Piper quickly shakes her head, "No, not all of us. Only Jason, Grover, and I." Annabeth almost sag in relief to know that she isn't the only one left in the dark about this. "None of us has seen Percy yet, though. He's been busy with the transfer of work location and settling in again. That's also why Friday night is important. He'd be there. For the first time in a long while, we'd be complete."

Annabeth is silent for a period, then nods weakly.

"Do you hate me?" Piper's voice hitches, and when Annabeth turns to her, her eyes are already brimming with tears.

She hates when Piper cries. God, it isn't even her fault that she knows. It isn't her fault that Percy told Jason and Grover, his best friends, and it isn't her fault that Jason told her. Annabeth knows Piper would rather not know. But now that she does, it's not her fault she wants to protect both Annabeth and Percy from each other. Not after what happened years ago between them.

Annabeth stands up and walks over to her friend, who is just about ready to explode. As soon as she opens her arms for Piper, her friend immediately melts into soft sobs. "I'm sorry, Annabeth. I didn't want to lie, but…" her voice catches again, and Annabeth rubs her back to soothe her. Piper must have felt bad about keeping the secret from her, knowing how important it is for Annabeth.

"I don't hate you, Piper. I can never hate you."

Piper sniffles, "I lied to you,"

"You kept a secret." Annabeth corrects. "That's hardly lying. And you did it for a good reason."

Piper pulls away from the hug to look at Annabeth, her eyes still misty from crying. "Thank you, Annie."

Despite herself, Annabeth smirks. "But you owe me a week of coffee and breakfast for this."

Piper laughs, and the heavy atmosphere around them dissipates completely.

/./ curt /./

#percabeth #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #percy jackson #annabeth chase #percy x annabeth #perachel #rachel elizabeth dare #piper mclean #...but if we loved again I swear I'd love you right #I finally edited chapter 3 wahh!!!!#after 500 years. hope it doesn't take me another 600 to edit the next one #fics tag #this is for the people still reading and waiting for this fic :((( i love you guys #word count: 3352

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certifiedceraunophile · 4 years ago

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KLAROLINE FALL BINGO PREVIEW.

@eliliyah @klarolinefallbingo

Prompt: Dias De Muertos

Honestly the relevancy of the prompt comes far to late in the story but it’s there, kinda. But hey it’s there.

MASQUERADES

(CinemaAU)

Sometimes all she needed was to take a breather. A single moment. One pause.

Breathe in.

To collect her thoughts and emotions. To steady her bearings.

To state in a repetitive loop all the reasons why punching one Niklaus Mikaelson in the balls would be a marginally bad idea.

And breathe out.

Forgive her, but The man was infuriating. Okay?

And unashamedly so. Not a whit of genuine compunction behind that facade of ‘Inescapable Charisma and Unadulterated Allure.’

Definitely not her words.

Nope. No sir.

These were the words of a certain Greta Martin, editor-in-chief for the first October issue of People Magazine.

With one Mega-frustrating arrogant blonde blue-eyed dimpled asshat demon going by the name Klaus slapped to the front of said issue.

And Nope if anyone asks,

No, she did not literally just shred -In a shredding machine no less, because efficiency, thank you very much- the first copy of the magazine she bought, after reading the beginning eight lines on his exclusive, recounting what a ‘delightfully satisfying and marvellous experience the entire three months of shooting turned out to be.’

Ok one Black-hole sized pause right there please.

Thank you.

A single beat.

And....

The Absolute Fuck?!

She’s sorry. Marvellous experience?

Excuse her, but say what?

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Beg pardon but What?

Excuse her.

But Marvellous experience, as in, aggressive quotation marks scratching the air “Marvellous experience” is NOT how she remembers it.

The slap in the face obvious discrepancy to both their stories is definitely not blind to her.

He called 84 re-takes that lasted four whole hours for one eight minute long single-shot single-angle scene, Marvellous.

He called having ice-cold Whiteclaw thrown square on his face by a Absolutely-done-with-wild-gust-of-agitated-Blonde-Fury on the eighth day of set, Marvellous.

He called having two separate make-up artists downright quit after being unable to touch up her makeup every thirteen seconds because she ran her hand down her face in unbridled aggravation every time her eyes landed on him, Marvellous.

He called the same experience where, she had to literally rush out of a set, under the ruse of a bathroom break, Twice in the course of three months, so that she can peacefully go through the motions of a rage-fueled emotional meltdown, complete with angry frustrated tears and a relentlessly colourful diatribe, cursing every man in her life who bore even a sliver of resemblance to the stormy-blue-eyed spawn of satan that was her co-actor, Marvellous.

God. How the hell did he possibly think he could get away with this,

How did he think he was going to smooth over the transparent inconsistencies between her interviews and his, without raising at least a few confused questions from bloodthirsty intuitive fans and the Press in general.

Given how her talk-show interviews and magazine exclusives gave the steady image, that

1. Klaus Mikaelson is a dick and a half, with an overgrown ego so ginormous that even the entirety of Tinseltown is ‘plainly restricting of his nonpareil talent in histrionic execution.’

2. Klaus Mikaelson is an arrogant narcissistic asshole that Hast pronounc'd upon his brethren yond this day f'rth that gent shalt with ev'ry smidgen of purpose in his life striveth to be the Unrivalled Bane of Caroline Forbes’ Existence.

3. The process of Creating the undeniable tour de force Masterpiece that was ‘100 years of solitude.’ The newest Christopher Nolan Direction and Production in theatres right now, that already has definite Academy Awards Nomination in the talks, was anything but Marvellous. She admits, It was so so gratifying and made her heart full with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, that left her giddy with such lighthearted contentment for days, after the phenomenal response it garnered post-premiering, Yes. But that does not capsulate how frustratingly tiresome and emotionally debilitating the entire creation process was. Hell it was downright painful at times.

4. Would she voluntarily take another movie with Klaus Mikaelson as a Co-star alongside her? You can get back to her when the sun starts to rise from the west and the answer would still be a definitive NO.

Now of course she wasn’t this brazen with her claims she knows how to be cute and classy and concise.

But she definitely did not mitigate the truth of her statement, she’s had enough training with her PR department to know what to say and how to say it but she’s sure that nobody had been able to overlook her less than companionable remarks about Klaus.

For example

The Stephen Colbert Show:

Stephen: “So Caroline tell us about the process, the Making of it, how everything fell into place like tiny puzzle pieces to reveal at last this grand, Grand Picture.”

“The process? Well the process was certainly not...pretty...but after every time we finished a scene, however small or inconsequential it may have seemed to the plot, there was this immense sense of ‘there-Done it. And done it well.’ ”

Jimmy Kimmel Live:

“Klaus Mikaelson, well my Co-star is um....eccentric at best.....”

Jimmy: “and at worst?”

“Well..... I guess” -hellish, heinously intolerable, a cruel mean bastard- “....Unyielding...?”

The Ellen Show:

“Well Klaus was a..... demanding partner and it took Herculean efforts to meet his exacting standards, but I can understand how that paid off so well on screen. The end result when I saw it for the first time, it damn well paid off.”

Ellen: “so he is absolved of his admittedly ‘uphill’ personality then?”

She laughs awkwardly,

“Ye-ah....No.”

followed by more laughter dissolving the painstaking grimace she’s trying to tamper down.

Oh and the worst.

The Late Late show with James Cordon:

During the ‘Fill Your Guts or Spill Your Guts’ segment

James: “So....I’m going to give you, let’s see, Ah there, the Bird Saliva.”

Caroline: “James!.... Damn it, you are so not making it into my good books, and....God. That’s just disconcerting I mean, How do they even, I don’t know... collect it?”

James: “Well there’s a whole process of harvesting it from the salivary glands and—“

Caroline: “Never mind! Nope. No need for the details, please, James, a lady’s delicate sensibilities are at stake. And unless the question is ‘what is your social security number?’ I’m not drinking this poison.”

James: “Now Caroline you wound me, I can assure you everything on this table is edible albeit being marginally unpalatable—“

Caroline: “Marginally?!”

James: “You should try the Cow’s tongue. It’s delectable.” Followed by a sagely nod.

Caroline: “Now I’m just intensely bothered. You’ve definitely lost all claim for a spot in my good books.”

James: “Ah well, speaking of staying in your good graces, here’s a question that will have you downing that Saliva in seconds.”

Caroline: “Hit me.”

James: “Well then, ‘Name Any one CO-star with whom you have worked with in the past that you would never volunteer to work with again.’”

Pause.

And the audience descended.

“Like I said, speaking about staying in your good books.”

Amidst the raucous screams, whistles and laughter, it didn’t even bother Caroline, the clarity and speed with which the name

‘Klaus Mikaelson’ flashed in the front of her mind, like a large Neon LED sign from a typical Vegas Nightlife scene.

It took her a total of three seconds to know that she was going to answer with his name because, well just look at that drink in front of her,

Sure if you bend over real low and squint in the right light it may look like a harmless Daiquiri, but a Daiquiri it was not.

No. This was Bird Freaking Saliva,

Come on, you can’t possibly ask her to put that in her goddamn mouth.

Like NO.

Just no.

So sue her for protecting her taste buds that are yet to experience many more exotic flavours and textures of food from all around the world.

But then again she can’t possibly outright just say “Oh that’s easy, Klaus Mikaelson.”

That’s exactly the kinda PR trouble she wants to stay above and definitely didn’t need to be wrung out dry by her Spitfire Mistress-of-Hell Publicist Katherine Pierce for.

(Who also alternates as her BFF, occasionally, mind you.)

So she puts on a good show, dropped her head in her hands, gave a healthy long groan, looked up and gave James her best wounded Puppy Dog eyes, to which he was clearly not immune to, judging by how he looked a touch chagrined, but the game was just as much as beyond his hands as it were hers,

She looked to the audience “You guys are so mean, it’s not even funny.”

And grumbled a bit more till everyone was laughing and pitching forward and back on their seat amused by the poor Blonde’s Dilemma.

So she looked up to the heavens as if to ask for some unknown deity for deliverance and guidance, and poised herself to drink,

Only to put the glass back down in the last second in a begrudgingly weak show of caving in, and blurted out reluctantly,

(She’s a glorious actor, she’s aware.)

“You know what, Nope. He’s just gotta deal with it, okay?.”

Deep breath

Or was it the audience taking a deep breath and holding it in,

“ItsKlausMikaelson,PleaseDontKillMe.”

Pause again.

And the auditorium transcended.

Well,

she handled that, pretty well, if she does say so herself you know.

Apparently Kat Disagrees.

Apparently She Blew It.

She blew it so hard she could’ve knocked down the third little pig’s brick house.

Ironic since she always envisioned Klaus as the Big Bad Wolf who huffs and puffs and just generally blows.

Apparently her little admission was a PR disaster.

And Kat was furious.

The two minute edited clip that encompassed the question, the reluctant grumbling and finally the confession was apparently now a viral video on all social networking platforms.

They were trending on twitter under the hashtag

#KlarolineUnrequitedLoveIsABitch.

But her admission to being generally averted on taking up Klaus as a colleague again was apparently only one half of the video,

The other half....

Well the other other half was Klaus with his personal confession.

God, it wasn’t even a confession,

it was a—a Mockery, yes that’s it, a Mockery,

Of Her, no less

Basically Here’s the run down of the second insidious half of the video,

Klaus sitting in front of Graham Norton, in all their British glory, going live on The Graham Norton Show,

when asked about Caroline Forbes, his “partner” on scene has the audacity to let out this evil little amused huff and say:

“Caroline?” Another amused huff. “Well Caroline, Christ, where do I start? She’s an absolutely glorious presence on set. Her energy....it’s infectious, She hits you like a blonde hurricane of sunshine and snark and you’re just left staring up at the sun thinking, ‘you need to catch up mate, if you want to be half as bright and burning as her.’”

And Caroline thinks maybe this is the feeling of your brain imploding within the confines of the skull.

TBC

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darks-ink · 5 years ago

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Absurdism Chapter 8

It’s the halfway point of Absurdism, chapter 8 out of 16!

Rating: Teen/K+ (a lil swearing, because teenagers, man) Warnings: - Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort Additional Tags: Sibling Bonding, Family Bonding, Alternate Universe - Halfa Jazz AU, Jazz makes friends

[AO3] [FFN] [more Absurdism on Tumblr] First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

---

Chapter 8: Fanning the Flames

“It’s just suspicious,” Jazz whispered, voice low. She didn’t expect to be overheard, despite the crowded hallway. Some kind of craze had come upon the students, recently, and suddenly everyone was obsessed with music from some artist named Ember.

And, well. She had dealt with enough ghosts and ghostly business to consider that reason for wariness.

“It’s possible,” Sidney acknowledged, speaking through the mirror—even with everyone so distracted, she didn’t want to make it too obvious who she was talking to. “I don’t recognize the name, but I can’t say I know every ghost around.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Jazz sighed, tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. “It’s just… not ideal.”

“What isn’t?” a sharp voice suddenly asked, and Jazz straightened automatically. Valerie.

“Nothing,” she quickly assured, turning around to face Valerie. “It’s nothing, Valerie.”

The other girl shot her a skeptical look. It didn’t last long however, as Valerie’s eyes suddenly widened, and, oh, yeah.

Sidney.

“Jazz,” Valerie hissed, turning furious eyes back to her, “I thought you hated ghosts! I thought you agreed with me and your parents!”

She scoffed. “My parents aren’t always right, Valerie.”

Valerie eyed her for a moment longer, clearly suspicious. “I thought you were talking to yourself. Thought that was kinda weird.”

“Mh. I was talking to Sidney.” Jazz gestured at the mirror again, looking from the corner of her eye to make sure he was still there. “But, speaking of weird, what do you think of the sudden musical craze happening?”

“What, with everyone suddenly going crazy over that girl? Ember whatever?” Valerie continued to squint suspiciously, but she was clever. Jazz could see the gears turning in her head. “You were talking about that?”

“Jazz thinks that ghosts might be involved,” Sidney explained, clearly uncertain but willing to go along with Jazz. “It’s certainly possible. Ghost powers are highly varied, but brainwashing anyone who is exposed to one’s music? It is absolutely in the realm of possibility.”

“It is pretty suspicious,” Valerie allowed, inclining her head a little. She didn’t stop squinting at Jazz. “You don’t know who’s responsible for it?”

“It seems likely that the singer is a ghost. Ember McClain, I believe.” Jazz leaned against the edge of her locker, keeping an eye on both Sidney and Valerie. “Sidney hadn’t heard of her before, but there’s tons of ghosts in the Zone, so it’s definitely possible that he just missed her.”

Valerie nodded, her mouth tight and grim. “That’s… good to know. I guess I’ll have to avoid her—and her music.”

“I was planning on looking at my parents’ inventions, see if they have anything that can be used to block the brainwashing effect.” Or, well. She was going to ask Phantom if he was familiar with Ember, and if yes, how to break her power’s effect. But that might involve some Fenton invention, so. It was basically the same, right?

“Just… be careful,” Sidney urged her from the other side of the mirror. “And stay safe, Jazz.”

“I will, Sid, I promise.” She shot him a—hopefully comforting—grin. “You stay out of trouble, too.”

He nodded, and his image faded away. The mirror’s surface returned to its normal reflective state.

“Let’s get lunch,” Valerie said, voice terse. “Somewhere private.”

“Sounds good,” Jazz agreed.

The silence that fell lasted all the way until they sat down outside. The weather was getting better, but no one else had chosen to go out. Maybe they were all obsessing about Ember inside?

“So,” Valerie said, then stopped. Her shoulders were still tight, muscles tensed.

“So,” Jazz repeated, idly pushing her lunch around. “Look, Valerie. I know I’ve been teaching you about ghosts based on my parents’ expertise, but they’re not perfect. They don’t know everything.”

“And you do?” she asked, skeptically. “It’s not like they’ve been doing this for forever or anything.”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying that either. But… my parents decided, before they ever met ghosts, that they were all bad, all malevolent and unthinking. And every ghost they’ve heard about since? They’ve just twisted what they see to fit what they decide was the truth. They’re biased, and that’s not good. It’s unscientific.”

“Yes, because ghosts are so scientific.” Valerie shook her head, taking a bite of her own lunch. Cheap cafeteria food—not enough to keep up with her teenage metabolism, not with how active Val was as the Red Huntress.

“Fair enough,” she allowed, taking a bite of her own sandwich. “But, really. Not all ghosts are as bad as my parents suggest. Sidney, you’ve probably heard of? Fighting off bullies to protect their victims. That’s not bad, is it?”

“Could be fighting for the sake of fighting,” Valerie protested. “Building up a reputation by playing a guardian angel, and then, bam! He turns against us.”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t. I know him.”

“Yeah, well.” Valerie gestured wildly. “There are plenty of other ghosts out there, all clearly malevolent. I mean, that dog ghost that attacked Axion Labs, that ruined mine and my dad’s lives?”

“It probably hadn’t meant to do any of that, Valerie.” Jazz softened a little, trying for a comforting tone. “It was a dog. It probably didn’t know any better.”

“So? Just because it’s an animal means that it should be allowed to run free? To cause trouble?”

“I didn’t say that,” she bit back, trying not to sound overly defensive. “It shouldn’t run around free, not if it’s just an animal. Someone should’ve stopped it. And who knows? Maybe they tried? We don’t know, do we?”

“What, someone like— like Specter and Phantom?” Valerie scoffed. “Please. Those two are sketchy as all hell.”

Were they? She supposed that they weren’t seen all that much, but still… “I don’t know, Val. I think they’re just trying to help.”

Valerie snorted dismissively. “Oh, please. They’re just doing cutesie dates in the human world, beating up their fellow ghosts. There’s nothing dependable about those two.”

Jazz felt her mind grind to a halt. “Dates?” she repeated incredulously. “Like… couple dates?”

“Uh, yeah?” Valerie raised a questioning eyebrow. “Come on, you can’t have missed it. Those two are close as anything, and everyone knows that ghosts don’t keep memories of their life, so they can’t be related. Therefore, they must be dating. Plus, they even look like they’re close to each other’s ages. Bonus.”

Jazz made a face, but she supposed Valerie had a point. As much as she hated it, the thought that people thought she and her brother—an alternate version of her brother—were dating… she couldn’t deny it, not as Jazz Fenton. She would have to talk it through with Phantom. Make sure that it become clear that they were, in fact, siblings.

Ugh. She’d heard a few vague rumors about it before, but she hadn’t realized it was this big. Now it was a whole thing.

“I guess,” she settled on, but she knew she’d been silent too long. Valerie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

They ate the rest of their lunches in silence.

---

“They think we’re what?! Yuck.” Phantom made a disgusted face, his green tongue poking out. “Seriously, urk.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Jazz shivered, a little overdramatic to match with Phantom. “We need to dissuade those rumors.”

