#the silver linings are getting to spend the night in a fancy hotel and getting friday as a complimentary day of leave

[jakeperalta]

I have my work summer event tomorrow which means a full day of socialising with coworkers

[thiswasinevitableid]

Indruck 22 for the meet uglies?

Here you go! I went SFW on this one

you’re on a date with this awful, awful person who keeps getting under my skin because my friend and I have been eavesdropping all night and your date says something that makes me snap … I thought it was a first date, not a three year relationship

“...such a waste of money. I mean, why spend all that to get something tacky on your skin?”

Indrid rolls his eyes at Barclay from across the counter of the Amnesty Lodge coffee shop, the cooks arms and hands sporting a plethora of tattoos rivaled only by Indrid’s collection.

“I dunno, l like the one I got.” The other man--who seems to be on the worst first date of his life--shrugs.

“You honestly think you and Juno couldn’t have spent that money on something else in college?”

“I mean maybe but, uh, we were earnin our own cash, figured we got to decide what to spend it on.”

“Hmmmm” the first guy sips his coffee, “sounds like a typical excuse for someone who doesn’t want to admit a mistake.”

“C’mon, that ain’t fair-”

“Ugh, stop saying ain’t! I can’t take someone who talks like that to meet my family.” Before the target of his disdain can respond, he snaps his fingers, “hey, buddy, can I get a refill or what?”

“The station for black coffee refills is right there, sir.” Barclay indicates the very obvious corner of dispensers, his voice the kind of calm that Indrid knows means he’s memorizing this guys face to warn other staff about.

They earn a brief reprieve while The Asshole leaves the table. When he returns, he’s shaking his head.

“God, have you looked at the photos they’ve got up? Who the fuck wants to look at bones?”

Indrid quickly glances at his friend to be sure he’s permitted to start a fight. Barclay nods.

“Quite a lot of people.” Indrid spins on his stool. “I’ve sold a number of them just from the display here. So perhaps you could keep your rude, unclultured, close-minded, obnoxious mouth shut.”

The man balks, looks to his companion for help. He offers none, mouth trying to form words and only coming out with halves of ones (except for the “fucks” which are plentiful).

“Oh my fucking god, you agree with him! That’s it, I’m out.” The Asshole pushes back from the table and storms out. The remaining man leaps up, panicked.

“Fuck.”

“It’s okay man, shitty first dates happen to all of us.” Barclay offers from beside the bakery case.

“I mean yeah, they do, but that wasn’t one of ‘em. That was my boyfriend of three fuckin years.” He dashes out of the shop, sparing a final glare at Indrid as he does.

Indrid trades a sheepish look with his friend, “Oops.”

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

“I’m glad you finally get to meet Duck!” Aubrey grins over her shoulder as she and Indrid wind down the hall at the office Kepler magazine.

Founded by childhood friends, Kepler worked a combination of print and video content that saw its subscribers and revenue climb while other publications struggled to stay afloat. Aubrey was head of the video team, though she contributed content to the magazine in the form of interviews about environmental activists of color and sustainable gift guides.

Kepler has three sections: travel, science, and environmental writing. Indrid now has the honor of being one of their primary photographers. He started two weeks ago and is thoroughly enjoying his work and the company of the other staff. The only person he’s yet to meet is Duck Newton, one of the founders and main reporters, as he was off on an assignment.

Aubrey knocks, gets a friendly “come in” and ushers Indrid into the office.

Looking at him from behind the desk is The Asshole’s Boyfriend, whose face goes from open and friendly to confused, then to perturbed.

“You okay?”

“I, uh, fuck, n-ye.” Duck sighs, “remember how I told you Alex and I split after a shitty date in a coffee shop?” He points at Indrid, “this was the fella who, uh, expedited the process.”

“Ohhhh.” Aubrey frowns, then shrugs with a smile, “whelp, he’s our new photographer. We’ll see you around.” She hurries them outside once more, shutting the doors. As they head back the way they came, she whispers, “his ex was a huge fucking dick, so if word gets out everyone is gonna think you’re a fucking hero.”

“He didn’t seem to see it that way.”

“It was only a few weeks ago, so it’s still pretty fresh. He’ll heal from it okay, Duck’s a tough cookie. And I’m sure you guys’ll get along eventually.”

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

“Juno, please, you gotta come with me.”

“I would bud, except it’s April and I’s fifth wedding anniversary that weekend. And no, we already have plans, so we can’t just take over this assignment as part of the celebration.”

“Fuck” Duck leans back in his chair.

“...You really asked everyone?”

“Ye-no, fuck-”

“Duck.”

“I ain’t asked Indrid yet.”

“There it is.” Juno smirks, “you gotta ask; besides, we were gonna have him do illustrations for the feature, but photos would be even better. And we both know it ain’t his fault y’all broke up.”

Duck nods, promises to ask Indrid after lunch. He finds the photographer flipping through his files from his shoot for next issues cover. His silver hair is pulled back, red glasses sitting on the desk beside him so he can gauge color correctly.

Duck kind of wants to pull the silver locks just to see what happens. It’s not his fault Indrid looks like his Sophomore roommate who he had a raging crush on, only with more tattoos and a much more captivating face. Pity he helped fuck up Duck’s last chance at a stable relationship.

“Hey, Indrid, you got a minute?”

The photographer cocks his head.

“I, uh, so we got a feature on this whole chunk of places touting themselves as ‘sustainable romantic getaways. I booked a bunch of places, but a lot of ‘em will turn me away if I turn up solo. And the person I was supposed to go with ain’t an option any more. Neither is anyone else. You get my drift?”

Indrid pinches the bridge of his nose, “you realize this is a terrible idea, yes?”

“Hey, we been workin together just fine. Ain’t we? Wait, fuck, I ain’t been treatin you bad even when I’m tryin to be professional, am I?”

“No, you’ve been perfectly polite. But there’s a world of difference between being cordial in an office and going on what’s functionally a vacation together.”

Duck crosses his arms, “I ain’t about to lose eight hundred bucks in deposits.”

Indrid blinks, then chuckles, “Fair. What day do we leave?”

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

The temperature rises and the air dries as they speed south on Five. Indrid fiddles with games on his phone as cover for the list of “will this be a disaster or not” he’s mentally constructing. So far the signs are positive; Duck isn’t very chatty, but neither is Indrid. They have similar tastes in music, which makes much more sense when Duck explains he was a burn-out in high school. He also isn’t agitated by Indrid stimming, which makes it easier for the photographer to relax and enjoy the drive.

But they haven’t spoken about the elephant in the car, and Indrid resolves not to be the first to do so. No point in poking the sore spot if he doesn’t have to.

They stop at a Sinclair for gas. Duck reaches into his glovebox for something as Indrid climbs out, comes away with a photo instead. It’s one of those ones from a photobooth, faded but unmistakably him and his ex. His face falls for a second and Indrid scurries into the Dairy Queen attached to the convenience store.