“Definitely.” Phantom shook his head, pushing one gloved hand through his hair. “Yikes. I mean, how did you even find out about that?”

“Valerie and I were talking about ghosts earlier,” Jazz explained, shrugging at Phantom’s incredulous look. “We were talking about ghosts that might be good, and she said that people thought our ghost fights were, like, dates. Apparently those rumors are kinda popular. Or, well, were. Everyone’s crazy about that one musician now.”

Phantom frowned. “Ember? That’s now?”

“So we were right?” Jazz wasn’t sure to cheer or to be disappointed that it was another major ghost attack. “Ember McClain is a ghost?”

“Yeah.” Phantom sighed, deep and heavy. “She brainwashes people to adore her, and that obsession strengthens her.”

He paused for a moment, then turned his head towards her, abruptly. “Wait. We?”

She shrugged again. “Me, Sidney, and Valerie were talking about it. Or, well. Sidney and I were talking about it, and Valerie dropped in without either of us noticing.”

Phantom made a face. “Well, that explains why the two of you were talking about ghosts. How’d she take it?”

“Not brilliantly,” Jazz admitted. “She thinks Sidney is tricking us into believing him to be nice, and like I said, she thinks that Specter and Phantom are only fighting ghosts as dates. But she listened to me explain, at least.”

“Still better than my Red, to be honest.” He scratched the back of his neck, a gesture of nervousness she could recognize as Danny’s from miles away. She wondered how that hadn’t given him away yet. “She took a while longer to even consider listening.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Jazz sighed, tucking away a strand of hair. “But, Ember? What’s our plan?”

“We’ll have to wait.” Phantom crossed his arms, standing up to his full length. “She gets stronger when people chant for her. With the amount of people going crazy for her now, we don’t stand a chance. We’ll have to break the obsession first.”

“Okay? So how are we going to do that?”

Phantom rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched up in what was unmistakably a smile. “Impatient, are you? Anyway, she should be dropping by sometime soon. Doing an impromptu show at the school. In my universe, Tucker did a bad rendition of her song, which broke the obsession. I’m not gonna subject this universe’s Tucker to the same, so I’ll do it myself. After that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to beat her, not with the two of us.”

She nodded. “Anything we need? Some kind of gadgets that will protect us, or Valerie?”

“Uh… Oh, yeah, actually. In my universe my parents had just invented some kind of earpieces. They were supposed to filter out spectral noise, but you can use them to communicate over longer distances as well. If you can snatch some of those, that would be super convenient. We should be safe from the regular musical brainwashing Ember can do, thanks to our half-ghost-ness, but direct attacks from her guitar can still get us.”

“Alright, I’ll look into those then.” She hoped they existed in this universe too. Sounded convenient. “So. Those earpieces, and then we wait? Do you know how long?”

He shrugged, looking apologetic. “No clue. Sorry, Jazz. I’ll hang out near Casper High so I’ll notice if she’s there. Don’t worry about your ghost sense, you’ll know when she’s there.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” She nodded, again. “I’ll get going, then. See you soon, Phantom.”

---

A strum of loud music broke the quiet of the classroom. The other students started screaming, rushed out of the classroom like their lives depended on it.

Through the chaos, Jazz caught Valerie’s look and nodded. They got up, followed the rest outside.

Jazz’ core stirred as they ran through the hallways, and she turned her head away to hide it from Valerie. When she turned back, Sidney had joined them, flying along.

They burst through the doors, stopping on the top step in front of the school. All other students had formed an enormous crowd, almost entirely black and blue, like an incomprehensible mass. And there, parked in front of them all, stood a giant podium.

“Fuck,” Valerie swore, eyes locked on the musician that stood on the foreground of the stage. Pale skin, shredded and punky black clothes, and blue hair that flared like fire.

Really, how had no one else figured out that Ember McClain was a ghost if her hair did that?

“Well, at least she’s obvious about it?” Sidney said. He grimaced. “I’m not gonna be any help here. I’ll have to leave, sorry.”

Valerie made a face, but nodded at Jazz. “I have to go too. Stay safe, Jazz.”

“You too, Val. And—” she held out her hand, revealing two shiny chrome earpieces. Fenton Phones. “Please wear these. They should block the worst of Ember’s brainwashing power.”

The other girl took them with a grateful expression. “Thanks. Make sure to wear some yourself, too.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jazz assured her, even as Valerie raced down the steps. She wouldn’t. There was no point, not now. But Valerie didn’t need to know that.

She glanced around, confirming that the immediate area was void of watchers. There were plenty of people, sure, but they were all focused on the stage, and on Ember.

Her core stirred to life, light flashing as she shifted to her ghost form. From there, it was a short burst of power to bring her to the roof of Casper High, where Phantom was waiting.

“So, the plan?” Jazz asked, touching down on the edge of the roof. She kept her eyes on Ember.

“You distract her, I’ll grab the microphone and break the obsession. After that, we should be able to take her out without too much trouble. She’s a decent fighter, and you’ll need to keep an eye on her guitar, but she’s no Spectra.”

“Gotcha.” Jazz nodded, lowering herself in a crouch. “Ready?”

Rather than answer, Phantom shot himself off of the roof. Jazz rolled her eyes but followed him with a burst of speed of her own.

Phantom dove right past Ember, but she pulled the mike away before he could reach for it. She sung on, steady and unwavering.

Alright, Jazz could admit that that was pretty impressive.

Still, she had a job to do. She followed Phantom’s example, diving low over the crowd. Rather than dart right past Ember, she raised herself earlier, extending a threatening hand coated in golden ectoplasm at her.

Ember snarled back, her hair flaring, but her song remained uninterrupted.

Black and white streaked past Ember’s other side, blue light flashing as Phantom froze the podium where he passed it.

And then, just when Jazz was preparing herself for another dive, a bolt of pink ectoplasm whizzed by her. She turned her head to gaze up, staring straight at Valerie.

She rose to up Valerie’s height, Phantom twirling around her. Valerie shifted on her board, like she scoffed, but she did lower her gun, so. Small victories.

“What?” she snapped at the two of them when they evened out with her. “Is shooting her a no-go or something?”

“Kind of,” Phantom explained, ignoring Valerie’s vicious tone. “She gets stronger when people say her name, especially if they chant it, when they’re obsessed by her. We need to break everyone’s trance, first, or else she’ll shrug off everything we can throw at her.”

Valerie scoffed. “And how do you plan on achieving that?”

“I need her microphone. I’ll do a terrible rendition of her song, and that’ll make people lose interest.” Phantom shrugged at Valerie’s incredulous look. “Trust me, I can produce some awful noises. It’ll work.”

“Ugh.” Valerie shook her head, then nodded. “Fine, whatever. I don’t trust either of you, but fine. I know which ghost here takes priority.”

Jazz shot her a brilliant smile, but Valerie seemed to ignore it. Hard to tell, with the mask she was wearing.

“Good. In that case, why don’t you take crowd control?” Phantom gestured at the enormous mass of humans below them. “Ember can force her adoring fans to do anything she wants them to. She might turn them against other humans, or attack them directly. You protect them, keep them safe, and we’ll deal with Ember.”

Valerie cocked her head, giving the impression that she was squinting at Phantom, but eventually she nodded. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. But I’m keeping an eye on you two.”

“That’s fair,” Jazz acknowledged with a loose shrug. She nodded at Phantom, who grinned back.

In almost perfect sync, they dove back down again. Phantom quickly overtook her, corkscrewing past Ember’s front. Ice crystals spiked from the podium’s edge, drawing excited yells from the public—they must’ve thought it was some kind of neat effect.

Hell, how much of this were they even noticing? That was a terrifying thought, that they didn’t even realize the kind of danger they were in.

Jazz dove past Ember’s back, discharging an ectoblast against her bare back. Ember stumbled forward, slipping on the ice that Phantom had left. She yelped, barely catching herself before she fell.

She had let go of the microphone.

Phantom had turned around in no-time, already speeding back. Ember’s eyes darted up to him, one hand flying out to grab the mike before he could.

Too slow.

The blur of black and white turned in its spot, going from horizontal to vertical like it was nothing. A decent height above the stage he stopped, the microphone held in his clenched fist.

“Hey, Amity,” he said into it. His voice crackled, the sound more echo-y and staticky than normal. “This one’s for all of you great folks.”

He winked, and Jazz knew she should be paying attention to the fight, but— but she had so few chances to watch Phantom work his magic. Besides, Ember seemed to be distracted by him as well. She frowned up at him, teeth bared in a snarl.

And then Phantom did— something. She didn’t know what, exactly. He just opened his mouth, the mike held before it, and made a noise— beyond description, really.

If she tried, she could almost make out words. But for the most part, it was a terrible sound, haunting and wailing and sharp and cutting. The sound installation couldn’t handle it either, a layer of static and screeching feedback applied over the whole thing.

It certainly seemed to do the trick. Everyone in the audience screamed, clapping their hands over their ears. Valerie’s head swirled towards Phantom, but she remained steady on her hoverboard. The earpieces must be filtering out Phantom’s noise.

Ember screeched, or, well. She looked like she was snarling and screeching, but Jazz couldn’t hear anything over Phantom’s terrible wail.

Then, suddenly, it was over. The silence was loud in the absence of Phantom’s song, and one by one, the audience lowered their hands again.

Valerie, the only one not distracted by Phantom, fired at Ember. A square hit, the ghost too occupied with her half-ghost opponents to notice the human hunter.

She stumbled on the stage, her eyes drawn towards Valerie, who had her gun raised and smoking. Ember’s fingers tightened on the neck of her guitar, and she raised her other hand threateningly.

Jazz fired a blast of golden ectoplasm against Ember’s back, then darted upwards before she could retaliate.

With Ember’s attention on Jazz, Valerie fired another shot. And when Ember turned back to the human huntress, Jazz shot again. They exchanged a few shots in that manner, until suddenly, a blue vortex interrupted the volley.

Phantom hovered above them, the uncapped Thermos held in one hand, and the microphone in the other.

“Can’t let you two have all the fun, can I?” he said, grinning a little. Valerie grumbled, but lowered her gun. She flew in closer, until all three of them hovered above the stage.

“You consider that fun, Phantom?” she asked sharply, jerking her head towards the Thermos he was capping.

He rolled his eyes. “It’s a figure of speech, chill.” He clicked the Thermos back on his belt, then held up the microphone to his mouth.

“While I’m holding this, I would like to publicly thank you for your help, huntress! So, thank you, for helping us protect Amity Park’s citizens!”

Valerie grumbled under her breath, shooting Phantom something that was probably a venomous glare. “Yeah, well. I’ll keep an eye on you two, too. Don’t think that this means anything.”

She shook her head, and the engines of her hoverboard roared to life. Apparently she had decided she couldn’t shoot them in front of all these people, as she left without another word.

“And, on a final note,” Phantom said, interrupting Jazz’ train of thought, “Amity Park! As much as Specter and I enjoy your warm welcome, we would like to make a small note to your baseless rumors!”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side. “This fantastic girl here is Specter, as most of you know! What none of you seem to realize, however, is that she’s my sister. We’re not dating, we’ve never dated, and we never will date.”

Jazz wrapped one gloved hand around the microphone, drawing it closer to herself. “Like Phantom said. Seriously, guys, we’re siblings. Please stop saying we’re dating, that’s seriously uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, anyway.” Phantom cleared his throat, then let go of her to place the microphone back on the stage. “Thanks for listening, folks, and have a good day!”

---

“Ugh,” Jazz grunted, dramatically draping herself over a rock. They were back in the woods for training, somewhere where Phantom could teach her about shields without Valerie interrupting.

“What’s up?” he asked, humor in his voice. “Life getting you down?”

“It’s no big deal,” she said, straightening herself again. “It’s just— this guy my brother is dating, you know? Something about him sets off alarm bells in my head, and I don’t know what it is.”

Phantom laughed. “That’s fair. I can’t say anything about your brother’s tastes, but I know I have had some questionable dating experiences.”

“Yeah?” She curled her legs underneath her, trying to find a comfortable spot to sit on the rock. “Come on, you can’t reference poor dates and not tell me about them!”

“Oh?” He grinned back at her, one hand lighting up green. “How about this, then. You show me a good shield, and I’ll tell you. Deal?”

“Deal!” She jumped to her feet, already pulling energy from her core. She got the principles already, how hard could it be to make an actual shield? It was just like an ectoblast, except she had to maintain it as a plane instead of firing it.

A ball of golden energy formed in her hands, and she poured in more and more energy. How much was enough?

Movement in the corner of her eye. She looked up, caught Phantom’s smirk. He raised a green hand.

Uh oh.

She raised her arms in front of her head automatically, pushing the collected energy outwards. Her core churned in her chest. Her eyes were clenched close.

No impact came.

Jazz lowered her arms, hesitantly. Phantom stood in the same spot as before, grinning widely.

A wall of golden energy, wavering and transparent, separated them.

“Good job!” he complimented her, raising a thumb. “I knew you could do it!”

She laughed a little, incredulous. Raised one hand to touch the wall, her fingers barely grazing past it. It was— energy, really. The sensation wasn’t one she could really describe. It was like energy underneath her finger, flexible and buzzing like static.

The ball of power burst like a bubble. Her core quietened, the strain of maintaining it finally gone.

“Nice,” she said, quiet. Then she turned to Phantom, grinning again. “So, about our deal…”

He groaned, but the smile didn’t leave his face. “Should’ve tempted you with embarrassing stories sooner. Urgh, alright.” Phantom folded his legs underneath himself, sitting down in the air.

Jazz eyed him for a moment, but, well. It did look more comfortable than the rock she sat on earlier. How hard could it really be?

She tugged on her core, activating her flight. Hovering just above the ground, she pulled her legs underneath herself as well, until she was in a sitting position.

Phantom waited until she was still, then nodded. “Right, so. My poor dating choices. There’s really only two, but they were pretty bold. Sam and Tucker hated me for the second one, too. Chronological order?”

“Sounds good. Save the best for last.” She grinned at him, and he stuck out his tongue, childishly.

“Okay, so. Technically this one is in two parts. My first dating experience in high school was Paulina. First, I asked her to that party all the way at the start of the year. But Dora’s necklace had slipped into my bag, and I didn’t recognize it, so when Paulina asked about it I pretended it was a gift for her. She agreed to be my date, and wore the necklace to the dance.”

“Oh no,” Jazz said, but she couldn’t hold back her laughter. “How did that go?”

“Well…” He laughed. “It was a whole thing, but she ended up passing the thing to Sam when she found out she wasn’t making Sam jealous by ‘stealing’ me. Sam got pissed at Paulina for being shallow, and she had the necklace, and, well. You can guess how that went.”

“Oh my god, did you fight a draconic version of Sam?” Now Jazz really couldn’t hold back her laughter, giggling. “Danny, that’s awful.”

“Yeah, well. That wasn’t the end of it.” He shook his head, a self-deprecating smile on his face. “So, after that disaster I figured my chances with Paulina were ruined forever. When Phantom became well-known, she started making heart-eyes at him, though. I started wondering what she would think if she found out that he and I were the same person. And then, I found out!”

Jazz gaped at him for a long moment before Phantom continued talking.

“I had just fought off this ghost, and I shifted back to human form, thinking that everyone had fled. But apparently I was wrong, because there was Paulina. And she was so excited! She promised to keep my secret, and we started dating, and it was great!”

“So how was that a bad dating experience?” Jazz asked, quirking one eyebrow. “Besides her discovering your half-ghost nature, and she didn’t even spill that secret. Did she?”

“Ha, no!” He shook his head, still grinning. “It was pretty nice while it lasted. But I discovered that apparently it wasn’t Paulina, not really. She was overshadowed by a ghost, and the only reason she was dating me was to make her actual boyfriend jealous.”

She flinched. “Uh, yikes. How could you possibly have found a worse dating experience?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Phantom clapped his hands together, clearly excited. “So, as you know, Valerie Gray absolutely hated the guts of Phantom in my universe, yes?”

“Oh, Danny, no,” Jazz said, already knowing where this was going.

“Yep!” he said, grinning manically. “My half-ghost ass decided that dating Valerie Gray, dangerous ghost huntress with a vendetta against my ghost form, was a good idea. And I still maintain that Val was great, and she was lovely as a partner.”

“How did that even end?” Jazz asked, unsure if she wanted to know. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that. “Did she find out?”

“Huh? Oh, no.” He flapped a hand, dismissive. “She broke up with me, said some vague stuff. I guess she thought it was too dangerous to date me, afraid that ghosts might target me as her partner.”

Jazz wasn’t sure what her face was doing, but whatever it was, it made Phantom laugh again. Something horrified, she thought.

“Well,” she finally tried, somewhat feebly. “I guess that that greasy biker dude that my Danny is dating isn’t the worst option, then.”

Phantom chuckled, then stopped, suddenly.

“Greasy biker dude?” he repeated, blankly. “What, like Johnny 13?”

Jazz felt her stomach plummet. Her body followed the feeling, and she thudded down on the grassy ground.

“You know him?”

He nodded, jerkily. “He dated my Jazz,” he explained, slowly. “He was giving her all kinds of items that were contaminated with his girlfriend’s power, so she was slowly possessing Jazz. Wanted her DNA so she could open the Portal for him and let out his actual girlfriend.”

“Oh my god.” Her core pulsed in her chest, agitated. “Holy shit, I gotta stop him.”

“Want a hand?” Phantom asked, unfolding himself from his sitting position. “You could probably take him, but—”

She shook her head, pushing herself up onto her feet. “No, come. You can drag Johnny away while I swear his skin off of him.”

Phantom threw back his head to laugh. “Deal,” he said, between cackles.

#danny phantom #dp fanfic #phanfic #phanfiction #dp fanfiction #danny fenton #jazz fenton #jazz phantom au #jazz phantom #valerie gray #dark writes #absurdism

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kamen-rider-zed · 5 years ago

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Artiste et Muse Ch4

Okay confession time: because depression sucks and my job is eating me alive, this is the last complete chapter of this fic. I'll try to have this done by the end of the week, but I can't make any promises. Just know that I appreciate all of the amazing comments, and I've been so glad to get even a bit of my writing mojo back after so long.

AO3

Chloe groaned and forced her eyes to open against the massive migraine sitting on her skull. She reached out and felt the sheets she’d slept in the previous night; somehow, she made it back home. She closed her eyes again and focused through the pain. How did she get here? What did she remember? The wedding album, crying, lots of crying, the cafe down the street, more crying, and Nathanael holding her.

Her eyes snapped open and she flinched against what she assumed was afternoon light slicing into the room through the thin crack in the drapes. Nathanael holding her? Comforting her? Why would he do that? He hated her, right? But then...why? She sat up, pressing a hand to her temple, and noticed her heels sitting next to the bed. He must have guided her back home, into bed, and even taken her shoes off. Her heart thumped harder in her chest but she shook the feeling away. Why was he having this effect on her?

She slipped out of the bed and out into the living room where she found Nathanael with a sketchbook on one knee and the wedding album on the other. He lifted his head when he heard her enter the room, and Chloe could have sworn there was the faintest smile on his face when he saw her.

He cleared his throat and whatever smile there had been disappeared. “You’re awake.”

A rude and snarky retort sat just behind her teeth ready to tear into him, but there it sat. Whether it was the migraine or her new and confusing feelings directed at Nathanael that held it back she couldn’t tell. Instead, she pressed her fingers into her temples and asked, “How long was I asleep?”

“A few hours. It’s just a little after one.” He pointed his pencil towards the kitchen. “There’s some pain pills on the counter if you need them. I would have made some coffee, but…”

“But you don’t know how?” She rounded the island in the kitchen and spotted the tiny red bottle. A quick search through the cabinets and she finally found a water glass.

“I know how to make coffee, but…” He turned his eyes back down to the album. “There’s nothing but whole bean in there.”

“Of course, I refuse to live under the same roof as pre-ground bullshit.” She found the beans and a grinder, paused, then turned back to Nathanael. “Get in here, Red. I may not like you, but everyone deserves to know how to make a decent cup of coffee.”

When she saw Nathanael blush at her invitation, she had to fight against the word ‘adorable’ crossing through her mind. He set the books aside and joined her in the kitchen. She taught him the proper proportions of beans to water, the proper grind settings, then set a kettle on the stove. As they waited for the water to boil, she asked, “What were you doing with the album?”

He was quiet for too long to Chloe’s liking. He finally said, “References. I thought I’d...practice drawing a wedding.”

Chloe moved across the kitchen to stand in front of him and crossed her arms. “You’re a terrible liar, you know that? You have the internet, a window into the next ten years of fashion and design. Getting to see that before literally anyone else? And you choose our...the wedding album?”

Nathanael matched her glare for a few seconds before he rolled his eyes and looked away. “Okay, I got curious too. I didn’t get that good of a look at it this morning, so I started flipping through it and...wanted to draw a few things. There, happy?”

“No. What about that book could have piqued your curiosity?”

A subtle movement dropped her gaze to his hands, where she noticed him twisting his wedding band about his finger. “I guess...it’s like I said to Marinette and the others last night; I want to know how this happened. How did we go from being bitter enemies to…” He lifted his left hand, fingers still playing with the ring.

Chloe stared at his hand for a long while. The Chloe and Nathanael of this world obviously had a strong relationship, but where had it come from? Sure, ten years was a long time, time enough for her to move on from Adrien and possibly to...but that was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. There was no way she’d choose someone else over Adrien...except she had. Or this world’s version of her had. And the Adrien of this world seemed happy with Marinette. Her thoughts flashed back to what Nathanael had said about the Akuma. Fairytale was supposed to make people live their happy endings. Did this mean that her happy ending wasn’t with Adrien?

The low whistle from the kettle broke her out of her thoughts and she finished showing Nathanael how to properly use a coffee press. Chloe found herself inexplicably smiling as he took his first sip of properly pressed coffee and melted into his mug. She raised her own mug to her lips to hide the smile, but had the slightest suspicion she hadn’t been quick enough. The damnedest thing was that she didn’t care. Maybe it was because he’d seen her at quite possibly the lowest she’d ever been in her life, but she wanted him to see her smile.

“Do you want to go through the album together?” Chloe looked to him and raised a brow. “You know, actually take a good look at the photos now that you’re…umm...” He turned away and bit his lip.

“Now that I’m not obsessed over my mother. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“No!” Chloe stared at him. “Okay, kinda. You know what? This was a bad idea.” He squeezed his way past her and made his way back to the couch. “I should probably just-”

“Sure.”

Nathanael whipped around and gaped. “Wha?”

“Sure, let’s look at the album together. It’s not like I have anything else to do until Ladybug gets us out of here. Besides, if I do get all weepy over my mother, I have…” You, she was going to say, because he had been her sole source of comfort since waking up in this strange world. As much as she hated his guts, having him around, that sense of familiarity, was better than nothing. She bit the inside of her cheek and reminded herself exactly who he was, who he worked for, and continued, “I have to get over it eventually.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, but soon shrugged and slid over on the couch to make room for her. Okay, not what she expected. She grabbed her coffee and sat down beside him, then turned her attention to the album on his knee.

An outdoor wedding. Flowers everywhere, rows upon rows of chairs set in...Chloe reached over and flipped another page, searching for an identifying landmark. Ah, there. The Jardin du Luxembourg. A nice venue. Several women in yellow sundresses. Marinette, Alya, Kagami, and...Sabrina. Chloe pulled the album into her lap and ran her fingers over Sabrina. When had they made amends? How long after Sabrina walked out on her, tired of Chloe using her superhero status to shove more and more schoolwork onto her? More tears pricked at the corners of Chloe’s eyes, but she wiped them away and turned another page.

She blushed at the picture of Nathanael, wearing black slacks, a purple button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black kippah. Somehow the purple worked for him, and...was he wearing a bee charm bracelet? He looked...really nice, especially with his hair tied back like thaaaa-no. No, she wasn’t going to think about him like that. Focus on something else, Chloe. He wasn’t wearing a jacket or a tie, so maybe they were going for a more casual wedding? Which didn’t make sense, if one of Paris’ superheroes were getting married, it would be a huge event, right?

On the next page...ah, her dress. A black lacy bodice with a low-scooped neckline, halter straps, and pearl adornments dangling from the front. From the waist down, a pure white sheath skirt with gold embroidered hem and a pale yellow sash tied about her waist, the knot somehow tied in such a way to resemble a flower. Lace fingerless gloves in the same yellow as the sash. A simple diamond and pearl tiara with her veil flowing from the back, her hair tied up with a plain white ribbon, and a bouquet of yellow dahlias. She squinted and looked closer at her necklace. Stones of purple, blue, and green. Paon’s colors. Now that she got a better look at it, it was subdued, but still spoke to her color pallet. Light fabrics to let it breath in the heat of summer. Marinette outdid herself.

“Are you nervous, Nath?” Chloe turned to the laptop at the sound of Nino’s voice. It was a shaky video of Nathanael buttoning up the shirt she had just seen, and another blush crept up on her face.

“Nervous? No. Relieved that we’re finally here? Yeah. Relieved that all of the planning and prep is over.” He chuckled. “Not that Chlo let me do much. She insisted on doing almost everything, including pay for all of this.” He turned to face the camera. “You know, her original budget was over a hundred thousand euros? Do you know how long it took me to talk her down from that? I mean, she justified it as a ‘charitable donation’ to expand the gardens, but that was still a bit much.”

“Well, Queen Bee is the face of the international ‘Save the Bees’ movement,” Nino said from behind the camera.

Nathanael smiled again. “Yeah, she is, however accidental it may be.” He leaned over to grab something off of a nearby table. “I didn’t even really want a wedding if I’m honest, but the moment I mentioned the word ‘elope’ to Chloe, she became a living nightmare until I relented.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you,” Chloe heard from her left. She elbowed Nathanael in the ribs, but kept her eyes on the video.

Nathanael stood back up stuffing whatever he searched for in his pocket. “But I’m glad we’re here. I’m glad she’s…” He turned his gaze to a nearby door and somehow, Chloe knew she was...no. Her alternate self was beyond that door. “If you’d told me ten, fifteen years ago that I’d eventually be married to Chloe Bourgeois, I would have laughed in your face. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Not Marinette, not Marc. She…” He chuckled. “She’s come so far since we were in lycee, and I’m so happy…” When he turned back to the camera and smiled, Chloe felt her heart skip a beat. “I’m so happy she’s about to be my wife.”

The screen faded to black, and when color bloomed back in, Chloe stood in the center wearing her wedding dress, her hands fidgeting and her eyes trained on a mirror in front of her.

“Chloe! Stop squirming!” came Marinette’s voice from just off frame.

Chloe looked down and mouthed ‘sorry’, then looked back into the mirror and sighed, her frayed nerves evident in her eyes.

“Don’t know what you’re so nervous about, girl,” Alya said behind the camera. “You’re Le Grand Paris’ chief event coordinator so you obviously know what you’re doing and you’ve triple checked every-damn-thing. This is probably going to be the smoothest wedding ever, granted Mayor Bourgeois doesn’t break down into tears like M. Dupain did.”

“Okay, just because my dad sobbed so loud the priest had to start over three times, that does not mean our wedding didn’t go smoothly.”

“It’s not the ceremony!” Chloe stomped, eliciting another swear from Marinette. Chloe apologized again and wrung her hands together. “I’m...kinda waiting to wake up.” Marinette’s head lifted into frame, a couple of pins hanging from the corner of her mouth and an inquisitive look in her eyes. “I treated Nath like shit for years, treated all of you like shit, and now look at us. Marinette made me a custom dress, Alya and Nino are handling our album, Sabrina agreed to be my maid of honor, and Nath…” She turned her eyes down to her left hand, her engagement ring sparkling in the light. “He proposed. After eight years of probably the rockiest relationship ever, he...chose me. Chose to spend the rest of his life bound to me. Me.

“I feel like this is a dream. I feel like the moment I say ‘I do’, I’ll wake up, I’ll be a teenager again, and Paon and I will be back to kicking each other’s teeth in.” She turned down to Marinette. “Did you ever go through this whole ‘too good to be true’ thing with Adrien?”

The camera lowered to Marinette, who huffed and flashed a wry grin before returning to her work on Chloe’s dress. “When he agreed to date me after two years of stalkery pining, kind of. After I found out he was Chat Noir, definitely. I thought there was no way the guy I loved and the cat who loved me were the same person. Even on our wedding day, I expected it to be some kind of Akuma spell, but here I am, six years deep into marriage with a pair of five-year-olds, and I couldn’t be happier.”

She smiled up at Chloe. “I assure you, this isn’t a dream. You deserve to be happy. After everything you’ve gone through, you deserve this.”

“Especially after all the bullshit you went through with The-Bitch-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

“Alya!” Marinette scolded, but the smile on her face betrayed her true feelings.

“What?” The camera shook in time with Alya’s laughter. “Chlo put the kibosh on mentioning her name, so how else are you supposed to know who I’m talking about?”

“You’re right.” Marinette and the camera refocused on Chloe. “You’re both right. I deserve this. I’ve changed so much since I was a stupid kid, and Nathanael sees that. He believes I deserve to be happy, and you know what?” She turned back to the camera and the smile on her face was bigger and brighter than Nathanael had ever seen. “I believe it too.”

That particular video file ended and Nathanael turned back to Chloe, who had her eyes down on the album in her lap. She seemed focused on a picture of her dress, which was strange since she described it as ‘lackluster’ earlier. “Are you alright?” he asked.

Chloe ran her fingers over the picture, and when she spoke, she spoke with an odd mix of wonder and sorrow in her voice. “I...she was right. It feels like a dream. This is me. I know this is me but it still feels like I’m looking at someone else’s life.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and all Nathanael could make out was, “I’ve never seen…”

“Never seen what?”

She shook her head and blinked at him, his voice jarring her from her stupor. “N-nothing.” She looked down at the album, stood, and held it out to him. “I’m done for today. You can look through it if you like.” When Nathanael accepted it, she collected their empty coffee mugs and strode into the kitchen, seeming all too eager to put distance between herself and him. Or maybe the album.

Nathanael looked down at the photo Chloe had been looking at. The Chloe in the photo wore the same smile she had in the video. Judging from the background, Nathanael guessed this photo was taken moments after that segment of the video ended, when Marinette had finished her last adjustments on the dress. That smile...he’d never seen Chloe smile that big or that bright. He’d never seen…

He paused and looked back up at Chloe, slowly realizing what she’d whispered.

“I’ve never seen myself that happy before.”

#chlonathweek2k19 #chlonath #chloe bourgeois #nathaniel kurtzberg #buzzkill au #miraculous ladybug #mlfanfiction #mlfic

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unfolded73 · 5 years ago

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How Do We Get Back (3/16) - schitt’s creek ff

Summary: In a literal alternate universe where the Roses escaped financial ruin, David and Patrick struggle with loneliness and a sense that something isn’t right. A chance meeting in New York and a terrible tragedy drive them to question whether the timeline they are on is the right one.

Rating will be explicit in later chapters. This chapter 3.8k words. (ao3)

Notes: As previously warned, this fic includes adultery. But as someone messaged me to ask, there are no kids involved.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

________________________________

Chapter 3

The first thing David saw when he got out of his Uber in midtown was a big red sandwich board on the sidewalk that said ‘99¢ PIZZA!’.

“Ew.” He shuddered and turned around, seeing the bar he was looking for a couple of doors down. The Distillery, it said in an understated serif font. Doubting that any distilling actually took place there, he took a breath to steel himself and went inside. He opened his Tinder app and quickly sent a message: I’m here.

The hostess took in his Neil Barrett shirt with black lightning bolts adorning the shoulders, and her haughty expression shifted into a smile. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m supposed to meet someone, but…” He looked down at his phone again. “I don’t think he’s here yet.”

“Well, you’re welcome to wait at the bar.” She pointed it out, her wrist jangling with bracelets. On a Tuesday, even this tourist-hell adjacent bar wasn’t completely packed, but there were only two empty seats that he could see. With a fluttering hand wave to indicate he’d do as the hostess suggested, David made his way over, taking the stool between a group of bros in business suits and a lone tourist.

He’d been browsing Tinder for a lack of anything better to do that afternoon, and after swiping left on half a dozen guys who listed Crossfit among their interests, and as many women who listed ‘influencer’ among their jobs, David had matched with a guy who appeared to be a nice balance of bookish and handsome. Andrew’s tortoise-shell framed glasses and his flirtatious smirk raised David’s hopes that he might get a decent conversation out of this hookup. The fact that Andrew suggested they meet in midtown had almost been enough for David to call the whole thing off, but then he’d looked at the smirk again and agreed.

The bartender approached David. “Get you a drink?”

David looked up from his phone. “I’d love a French 75 if you have Hendrick’s.”

The bartender nodded. “Can I get you another one?” he said to the man beside David, pointing to his almost empty beer glass.

“Sure, thanks.”

David saw that Alexis had posted a selfie with Stavros in a New York club the night before. He hadn’t even known she was in town.

“Gotta say, I don’t really know what to do with my eyes when there’s no TV behind the bar,” the tourist next to him said suddenly.

David looked up, frustrated that someone was trying to make small talk with him, and blinked a couple of times. “That’s what your phone is for.”

The man talking to him smiled sheepishly. “My battery is terrible so I try not to use it too much.”

“Okay.” David opened his Tinder app but without read receipts, he couldn’t tell if his date had seen his message or not. He glanced around the bar, looking for a man who looked like Andrew’s picture, but he still didn’t seem to have arrived.

“I’m Patrick,” the guy next to him said, holding out his hand for David to shake.

David looked at his hand for just a beat too long before tentatively taking it. “David Rose.”

While he was far from famous, David’s name did inspire a spark of recognition in certain circles. Patrick showed no such recognition. His handshake was firm, skin dry and fingertips calloused. David extracted his hand quickly just as the bartender delivered their drinks.

“What do you do, David?” Patrick asked.

“What’s it like, being from a town small enough to strike up conversations with strangers in bars?” David said, trying to shut the conversation down with a dollop of cruelty.

Patrick didn’t take the hint or if he did, the hint only served to amuse him. He just grinned back at David. “It’s pretty nice, actually. What’s it like living in New York?”

David finally looked the guy up and down. Mid-range denim jeans, wash-and-wear cotton weave light blue shirt, too-short haircut that emphasized the roundness of his face. Cute, with big brown eyes that in the right context could be devastating — the eyes were definitely his best feature.

“In answer to your first question, I’m a gallerist.”

Patrick nodded as if he was considering that. “Hmm, okay. What’s a gallerist?”

David squinted at him, his glass at his lips. “Pretty sure it’s right there in the name. Or do you need me to explain what an art gallery is?”

Laughing and flushing with embarrassment, Patrick held up a hand. “Okay, I deserve that. I guess I’m asking what exactly is involved in being a gallerist?”

“Why?” David asked, his whole body recoiling at the questions from this earnest stranger.

Patrick shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

“I cultivate an aesthetic that centers around outsider art, mostly.”

“And what does that mean?” Patrick asked in an overly patient manner that made David feel like he was being made fun of.

Huffing out an impatient breath, David continued, “I arrange to display artists’ work in my space, I cultivate relationships with buyers, host cocktail receptions for special exhibitions, that sort of thing.” His rings flashed in the dim light of the bar as he used his hands to enunciate each point.

“Sounds like interesting work,” Patrick said, his eyes never leaving David’s. It was unnerving, and a little sexy.

“Let me guess, Patrick. You’re in town on business,” David said, already looking back at his phone to show how disinterested he was in the answer. Trying to get the upper hand again.

Patrick chuckled. “Guilty. I’m attending a tax seminar in Hoboken, and I took the ferry over. This is my first time in New York.”

David’s head whipped up at that. “Well, that’s adorable. Why are you at this bar, though? Shouldn’t you be… going to the top of the Empire State building or something?”

“That’s a bit cliche, isn’t it?”

“Everything about you screams tourist, you may as well lean into the stereotype,” David responded.

“Everything about me screams tourist?”

David rolled his eyes. “Yes. Your whole…” He gestured to encompass all of Patrick. “... vibe.”

Patrick looked down at himself and then back up. “Is that what you’re doing with that shirt and the rings and that drink and with checking Tinder every two minutes? Leaning into the stereotype?”

David gaped at him. He’d been trying to insult this guy a little bit, just enough so that the conversation could be over. He hadn’t expected Patrick to be able to match him.

“Wow, okay.”

Patrick suddenly looked regretful and a little scared. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that in a… homophobic way. I’m not used to talking to people so much more sophisticated than me.”

Sniffing, David looked back at his phone. “No, I imagine not. Oh, fuck.”

“What?”

David turned us phone over on the bar and drank half his drink in one gulp. “My date is flaking on me. And after he made me come up to midtown.”

“Is that bad?” Patrick asked. “Not the flaking part — that’s obviously bad — I meant the midtown part.”

“Not if you’re a tourist trying to get your poster on camera for the Today Show.”

“Ah.” Patrick’s lips twitched. “That would be during the… day though.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Only barely.”

David drummed his fingers on the bar. “You’re from Canada,” he said.

“Come on, I only said ‘sorry’ once.” Patrick said with a grin.

“Your accent is unmistakable,” David said, and then indicated himself. “I have dual citizenship. I was born here, but my parents are Canadian. They still have a place outside of Toronto.”

“Oh, yeah? Where did you spend your childhood?”

David rolled his eyes. “Everywhere. My parents are Moira and Johnny Rose.” When Patrick looked at him blankly, he continued. “My mother’s an actress. My father founded Rose Video.”