As he waits in line, he turns one fact over in his mind like a picture he’s trying to make sense of; it would be easier to let their awkward first meeting go if he did not genuinely like the other man. He’s charming, in a quiet way, and very friendly. He’s built like the guys Indrid always got useless crushes on in college, usually third tier frat boys or--if he was lucky--a bear a few years older than him who liked his men on the odd side.

He doesn’t like seeing Duck sad. The sadness isn’t something he can fix. The stalemate between these two facts annoy the living hell out of him.

He’s next in line, glances up to confirm what he wants, and gets an idea. Last week, he overheard Duck talking with Aubrey about roadtrip snacks of their youth.

“One chocolate dipped cone, on me.” He holds the treat out to the other man.

“Oh. Uh, thanks. These are my favorite from when I was a kid.” Duck’s smile returns.

“I remembered. Or, ah, that is, I remembered you saying that.”

The smile changes, “you didn’t need to.”

“I wanted to. Shall we?”

“Yep. Uh, you gonna be able to drive and eat that at the same time?”

“Do not doubt my ability to consume ice cream under difficult circumstances, Duck Newton.”

They make it to their first stop unscathed. It’s what Duck refers to as, “eco-bespoke,” a fancy spa and hotel built in a former school, the kind that was made in an era of beautiful instead of grim educational architecture.

“Goats!” Indrid claps his hands, delighted, at the two animals stabled near the main building. One of it’s supposed sustainable elements is the small farm that helps feed the on-site restaurant. Duck smirks and Indrid suddenly feels the gulf in their upbringings, “Ah, I suppose they’re not exciting to someone who grew up in a rural town.”

“Nah, but they’re damn cute.” Duck checks the tag on their room keys, “okay, we’re in the green building, room 2B.”

Indrid snaps some photos as they cross the grounds, more to remind himself of things he wants to come back to later than anything else. He’s busy studying a strange mark on the wall by their door when Duck says, “I can sleep on the floor.”

“Why--oh” he stares at the single bed, “in retrospect, we should have seen this coming.”

“Yeah.” Duck drops his bag near the closet, slides the door to look for spare linens. Indrid summons his courage, finds it lacking, and so bolsters it with nonchalance.

“It’s a king, we could easily share.”

“You’d, uh, you’d be okay with that?”

“It is only narrow definitions of masculinity that mean something like sharing a bed is inherently sexual.”

He’s not entirely sure that made sense, but Duck nods, “You want the right side or left?”

“Right, please.”

“Great. And, uh, Indrid? Thanks for rollin with all this. I, uh, I know it’s fuckin weird but this is a huge feature for the magazine and we woulda been fucked if we had to pull it.”

Indrid gingerly sits on his side of the bed, “You’re welcome. And I don;t know about you, but” he smiles, catches Duck watching him intently in the mirror, “I’m enjoying myself so far.”

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

“Why has an activity that renders one incapable of using their thighs been deemed ‘romantic?” Indrid mumbles, face-down on the bed to offer his burning legs relief.

“Fuck if I know.” Duck groans as he sits next to him, “Kinda fun, but if I was doin this to get you in bed, I’d be fucked.”

“I am in bed” Indrid teases.

“And if I tried to put the moves of you you’d toss me outta it. Assumin I could even move myself that close.” Duck nudges him, then clears his throat, “uh, I mean, not like we’d be doin that-”

“Nono, point taken.” Indrid rolls over. The horseback ride was one of the “couples exclusives;” a trot out to a beautiful oasis for a gourmet picnic. Indrid got some excellent shots, including one of Duck with honeycomb dripping down his chin, which he will not be offering up to editors but may keep for himself. For it’s beautiful composition, of course.

Mercifully, their next stop is the pool. Indrid settles himself in the hot tub while Duck types some notes on his phone. Then his friend doffs his bathrobe and Indrid may as well be in a dream. In the steaming, echoing paradise of multi-colored tile and ecstatic shouts, Duck stands like one of the angelic fountains at its heart has come to life.

“You okay there, ‘Drid?”

“Yes.” He hopes his lack of glasses means Duck will mistake his blatant staring for trying to get his vision in focus.

“Then scoot your cu--uh, your butt over so I can sit down.”

Indrid gladly moves aside, finds he’s so comfortable with Duck pressed against him that he begins nodding off in the warm lull of the water. When the other man nudges him, saying it’s time to go, he finds a strong arm draped over his shoulder and Duck’s smile the most relaxed it’s been all trip.

Their last task at this location is to locate the speakeasy somewhere on the premises and order the “lovers delight” (only available to couples). To do so, they follow clues purple light bulbs, doors that lead to tiny, art-filled rooms, secret staircases, and a false supply closet to a dark wooded, dimly lit, incredibly pleasant bar looking out over the property. The drink turns out to be a massive goblet (more a bowl that someone stuck on a stem) of ginger syrup, prickly pear juice, and silver tequila.

It also turns out to be incredibly strong. So much so that when they get back to the room, Indrid loses his balance getting his shoes off, which makes Duck laugh, which results in both of them flopping onto the bed.

“S’fun. You’re, you’re real good at the clues. Should, should go to an escape room when we get home.”

“Wasn’t, hic, that hard. They, they want, hic, want you to find it.”

“Take the compliment, goofus” Duck pushes his shoulder.

“You’re, hic, the goofus.”

“Nuh uh.” Duck sticks his tongue out. Indrid does the same, then licks his cheek just to hear him laugh.

Duck rolls onto his back, giggles dying down to a contemplative sigh, “He woulda hated this.”

“Your ex?” Indrid crawls to stay close to him.

“Yeah. Everythin I like, or, or thought was fun, he thought it was a waste of time or just plain worthless. He, he wasn’t like that at the start. Dunno what changed. Probably me. Probably got borin. Got worse.”

Indrid is not so drunk that he believes he can fix this. But he’s just drunk enough to stroke Duck’s cheek and murmur, “No. Nono, hic, you’re th’best.”

He doesn’t remember falling asleep after that, but he must have, because his phone is beeping at them to get up and face the day. They do so with to-go coffees in one hand and their bags in the other, neither speaking of the night before until Indrid has turned the car into deeper desert.

“Sorry for gettin on a thing about Alex last night.”

“It was a three year relationship; goodness knows you’re allowed to have feelings about it.”

“Even relief?”

Indrid glances at him, “Of course.”

His friend leans back in his seat, sipping from his travel mug, “That’s half the reason I been in such a funk. I feel like I oughta be sad, then I feel guilty for the fact I’m relieved instead. But if I really was that unhappy in it, why did I hang around so long? Maybe that was the best I deserved, y’know?”

“I know the feeling, yes, but I can’t say I agree with your statement. You deserve someone who sees you for who you are and adores it, not someone who loved what you once were and became bitter when you grew.”