That made Patrick’s face light up. “I worked at a Rose Video in high school!”

“How fun for you.” David finished his drink and pulled out his wallet. “Well, I guess it’s time for me to make my escape.”

“Oh.” Patrick’s face betrayed his disappointment, which was interesting. “Who am I going to talk to now?”

David looked over his shoulder at the men in suits who’d been getting louder and drunker. “Those guys?” he said, cocking his thumb at them.

Patrick made a disgusted face. “Yeah, I’ll pass.”

It occurred to David for the first time to check Patrick’s left hand. A simple wedding band sat unassumingly on his ring finger. Not that wedding rings said anything about a person’s sexual preferences anymore (if they ever had), but it did say something about this Patrick’s motivations. Either he was just alone and bored in New York and looking for someone to chat with, as it appeared on the surface, or he was looking to cheat on his wife or husband with someone he wouldn’t have to see ever again. David had been on the receiving end of that kind of attention from more than a few wives and husbands over the years. It never felt great, in the end.

On the other hand, those brown eyes were a little bit devastating. And under his cheap Oxford shirt, Patrick’s arms did look nice and strong.

“I guess I could have one more drink,” David heard himself saying.

~*~

“I’m sorry, but that is the most boring fucking job I have ever heard of. If you say it again, I will literally fall asleep at this bar,” David said, tipping the last of his third drink into his mouth.

Patrick grinned widely. “Business manager at an electrical supply company,” he whispered close to David’s ear.

David masked a shudder by theatrically letting his forehead hit the polished surface of the bar, trying not to get distracted by how sexy Patrick’s voice could apparently be, even when he was talking about his dull job.

Patrick laughed and picked up another slider from the plate they were sharing.

“I mean, I know it’s not as glamorous as being a gallerist—”

“You’re right, it isn’t. It isn’t glamorous at all,” David said, debating if he should order one more drink. If he did, he’d cross the line from pleasantly buzzed over into drunk, and that was probably a bad idea for a number of reasons.

“I mean, I’m not the… what was it? ‘Rembrandt of Wall Street’?” Patrick said, referring to something they’d overheard one of the finance bros say before they’d cleared out to go hit another bar. They’d barely suppressed their giggles at the time, and now David allowed himself a full-out laugh, Patrick laughing right along with him. David leaned over in Patrick’s direction in his mirth, losing his balance slightly and catching himself with a hand on Patrick’s denim-clad thigh.

He let his hand stay there just long enough that it still plausibly fell within the realm of an accident, but he took careful note of a tiny catch in Patrick’s breath, and the way he licked his lips as David righted himself. Interesting, he thought.

Patrick had had only had two and a half beers over the last few hours (counting the one he’d almost finished when David arrived), so at least David knew he was in full possession of his faculties. Not that it mattered; why was he worried about whether Patrick was drunk?

Because you want to fuck him, his inner voice supplied. Which was depressing because this very funny, surprisingly attractive button of a man was definitely married, likely to a woman, and nothing good was going to come from going down that road. Best case scenario, Patrick would reject him immediately, being the upstanding person that he was. Worst case scenario, something would happen between them and David would end up getting his heart stepped on.

Patrick was looking at his phone. “Wow, I had no idea what time it was. You don’t have any idea how late the ferries run, do you?”

“Do I look like I ever go to New Jersey?” David asked, taking a bite of the last slider.

Laughing, Patrick flagged down the bartender and asked him the same question.

“You’ve already missed the last one,” the bartender told him. “Separate checks?”

“Shit,” Patrick said at the same time David said, “I’ll take the check.”

“What? No, you don’t have to do that,” Patrick said.

“Please, you saved me from a shameful retreat when my date bailed. It’s the least I can do.”

“I guess I can take a cab back to Hoboken?”

“A cab through the Lincoln Tunnel will cost you at least seventy-five dollars,” the bartender said to Patrick as he handed the little black folder to David.

“Oh,” Patrick said, and David could tell that was a lot of money to him. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for picking up the check.

“I could call you an Uber,” David offered.

“You’re already paying for the drinks and the food, David; I can’t ask you to do that.”

He started to say that the money meant nothing to him, but then he had an idea. “Well, then you can crash at my place and catch the ferry in the morning,” he said as he stuck a credit card in the little pocket and set it on the edge of the bar, trying to seem nonchalant.

He wasn’t looking at Patrick but he could feel his surprise. “Oh… I don’t… I can’t…”

“That’s not a pick-up line, I literally just mean you can crash there. I’m not trying to—”

“No, I know,” Patrick said quickly. David finally looked at him and his eyes were very wide. “It’s just too much of an imposition for someone I just met. And what if I’m an axe murderer?”

David tried to suppress a smile, his lips twisting. “Well, are you an axe murderer?”

“Are you?”

The bartender put the check in front of David, and he quickly filled out the tip line and scratched out his illegible signature. “Yes, but I’m taking a sabbatical from the murdering.”

“What a coincidence, me too,” Patrick said.

“Then it’s settled,” David said, pulling on his leather jacket. “Come on.”

He didn’t really expect that to work but when he headed for the exit, Patrick pulled on his own (much more weather-appropriate) winter coat and joined him.

An Uber appeared like magic a mere minute after he summoned one, and David held the door open for Patrick, letting him get into the car first. Patrick sat silently as they crawled down 9th Avenue, looking out of the window at the storefronts.

“Is there traffic like this at any time of the day or night?” Patrick finally asked.

“It clears out eventually,” David said, watching Patrick. He was fidgeting with his hands, playing with his wedding ring, and David felt a stab of guilt. Yes, there was a level on which this was innocent, but there was another, more true level on which it wasn’t, on which the touch on Patrick’s thigh had been calculated, and the invitation to his apartment a tactic. Still, he could back out and let the innocent explanation for inviting Patrick back to his place become the true one. It wasn’t too late to be honorable for once in his life.

They finally arrived, and David tried to look a little more graceful than he usually did shoving on the sticky vestibule door of his building. He mostly succeeded.

“I can find you an unused toothbrush,” he said as he led Patrick up the stairs. “And if you want to shower tonight or in the morning, I can get you a towel.”

“Thanks again, David. This is incredibly generous.”

David unlocked the door to his apartment and opened it, gesturing for Patrick to go in. “Please, I have a spare bedroom, it’s really no trouble.” After taking Patrick’s coat and carefully hanging it up in the hall closet, David moved deeper into the apartment, flipping on lights as he went. “Do you want a glass of water?”

“Uhh… yeah. Thanks.” Patrick walked over to the living room windows. “This is a really nice apartment.”

David filled a water glass from the pitcher in the fridge and carried it back out to Patrick, standing at Patrick’s side and following his gaze out the window. “It’s not as nice as the apartment I used to have, but it’s fine.”

“What happened to the apartment you used to have?”

David raised his shoulders in a sort of shrug. “Turns out my father’s business manager was embezzling from him a few years ago. He was caught, but he hadn’t been paying taxes for a while so we had to pay…” He suddenly couldn’t think of the word.

“Penalties?”

“Right, penalties. So we had to sell off some stuff, including that apartment. Also, as you can imagine, the video business isn’t what it used to be,” he said with a smirk.

“Yeah. So do you not have a Netflix account out of, like, solidarity?”

David laughed. “No, I have a Netflix account. Why, did you want to watch something?”

Patrick shook his head and set his water down on a glass end table. “I should probably get some sleep. I’ll need to be up pretty early in order to make it back to the seminar for the morning session.” He continued to stand rooted on the spot, though, making no move away from David’s side.

“Did you need to charge your cell phone?” David asked. “You mentioned earlier—”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks.” Patrick pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over. David made a face at his cheap Nokia phone with the chipped edges, but he opened a drawer under his coffee table and pulled out a tangle of different chargers, some of which had been left behind by people he’d dated. He quickly found a suitable one and plugged in Patrick’s phone.

“Okay, well, spare bedroom is right over there,” David said, returning to Patrick’s side and indicating the door next to the one that led to his own room. The atmosphere between them felt heavy, and David knew he should move away from Patrick, go get him a towel or something to defuse things, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

Then Patrick made a tiny move of his head, infinitesimal really, in David’s direction, and that was all David could take. He met him more than halfway, mouth on Patrick’s and hand coming up to cup the back of his head. The kiss was relatively chaste, but there was no question that Patrick was on board for it, his lips nipping at David’s bottom one, one of his hands clutching at David’s bicep. David felt a bit like a dam was breaking on the desire that had been building between them all night, and he let himself enjoy the few blissful seconds of that kiss.

“And when I said I wasn’t trying to pick you up,” David whispered when they parted, “that didn’t mean I was averse to picking you up.”

Patrick’s still held onto his arm, but his facial expression was pained. “David, I’m married.”

“Yeah, I noticed the ring.”

“To a… to a woman. I’ve never done that before with a guy. So…”

“Oh.” David did take a step back then. So that’s what this was. A small-town closet case who’d gotten married under false pretenses. Not exactly what he’d hoped he was signing up for. “Is it a religious thing? Are you one of those guys who’s been scarred by conversion therapy?”

Patrick shook his head quickly. “No, nothing like that. I really thought…” He ran his hands over his face. “Holy shit, how could I not know that that’s what kissing someone is supposed to feel like?”

David couldn’t help preening a little bit at that. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a sexual revelation to someone before.”

With an uneasy chuckle, Patrick let himself drop onto the sofa. “What am I doing? Why did I come here?” he murmured, almost to himself.

David sat down on the sofa too, leaving a space between them. “Look, it can end right here. You go sleep in the guest room and I’ll go sleep in my room, and…” He threw up his hands. “And in the morning you won’t even have to see me, because I’m not really a morning person, so…” He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence.

Patrick was fidgeting with his hands again, twisting his wedding ring. “My intention wasn’t to… treat you like an experiment, and that must be what this seems like. As if I set out this evening to go to a bar in a big city and meet an anonymous man so that I could test drive a… another sexual orientation.”

David gave him a sheepish shrug. It didn’t not seem like that.

“I started talking to you for the exact reason you said: I’m from a small town where you make conversation with the guy sitting next to you at the bar. But David, I…” He looked up finally then, and fuck, those brown eyes were exactly as devastating as David had feared they could be. “Thinking about it now, I was attracted to you from the moment you shook my hand, and I honestly don’t know if it’s just you or men in general, but if it is men in general that would certainly explain a lot of things about my—”

David put a hand over Patrick’s to stop his manic motion, and it simultaneously stopped his mouth from moving, the tumult of words drying up as rapidly as they had started. It was a relief. Patrick’s openness was turning David inside out; he wasn’t used to being around people who said exactly what they were thinking, who didn’t play games, whose every word wasn’t calculated to manipulate.

“It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling is okay. And whatever you want to do is okay,” David said, and then winced. He was definitely going to regret this, but he couldn’t help himself. The idea of helping this man discover a new side of himself was too tempting to resist. “I can be… if you need to test things out and see the way you feel with a man, then I can be that. For you.”

Patrick’s eyes widened, then dropped to David’s lips. “Why would you do that?”

“Umm, because you’re hot?” David said flippantly, trying to lighten things up. “And because it seems like you need a push in the queer direction,” he added with a gentle laugh.

A quick smile flashed across Patrick’s face before his face turned serious again, his eyes still trained on David’s mouth. And then he leaned in.

Chapter 4

#schitt's creek #schitts creek #david x patrick #david x patrick ff #schitt's creek ff #hdwgb fic #my fic

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bloomingednae · 6 years ago

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"Okabe...who was I to you?"

Eight years have passed since the achievement of Steins;Gate world line; from research to moving on, both Okabe and Kurisu realize that the time passed between them has only widened the distance; and brought them closer than intended.

A reflection on the what-ifs, regrets, forgiveness, and second chances, and how sometimes, too much time apart can bring people closer than ever before.

[set in S;G world line, in which Okabe never confesses to Kurisu at the end of the OVA].

(Chapter 1 up, at last! This fic is also on AO3, follow the link above to read on AO3, or click on the ‘read more’ link below for chapter 1 here. Each chapter is mostly inspired by a Panic! At the Disco song, save for about one or two which will be by different artists, so be sure to be on the lookout for the lyrics that inspire each chapter’s theme. ~)

Chapter 1: The Calendar

“Don’t wanna call it a second chance, But when I came back, it was more of a relapse, Anticipation’s on the other line, An obsession called while you were out Yeah, it called while you were out.” ~ The Calendar - Panic! At the Disco

October 15, 2010

"Then forget about it," he started, closing his eyes a bit. "No good will come from chasing alternate world lines."

"I know," she said, shutting her eyes in slight frustration, clutching the maid tray closer to her chest. "I intend to forget it all."

He opened his eyes slowly, keeping a downcast expression to hide his disappointment.

"I see."

She turned her heel on him and walked away, unbeknownst to him the confusion and reflected disappointment in her own eyes.

All the same, she missed his downcast expression, mixed with an unexplained bittersweet sadness.

-----------------

September 29, 2018

“I...see.”

His breath hitched for a split second before he exhaled, hands rubbing his face with one motion before he steadied his gaze on her again.

“So even after all this time…”

“Please, don’t take this the wrong way,” Kurisu began. She fidgeted with one of her hands on her lap, the other clenching and unclenching into a fist on the table near his own hand, and she sighed before speaking.

“I...you-”

“Your heart belongs somewhere else.”

Kurisu’s eyes shot up at him, but before she could speak, he gently raised one in a ‘stop’ motion, silencing her once more.

“Kurisu, there’s a look in your eyes...I don’t know how to explain it. It’s distant, as if you’re constantly daydreaming elsewhere.”

“Every time you look at your phone when he messages you,” he continued, “your eyes would light up. They become colored with this emotion I’ve never seen you have; it’s a mix of irritation and joy, but the bottom line is...it’s different.”

He sighed as he grasped his glass, unable to drink its contents. With a silent chuckle, he looked up to Kurisu and he shook his head slowly.

“There’s a fire in your eyes that I could never ignite.”

In that moment, Kurisu felt all of the air from her lungs escape her, a silent gasp in her breath as he revealed the cruel truth in front of her. She shook her head, in an attempt to deny what has already been admitted.

“Seth, you know that’s not true-”

“I can’t understand Japanese,” he interrupted quickly, “but I do see the same name come up on your messages every now and then. And while I trust you, I can’t deny the fact that you may honestly be feeling something different with each message.”

Kurisu shook her head. “I’ve never said anything that implied otherwise in those messages,” she responded. “Granted, we talked a lot three years ago around the time I first started seeing you, but that was because we had that paper to publish together.”

He chuckled, and he shook his head sadly. “Oh, Kurisu, if only you could see your own true emotions; it’s your greatest attraction...and downfall.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but slowly closed them as she watched him in careful regard, his eyes staring at hers fleetingly. With a bittersweet smile, he sighed in defeat, placing his hands on his lap as he kept his steady gaze on her.

And all at once, she braced herself for what was to come next. With a hard heart, she took in his words with full force.

“...I hope he sees the ‘you’ that I couldn’t.”

-----------

It was midnight by the time the lights to the small apartment living room lights turned on, signaling her roommate’s return home. She listened as keys were placed loudly on the kitchen table, followed by a drop of a heavy book bag; in the next few seconds, the familiar sound of those footsteps came down the hall and stopped right outside her bedroom door.

Dreadfully, Kurisu buried her face into her pillow once more as her bedroom door opened, flooding her dark room with a blinding light from the living room. She tried to stay as silent as possible, even as she heard a sigh coming from the entrance of her room.

“What happened?”

Kurisu groaned; as much as she appreciated Maho’s straight-forward personality, it was something she didn’t need at the moment. She shook her head in resistance, not responding, even as Maho entered her room and sat at the edge of her bed. Maho poked her leg in response and Kurisu could only recoil away from the touch, curling more into a fetal position to clutch her dolphin stuffed animal even closer to her chest.

“Don’t ignore me. I know what happened. And I know it was big enough to impact you if you’re clutching to that poor dolphin with your life.”

Kurisu shook her head, mumbling into her pillow.

“It’s over.”

Maho rolled her eyes. “I know that, dummy. But how and why?”

Kurisu sat up slowly at her question and squinted at her with tired eyes.

“This isn’t an experiment, Senpai.”

“And I’m not just your roommate,” Maho responded sharply. “I’m your friend, and I know you’re thinking more into this than you usually would.”

“Granted,” Maho continued, “this is your...first time breaking up with someone so…and well, I wouldn't know any better, but...”

Kurisu buried her face into the dolphin’s plush body at the impact of the sentence and Maho shook her head.

“Sorry. That came out too blunt.”

Kurisu didn’t bother to correct her that everything she said came out too blunt. She sighed as she slowly looked at Maho again, weariness in her eyes.

“I’m okay,” she responded. “It stings, but...I know I can get over this.”

She tucked a stray hair in her face behind her ear before continuing. “He had this silly notion that someone else was of my interest, and I guess he got tired of waiting for me.”

Maho hummed at the response, but didn’t say a word as she let Kurisu continue. Kurisu sniffled a bit as she spoke.

“In all honesty,” she said, as she clutched the dolphin even closer to her, “I’m not hurt at the situation...that much. For some reason, I couldn’t see myself being with him so long term; it didn’t feel right.”

Kurisu inhaled slowly as she deliberated on her next few words, shakiness in her tone as she spoke.

“I’m hurt and afraid at how true he may be, after all.”

Maho crossed her arms. “Is that why I saw an airplane ticket confirmation for Japan on the printer earlier?”

Kurisu winced at the thought of Maho finding her impulsive spend, but she decided to let it go. She nodded slowly, face palming as she did so.

“...I don’t believe in second lives, destiny, fate, or pre-existing encounters. We’re scientists, Senpai, and it’d be ridiculous to do so.”

“But,” Kurisu continued, “I...need to get to the bottom of this.”

Maho remained silent in thought, quickly picking up the implications of Kurisu's words. She crossed her arms, expression filled with doubt.

“Is this the whole world line thing you tried to explain to me, the one you heard from him?

Kurisu nodded. “I still don't get it. I mean, theoretically I do, but I don't understand...the subjectivity of it all. It's so unsure and experiences can be interpreted differently, to the point that you start to wonder what's real anymore.”

Maho shook her head. “Nothing good comes from trying to mix in fantasy and reality.”

Kurisu turned to Maho quickly, shaking her head. “That’s the thing; is it really fantasy?”

She fidgeted with one of the fins on the dolphin as she spoke, averting Maho’s eyes when speaking the next few words.

“Something...or someone, keeps drawing me back to Japan. I’m strung to something like a string that keeps pulling me back. I’m captivated by the lights and the sights of the streets in Akihabara whenever I visit. And I’m hung over by the familiarity of that room, as stupid and small that place is.”

“So that’s why I’m going back,” Kurisu said firmly. “I’m scared to know if what he says is true, but…”

Her voice trailed off as Maho nodded, listening to each word that Kurisu mentioned. Maho sighed as she pressed her hand against one side of her temple, in clear exasperation.