Duck looks at the console between them, at Indrid’s chipped black nails and the hand he hopes isn’t shaking. He squeezes it a moment longer than necessary, “Thanks, ‘Drid. It’s nice to hear that from someone who’s still gettin to know me. Juno and them, they’re my friends, I know they’re in my corner but, uh, sometimes I worry that anyone new is gonna find me dull or somethin like that.”

“I’m sure some people would, just as some take one look at me and decide I’m a weirdo who they don’t want to deal with. But I can say with certainty that I don’t find you that way.”

Duck grins all the way to their destination. It’s a quirky trailer park full of amenities and built mostly from salvaged materials, doing it’s best to run off the grid. It also gives each trailer a theme, and Indrid flaps his hands when he sees they’ve been booked in the “The Cramps” themed one.

“Hell yeah.” Duck mirrors his excitement as they open the door. Their haven from the desert sun is full of kitschy horror artifacts and a much smaller bed than the previous spot. There’s no debate this time; Indrid settles on the right, Duck on the left, and they settle in for a nap before venturing out to work.

They take in the bar, the arcade, the mini-golf course, and the “couples supply room” (“damn, didn’t know they made eggnog scented massage oil” “ooh, I like how that smells”), but Duck turns out to be most excited to rent a stargazing kit and guide Indrid out into the dark desert. They’re on their backs, shoulder to shoulder and munching chocolate covered fruit, when he discovers the source of his glee.

“There!” Duck points to a crackling streak of silver.

“A meteor” Indrid wiggles happily as a second one speeds through his view.

“It’s the Perseids, and this is a damn good place to watch ‘em. Look, there’s another one.” He’s breathless each time and Indrid’s heart threatens to beat hard enough to crack the earth at the sound.

“Did you ever wish on stars when you were little?”

“Yep. Never asked for much worth notin, though I’m pretty sure I wished once to just wake up and be a boy. Or, uh, guess for everyone to see me as one. What about you?”

“I wished...I wished for someone to do things like this with, some who’d kiss me and tell me that they didn’t need to wish because what they wanted was right here.. I love the world, I want to see so much of it, that’s half the reason I chose my profession.. But when I was young I thought I’d be with someone when I did. I thought it was easy to find that kind of love. To be worthy of it.”

“Hey now” Duck rolls onto his side. He’s backlit by the moon, meteors zipping behind him as if they, just like Indrid, are pulled to him, “what happened to all the stuff you said in the car about deservin someone who adores you?”

“It’s easy to apply such things to you, harder to believe them about myself.”

“How come?”

“Because you are everything a sensible person could want in a man and I am not.”

“That’s where you’re wrong” He sets a hand next to Indrid’s shoulder, “Can think of at least one sensible fella who wants to get to know you a whole hell of a lot.”

“He’ll get to know me plenty, we’re co-workers.”

“There are different kinds of gettin to know someone.” Duck dips down, brushes their noses together, “for instance, the last few days I’ve gotten to know you’re a damn good travel companion and that Ned was smart to hire you. But I’ve also gotten to know there’s some things about you I really wanna know.”

“Such as?” Indrid’s fingers find Duck’s sides.

“Such as whether you wanna go on a date with me when we get back. No assignment, just the two of us gettin some time together.”

“I want nothing more.” He leans up to kiss him, feels him shudder happily when their lips meet. Indrid wonders how long it’s been since someone kissed Duck like they meant it, and resolves to make up any deficits with an enthusiasm that would put horny eighteen year olds to shame.

Indrid nips Ducks ear, “you know, were it not for the threat of mosquitos and scorpions, I’d suggest we make good use of the non-food items in that basket.”

Ducks grin lights Indrid up like a comet, “Then howsabout we go test just how conducive our trailer is to romance?”

Indrid kisses him adoringly, “Lead on, sweetheart; I’ll follow you anywhere.”

[cassguardia]

Moonlit Thoughts - Pt 3

January 2nd, 2022

Cass’s life was in shambles.

This was now her third month staying at the Neverland Hotel, still unable to find a permanent place to live after absconding from her childhood home. Any money that she had been saving up over the years was now being drained away with each night that passed, even when staying in the hotel’s cheapest, dingiest room.

Her job was pointless. It didn’t seem like there was anything she could do to get promoted to a legitimate officer. At this point she had to wonder--was it even worth it? The Redwood Hollow Police Department was a fucking joke. There had been countless break-ins, thefts, and a disappearance over the last few months, yet no lead on who was doing it or how to stop it from happening again. Creeps like Oz and Flynn could walk around in the light of day and do whatever the fuck they wanted because no one could compile a case strong enough to convict them, even though it was obvious they were dirtbags. Cass thought that by becoming an officer, she could make those changes to bring criminals to justice, but what could she do, really? What would becoming an officer even achieve?

The number of people she could rely on was waning. Her Dad hadn’t spoken to her since she slammed the door in his face on Halloween and any chance that he would ever reach out seemed slimmer with each passing holiday. Rachel was busy spending the holidays with her own family and any time not being spent with them seemed to be with Toulouse. It wasn’t that she didn’t reach out--quite the opposite, really--but every conversation only highlighted how great things were going with Rachel and how terrible things were going with her. After awhile, she just stopped responding.

The only silver lining in all of this was Honeymaren, but just that fact alone made Cass sick to her stomach. There were plenty of times in her life where she had depended on a relationship to make her happy and every single time it ended in disaster. It was only a matter of time before Honeymaren cheated on her, or left her, or grew sick of her shit. It happened every time, like clockwork. And the more time they spent together--doing puzzles, cuddling in fuzzy socks, waking up next to each other in a warm bed--the more Cass knew that their time was running out. She had to be the one to cut it off before it was too late. So after awhile, she stopped responding to her as well.

And then there were the dreams. They never left her. Every night it was the same--the figure in a maroon dress, the curly black hair, the music box, a never-ending bus, and that word always leaving her own mouth: “Mama.” Without the lead she was hoping to get from her Dad, she had no idea where to even begin in searching for answers about her mother. How does one investigate a dream?

These were the thoughts that haunted her in the early morning when she made her way to the precinct, bleary and tired from yet another night of restless sleep. As she put her things into her locker, she almost didn’t notice the black envelope that was stuffed between the slots of the door. It was only when she went to close it did the darkened paper catch her eye, which furrowed beneath her brow in confusion. Carefully sliding the letter out, the first thing she noticed was that it was addressed to her, in extremely fancy but otherwise unfamiliar handwriting. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching, she reached in to pull out its contents:

Look into the Crowne case. C.B. 