“Obviously, whatever I say wouldn't effect you much. Even if I told you again and again that no other world lines exist with scientific proof, you won't stop searching no matter what," Maho said plainly.

"However," she continued, "There are things that you should be able to see with a plain eye, Kurisu, and I wonder if you’re actually just stupid.”

Kurisu’s eyes shot up as she made eye contact with Maho, opening her mouth to speak, but Maho automatically cut her off.

“Well, whatever. If you want to find the truth out yourself, you’re more than welcome to. Because I know you, Kurisu.”

Maho turned to gaze at the younger individual, a serious gaze in her eyes. “You’re one to find out the truth for yourself rather than others tell you.”

Kurisu looked at her puzzledly for a second and Maho sighed in return, facing her gaze away.

“Go. And see for yourself,” Maho said. “Just,” she continued, “don’t…overwork yourself over it.”

Kurisu nodded slowly, in acknowledgement. The words of her senior didn’t quite make sense to her, but...she trusted them. And it was the only thing that pushed her forward at that moment.

“Thank you, Senpai.”

Maho smiled for a second before looking out towards the living room. She paused for a second before speaking.

“So...any reason you’ll be giving them to be going to Japan this time around?”

Kurisu paused before nodding slowly. “Suzuha-chan’s birthday just passed….Amane-san invited me but I just missed it…”

Maho scoffed. “I did tell you to go, you know.”

Kurisu pouted in response. “Look, I thought I had everything in control, so…”

Maho side glanced her for a moment, before chuckling slightly. “You don’t really need a reason, really. I guess I just ask because...you know that they’ll ask, since it’s not for a conference or class reason; I mean at least...someone...will ask.”

Kurisu tried to shake off the implication behind the ‘someone’ Maho referred to by shaking her head and sighing.

It was the reason she was going to Japan, and something she didn’t need to think about at the moment.

She stretched for a moment before glancing at her clock, frowning as she met the blaring numbers of “12:47 AM” on the display. Maho seemed to pick up on her concern of the late time and stood up as a signal to exiting the room.

Maho turned to Kurisu one last time before stepping out, glancing at her with a gaze in earnest.

“Don’t hesitate to call me, if something comes up.”

Kurisu noticed the way she omitted, “in Japan”; Maho often left the option open for Kurisu to call her at any time at any place, even within the states. Deep down, Kurisu had a great appreciation and respect for her senior, which eventually blurred the lines into letting her accept that Maho was indeed one of her closest and best friends.

She smiled in return. “Thanks again, Senpai.”

#blooming drabbles s;g #s;g trade mistakes #steins;gate #steins gate

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the-original-starfruit-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Lapidot Anniversary Week D3

“Love Thy Neighbor”

The perks of living in a refurbished barn in the middle of nowhere? Lots of serene quiet, an ideal atmosphere for making art, and homophobic neighbors to one-up with your completely, utterly, 100% platonic roommate.

Words: 3,481

Tags: romance/ mutual crushing/ homophobia/ human au/ gay pride/ artist!au/ music!au/ they each have a crush on the other and it's a grand gay old time

(my contribution for day three’s human au prompt !! and yes, this was preexisting cause i was lazy today and didn’t do a painting) @jenhedgehog @lapidot-anniversary-week

Lapis moved the curtain aside to peek out the window. She did a double take, quickly pushing the light fabric all the way aside to get a better view.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, then louder: “Peridot, come look at this shit.”

There was a note from the other room, the sullen twang of a B flat, a hollow, vaguely discordant thump that sounded like a guitar being put down not as gently as it should have. Another sound, one of their chairs being scraped back, and Peridot came over.

“Sorry – was I interrupting?” Lapis asked, and she shook her head grumpily.

Lapis suppressed a shiver as Peridot slipped under her arm to look out the window.

“It’s fine. I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.”

She could feel the younger girl’s body heat radiating through her light summer clothes, the top of her hijab barely brushing Lapis’s shoulder.

“So what’s outside besides the usual trees, grass and –“ Peridot stopped, her mouth dropping open. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Lapis agreed, dropping her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Although it may not befit you to take the Lord’s name in vain.”

Peridot snorted, elbowing Lapis in the side. She shook her head slowly as she continued to look outside at the house next door, which had been decorated apparently overnight with no less than seven oversized American flags, a large cross, and a wooden sign that proclaimed God Bless America!

“I always knew our neighbors were wacked,” Lapis said, stepping away from the window. The butterflies in her stomach subsided, though she told herself it was the absence of Christian patriotism being shoved in her face rather than close proximity to Peridot and her warmth.

“I mean, we’re two reclusive art students living in a barely remodeled barn, Laz,” Peridot said with a grin. “They probably think the same thing about us.”

She let the curtain fall back into place and went back into the two mismatched couches they called the sitting area, picking up her guitar and letting a couple notes vibrate through the air. She extended one short leg onto the crate-turned-coffee-table and leaned her head back, emitting a sigh of frustration so heavy it was nearly palpable.

“You need a break,” Lapis said. “Wanna come to the farmer’s market so we actually have something for dinner tonight?”

“Why not,” Peridot said after a moment of hesitation, leaning all the way over the back of the couch and smiling upside down. Her glasses nearly fell off as she straightened with nervous energy and hopped off the couch.

Lapis grabbed her backpack from the table and rummaged around inside, fishing out a few crumpled bills and a handful of change. Peridot came down from the loft a few minutes later with a similar yield.

“Twelve seventy-eight,” she said. Lapis grinned and held out her hand.

“Twenty-six fifty,” she said triumphantly, and Peridot whooped.

“Gourmet tonight,” she said, opening the front door and letting Peridot out first, “I’m thinking fresh pesto and –“

They collided as Peridot stopped abruptly, and Lapis swore as she nearly bowled her over.

“What –“ she began, and then Peridot bent to pick up a sheet of paper from their front step. Her eyes scanned it quickly and she handed it to Lapis, incredulous.

“Add to the burn pile, I guess,” she said, eyebrows raised as she headed for the car.

HAVE YOU BEEN SAVED? the paper bellowed, and Lapis allowed for a hearty eye roll before she continued to read. Most are unaware they are living in sin. However, it is not too late! The New Testament proclaims that everyone can be saved if they confess, repent, and believe – despite falling prey to sins such as thievery, copulation out of wedlock, homosexuality

Lapis crumpled the paper in her fist, scowling, and threw it vehemently in the direction of the house next door.

She got into the driver’s seat, slamming the door a bit harder than necessary, her cheeks flushed. Peridot, seatbelt already buckled conscientiously, looked over.

“Do you mind if we make a stop at the paint store on the way home?” Lapis asked. An idea was starting, familiar inspiration blooming in the forefront of her mind. “I have some stuff I need to get.”

* * * * *

The next morning, Lapis was up at dawn. She dressed quickly and headed outside, her bag of brushes and paint heavy on her arm. She had gotten seven sample-sized colors of housepaint for free, and she knew exactly how she was going to use them.

She hummed as she pried open the metal lids with a paint-splattered screwdriver. She and Peridot had talked about repainting the barn since they moved in, and Lapis had always hated the drab gray that was peeling off the outside wall like long strips of elephant skin. She had been out with a ladder, an old toilet brush and a hose last night, scrubbing away the dirt and loose old paint to prepare the wall for new.

By the time Peridot had woken up, gotten ready, realized Lapis was gone, and come outside to look for her, her work was done. With her hands on her hips and her back to their neighbor’s house, she stood and admired the seven stripes of color that radiated off the side of their barn. Peridot joined her, mouth agape.

“You painted a twelve foot pride flag on the side of our house because our neighbors left a stupid flyer on our stoop?”

Lapis nodded, unable to contain her grin. She wiped a smear of blue paint from her hand to her leg.

Peridot’s serious facade broke, and she cackled, holding her sides and wiping at the corner of her eye.

“They’re going to be so pissed,” she gasped eventually, patting Lapis lightly on the back several times, warm and sweet and congratulatory in the sun.

“That’s the idea,” Lapis said, something in her chest glowing. “Let’s go have breakfast, I’m starved.”

* * * * *

For two days they waited for a response, peeking out the windows every few hours. Bored, Lapis used the rest of the robin-egg blue housepaint to repaint a wall on her side of the loft, and Peridot whined about the fumes until Lapis mixed a pale purple and drove her outside by deciding to do a wall downstairs as well. She opened all the windows and laughed as she listened to Peridot strum her guitar, alternating between mournful minor chords and an angry blues riff that always ended with the accompanying lyrics fuck you, oh-ohhh Lazuli, fuck yoo-ouu.

That evening, she went outside with purple paint under her nails and two sandwiches on a tray. She sat next to Peridot on their scratchy little back lawn, admiring how the last of the sunset looked coming through the tall weeping beech that watched over the black-eyed Susans in the corner. Cicadas sang in monotone at the few dozen fireflies beginning to stitch through the dark abovegrass.

“Oh! Wow, thanks,” Peridot said, picking up her sandwich and humming appreciatively as she bit into it.

“You should eat more,” Lapis said without thinking, knowing how easy it was to forget food when immersed in painting or sculpting. She hoped it was the same for Peridot’s music and that the younger girl wasn’t neglecting to eat on purpose.

Peridot shrugged it off, her mouth full. Then she swallowed like she had forgotten something, her eyes wide.

“I forgot to tell you! Look what they put up over there, it’s fucking terrifying.”

Lapis stood up and shaded her eyes, looking at the neighbor’s house. Her mouth fell open.

There was a life-sized scarecrow decorated in painstaking detail to look like Uncle Sam, painted face accurate down to the bushy white eyebrows. It pointed menacingly in their direction, a red-white-and-blue top hat perched on its head. Yet another flag hung from an outstretched arm.

Peridot was laughing silently when Lapis sat back down, wide-eyed and shaking her head slowly. She opened her mouth, but then just took a bite of sandwich, at a loss for words.

“You know what this calls for, right?” Peridot asked, her eyes glittering. Lapis looked over and couldn’t help smiling at the four feet eleven inches of energy practically vibrating by her side.

“Retaliation.”

* * * * *

The next day Lapis woke up to something horrible poking repetitively at her ribs. She shoved the offending sensation away. It persisted, and she groaned, rolling over and cocooning herself in blankets.

“Lazuli,” a soft whisper, then louder, “Lazuli!”

She sat bolt upright so suddenly that Peridot squeaked in alarm, jerking backwards and blinking innocently behind her round glasses.

“Iss still dark ou’,” Lapis slurred irritably, glaring through squinted eyes in the lavender-tinted predawn light that crept shyly through the window. Peridot nodded.

“I know, I have to get outside before the neighbors go to work so that they’re guaranteed to hear me, and I thought I could use a little extra time to ensure the plan goes off flawlessly –“

Lapis laid a finger imprecisely over her lips in a shushing motion. The blanket slipped down a bit, and Lapis hiked it back up, feeling the cool air prickle her bare skin. Peridot stopped talking abruptly. Lapis couldn’t tell in the barely-there light, but she thought she saw a dark flush of color, flaming cheeks.

“Get to the point?” Lapis asked, less cuttingly than she wanted, and her heart was racing so damn hard at the feeling of Peridot’s soft and slightly chapped lips on her finger that she was certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep again.

Peridot grinned and pulled away from Lapis’s hand.

“What are the gayest songs you know?” she asked. Lapis blinked for a moment.

“Power of Two by Indigo Girls, She by Dodie Clark, Jenny by the Studio Killers,” Lapis rattled off, then smiled a little as Peridot blinked in bemusement. “Why’d you ask me if you thought you wouldn’t get results?”

Peridot shook her head silently and left. Her head stopped level with the floor as she descended the ladder, and she added a small, “Wow, thanks!” before disappearing below the edge of the loft.

Lapis sagged back into the nest of her bed. She touched her finger with her other hand, gently rubbing the spot where Peridot’s lips had been – the spot that, for some elusive reason, seemed to burn.

She knew it would be useless to try and get back to sleep, but she lay in bed for a while longer anyway before Peridot’s soft music drifted through the walls of the barn. She got up, pulled on a shirt, and went outside.

Peridot was leaning against the wall of the barn underneath the enormous pride flag, strumming her guitar and looking at tablature on her phone. The sun was coming up, painting everything with a strangely delicate new light, rose-toned and downy gold.

Peridot saw her and stopped humming under her breath.

“Lapis! Here, this is in perfect conjunction with my plan – quick, sit down, he’ll be coming out here any minute –“

Lapis sat next to Peridot in the dew-sweet grass, shivering as the seat of her boxers soaked up the dampness with brutal efficiency. Peridot glanced up.

“Cozy up, we have to put on a good show,” she said, and Lapis felt warmth blossom down her whole side as Peridot pressed against her. She sighed in sleepy contentment, her mouth opening in a jaw-cracking yawn.

“So wha – aaah – what’s this… retaliation of yours?” Lapis asked. Her head drooped, and it seemed too much effort to raise it again. Peridot repositioned her shoulder so she could still play with Lapis’s head cradled by her neck.

“I sit out here and demonstrate proof of my blatant protest of their homophobia by playing gay songs under our enormous pride flag. The message would have been sufficiently clear with me on my own, hence the plan, but your presence adds yet another layer of sapphic imagery.”

Lapis smiled a little at the proud explanation. She was always a sucker for sapphic imagery.

“Well-planned and meaningful composition,” she said through another yawn, “thought that was my job.”

“You already did your job with the flag, painter,” Peridot said smugly, strumming a few chords, the notes harmonious as dewdrops in the fresh air. “Now sit there and look gay.”

Lapis snorted. Her eyes slipped closed.

“Can do,” she thought she muttered, but she couldn’t be sure – everything was a bit dreamlike, a faded impressionist landscape of greens and sunrise hues, blurred through the squint of her eyelashes. Almost chalky with pastel strokes and colors. Peridot’s bare shoulder blushed warm under her sleep-soft cheek.

It could have been hours later when Lapis first started to wake, surfacing from some emerald-weeded and waterlilied pond jeweled by music she couldn’t differentiate from a dream. She was slowly aware of being curled against something warm and small, and of the song filtering down through the sunlit water of her consciousness – a voice that Lapis rarely heard, less nasal than spoken word and much huskier than expected from such a tiny girl.

She opened her eyes and was confronted by Peridot’s shoulder, the golden-brown expanse of her skin under the slim smile of her tank top strap. The song was barely audible over the sigh of the wind, but some lyrics got through.

though she came from the sea

her smile’s not for me

a moonshell girl, translucent pearl

my Lapis Lazuli.

Lapis tried to isolate the lurch in her chest but shifted by accident, her face slipping abruptly and her heart beating hummingbird fast.

The guitar and Peridot’s voice cut off with equal suddenness, and Lapis felt her move. A poorly disguised note of panic, though she kept her voice quiet.

“I – Lapis! Are you awake?”

Lapis pretended to stretch with a sonorous movement, as if she were escaping the syrup of sleep, and she must have done a moderately convincing job. Peridot relaxed as she hummed a noncommittally drowsy answer, straightening slowly against the wall. She faked a yawn and wiggled her toes in the grass in front of her, finally looking over at Peridot with a simulated tiredness.

“Aaah shit – how long did I sleep? Did I miss him?” she murmured, pointing her chin at the neighbor’s house.

Peridot looked relieved.

“Only by about an hour,” she said scornfully. “You’ll be pleased to know he reacted quite well to my ballads – other than his face bearing a striking resemblance to a pitted prune once he figured out my lyrics, there appeared to be no negative changes in his attitude.”

Lapis snorted.

“No pitchforks, no torches, no village mob screaming to burn us?” she asked, and Peridot shook her head.

“You can afford to joke, but we’re lucky,” she said darkly.

“Oh, lighten up, Miss Gloom-and-Doom,” Lapis said, resisting the impulse to kiss Peridot’s cheek - where in the blazing hell had that come from? - before she stood up, trying to hide her furious blush. “I can’t wait to see how they’ll top this one.”

* * * * *

The revenge was quick to come in the form of an obnoxious sign, proudly pegged into the center of the neighbor’s lawn – God Hates Gays & Liars.

“Whatever that means,” Peridot had said contemptuously when she saw it. Lapis loathed that sign, and now a hot little worm of anger burned whenever she looked out the window.

It took her four days to sculpt three detailed statues, each about eight inches high, and each depicting a different pair of women embracing in various positions, their nudity artfully displayed and accentuated with long, flowing lines of languorous motion. Peridot blushed heavily when she saw them.

“Wow – I mean, those are gorgeous, but, uh, pretty explicit, Laz,” she said when Lapis emerged, smelling baked by the kiln and her fingernails crusted with brown-red clay.

“I know. This should, ah, grant them a new perspective on what they’re protesting with all their righteous god-squad fuckery,” Lapis said, carefully gathering her sculptures.

“Wait – what do you mean? These aren’t for around the house, or gallery pieces? You’re not selling them?” Peridot questioned anxiously, following Lapis as she made a beeline for the front door.

“Oh, no,” Lapis assured her with a manic brightness in her eyes, “these are going straight on our garden wall. Those assholes will get a very personalized gallery viewing.”

She marched out the door, Peridot spluttering in her wake, and set the statues facing their neighbors on the low stone wall that divided their two properties.

The next day, the other house planted two beds of bright, unnatural-looking red-white-and-blue flowers around their sign and around their scarecrow. Peridot, her mouth twisted in unspoken distaste, set large pots of tall foxglove and marigold on the wall between the statues, partially blocking the view.

Nearly a week passed without retaliation, and Lapis had begun to relax until she went out to water Peridot’s flowers one morning. The watering can toppled from her hand.

One of her statues had been smashed, a thousand shards of clay scattered along the top of the wall. Some larger fragments had fallen to the ground, and Lapis recognized smooth brown limbs she had spent hours creating, a leg here, an arm there. Shaking with anger, she picked up the sign that had replaced the statue.

Love is Love, But God’s Law is God’s Law. Keep Marriage Sacred.

She clenched her teeth, a sound of furious despair leaking out of her mouth. She threw the sign violently and fell to her knees, head bowed, slowly picking up the pieces.

Peridot came out of the house, running across the lawn in fright. Lapis didn’t look up.

“Laz! Lapis! What’s wrong, are you – “ Out of breath, she spotted the ruined statue and the sign. She slowed to a stop, and then hesitantly put her hand on Lapis’s shoulder.

After a minute, she spoke again, her voice unusually gentle.

“We can file a complaint, maybe call someone? Destruction of private property on private property has got to be – “

“It’s not about the statue!” Lapis cut her off, feeling hot tears welling behind her eyes. “I guess – it was never about the neighbors. It’s the principle of the matter. That there are still people like this, backwards-thinking stupid damn people who think it’s not okay for us to love each other – or – or that we’re broken or dirty or – wrong,” she finished, feeling Peridot’s hand drop from her shoulder. She felt a brief flare of panic – and then a small hand was in hers, pulling her upright, and then gentle fingers were under her eyes, doing their best to blot the sadness away.

“Hey, hey. Hey,” Peridot insisted, touching Lapis under the chin to make her look down. “I know. Some people are shitty sometimes, and lots of people are shitty all the time. But,” and Peridot was leaning closer, leaning upwards, and Lapis’s heart was thundering in her ears, her eyes half-closed, lashes wet and still and sooty, “you have to remember that there will always be people like us, too.”

She closed the distance between them, and Lapis had room for nothing except the music that seemed to soar from around them, rising like a sunburst in the middle of the hot summer morning. There was a chaotic, tumbling happiness too, the world feeling overwhelmingly warm and bright and wonderful. The smell of cut grass and flowers in Peridot’s hair. Lapis thought they could have stayed like that forever if she hadn’t heard the small cough from over the garden wall.

She pulled back gently and turned her head.

Their neighbor, who Lapis had never seen before now, stood in the middle of his flower bed, a harmless-looking old man in baggy jeans and a red polo shirt. His mouth was open slightly, and an obviously forgotten hose hung from one hand, pouring a stream of clear water into a patch of already saturated grass.

Lapis found herself smiling sunnily.

She pulled Peridot tight against her, lifting her up and kissing her deeply. She felt a shimmer of pride as the startled sound Peridot made initially turned into a quiet, satisfied hum. Her arms wrapped around Lapis’s shoulders. Lapis closed her eyes, gently stroking Peridot’s back, and let herself be absorbed in bliss until she heard a series of progressively less subtle coughs, then an offended “Hmmph!” and a door slamming in the next house over.

They broke apart leisurely, Peridot grinning with the self-satisfaction of a cat as she slid back to the ground.

“We should have done that a long time ago,” she said breathlessly, her arms still around Lapis’s waist.

Lapis nodded and kissed Peridot’s cheek. Finally. It was warm and smooth.

“Can you help me take these statues in?” Lapis asked with a smile, touching the warm blush of freckles on Peridot’s face as she nodded. “I don’t think we need to worry about the neighbors anymore.”

#my writing #steven universe #lapidot #lapidot anniversary week #human au #text post #this is cute !! read at ur own risk !!#enjoy it lapidot folks <3

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black-wolf066 · 7 years ago

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Well, You Do Have My Chin

Update: OMG!!! MY TIRED 36 HOUR LACK OF SLEEP BRAIN ACCIDENTLY DELETED THE STORY I POSTED THIS MORNING!!! I meant to hit edit, and apparently I hit delete and when it gave me the prompt to hit yes or no, my tired brain that it said “would you like to edit: yes or no”.... so here goes round two... so sorry guys. I wanted to add that i have this on Fanfiction.net now too (under my account Wolf-shadow666) but I just curfunkled everything... ANYWAY underneath is pretty much the post that got deleted... thankfully i save everything on document...

First off, let me just say. I’M ALIVE!!! It is now 8am in the morning, I’ve been working on the better part of this little shit that wouldn’t leave me alone i mean piece since 9pm last night…. i have TO GO TO WORK IN AN HOUR!!! HELP ME!!!!! *flails all over the place* I swear i can adult right sometimes… just not today apparently…. keep this in mind as you’re reading cause even though I’ve proof read this thrice, I’m sure some (or many) things have escaped my brain’s notice.

anyway….

Here is the comment that inspired me to write this one-shot:

@timetravelingpotatoast said:

All I really want from this season is for Killian and Henry to become good friends and talk about Lucy’s “conspiracy” only for Killian to ask who she thinks he is. However, somewhere in the translation it’s lost that Killian is his step-dad, so Henry just says his dad, leading to a “well you do have my chin,” commentary from Killian.

When the curse breaks they just squint at each other for a really long time.

Now, for the sake of the prompt, this is gonna be very heavily AU from season 7. This is by no means a “fix-it fic” because I really am enjoying season 7; I’m only writing this because I really wanted to see something like this be a thing after reading the comment. I absolutely love father/son bonding fics between Killian and Henry and I need more of it in my life… (Seriously there aren’t enough Captain Cobra centered fics to satisfy my craving for it). And I know that I said “I wish I was creative enough to contribute to the fandom of Once Upon a Time”, but after posting my last little snippet; I figured “what the hell I’m gonna do it anyway” because that’s what fandom is (I still feel like I suck terribly but *shrug* if you’re having fun doing it than screw being good at it, right?). (((Also something that should have been maybe 2000 words or less, ended up running away from me toward 4000 (my brain projecting my need for more Captain Cobra moments I guess)… I realize a lot of it is probably considered filler and I could have done away with it, but I kinda wanted to build that relationship between cursed Killian and Henry much like the relationship between Snow White and Emma in season 1)))).

Anyway, here’s a bit of backstory that I came up with for the AU universe of this fic…. If you don’t care and simply just want to read the story, than you can simply scroll down to the Continue reading link:

So in this AU, I’ve pretty much figured that Rumple, Killian, Regina and Emma came to save the day for Henry (Henry may have asked for Killian, Regina and Emma, but the three probably went to Rumple for help or something and Belle urged him to go). I’m thinking the timeline in the realm Henry is in moves faster than the timeline that is Storybrooke, so Henry might be 25 and not 18, but to the rest of his family only 1 year has passed since Henry left in search of his own story((((wondering if this is actually canon considering how shocked they were at seeing him so grown and I don’t believe for a single second that it took Emma and Killian that long to have a baby)))). Emma wasn’t pregnant at the time but eventually as they all stay and help the resistance against Tremaine and Drizella (after finding a way to send word back home that everything and everyone is alright and that they’re staying to help… maybe Rumple being pushed by Belle to stay and help them too), she and Killian end up having twins, and barely a year later Henry has his own kid with Ella. When the curse comes and separates them all, the curse spans the whole state of Washington (Tremaine or Drizella wanting to separate as many of them as they could and not keep them all in the same place… especially the true love couples. But they didn’t bank on Lucy remembering or Rumple finding a loop hole so he didn’t get cursed along with everyone else), so HH is the main hive so to speak but the fairy-tale characters are scattered across other cities and towns. Emma is off in one city (maybe Walla Walla), their twin daughters are in a group home in another city, Henry lived somewhere in Olympia (which is close enough to Seattle and HH), Robin (because I need Regina to be happy damn it! And I figure maybe they found that his soul wasn’t destroyed but simply stuck in the crystal, even across all alternate versions of said crystal in any realm, so he ends up getting freed) is also scattered somewhere, and Rumple, Killian, Regina, Ella and Lucy remained in HH where Tremaine and/or Drizella could keep an eye on them and make their lives a living hell. When Lucy finds Henry, and Jacinda steals his car (much like in the show and what not), he decides to stay at a motel for a week, finding the place interesting (and spurring a bit of creativity that he hadn’t felt since his failed first book) and eventually that week turns into him finding an actual place to stay once he gets to know the people in the neighborhood (made hard by the outrageous prices being asked). When Detective Rogers hears about his search, he offers to turn his den/office into a spare room (the only reason Regina/Roni didn’t offer is because she lives in a small studio apartment above the bar with the only closed room being a bathroom)…. Eventually Rumple as Weaver manages to get everyone back into the neighborhood (((he was the one to give Lucy the book. He was the one to find and bring back the cursed versions of Robin—Kevin Adams, who is a struggling lawyer that ends up helping Jacinda, by Rumple/Weaver’s prompting, get custody of Lucy back—and Emma—Danielle “Dani” Stevens, who was a sketch artist for Walla Walla police department. He was also the one to find which group home the twins were staying in and try to adopt them, since he wasn’t sure how long it would take to break the curse, and he didn’t want them staying there… Rumple and Killian might be civil borderline grey area friends, but he likes the twins and it’ll get them back to their family that much quicker once the curse is broken if he does it like this…)))) and the curse gets broken the same as in season 1 with Henry and Lucy (cause I’m unoriginal and my brain can’t think of anything else right now) ((((That should be enough of a background right? I don’t know… I’m terrible at this… don’t question the plot holes too much okay? You might get sucked into its black hole…))))

(((I looked at apartment averages in Seattle as a guideline (got rid of link since it wasn’t working)… and even though almost 3000 is very high for a one-bedroom apartment that Henry was looking for; I figured that Tremaine and Drizella were trying to weed out the people in the neighborhood slowly so they could bulldoze and improve and bring forth a ‘richer’ environment and a “richer” culture of people to surround themselves with, therefore causing more suffering and separation for those cursed and gaining something else for themselves….))))

((also when it comes to ages, I’m probably way off from canon, but these are my head canon ages for them here so… Emma was 28 at the start of season 1; Killian was 29, Regina 32. Adding 9 years considering Henry left at 18 and only a year passed in Storybrooke whereas 7 years passed where Henry was, that would make them 37, 38, and 41. With another 11ish to 12ish years they are now 48, 49, and 52 with Henry being 37ish.

tagging @superchocovian since she kindly asked me to (hope you enjoy it!!!)

Anyway, without farther ado, i give you this Captain Cobra one-shot in all it’s (step)father/son bonding glory!

Well, You do have my chin

Word count: 4203

Rating: pg-13 for my potty mouth

The din of Roni’s bar was oddly relaxing to Henry as he searched on his laptop for available apartments to move into, but after another site herald the same results, he sighed, closed the screen, and dropped his head into the crook of his arm. Was it too much to ask for a place within his price range? Hell, he was sure he could find something cheaper in the heart of Seattle than he could here.

But no, he stubbornly wanted to stay in this part of the neighborhood. There was something about Hyperion Heights, something that spoke to him, and not just Lucy’s crazy theory that his book was real and they were all fairytale characters scattered across the state (never mind the even crazier theory that he was her father—there was no way he could ever forget meeting a beautiful girl like Jacinda or be stupid enough not to fight for more than a one night stand with said woman).

The scraping of a chair across from him brought Henry’s attention up to that of the arrival of Detective Logan Rogers. The cop’s eyebrow was raised at him in silent question and concern as he sat down and nabbed the untouched bear claw from his plate.

“Bad day?” he asked finally with a tilt of his head as Roni approached with his usual beer.

When Henry still didn’t move to answer, simply groaning and hiding his face back in the crook of his arm, Roni supplied. “He’s looking for places to stay… and failing by the looks of it.”

“The asking prices are outrageous! How do you guys survive here?” he griped into his arm.

Roni snorted and Henry peeked up at her with a perturbed eyebrow raised. “You’ve seen the state of the neighborhood and the state of my bar before I decided to fight back. Isn’t that answer enough for you?”

“What’s your budget?” Logan cut in with his query before Henry could snark back and start an argument with the ornery bartender.

“Well,” Henry’s eyes shifted to him just as the older man took a bite out of the pilfered pastry. “With Seattle, I kind of figured I’d be lucky to find something for twenty-two hundred, but there is no way I’m paying almost three thousand for a place that’s barely in the city’s limits.”

“Welcome to the land of Belfrey greed.” chimed Roni as she walked back to tend the bar and the new arrival of customers.

Henry scowled un-amusedly at her back as she went.

“I have space,”

Startled, Henry gazed, wide eyed, back at the Detective. “What?”

“Well, it’s not really a ‘room’, but the den can easily be turned into one.” Logan continued, his good hand going up to scratch nervously behind his ear.

“Wha—Why?” Tilting his head and narrowing his eyes, Henry pressed on. “I know the three of us are ‘kinda’ working together, but we barely know each other. Hell, for all you know I could be a serial killer.” at Logan’s snort and raised brow, Henry rolled his eyes and said defensively. “Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“I trust you.” Logan relented simply with a shrug of his shoulders. “Besides, I have a gun I’m not afraid to use, and you look to be out of options, mate.”

Still eyeing the older man with suspicion, not used to blatantly kind gestures from others, he asked. “Can I swing by to look at your place before I decide?”

“Of course.” taking a swig of his beer, Logan gestured with his head to the closed laptop. “Now, what was it you wanted to show me?”

(***)

Walking into the apartment after Logan, Henry took in the sparsely decorated living space with a familiar pang beating against his chest. It was neat and orderly, everything he considered the detective to be, even after a week of working covertly with him and Roni. But seeing it so bare, devoid of… well, devoid of life and personality; it all just resonated with him. There wasn’t even a single picture or photo on the walls or table tops (Henry knows there are photos of Logan out there. He’s seen the pictures Roni hangs proudly on the walls of her establishment, knows that the picture of Logan and Roni—two best friends, he’s come to learn, that grew up together in the neighborhood—has a special place right behind the bar where she works). There was nothing, other than the books neatly tucked into a shelf, to give Henry a glimpse into what made this man Logan Rogers.

Walking through the 900 square foot space, he knew it wasn’t just the home of a bachelor; it was the home of someone who was just as lost as Henry himself felt. A space made entirely out of necessity rather than be made to feel like an actual home. It reminded him of his years after the foster system, before he had met his late wife, where he had had nothing of that old life worth keeping. Anything he had gained afterwards had been destroyed by the fire that took his wife and daughter three years ago, and after that he had just never bothered to start over (it wouldn’t bring them back and honestly they were all Henry wanted, not materialistic things).

As Logan led him through the kitchen toward the open den, Henry wondered what kind of past the man must have had, wondered if he too was an orphan looking for a place to belong.

“Here it is.” Logan stated with a flourish of his hand and ultimately cutting Henry out of his thoughts.

His eyes roved over the small space, at the neat and tidy desk underneath the window and the wall lined with more bookshelves and books and a single three-drawer filing cabinet.

“Sorry, I know it’s not much… doesn’t even have a door.”

Henry’s eyes cut to the older man just as he saw his good hand go to scratch behind his ear (a nervous tick he’d come to realize early on in the week). “No, it’s perfect,” He reassured as he walked around the opened room; envisioning where his stuff would fit. “I don’t really need that much space anyway.” he moved back to the opened archway and gave the man a small smile. “And privacy can be fixed with a curtain,”

“Does that mean you accept my offer?”

“If you don’t mind me for a roommate, than yeah, I’ll take it.”

(***)

A little over one month since his move into the neighborhood, and not once did Henry regret his decision (well, maybe a little; after all, Victoria Belfrey and her daughter are a force to be reckoned with… and good god did those two give him a headache sometimes). He genuinely liked it here; he liked most of the quirky people and he could clearly see why the neighborhood was worth trying to save. He also found rooming with Logan to be better than he originally expected. Sure they had their moments (like the kitchen incident that nearly gave the detective an aneurysm, or how scarily grumpy Logan could get when he’s had a bad day at the station), but their camaraderie was easy going between them, and for once after three years, Henry felt like he had a true friend again.

It was because of this easy camaraderie that Henry and Logan, one Saturday morning, found themselves planning a Star Wars marathon and arguing over the order in which to watch it (“They’re my movies, Rogers!” “And it’s my TV, Mills.”).

Somehow Henry won the argument, which found Logan sitting on the couch with the large popcorn bowl settled on the middle cushion and a beer in his hand, while Henry squatted down in front of their combined movie collection to find the first disk.

As he skimmed the neatly ordered DVDs for the one he wanted, his finger froze on a particular title and could barely contain the Cheshire cat grin as he pulled it out and pivoted to face the detective.

“The Princess Bride: Special Edition.”

Logan scowled and pointed his finger at him as he defended. “Shove off, mate, it’s a good book and a good movie; leave it alone.”

The grin on Henry’s face turned impish as he pivoted back and added as he went, “As you wish.”

The couch pillow thrown at his back did nothing to curb his mirth.

(***)

It was almost three months after his move to Hyperion Heights, that Henry managed to work the nerve enough (more like getting the quadrant that was Roni, Logan, Sabine and Lucy to shut up, and to stop hounding him to try and move on and be happy) to ask Jacinda on a date.

Glancing at himself in the hallway mirror, and trying to ignore the grinning idiot leaning against the wall a few paces behind him; he felt the bubbling of nerves roiling in his stomach as he finally turned to face his roommate.

“You’ll be fine,” Logan soothed with the utmost confidence. “You didn’t have any problems when you were flirting with her, one date isn’t going to kill you, mate. Just be yourself.”

“Yeah, be myself.” Henry snorted and rubbed his sweating palms against his jean clad thighs. “Cause any girl would swoon at a failed writer, a widowed husband, and a nerd for all things 80’s, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Tolkien related.”

“Henry,” Logan stepped forward than, placing his hand and prosthetic firmly on his shoulders as he earnestly stated. “You’ve told Jacinda all of this already and yet she still accepted to go to this concert with you. So cut yourself a little slack, give her a little more credit than that, and go out tonight and have fun.”

(***)

It was almost six months after his move, and during one of their covert meet ups at the bar, when Henry felt a little friendly revenge against Roni and Logan was in order (because dear god, if they didn’t stop and take their own damn advice, he was going to go crazy… or take Roni’s bat and beat himself or them with it… really, he wasn’t picky).

It hadn’t been long after his and Jacinda’s first—or even their second— date that Jacinda decided enough was enough and it was time to try and win custody of her daughter back from her step mother. Detective Weaver had recommended a Lawyer from Spokane, and ever since Kevin Adams stepped foot into Roni’s bar, the two had done nothing but snark at each other.

Within the same month, a missing person’s case had popped up that apparently Weaver thought required the work of a sketch artist from Walla Walla… or so Logan kept griping to him to no freaking end. Honestly, Henry thought Danielle (or Dani as she asked to be called) a rather nice woman, maybe a little too bubbly and Chatty Cathy at times, but if Logan was to be believed than she was the worst woman he had ever had the displeasure to work with.

Yeah… right…

Denial, she is a river, and both of them are currently drowning at the bottom of it.

“So,” He began innocently around a mouthful of pizza. “When are you both going to stop pussy-footing around and ask Dani and Kevin out?”

The soda Logan was drinking and the pizza Roni was currently chewing, both ended up spat out on the table and floor, and the word vomit that followed as they tried to deny it had Henry rolling his eyes so hard he was surprised that they didn’t just roll right out of his head.

“Uh-huh,” putting his slice back down on his plate, he folded his arms across his chest and stared them both down, feeling for all the world like the no nonsense father he should have been to the daughter that would have been thirteen now. “Guys, I’m not stupid… and the last I checked my vision was perfect, so not blind either.” He cut them off before they could rush to deny it any farther. “If I have to sit here and watch you two continue with this charade a moment longer, I will either be checking myself in somewhere or Detective Weaver will have not one but three missing person’s cases to contend with.”

They didn’t try to feed him any more bullshit after that, which he was grateful for, because seriously there was only so much a person can take.

And if he caught his roommate dressed (rather nicely) in a blue button up shirt, black iron pressed slacks, and trying to rush past him and out the door before Henry could say a word with a bouquet of pink and yellow roses in hand.