Cass blinked. The Crowne case--as in Rachel Crowne? It was the first (and last) case that Cass had been assigned on officially during her time as a trainee. Rachel Crowne, the missing girl who was found and returned by the criminal trying to rob her house. Cass had been assigned to interrogate the girl and get her statement, but it was only shortly after this that she was taken off the case, deemed too important to be handled by a trainee. At the time, Cass had been furious and went behind the department’s back to speak with the girl further. From there, an unlikely friendship developed and she got further insight to Rachel’s struggles--her abusive kidnapper of a “mother”, the fact that she was locked up her entire life, how she had seen Flynn as her chance to escape, but had no idea she was actually a missing person. In Cass’s eyes, she knew everything there was to the case--even more than others, considering her closeness with Rachel. What would she gain by looking into it?

As it turned out, that was a much harder question to answer than originally thought. With her curiosity piqued, she went into the archives that very day to pull out the case folder. However, she would discover that it wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere. Despite turning the entire archives inside and out, the file was nowhere to be found. She started asking around the precinct, thinking maybe someone had pulled it (for some reason?) but found nothing there either. At some point, she was reminded that she had been taken off the case for a reason and to just drop it. This only fueled her need to see it more. Her search went on for days, but every lead turned up to nothing.

January 5th, 2022

It was the late night hours of the precinct, when most officers had either gone home or were out on patrol for the night shift. Cass sat on the bench at the end of the locker room, turning over the black envelope in her hands. Somebody knew something that she didn’t and it was becoming more and more obvious that this was by design. For whatever reason, the information was being kept, specifically from her.

There was a moment of pause before she looked up. Right in front of her was an old and slightly rusted over locker with a faded label--Richard Guardia. Her Dad’s old locker when he was in the precinct. Normally, when an officer retired, their locker would be cleared out to be used by someone else. But his label still remained. At first, there didn’t seem to be anything sinister to that. The end of this hallway was a bunch of empty lockers, as new recruits were more likely to be given a locker in the front or middle close to everyone else’s. But something about this seemed to sink to the bottom of Cass’s stomach, like an acid that ate away at her flesh.

“Did Rachel say something to you?“

That was what her Dad had blurted out when she started asking questions about her mother. At the time, Cass had no idea what Rachel would have to do with any of this or why he would bring up her name in the first place. But now, she was starting to get an idea. With a sudden burst of vigor, she leaped up from the bench and lurched forward to open the locker--

--Only to find that it was locked. What? Retired lockers aren’t supposed to be locked. Indeed, when she went to open any of the other empty lockers around it, they all swung open with no problem. It was only this lone, abandoned locker, once belonging to her Dad, that did not acquiesce. No matter what combination she tried, or how hard she shook it, it would not budge. If she wanted in, she’d need the master key.

For being a cop, Cass was surprisingly good at petty theft. It was a skill she picked up in her years at boarding school--when being raised by strict assholes who got off on punishing children, the children had to then learn how to sneak around to get the things that they wanted. In Cass’s case, she was the one everyone went to when they needed a lock picked. Of course, this wasn’t going to work on the lockers, which were made of far sturdier stuff. But for the desk drawer that contained the master key? That, she could do. The front desk was usually manned by Officer Clawhauser, but in these late night hours, he had already returned home, leaving it wide open. She tried to remain stealthy as she slipped into the office chair, careful not to give out any squeaks or cracks that would echo in the (seemingly) empty precinct. It didn’t take long to find a paperclip, which she unfolded and stuck into the lock of the top drawer. It would take a few minutes and a lot of careful maneuvering but eventually she heard that familiar, nostalgic click as the drawer gave way to her. The inside was cluttered with things of import and not--the petty cash box, donation checks, a collection of magazine cutouts all about the same celebrity (probably Clawhauser’s, she thought), and finally a ring of keys.

It seemed to take forever to sort through the ring to find the locker’s master key but eventually a small golden key slid into the lock, cracking it open. As the rusty metal finally gave way, Cass was shocked to find that her Dad’s locker was just as full as the day he left. His uniform, his weapons, his badge--the glint of gold caught her eye immediately and she reached in to grab it, along with the golden name pin that lay beside it. As she turned it over in her hands, her thumb rubbed over the inscription--Officer Guardia.

This was supposed to be hers. For four years, she’d worked through a training program that only took the average officer a year. For four years she sat on the sidelines, watching rookies who joined the program later than her graduate before her, only for her to be assigned as their shadow. For four years she sat in the Chief’s office, hearing excuse after excuse on why she couldn’t be promoted. Implications that the only reason she was here at all was because of her father’s name and reputation.

One that would never be hers.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you work. How many hours you put in. How hard you grill a suspect. How long you chase someone. How far you’re willing to go. Some people are just born unlucky, insufferable, unlovable.

As these thoughts crawled under her skin, she went to shove the badge and pin back into the locker, only to see something farther back on the shelf.

A folder.

Immediately, she shoved everything else aside and snatched the folder, pulling it out. Sure enough, the tab was labeled “Rachel Crowne”. For a moment, the paper sat heavy in her hands as the weight of the implications began to sink in. This information was being hidden, purposefully, by her Dad. For what reason?

She had to find out. She tore open the folder, expecting to find some kind of blaring truth burned within the front pages. However, as her eyes quickly scanned over everything, nothing jumped out at her. All of this seemed like normal case information, all of which Cassandra already knew. There wasn’t anything different.

That is, until she got to the suspect and conviction. Cass thought she knew everything she needed to about the woman Rachel had called “Mother”. She was some old bat who had kidnapped her and locked her away in their house for two decades, telling her terrifying stories of the outside world to keep her under her control. She knew that after Rachel was returned to Redwood Hollow, she was arrested and Rachel had to testify against her in court, ultimately sending her to prison.

But as she stared down at a mug shot, she realized--she didn’t know what she looked like. She didn’t know her name. She didn’t actually know anything about her. And as the grey eyes of the mug shot stared back at her, framed in curtains of black, curly hair, a thin, pointed nose, and a jawline that mirrored her own, Cass finally understood why.

This was the person in her dreams.

The face, which had always seemed inscrutable in the depths of slumber, seemed to click into place, like a puzzle piece finally revealing the image. Underneath the photo, a name was printed: “Esther Gothel”.

Cass dropped the folder, allowing the papers to scatter across the floor. She stumbled back to sit at the bench once more, her mind reeling as she tried to sort all of this out. Okay, so she was having dreams about this woman--but did that really mean anything? Maybe she had seen this picture before and just forgot about it. Maybe her brain was just grasping for a mother figure and chose Rachel’s as the closest to fill. Maybe the stress was finally causing her to crack and she’d finally gone crazy.

No matter what the explanation, there was no concrete evidence. She was just as confused as when she began, if not more so.

Shaking her head, she dropped to her knees and began gathering up all the papers to shove back into the file. At the very back, however, she discovered a second manila envelope slipped within the first. This one had a completely different label: “Cassandra Gothel”.