Well… he could only thank whatever deity listening for small miracles.

(***)

It’s at elven months since his move, that Henry felt for all the world a content man. Jacinda had won her battle against her step-mother, and Lucy had become a constant presence in the apartment, especially since he had offered to watch her after school while Jacinda worked. He loved Lucy and her precocious nature, found her imagination beyond incredible for an elven year old and even began to look forward to hearing her crazy theories about them being cursed.

Sometimes they would be alone, with him helping her with her homework and other times Logan would be there, smiling and humoring her and her theories like they all had agreed to do.

It was during one of these nights, after Jacinda and Lucy had eaten dinner with them and left, that Logan’s curiosity had gotten the better of him. They were in the kitchen, Henry washing the dishes while his roommate dried them, that Logan broke the comfortable silence.

“Who does she think I am?”

“Huh?” Henry glanced over with a brow raised.

“Lucy,” he elaborated. “With her theories, who does she think I am? She never tells me when I ask.”

Henry snorted out a chuckle as he handed over the plate and proceeded washing the next one while answering. “Captain Hook.”

“You’re kidding.” The dry look Henry gave him caused him to roll his eyes. “It’s the hand isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Henry shrugged. “Or it could be the fact that she thinks you’re my dad.”

“What?” Logan froze mid swipe with the towel and Henry could practically feel the man’s eyes burning his profile.

“Yeah, crazy, I know.”

“Mate, if she is to be believed and you are my son; I would have had you when I was 11…”

They both chuckled at that.

“Again, crazy, I know.”

They went back to the comfortable silence as they worked, but the occasional contemplative side eye he would catch Logan giving him in his peripheral as they cleaned up the rest of the kitchen, eventually had Henry turning to stare blatantly at the man’s profile with an eyebrow raised in question.

“Do I have barbeque sauce on my face or something?”

Startled, Logan shifted his attention away from the stove top he was wiping down, and met his eyes with that contemplative expression still in place.

“No, you’re fine.” He distractedly answered.

“Than what’s on your mind? And don’t tell me nothing; you’ve been staring at me off and on for the past five minutes?”

“I was just thinking.”

The other brow rose to meet its twin as he deadpanned. “Clearly,”

Logan rolled his eyes and elaborated. “I was thinking about what you said, about who Lucy thinks I am.”

“Logan, none of that is real.”

“No, I know that… but—now that it’s been said, I can’t help but see it. Hell, Henry you can’t tell me that you can’t see it, not even a little bit.”

Henry tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at him; his eyebrows practically at his hairline now.

“We do look a little alike, mate; long lost cousins or brothers or something. I mean you do kinda have my chin, our noses are almost similar and the brow structure too…” he trailed off.

With a snort, Henry joked. “You’ve been hanging out with Dani too much, you’re even starting to sound like a sketch artist.”

“Shut up,”

He dodged and caught the wet rag thrown at him, before tossing it back; both chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all as they finished up and moved to the couch to see what was on TV.

Expect, as the days and weeks progressed (and Weaver shockingly adopted two pre-teen girls from Aberdeen that looked eerily like Dani and Logan), Henry found that he couldn’t stop thinking about it too (no matter how hard he tried to shake the insane notion from his head each and every time it sprung back into the forefront of his thoughts).

He’d often catch himself staring at Logan when the older man was distracted and—illogically enough as it was—could practically see what the other man was talking about.

It was crazy.

It wasn’t conceivable.

But damn it all if Logan wasn’t right.

They did share the same freaking chin, and though his nose was a bit larger than Logan’s, it was the same freaking shape.

Maybe he needed to check himself in somewhere after all…

(***)

Sixteen months after moving to Hyperion Heights, the curse was broken.

It had been an emotionally exhausting week beforehand, with Lucy suddenly falling into a coma that the doctors couldn’t medically explain. Jacinda had rightfully been beside herself with worry, and all Henry could feel was the crushing feeling of losing another loved one… another child. It had been the very reason why he didn’t like opening up, didn’t like taking these leaps of faith when it came to his heart and feelings. Yet he had stupidly allowed himself to get close to all these people, and stupidly thought he could have a second chance at a family, but those dreams had gone up in flames the first time and now plummeted back down from the stars a second time with the flat lining of the heart monitor as Jacinda brokenly wailed her heartache.

He didn’t feel the hand of his roommate trying to console him as he numbly watched Jacinda break down in the waiting room they had been forcibly moved too when the doctors came swarming into the room. Didn’t hear the words being spoken as Jacinda fought and then bonelessly collapsed in Sabine and Roni’s arms; her wails gut wrenching and shredding his already scarred heart to pieces. The flood of his emotions and his own tears didn’t come until after the doctor told them that their precious, precocious little Lucy was truly and utterly gone, that the defibrillator failed to restart her heart.

It was Logan who caught him when his legs refused to hold his weight any longer, when the world suddenly came crushing down around him and nothing felt right anymore. And it was Logan who helped him into the chair; the warm presence of his roommates hand at the back of his neck guiding his head to lean on his broad shoulder. And he took the comfort and sobbed for all he was worth. Sobbed for the loss of the wife and daughter he had had to bare losing and moving on from all on his own, sobbed for Jacinda and how much she didn’t deserve to know the gut wrenching pain that losing a child brought, sobbed for Lucy who had been robbed of her own dreams, who had been robbed the chance to live and grow.

His heart hurt as he followed Jacinda into the room to say goodbye, the tears blurring his vision at seeing the white sheet lying over Lucy’s little body; so final in its position that it made him want to collapse all over again. But he couldn’t, he had to be strong for Jacinda as he was the one to hold her upright as they moved toward the bed.

Her sobs as she pulled back the sheet to view her daughters pale face tore at him even more, her words a broken, jumbled mess as she climbed onto the bed and wept onto her daughters unmoving chest.

Running on autopilot, Henry’s feet moved of their own accord; one hand going to Jacinda’s shaking back and the other to card the bangs off of Lucy’s forehead.

“I’m sorry Lucy, I’m so, so sorry.” He whispered as he leaned down and pressed his lips to her crown.

The whoosh of wind startled him and before he could right himself to wonder where it came from, the overwhelming flood of memories came next; slamming everything back into place and causing the air to deflate right out of his lungs. The watery, startled gasp from Ella (his wife, his true love) told him she remembered too, but it was the choked rush of life from his daughter, his daughter (his beautiful and very much alive little girl, his other true love), that was bloody music to his ears and heart.

“Papa? Mama?” she wheezed out as her eyes foggily and confusedly took them and her surroundings in.

“Baby!”

Everything was alright.

Everything in the world was right again.

(***)

The moment Lucy was cleared to leave; the overdue reunion of their family came afterwards. The battle was far from over; not with Tremaine and Drizella currently in hiding and no one knowing where they had run off too, but they were together again, and at the moment that was enough for them all as they celebrated at the bar that had been his adoptive mother’s home for the last eighteen months.

Henry had his wife and daughter back, his half-sisters, both his mothers, both his step-fathers and his grandfather. To say he was over the moon would have been an understatement as the din of fairytale characters and his family filled the industrial styled establishment.

It was all so overwhelming still that he had to take a seat at one of the tables; simply content to watch as he sipped at his beer. Killian soon joined him with his own glass, rum he was sure now that the man remembered who he was, and the thought of step-fathers in general had his mind venturing to their conversation once again.

It must have been on Killian’s mind as well because before either knew what they were truly doing, they were starting at one another, eyes narrowed and the rim of their drinks to their lips as they tried to see what apparently their cursed selves had been able to see.

“Man, I hope this is the last curse we ever have to face. I’ve lost count at how many cursed memories we’ve had forced into our heads at this point.” Emma groaned, yet her arrival didn’t completely break their staring contest as she dropped into the chair next to Killian; her eyes not yet looking at either of them but at her daughters who were laughing along with Lucy near the corner of the bar. She blindly but efficiently snatched her husband’s glass out of his hand and downed the last shot of the dark amber that was left as she continued. “Seriously though, can you imagine the identity crisis we’ll have in our old age if we get Alzheimer’s?” Finally glancing over at them, and realizing she had neither her son nor her husband’s attention, she raised an eyebrow and asked with trepidation. “What’s up with you two? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah love,” Killian briefly met Emma’s eyes, before he was squinting back at Henry as he continued. “Apparently while cursed, and thanks to our lovely granddaughter, the two of us got it into our heads that we were blood related; something about seeing similarities in our features and what have you.”

Blinking once than twice, Emma’s eyes bounced from one to the other, before she was tilting her head and squinting at them as well. Satisfied with what she saw, she nodded to herself, shrugged, and stated. “I can see it, especially when you wear your hair like this and stop shaving.” She grinned and chuckled and leaned forward to ruffle her son’s gel slicked hair, which Henry swatted away with a scowl as he tried to fix it back into place.

However her statement only proceeded to have them squint even harder at each other, and Emma could do nothing more than laugh at her first two goofy true loves.

As the celebrations began to die down and people started heading home, Henry and Killian simply shrugged and let it go as they hugged each other goodbye for the night (each having every intention of spending this night with their loved ones).

“Well,” Killian began softly. “Blood related or not, you’re still my son Henry; always have been, my boy.”

The smile that stretched Henry’s face, nearly threatened to split his skin from ear to ear as he replied just as softly but no less sincerely. “Thanks, dad.”

And if they hugged each other just a little tighter and their eyes shone just a little brighter with emotion, no one that witnessed the moment commented on it.

#captain cobra #captain swan #henry x cinderella #glass believer #hooked queen friendship #outlaw queen #once upon a time #ouat s7 AU #ouat ff #once upon a time fanfiction #my fanfiction

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paperpenmasterpieces · 7 years ago

Text

Different Earth's, Same Idea

Sorry for the wait! Enjoy!

Request: You're Barry's sibling on this earth and Cisco and you've never thought about a relationship ever. But then an alternate you pops in for some reason and lays one on Cisco which makes you super jealous and everything super awkward. But you all get a happy ending. (Word Count: 3884)

Growing up as Barry’s little sister wasn’t always easy. After we’d lost our Mom and our father was arrested, things were just slightly different. Yes, we were close, but I think we were both too afraid of losing the other that there was always a distance between us.

As a result, our paths, while traveled together, always had some firm line between it. He became a forensic scientist and I became a sketch artist, both working for CCPD. Living with the Wests was great, but again, that line was always there between Barry and Iris and I, most likely due to the three year age difference we shared. Even when Barry started spending more time at STAR Labs, I wasn’t immediately notified of the major effect of his lightning incident because Joe wanted to keep his girls safe. Iris was a reporter that had a knack for discovering things, and I was only aware of something if it was drawn out right in front of me. Naturally, you can guess who found out Barry’s big secret first.

And after that, it was like a light had switched back on. Learning how our mother died and that Barry now had the power to protect us seemed to immediately close whatever distance he and I had created. It was a closure to a traumatizing night we both desperately needed. And it was one thing that Eobard Thawne had managed to do right: merge my brother and I’s paths back onto the same road. As a result, I had two other families I fit in with: the Wests and the STAR Labs team.

And that’s all we were. Family. No harboring feelings for anyone, good or bad. I wasn’t secretly longing for a certain mechanical engineer that was a great friend for both Barry and I.

At least… I think that was the case. Until she had come along.

It was a good night as Team Flash celebrated another win. Caitlin and I were heading the Cortex as both Barry and Cisco were out on the field, an exciting moment for both guys as it was the first official outing for Vibe, and so far it was going really well.

“Alright, boys! That’s a wrap for tonight, so go ahead and come back so the Doctor can patch you up!” I smirked at Caitlin as I leaned back in the chair. I could hear the two superheroes’ confirmation and rolled my chair towards the brunette.

“Yes?”

“We never finished our conversation.” Caitlin rolled her eyes with a gentle smile.

“We went out for dinner and had a nice time.” At my grin, she shook her head. “It really isn’t anything. Julian and I are just friends!”

“Uh-huh. Surrre.”

She glared at me, losing the seriousness as a small grin was on her face. Her grin widened though as she squinted her eyes briefly. “What about you? Anyone caught your eye lately?”

I thought briefly about it. Between work at CCPD and work at STAR Labs, there really wasn’t anytime to see or meet anyone new. The closest I got to hanging out with another male (that wasn’t my brother) was Cisco and our office movie nights. It was a way to keep ourselves sane during nights when he needed to work on superhero stuff and I needed to work on police stuff (and there were plenty of them).

Subconsciously, I smiled as I remembered last night's argument over The Princess Bride, a movie I refused to see simply because it ticked Cisco off.

“This is a MASTERPIECE. Don’t diss this just because you have some weird grudge against me.” He was holding the movie against his chest as he stared at me, offended.

“Quit calling me Baby Allen and I’ll watch it.” I told him as I set up our chairs in front of the screen he’d pulled down.

“But…” I looked up as he tried to come up with an argument. Giving up he settled with, “But you ARE Baby Allen.” I sat down and crossed my arms, rolling my eyes at him and motioned for him to pick another movie.

He started to walk away before quickly spinning around. “Let’s compromise…how about Baby West?”

Yeah. I choose movie nights with someone I’m comfortable with then an awkward dinner with a stranger any day.

Looking back at Caitlin, she pointed at my face. “There is someone!”

Waving my hands, I shook my head. “Unfortunately, there isn’t so don’t try to shine the spotlight away from you, missy!”

I glanced at the monitor as she let out a scoff, only to see the two dots at their same location. I opened up the line for communication.

“Are you both okay?” Laughter filled the Cortex as Cisco’s voice came through.

“Alright you two! Breacher or Speedster? Who’s the faster of the two? Place your bets, now!” Letting out a loud laugh, I looked at Caitlin and we both put on our poker faces immediately.

“Barry has been getting faster.” She reasoned.

“But Cisco has really gotten the hang of opening breaches.” Narrowing her eyes at me, she responded to them.

“Barry, you better win this!”

“Seriously?” Barry’s voice came through. “No points for your own bro, sis?”

Shrugging though he couldn’t see me, I answered, “I’ve got to spice it up a bit!” Addressing Cisco I shouted, “Ramon! Let’s do this!”

“Yes! You know you on the winning team, gurl! Ain’t gonna let you down!”

His shout of excitement made me giggle and Caitlin had began a countdown on the computer.

But before the race could commence, a strange sound came from Barry and Cisco’s side.

“Cisco?” Barry’s voice was slightly anxious. “Please tell me you’re cheating.”

“What’s happening?” I turned to Caitlin and she pressed a few keys on the computer. Worried she quickly looked at me, “A new breach is opening right on top of them!”

“Guys, get out of there now!” I tried to downplay how scared I was, but let’s face it: a breacher from who knows where is always a logical reason to be worried.

Barry didn’t respond and it was a few moments of silence before we heard anything from them. That’s one of the hardest parts about being on desk duty with no metahuman abilities. The not being able to help and just standing aside waiting to see what would happen next. Caitlin and I were on edge as we waited for a blue breach to open or for a gust of wind to signal their return.

Caitlin tried the comms again after a few minutes. “Barry? Cisco?”

A heartbeat.

“Uh, yeah, we’re here…” Barry’s voice came through but there was something off about it.

“Are you okay? What happened?” I threw myself in front of Caitlin, trying to figure out what was wrong.

“Um, that’s the thing, we’re okay, but something happened? Or is happening…?” His voice trailed off and I could just imagine him turning to look at Cisco.

“Just… have the med bay prepped, Cait. We’re, uh– headed back.” Caitlin nodded at Cisco’s somewhat weak voice and while confused, she began to make her way to the clinic, her heels tapping away.

“Oh, and kid?” I hated when Barry called me that. Three years age difference!

“What?”

“Just… try not to freak out?”

Naturally, that caused me to do the opposite, but as my heart beat wildly in my chest I held my voice steady. “Why?”

A loud whirl behind me had me turning around and waiting for Cisco to land. However, when he did, he quickly took off his goggles and brushed his hair back, seemingly having trouble looking me in the eye. “Cisco? What happened out there?” I walked toward him and could’ve sworn he was blushing. “Uh, well…” He pointed to the entrance of the Cortex and my hair whipped around my face as Barry entered.

Except he was holding me. A scratched up and shaky me, but me nonetheless.

And I was trying my very hardest to listen to what my brother had just suggested moments ago.

He quickly took her (me?) to the med bay where Caitlin was and I was able to see her look at the girl in Barry’s arms and then back at me, a shocked look on her face, before she started looking her over. Barry walked back out, a worried look on his face before he looked at Cisco and narrowed his eyes just a little bit.

“So, uh…that’s me.” I pointed to the girl with Caitlin and then turned my back to her to face my friend and brother. The boys looked at each other briefly before both turned to me, “Yeah, that’s you.”

“But, is that a future me or–”

“No, no!” Cisco waved his hands quickly, an embarrassing smile on his face. “That’s an alternate you. And by that I mean from another universe– where things are completely different from this Earth! Because, uh…” He looked nervously at Barry before continuing his rambling, “…not everything is the same on every Earth. You know… Obviously. Um.” He awkwardly cleared his throat and banged his fist together as he made it a point to look away from me.

But while Barry had a somewhat amused look now, I stared straight at Cisco and I knew he could feel it. “What did she do to you?”

“You, uh, well– not you! Because that’s not here-you! No, uh…” He laughed nervously.

“I kissed him.”

I spun around quickly only to come face to face with my doppleganger. Looking her over quickly I saw that Caitlin had cleaned her up and that she looked fine for the most part. Taking the chance, I recognized just a few differences in us (her hair was lighter and straighter than mine and her style was slightly different) but overall it really was like looking into a mirror.

It was after the shock of meeting my doppleganger for the first time, that I finally registered what she had said and for some reason, a weird feeling landed in my stomach and my chest started fluttering.

“Wait– why would you kiss Cisco?”

“Apparently, she and Cisco are together on her Earth.” Barry crossed his arms and looked back and forth between me and Cisco, who I could now understand his reason for not looking at me because, well, I couldn’t face him either.

“But you two aren’t together here, I’ve gathered.” She stated, noticing the strange looks going on.

Glancing at the other me I nodded quickly. “We’re just really good friends! The best!”

Turning to look at Cisco for confirmation he briefly nodded his head and was about to say something but strangely paused and looked at the floor, crossing his arms across his chest. Confused, I turned to her and she had a small smirk on her face before she looked down and nodded. She looked back up to me and tilted her head. “You do the late night coffee runs?”

“Oh! They do the late night movies here at the lab!” Caitlin answered enthusiastically, causing us all to stare at her, me and Cisco with slight panic in our eyes and Barry with widened eyes.

My brother turned to me, his voice slightly high as he asked, “You said you always stayed to do your sketches at my lab?”

I held up a finger. “I said THE lab, not necessarily your lab. And I do them! The movies are just to relax and— I don’t need to explain this. Cisco and I are friends!” I stated firmly.