It was like the wind was knocked out of her, her blood going cold. What was this? What the fuck was this? And what was it doing in Rachel Crowne’s case file? There was a part of Cassandra that was terrified to open it, knowing deep down that once she did, there was no going back. No going back to her Dad, no going back to Rachel, no becoming an officer, no fulfilling the Guardia name.

But this file made it clear: that was a name that didn’t even belong to her.

Her fingers twitched, breaking apart the ice that froze them in place, before reaching into the folder and flipping it open.

On September 1st, 1999 Cassandra Gothel was found at 8:42pm at the bus stop on 3rd Avenue when a worried civilian called about an abandoned child who had been sitting there since the early afternoon. Officer Richard Guardia was dispatched where he picked up the child and returned her to the precinct. Four years old, forty inches tall with dark wavy hair and dark brown eyes, wearing a green dress and black mary janes.

After initial interrogation and investigation, the girl was able to show us where she lived, 202 Harper Lane. The landlord of the apartment gave us the records of who was leasing the unit last, Esther Gothel. According to their testimony, Esther lived in the apartment with her young daughter, though was often seen leaving the building without her. Upon further investigation of the unit itself, it seems that a fair amount of clothes and supplies were packed in a haste. The last time the two were seen leaving the building was on 10/01/99 around noon, heading for downtown. Esther was seen wearing a maroon dress, carrying a black suitcase, and holding a bundle the landlord swore was a baby but insists it must have been their imagination. According to all records, Esther never had a second child.

The Statute of Child Abandonment has taken affect and should there be no contact from Esther or another legal guardian within three months, she will be placed into the foster care system up for adoption. In lieu of lack of immediate openings, Officer Guardia has volunteered to take care of the child until such circumstances arise.

Cass had to reread it three times for the words to finally sink in. It was like someone had turned her dreams into an official statement. As she shuffled through the file, she found more documentation--the landlord’s papers, the bus schedule with certain times scratched out and highlighted, and a picture of a little girl that was undoubtedly herself. She sat in the all too familiar plastic chairs of the precinct in a green dress and black mary janes that didn’t reach the ground. Her eyes were lost and confused, staring past the camera in search of answers that would never come.

At least, not until today.

Her head was reeling from the information, as well as the heavy implications that followed. What it meant for her, for her relationships to her Dad and Rachel, for everything she thought she knew. All of it was collapsing around her and she was left to ask--what did she even do with all of this?

As if to answer her question, her eyes flicked upwards. From her position on her knees, she could now see the lower half of her Dad’s locker more clearly. Sitting on the very bottom, as if it had been dropped through the slots, was another black envelope. This time, the envelope was blank with only a single note inside, written in the same fancy scrawl as her first message:

Casamir Borovsky

Mountain Suite

Neverland Hotel

The resolve that erupted inside her was spontaneous and intense. Without a second thought, she pushed herself to her feet and started gathering everything from her Dad’s locker--the files, the uniform, the weapons, the badge--and stuffed it all in her bag. Then she closed the locker, locked it, and returned the keys back to the front desk as if nothing had happened. Finally, she made a beeline out to the parking lot to board her motorcycle, so intent that she didn’t even bother putting on her helmet.

She was going to go to the Neverland Hotel.

And she was going to get answers.

January 19th, 2022

She’d made a huge mistake.

Cass hadn’t been sure what was going to happen the night that she confronted the mysterious man who had led her to the truth, and she still wasn’t entirely sure what had occurred. The conversation they had swam in her mind, having her constantly question the things she thought she knew.

But at this point, her mind was nothing but a buzzing, burning, thumping haze.

The symptoms had started a few days after everything had occurred. First, it had just been a light headache here or there. Then the tremors began, followed by nausea and a complete lack of focus. Dreams of her mother persisted, but now they were twisted and deformed--lost in shadows, always with something hunting her. She would wake up at several points throughout each night, the stale sheets of her hotel bed soaked with sweat. It was only when the fevers kicked in that the precinct put her on sick leave and forced her to confine to her hotel room. There, she lay in complete darkness and silence, with any hint of light or noise sending her head into a frenzy that made it feel like it was being crushed in a compactor.

Of course, Rachel and Honeymaren tried to come to her aid. When they heard the news of her illness, they insisted she let them take care of her, but she couldn’t bring herself to face anyone after what she had learned, especially Rachel. She just told them that she didn’t want to expose them to anything and if they really needed to help her, they could leave things at her hotel door. After that, she ignored all messages from them.

She had no idea what time of day it was. The curtains remained steadfastly closed, and she’d unplugged the digital clock on her nightstand, as even that was enough light to set off another migraine. Yet here she was, shuffling her way back from the bathroom, one of the few times she could force herself out of bed. As she approached the blackened silhouette of the mattress, however, it started to twist around her, as if she’d entered a spinning tunnel found at the carnival. Her vision, as dark as it was, seemed to bend and transform to the point where she couldn’t tell what direction she was facing anymore. Stumbling forward, she dropped to a knee, a desperate hand clinging to the comforter as she looked around frantically for some point of focus. Finally, her eyes narrowed on a small, blue pinprick of light coming from her nightstand. Gasping for air, she nudged herself forward, reaching for it. Finally, her fingers, cold and glistening with sweat, wrapped around the familiar metal of her moonstone necklace, seemingly glowing in the otherwise pitch black of her room.

The feeling of the smooth, cool stone was the last thing that she could register before her body slumped on the floor, losing consciousness.

February 6th, 2022

The clanging of metal on metal as two swords collided into one another, locked in the heat of battle. The glinting of an owl’s wings threaded between the canopy of darkened tress, illuminated by the light of the moon. Polished obsidian stalagmites jutting from the ground in sharp, unnatural angles, effortlessly disrupting the earth around it. A wicked grin formed across a pale, translucent face. Golden hair, endlessly flowing with impossible length with seemingly no beginning or end.

She needed to follow it.

It was an endless maze, sending her in all directions.

The answer would be at the end.

She was sure she was going in circles.

Finally, the hair lifted from the ground, smoothing at the top of a figure who had their back to her. She opened her mouth to call out to them, but nothing sounded. Slowly, the figure turned around, the curtains of hair parting as an arm was lifted in her direction. The closer she got, the brighter the hair began to glow, pulsing with each step. At first, she thought the hand was reaching out for her. She soon realized, however, that it was reaching forward to grab a dazzling blue stone floating in the center of an obsidian cage.

Cass leaped forward to grab it first.

“Rapunzel!” She cried, bursting up from a laying position she didn’t know she was in. In an instant, everything around her vanished.

The darkness, the figure, the glowing hair, the stone, all of it was gone--replaced instead with the pallid whiteness of the room around her. Fluorescent lights hummed, beating down a light that she had to strain her eyes in order to see through. Machinery whirred and beeped, draped with wires that she now realized were connected to various parts of her body. Passing by outside, she could see figures walk by adorned in head to toe blue outfits and masks.

She was in the Redwood Hollow Hospital.

As she looked around the room in a haze, she tried to remember what she had been dreaming about. Darkness, glowing...all of it faded into obscurity. Instead, her eyes fell upon the nightstand next to her cot, which was adorned with brightly colored flowers of all shapes and sizes. At the base of the vase, however, was an all too familiar necklace. Without a second thought, she reached for it, despite the way that her muscles strained and quivered from lack of use--how long had she been out anyway?

As her fingers wrapped around it, pressing it into the curves of her palm, something within her pulsated, once again filling her with that resolve that drove her to the Neverland Hotel that fateful evening. While she had thought she knew exactly what she was looking for as she sped off into the night, she would eventually come to realize that everything she thought she knew was a lie.

There was one thing she knew for certain.

Nothing was ever going to be the same.

[taking-over-his-life]

Munich 1

It was a warm evening when I woke up in the hotel in Munich. I was here for a weeks break, and arrived on a late afternoon flight. By the time I got off the train and caught a taxi to the hotel, I was really tired. And all I could think about was getting a sleep before I hit the clubs that evening.

As I unpacked, the smell of my new leather breeches, that had been confined the case wafted into my face, the smell was intoxicating and so I began to strip off and dress in my leather gear.

First the cock strap then the leather jock, warm and soft, smelling of man stink and leather , the breeches, pulling them on first on the left leg then the right and up over my arse, and by this time I had a boner of a dick.

The leather shirt smooth on my skin, smelling of my pits mixing with the pungent smell of leather, excited me even more. Enough I thought or I will start to wank, so I quickly put on some socks, pulled on my high Chippewa boots, and laid down for a rest.

I must have slept for at least 7 hours, and I woke up at 245am, Shit I’ve missed the club. It was a sultry night, hot and I was sweating heavily. There was no way I was going to stay in. I took a drink of water and followed it by a double whisky.

I pulled on my heavy leather jacket, put on 4 rings on my fingers, tight black leather gloves, and then my muir cap.

I looked in the mirror, fucking horny I thought. I put on my black leather coat, It was a German ww11 style coat. And headed downstairs.

The hotel was gay, so I wondered what would be in reception, and I was disappointed. No one I fancied.

I had been here before and knew that the englisher garden was 10 mins walk away and there was always cruising there.

I felt so good in the morning air, fully leathered and strutting the streets. Watching myself in the shop windows, I was proud of how I looked and what I had become. I had always envied the leather guys I saw, when I was new to the scene, and just so much wanted to change places with them and be one of them.

On one occasion I met a leather guy in a park, he was so horny and masculine, he stripped as we played and he let me wear his gear, it really excited me, O I wish I could have been him, gay proud and not afraid to wear gear in public, but I was the timid type and didn’t dare buy leather back then.

Since that time I have always enjoyed exchanging gear with guys and feeling their leather on me, smelling them on my body.

I reached the garden and headed off down a tree lined path, the moon was out so it a good night to cruise. As I was walking down I saw several guys but there was one that really got my attention. He was sitting on a wooden bench, he was tall about my height, and size, but he looked so horny and so dirty.

He had a shaved head and a long Mexican moustache thick stubble . His leather confederate cap covered his head. He was smoking a joint. I walked up to him, he passed it to me. I smiled took it and took a drag and then another, and passed it back.

I looked at him as he took the drag. Blue ripped worn jeans, ripped at the back and front, they were well worn and dirty. Well worn leather chaps over the top, they were tight so his arse and dick stood out.

He was wearing a leather shirt, so worn, and well fitting, it turned me on, so much. His chest was exposed. A silver thick chain was round his neck, pierced ears, eye brow and nose, he was wearing a leather jacket which finished his look off perfectly, my dick just exploded into action. His scent was pure male, a heavy scent of man, no deodorant.

I put my hand on his dick and it was hard and damp, he had pissed his jeans . I smelt my hand, cum and piss, the smell turned me on

I started to kiss his mouth, deep tongues penetrating each others mouths, feeling his body, his caressing mine with his hands, my hand went to his arse and I discovered a slit in his jeans my leathered finger entered his tight arse and he moaned as we exchanged gob, my other hand was pushing the back of his head to keep our mouths together. I created a seal and started to pull in his air from his lungs until he realised and we began to rebreath as we played with each others arses and dicks.

We pulled apart and headed into the bushes. It was nice and dark and we started the process all over again. He lit another joint and we both took several drags, and then it started to get exciting, I took off my coat and jacket and lay them down he got down on them and started to sniff the leather. Then he started to unzip my breeches,using his other hand to feel my legs. His tongue was licking on the leather as he made moans of delight. I pulled out my huge erect dick and pushed it towards his warm inviting mouth, he took it, I mean took it all, all 9ins thick

He seems to caress it with his tongue, I opening his leather shirt to reveal his pierced nipples, his dark skin so attractive to me. I got his hands and placed them against my nips and he started to play with them as I played with his.

He was covered in tatts, everything I wanted to be at his age which was 25 ish, Oh to go back to that age, imagine being someone like him. My excitement was so great

I stood him up spun him round and started to open his chaps and jeans. I was shaking with anticipation. His muscled hard pert arse, was so fucking gorgeous.

I got down and started to lick at his hole. He was in heaven as my tongue entered his crack

He tasted so good. I stood up and placed my dick near his hole, ‘Please’ he said with a strong german accent, that turned me on even more.

I pushed the huge head of my dick against his hole until it gently moved aside his arse muscles, then I steadily and firmly moved in

He started to push back on me so it speeded the process, speaking in German,

I grabbed hold of his tits and pulled and I moved in and out of him with my dick the warmth of his insides getting me so hard and horny, forcing my dick further into his guts, I wanted to deposit my DNA deep inside him. The smell of his pits and body was intoxicating, he hadn’t wshed for days, a really dirty bastard.

The movements became stronger and harder, he reached into his pocket and popped a pill, then passed one to me.

I swallowed. I continued to push inside of him, I pulled out and lay him on his back on the grass.

He looked up at me, with those deep eyes. His stubble looked so ruff and hard, against the black moustache, so fucking horny. His teeth were white, and his smile, a real come to bed smile.

I grabbed hold of his left boot by the heel and started to pull, nice knee high German boots, I pulled it off, his socks were damp, where the piss had run.

The smell of his boot was intoxicated piss and leather, I then took the right boot and did the same, holding it up to my nose

He just lay there looking at me smiling. I undid his chaps and pulled them down, then those worn jeans, gentle removing them from his hot arse, and legs

His dick was erect, he moved his legs and placed his ankles on my shoulders and shunted himself up towards me.

He was wearing a metal and leather cock strap. I took it off him and smelt it, warm and pungent with piss, skin and cum

I took it and put it on my dick, he watched me closely and smiled.

Yes he said, I transferred my leather cock strap to him, he smiled, ‘give me it all’ he said.