My doppleganger smiled knowingly as she said, “Yeah, that’s how we started, too.”

Seeing Barry’s eyebrows jump up, I quickly intervened. “Why are you here? Or– how did you get here? Are you a meta on your Earth?”

“No.” She sighed before lightly waving her hand towards the two males. “I explained it briefly to them when I came out of the breach. One created by my Cisco.” I could tell she was starting to get worried as she explained what happened.

“There’s a meta we’re handling on my Earth and he kind of just ambushed me and Cisco as we were on a date. Cisco started fighting him, but he got knocked down before the meta started coming for me.”

“Why didn’t you use the metahuman app to call Barry or Wally?” Cisco asked.

“Well… we don’t have one of those.” She thought about the idea of the app briefly before continuing. “But, uh, anyway, before the meta could attack me, Cisco created a breach and used his abilities to toss me through it.”

She turned to Cisco. “That’s why I ran up and kissed you as soon as I fell through. I thought you had looped it around to land next to you and it took me awhile to notice you were in your suit and were hesitant when kissing me back.”

Caitlin and I whipped our heads in Cisco’s direction.

“You kissed BACK?”

Blushing even darker, Cisco tried to explain. “Well, a pretty girl kisses me, I mean–” Cisco looked at me, “not to say that I just kiss anyone, because I don’t! But it was… instinctual? I–uh– Caitlin…” He looked helplessly toward her. “Help?”

“What I think he means to say is that it was just something he couldn’t help!” Caitlin suggested, a small twinkle in her eye.

Cisco raised a hand to his throat telling her to cut it out, but before I or anyone else could respond, my doppleganger continued with her story. “When Cisco created the breach, maybe in a state of panic, I think he accidentally created a breach that got me away from the danger. And that sent me to another Earth.” She flicked her hands around her. “Your Earth.”

She looked seriously at Cisco. “Which is why you need to get me back there immediately, so I can know he’s okay.”

“Makes sense.” Cisco put his glasses back on, placing his fist in front of him. “Just tell me which Earth and we’ll get you back… to…me?” His sentence had trailed off as he realized what he was saying.

Doppelgänger me hesitated before she asked, “You consider yourselves Earth-1, right?”

My eyes widened as I realized what she was saying. “You don’t know what Earth to get back to, do you?”

She nodded and ran a hand threw her hair. “Which would mean that my Cisco won’t know where to get me from either. Especially if he didn’t mean to send me here!”

Caitlin put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll send you back. I know your family is missing you and will be doing the exact same thing we are in trying to get you home.”

We had separated into teams to try and figure this one out. Cisco and Barry had gone back to the scene of the crime to see if Cisco could vibe anything about her Earth. Caitlin had taken some evidence from my doppleganger’s clothes and went over to CCPD to see if Julian could get any hints about well, anything.

And that left me with her.

“So. Everyone here at STAR Labs seems pretty much the same.” She was walking around taking everything in while I sat in Cisco’s chair.

She sat down on Cisco’s desk and stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. “Only small differences here and there.”

Slightly irritated I stared pointedly at where she was sitting. “Do you mind sitting in a chair? Cisco’s been working hard on all these diagrams.”

Surprised, she looked at the desk before getting off of it, moving over to roll another chair towards us. “Sorry! Force of habit, I guess?”

She looked down at the diagrams he had been working on for his suit before she pulled the paper toward her, grabbed a pen and started writing something on it.

“Hey!” I ripped the pen from her hand. “You can’t just write all over his stuff!”

“I do it all the time.” She stared at me, curious. “Are you not an engineer here?”

“Engineer? No. I’m a sketch artist. You’re an engineer on your Earth?”

Nodding, she gently took the pen out of my grasp before continuing her correction. “It’s how I met the team… and Cisco.” She focused on the papers in front of her as she talked. “We crushed on each other while working together, Barry became the Flash, Cisco and I grew closer, lots of stuff happened in between that and voila!” She finished writing and looked up. “Here I am.” She grinned and I asked her what I had been wanting to know ever since I saw her.

“How are you and Cisco dating? I mean, he’s awesome and a great guy… but we work together and he’s my brother’s best friend and it just seems…” I trailed off after realizing that there really wasn’t any logical reason as to why it seemed wrong.

Knowingly, she grabbed a spare sheet of paper and began doodling. “I don’t know. I always had some kind of feelings for him, but figured ‘Hey, he’s my best friend, let’s not ruin that’, but one day, this breacher from Earth 19 comes in and next thing I know she’s kissing him like there’s no tomorrow and I felt… betrayal. It was like that kiss sparked this jealousy in me that I hadn’t expected. Cait had noticed and convinced me to tell Cisco and I did. I can’t tell you how surprised the both of us were when we said we actually liked each other.” Smiling softly, she added, “As cheesy as it sounds, it’s one of the greatest things that could’ve happened to either one of us.”

Her eyes met mine and she had a thoughtful look on her face. “Maybe I’m your Gypsy.” I felt my forehead scrunch up as I looked at her completely lost. “You’re my what?”

She jumped up, sitting straight in her chair, a new wave of excitement flowing through her. “You don’t know who she is! That’s perfect! That means that I’m the one who gets your relationship going!” She pointed at me. “Tell me hearing about the kiss didn’t affect you in some way!”

I didn’t really have an answer for her. And she knew she had gotten me.

With a sweet smile she spoke softly. “Cisco said that on any Earth we find each other. A bit like Barr and Iris. Soulmates.”

“Who are soulmates?”

Footsteps entering the room made me jump as Barry and Cisco came back. Looking at Barry I was at a loss for words before my doppleganger answered for me. “You and Iris. We were talking about similarities between our Earths and you and Iris are as sickeningly cute as ever.”

Smiling, Barry took the answer, but peeking at Cisco and meeting his eyes, I knew he knew the truth. We stared at one another for a moment before I broke our eye contact.

“Did you guys find where to send our new friend back?”

“Yes.” Barry walked toward us. “Cisco managed to get a vibe from your Earth’s Cisco and they managed to figure out that you belong on Earth 14.”

“So he’s okay?”

Barry nodded at his sister and put his hands on her shoulders. “He’s fine. And from what he said the meta is taken care of and everyone is just waiting for you to get home.”

Letting out a breath of relief she hugged my brother. “Thanks, Barr.” He gave her a tight squeeze before releasing her. “Just stay safe, okay.” He smiled mischiveously before saying, “And tell Cisco he better take care of you, or I’ll run all the way over there to get him in line.”

“So you threaten my boyfriend the same way in any dimension.” She grinned widely at him.

“I’ll see you soon, kid.”

She walked up to Cisco next and they gave awkward laughs as they tried to figure out if they should hug or not. After a second, Cisco opened his arms and she stepped into them, a warm hug shared between them– a hug I was familiar with myself. She whispered something to him and Cisco cleared his throat as he pulled away, glancing at my brother and I before nodding his head briefly.

She turned around to face me and held out her hand as she said, “I always hear Barry talking about how he met past him, future him, doppleganger him… and as weird as it is, it was still pretty cool to meet you.”

Shaking her hand, I gave a smile. “Just stay safe over there, okay? And tell Cisco not to send you into anymore strange earths.”

Winking at me, she quietly said, “Oh, he’ll get a talking to.” Stepping closer she whispered, “Both of us will be having discussions with a certain Ramon tonight.” Giving my arm a squeeze, she backed away before explaining what she meant.

“Oh, and tell Caitlin thank you, will you?”

Barry nodded. “Of course”. He turned his head towards Cisco and gave him a meaningful look. “Ready?”

Pulling out his goggles he put them on and aimed his fist at the empty space in front of us, “Earth-14, welcome back your missing friend!”

The familiar swirl of the breach began to open, and turning around my doppleganger gave us one last wave before walking through, the breach immediately closing, leaving only the three of us in the room.

Talking to no one in particular, I quickly said, “Well, that’s a new one.”

“Eh, not really.” Barry replied.

Turning to look at my brother, I narrowed my eyes. “It is for those that weren’t allowed to other Earths.”

“You know what is new though?” Barry walked up and placed an arm around Cisco, playfully saying, “You two. I mean, who would’ve thought, right?” Cisco and I laughed awkwardly as Barry smiled at the two of us, loving the blushes that painted both of our faces.

“Yeah! I mean, that’s completely out of nowhere!” Cisco agreed, but his jerky movements and high pitched voice didn’t really fool me or Barry. And that got me thinking about what my doppleganger had said.

Yes, it would be a natural step between Cisco and I to move forward in our friendship. I mean, I would be lying if I said there weren’t moments that I wanted to move closer to him when we were already invading each other’s personal space, or times that I just never wanted to leave his side, even if it was just to go home and take a shower, only to see him at the lab a couple hours later.

Maybe that’s why I never thought of me and Cisco as me AND Cisco. We were already naturally gravitating around one another. Why would we need to point out the obvious?

“Hey? You okay?”

Snapping out of my thoughts, I found Cisco waving his hand in front of me, looking concerned. I looked around quickly and noticed that my brother had left.

Cisco replied to my unanswered question, “Barry said he had to go meet Iris about something or other.” He waved his hand around as an explanation.

“Ah. Right!” I nodded and we were silent for awhile.

“So what did she tell you before she left?” I asked, curious.

“Oh, that?” He smiled wistfully as he looked away from me. “Just some friendly Earth-14 advice.”

“About?”

He looked down and grinned before looking back up at me. “About us.” He answered, bluntly.

“Ah.”

I wasn’t nervous and neither was he. At least not as much as we should’ve been. And that’s probably why I was brave enough to continue the conversation.

“She seemed happy. And her Cisco probably is too.”

He stepped closer and I looked down and saw that our shoes were toe and toe, and while I could feel his gaze on me, I could also feel the warmth radiating from his body.

I looked up into his dark eyes, and smiled shyly. “I’m pretty sure I could make my Cisco happy as well.”

Giving me his wide grin, his hand swept down my arm and into my hand, interlacing our fingers.

“You already do.”

#cisco ramon imagine #cisco ramon #cisco ramon x reader #the flash #cisco ramon reader

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haiskulstories-blog · 8 years ago

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Hai Skül Story #1; 2 Girls : 1 Boy

PART II: Anastacia Raynolds

My name is Anastacia Raynolds. My friends call me Ana. I’m one of the brightest girls in school, but I hate school. Fuck Wilson High School and all the shitty kids that go there. Except my friends, who are OK. We like to hang out and systematically plan the deaths of all the popular kids while we paint our nails and watch Heathers or Twin Peaks. Sometimes we watch My Sweet Sixteen if we run out of popular kids to fantastically destroy.

I do well in school because I’m bright and I’m nice to the kids who are smart but too socially incompatible to aggregate any sense of a circle of friends. Turns out, they are some of the coolest kids in school because they die to have a class next to me and in exchange, they will do anything for me. Usually it’s like: “Will you please get me a cup of water? I’m still working on this problem,” but they are happy to fulfill a variety of purposes. Needless to say: wrapped around my little stinky pinkie.

Part of the reason I like them is because I have a lot of shit to take care of in my life and I don’t always have time to go to Hot Topic in the mall if, say, my striped leggings get a run. Diane Blair works there. She acts so goth with all of their weird, glittery, off-color makeup, but she honestly just makes herself look like a clown. The popular boys seem to like her though, so whatever.

Now, you get the basic idea of what I do in and out of school, except I have a few hobbies I didn’t mention that I like to keep to myself. I’m actually really tight with my family. I have a little sister who I aspire to mentor as much as possible. She is going to Wilson High next year and I’m almost done with her starter kit. It includes profiles on the ten most popular seniors-to-be, including their favorite brands (in case she decides to fall in with them). She’s awfully pretty and I could see her falling in with one of the jocks. I’ve also included for her where the ten people they live and what kind of cars they drive (for obvious reasons, if she follows in my footsteps).

I’m a little bit torn about what social group she is going to choose, but I’ve made a full proof plan to flat out not care. She may be more popular with boys than me since she flat out likes them more than hitting the books, a divergence of our personalities. She’s had some guys over that, yeah, I can call guys, to the point that sometimes I’m slightly concerned for her since she’s still only 14, but the guys drive awesome cars and buy her clothes and she seems happy enough. She gets them to help her with homework, so I really can’t complain.

When we were younger, we used to be a pair of tomboys and would fight like boys with the neighborhood boys, play in the mud, steal the other kids’ bikes and such. I guess we both have the rebel bred into us, we just have matured into different ways in terms of how we logically put it to use. When I started to see the way she was getting guys to do her bidding, I figured she might have picked up better on our mom’s pretty housewife thing.

All for good reason: our mom is a fox. I guess I got girly when I hit high school and switched up my style, started puting on a little makeup. But I still never dropped my boyish pursuits. Quite the contrary. Neither my sister nor my mom were much thrilled when I started excelling in math and became the president of the motorsports club. They end up opting to spend Saturdays at the mall and for reasons I cannot comprehend, Jaqueline, my little sis, never got over going to church. Personally? I say burn it.

They say having a large network of friends is a guaranteed path to increasing the likelihood of longevity. I care a shit ton about my little sister, so when I saw she wasn’t growing out of her Catholic pursuits, I felt I needed to take action, so we could sit together well after our primes, saggy wrinkles eating up the Carribean sun, sipping piña coladas. I had the realization just about halfway through sophomore year and up until then, I’d been hitting the books hard, outperforming even the nerds and not thinking too much about a social life to any degree. But I have a decent amount of foresight and I imagined my girly little sister getting to High School, failing at academia and not having any friends, so I figured I should buff up on the real extracurriculars for her sake; I started going to parties.

It was just around that time that I began to gather a following. My grade is a little weird in that most of the alternative girls are of the gothic persuasion and they simultaneously have a lot going for them looks wise. Using my head to grow my popularity but sticking to my cute and nerdy alt guns, I became a pin-up magnet and I soon had every pierced and ungodly chick’s posts rolling out a black carpet for a funeral-themed wedding whenever I scrolled through my Facebook feed. I guess they were excited by my bad-chick sleuthing skills to find the ragers and for good reason: I got them skin with boys they probably would never have seen until finishing their tattoo artist apprenticeships after graduation.

In turn, I was granted a spot in the throne as the prettiest in a flock of birds who would peck to pieces any sausage party. To put it plainly, we get what we wanted by sheer volume of pussy. I don’t even have to make plans on a Friday and by nine, I know where the party’s at and I know my gang will blow it up and turn even the lamest bangers into a roving burlesque.

And that’s exactly what we did over winter break when Stacy Fields, one of my prettier girls, let on that her boy Monty was having a get together with the basketball team. Stacy had visited Diane at Hot Topic earlier that day and snagged a couple bottles of O.P.I Midnight Glitter, so as soon as the bell rang, we all piled over to her house, ate strawberry Poki and watched The Devil’s Rejects while we spread layer after layer of shimmering jet black nitrocellulose over upwards of 100 nails.

We like to be fashionably late, so we rolled up to the party around quarter past eleven, ten girls decked out in torture garb with purses full of candy in a big black Chevrolet Suburban. When I got inside, it was apparent the party had already started because there were quite a lot of empty bottles sitting around, but the music was a little soft, dishearteningly acquiescing to hoots in a smoky family room focused on a plasma TV playing a videogame.

Monty walked up to me out of the smoke and asked me if I’d like a drink, so we headed to the kitchen where a couple other girls from the South Valley were comparing their boyfriends’ dick pics while sitting on the tile countertop, tugging out of a 32 of Miller High Life. Monty mixed me something strong that tasted flowery and vaguely like blue toilet liquid, but it got the job done. Uninterested in the dick pics, I walked back into the smoky living room, took a hit off a blunt that was being passed around and was lit. Then, I spotted him.

Across the room, sitting on an overstuffed brown faux-leather couch, was Erik Crooners, A-team player for the Wilson Wildcats basketball team. He looked uncomfortably out of place, not playing video games and not doing much at all except just kind of waiting for me to pounce on him and eat him up like he were a cup of soft serve.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. If I told you my taste in men, I’d first have to tell you my taste in women, to have a juxtaposition with with which to easily compare. I like Latina girls: tall, thin, but muscular. If she has a tattoo: especially my type. The more, the better. As for men: ditto! And Erik fits the bill to the ‘T,’ his sinewy body was even just ever so slightly caramel color, surely from all that time he spend with his oafish bestie DeShawn. Even made his white ass look a little bit vato: Swoon!

So then I stood there for like a split second, eyeing his most prominent tattoo, a ridiculously vain spidery scrawling of his own name that seemed to bulge out of his tank top on his left pectoral. I didn’t want to be a deer in headlights though. The faux-leather furniture set made the room feel especially ‘den’-like, so I took off my shoes and pranced over, flinging myself onto the big brown cushion next to Erik.

The whole chase was as much like eating soft serve as it had looked from a distance; all I had to do was pull on the little black bow in my hair and kind of tilt my head to show him my neck and he was melting. He tried to make conversation a little like a car trying to start when it’s battery’s dead. After he tried for the third time to say something incomprehensible, then he just kind of pulled his head back a little bit and squinted his eyes all Chinese.

We were up in the master bedroom for probably 20 minutes. He was acting a little like putty, but I’d had only one drink so I decided to take control. I’d had a crush on Erik Crooners ever since the third grade, ever since he gave me a stupid valentine that had a bunch of misspelled words on it about farm animals. I remember when he gave it to me, I took the sweater I had just taken off and threw it in his face.

Ever since then, my feelings of guilt had sort of blossomed into an obsession with his pathetic attempt, his embarrassment, his red little cheeks after I threw the sweater, stuck in my mind as cute but also loving. But when he came, his face got all sort of red and puffy and his eyes bulged. It was a little repulsive and made me question the whole engagement. I didn’t waste time and quickly got up to use the bathroom. On my way down the hall to the bathroom, I got a string of texts from Stacy:

“Where R U??? //

We jackt the keg! //

Alreds in car + keg + we gonna leave yo asssss!!!!”

Even though I felt like I was about to piss myself, I sprinted downstairs and out into the car. As soon as I got in, everybody started asking me where I’d been and then Felicia shouted out that she’d seen me go upstairs with Erik. While my opinion had just been stilted by Erik and the idiosyncrasies fornication will no doubt pull out of a lover every once in awhile, all of the girls started screaming. The keg had already been tapped and we took turns pulling out of it directly, half the girls in the car, including myself, blacking out by the time we reached Stacy’s house.

Looking back, maybe Erik wasn’t all that bad in bed. I remember at one point he started saying something and it pains me to think that I might of heard him confessing, “I love you.” Maybe that’s why he didn’t pull out and maybe that’s why I had to pee so bad after running out of the room, even though I thought he had. All in all, one thing came out of that night: me, pregnant with Erik Crooner’s baby.

#haiskulstories #highschool #popularkids #teen #highschoolclicks #collegebasketball #danceteam #pointguard #dating #parties

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