My dick reenterd his hole, by this time the pill was enhancing the experience.

I pushed deeply inside of him, till my balls bounced off his arse. He reached for my nips and started to play, I started to play with his, his cock was erect huge, pierced and horny

The pre cum was seeping, I got it n my hand and then licked it and wiped it on my face.

‘I wish I looked like you Mr’, I said. ‘I wish I was you’, he retorted. ‘I’ve always wanted to change place with someone’.

My dick and mind just exploded. My cum entering his guts, pouring out of me in floods. Planting myself in him

I lay on top of him and we started to kiss. ‘I really would like to be you Mr’, I said, ‘no joke’. He looked into my eyes ‘and me you, No joke’.

I was astounded someone so horny could fancy me so much

I undid his shirt and pulled it off him, and them removed mine. I stood up and stripped, every bit of leather off me except his cock strap. I got down and started to lick out his stinking pits, they smelt out of this world, the stink lingered on my goatee. He was licking me all over, my dick was so hard I needed to spend more time in him, but we had been there three hours and it was getting light.

I stood up, and reached for my jock, No he said and took it off me and wore it himself. He passed me his jeans and chaps. Put them on.. I thought about it and then put my feet into the worn denim and started to pull them up over my arse and dick. They stunk of piss and were damp, but fuck did they turn me on. I put on his chaps and as I bent down to pull up the zips, saw him dressing in my gear. Fuck he looked great.

So I decided to just continue, damp pissed on socks, high German boots, his stinking leather shirt. And jacket. Everything fitted me perfectly. I turned round and put my hands round his neck and removed a thick metal chain and put it on my neck. I wanted it all. I put on his leather cap he asked me for my gloves I removed them and he took the four rings I was wearing and put them on his fingers. He had a ring on each finger, he lovingly placed them on mine , then handed me the his gloves, the gear transfer was complete. All we are missing, he said, was to transfer into each others bodies, Fuck I said, if only, little did I know.

Come home with me, he said and started to walk in front of me, he looks so hot in my breeches and boots, wearing my muir cap. I caught up with him and we put our arm around each other as we walked the mile or so to his flat.

It was in an old quarter of the city, near some shops. AS we passed the shop windows I could look at myself in his stinking gear, I felt so horny and so good, he was doing the same, our dicks nearly ripping our gear to escape. We walked the two sets of steps to the first floor and went into his flat.

Once in he just lunged at me and started to push his tongue deep into my mouth, exchanging breath and gob, everything passing between us. He snorted coke and it entered my lungs as we played. Whisky was flowing as we entered a black room with a mattress on the floor, rubber sheets, a small red light and mirrored walls. Lots of gear.

He loved his chemms and they were laid out next to the bed, STRIP he said, we both took off each others gear and were naked on that bed, the rubber smell was intoxicating, again dried piss filled the room. He opened 6 bottles of poppers and let the pungent smell fill the room. Take what you want he said as he opened a box full of chemms, I snorted two lines of coke and took some crystal, and a viagra

Our bare flesh rested against each other as we partook. He took his cocktail, and well, after that, all I know is it was deep penetrating sex all night, every body fluid was exchanged, he enjoyed taking my spit, snot, piss and swallowing it, my balls emptied several times inside him and I licked out his every extremity and his cum flowed down my throat.

We had been going at it for 8 or so hours, no let up. Some small breaks, I don’t know where the energy came from but It was sheer heaven.

He was on his back, on the piss soaked rubber sheet, ankles on my shoulders, groaning with pleasure. I was so deep inside of him, my 9 ins penetrating deep inside him, filling him with my DNA, Our tits sore yet so exciting. The chemms enhancing every feeling, I just wanted his flesh so much, he was everytrhing I wanted, and also everything I would like to be.

Young, muscular, tatts, piercings, not afraid to dress the way he wanted, filthy perverted fuck. Handsome fucker.

I would love to be you! I said, you are so fucking hot and horny, Id exchange with you now if I could. Id love to be in your body. He just smiled, pushed his arse so my dick got harder inside of him, give me your gob he said, I spit straight into his mouth. Fucking great taste he said. Lets make it happen, Id like to look and become you, he said. I was so excited, this sort of cyber was a real turn on. Suddenly I felt really strange.I kept feeling like I was falling, but I was only on my knees, he saw me, his hand caressed my face, don’t fight it will be OK he said, what’s going on, don’t worry your fantasy will be fulfilled, just let go….drop, fall into my body become me he said.

I didnt know what was happening, my dick deep in him, almost stuck in there pulsating emptying my being inside of him, my hands on his chest. I gave in and started to fall, it seemed like I was leaving my body, a long way down and landed in him, not my body falling but my spirit. I was inside him and saw him heading upwards, going inside of my body, every part of me was tingling, I was in pure panick

I started to wriggle about, as if trying to fit into this new habitation, I felt strange, Looking up, I saw my own face, my body, I was smiling, I looked and saw my ankles on his shoulders, in fact they were his legs not mine, but I was in his body, and he inhabited mine, I felt a huge dick in my new arse, I had never experienced that before, it was so erotic, and he was fucking me so deep, trying out his new body and new role. I looked in the mirror, and I could see myself and him, but I was the younger one, the tattooed one piercing, and he was me, FUCK!!! I couldn’t belive it, I felt so fucking unbelievable horny, I kept looking in the mirror, I wanted this dream to last,

Fuck, I said, who am I whats my name, Your Gunter, you are now me, you inhabit my body, you have my life, and I am in yours, it feels good. I enjoy fucking. We fucked for an hour or so. At that point the tiredness got the both of us and we slept.

I woke up a few hours later, thinking the past was a dream. I left the bedroom and found a toilet, I held my dick and looked down, I jumped back. My dick was cut, and pierced, my hands different. I pissed all over the floor, in shock. I turned to the mirror, and there he was. I was the German boi, pierced nose, pierced ears, stubble, deep dark eyes, I was gorgeous.I was so shocked I fell back landing on the floor, I started to look at my arms legs, chest, and got a bit panicky.

Fuck I said, but it wasn’t my voice, and it wasn’t English, but German, I started to speak, what the hell has happened. It came out in his voice.

I went back to the mirror, and started to look closely. My face a Mexican moustache, well tanned and dark, deep black eyes, 22 yrs or so, handsome. It was so strange, but I liked what I saw. I felt my new face and head, chest arms legs, dick.

I had changed I liked what I saw. My dick was so hard I wanted to cum so much, so I started to wank. The experience and feelings were totally different to my own. At this point he walked in. Don’t waste that Gunter, I want it! Gunter, that’s me I thought.

Well, do you like, he said. In my body with my voice. Fuck do I , I said. This is what you wanted. I’m very happy being George, I didn’t know what to say,

He grabbed me and pulled me back into the room, then pushed me on the mattress, and got down in-between my legs, he started to suck me off. The feeling in my new body were so different, so enhanced.

After that he lifted my legs, and put them on his shoulders, Lets try out my new dick he said. No I don’t get fucked I said. You do now Mr, enjoy your new body.

I struggled a bit and he held me then entered me, OHHH it was heaven, what an experience, he just fucked me for the next 15 mins and then shot so deep inside of me.

So you liked that, eh? He said, yes I did, this is so fucking horny, as I looked at my new body and him.

We spent the next hour chatting, finding out who we were now, dates, family friends jobs, etc. A briefing to live another mans life.

It was 7pm. He stood up and dressed. I’m going back to the hotel, I want to try this new life out. It was strange to see someone ick up my clothes, but, they were his now, they belonged to my old body. Come to the hotel tomorrow, and lets change back. Ok I said, enjoy he said, smiling.

He left the flat. I was now another man, new looks new feeling new life. I went up to the mirror and started to explore who I was, the pirced nips, and dick, got me hard, the tattts on my arms chest back hands andleg, I was one horny fucker, as I looked around I new I was a dirty cunt, and wanted more.

The flat was now mine, so I started to explore. His wardrobe was hot. I selected a pair of good thick quality jeans with a stripe down the side and put them on. They zipped from front to back for easy access.

Huge German boots, fit my feet perfectly. I looked great. I spend a good 20 mins checking myself out and liking what I saw There was a knock at the door, I went to it. Two totally leathered men stood there. You ready Gunter, they said. Come in, hang on, I said in german.

Fuck what u been doing here, they said, some wild party, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

I put on a leather shirt, some arm band, a jacket, muir cap and gloves. I found a huge WW11 coat and put it on. Fuck this looked great

I came out to the guys, FUCKING HELL they said, I want you tonight, one said, and so did the other, they were a couple I discovered.

They both started to fondle me, it seems like we were good m8s, but where we going I didn’t have a clue. I followed these leather gods downstairs and into huge merc that was waiting outside. One of the guys, Kurt got in the back with me will peter drove, Kurt started to feel me up and then the kissing began. He was so handsome and he was into me. He gentle undid his breeches and forced me down onto his dick. First my mouth till he fed me his sweet cum. I wasn’t used to this but my new body really enjoyed it and I was going to experience as much as I could while I had it.

We arrived at a large farmhouse deep n the country. There were loads of cars parked outside. We got out and walked to the barn door, and were allowed in. The place was huge with about 60 totally leather and rubber clad guys in there.

This was going to be great. Peter came over to me and started to play, then a collar came out and was put round my neck, what the fuck? I said, the Kurt, pulled out a leather mask and forced it on my head, fuck I was worried, but strangely was enjoying it. My hosts body really liked this. So I succumbed.

As the night rolled on the two guys were all over me, the drugs ran free like the alcohol, and it wasn’t long before I was high. There were slings seats all manner of equipment in there. They found an empty sling and in I went, too fucked up to care.

They unzipped my jeans from front to back, tied my legs and hands, and left me there. It wasn’t long before I felt dick after dick inside of me emptying their hot man juice, I was in ecstasy. I could see out of the mask, who was fucking my arse. My nips were attached to chains, and I was fed drugs and alcohol all night, I pissed where I was, till my leather jeans were soaking.

Then I saw him, George, my old body with him in it. He smiled at me pulled out his dick and started to piss all over my face and chest, then in-between my legs, and pushed his dick deep into my guts, as he pushed he leaned over so we were face to face, You like your new life Gunter? He said. Yes the experience has been great, but I want to change back I said, lets start the process here. No way he said, I’m enjoying this too much. Being a top is great, He whispered in my ear, This body is mine, your life is mine, your never getting it back fuck wit. No way, I shouted you cunt helppppp, at this he produced a gag, and gagged me against my will, no one could here me now. I struggled but he continued to fuck me unloading deep inside of me, that’s the last bit of yourself you will ever have, this change is permanent.

I struggled and he put some drug under my nose I tried not to breath in but there was no way I could escape.

He continued to fuck, drink and soak me in piss.

Then I blacked out. When I awoke I was in the middle of a fuck fest 10 or so guys fucking pissing, sucking, I was being fucked by a huge black leather man, 12 ins deep in me as his partner sucked me off, another guy was mouth fucking me as yet others licked me and worked my tits.

I was in heaven. He had gone, I was now Gunter a 22yr old German. I had no choice but to accept my new life, and live it.

[natural-namjoon]

𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧

Seonghwa fluff, very mild smut.

Very mild, just making out and heavy groping that's pretty much it.

“Blaze it up and we'll be cruisin'

With the top down

Rev up the engine we'll be cruisin'

Watch it go down

Get in my truck and I'll be ridin'

With my top down

With my top down

My top down”   

The sun shone brightly as you drove your old truck down the Hot Arizona highway, leaving Phoenix. Your new destination was Los Angeles. Having lived the nomad lifestyle ever since you got out of high school, you were always on the road jumping from city to city, working odd jobs to keep some money in your pocket and once you felt you spent enough time in one place you’d pack up your few belongings and head out to a new place. You had called phoenix your home for 6 months, staying longer than usual because the hotel job you had paid pretty well and you were able to save up a bit of money for yourself, but the dry heat finally got to you and you decided to leave, randomly picking LA for your next destination. 

In 3 hours you found yourself crossing state lines, passing a sign welcoming you to the golden state. It only took another 3 hours to find your way in between the sprawling buildings of the city of angels. You had found a random gas station and decided to refill your tank and grab a snack for yourself. After getting gas and doing a little search on your phone you found a decently clean 3-star hotel to stay in, after booking and confirming your stay you decided to check-in and freshen up. The vibes of the big city were buzzing in your veins and you felt like going out and seeing the sights. After a quick shower, you threw on a cute black slip dress that flattered your curves along with some strappy sandals. Looking out your hotel window you could see the shoreline in the distance, the sun would be setting pretty soon and you’d never seen the west coast before so off you went.

 It felt so freeing to you and it was one of the reasons for living the way you did. Going from place to place, the vibe of each place was different and unique and it energized your soul every time you were able to breathe in the air of a new place filled with new people and experiences. It took a bit of time to make your way to the beach because of the ungodly traffic but you made it just as the sun was setting. There were lots of people on the beach, children and families laughing and playing. Feeling self-conscious,you decided to wait and people-watch from one of the many restaurants that lined the beach and boardwalk. You ducked into this goofy themed crab restaurant and you found a seat at the window so you could watch the sunset over the water. 

You sat and just got lost in your thoughts, thinking of home and how long it's been since you spent any quality time with your friends and family let alone someone of the opposite gender. Your lifestyle was lonely and you knew that before you even had left, spending 2- 4 months in each city didn’t really allow for serious relationships, and yeah, you had a couple of hook-ups but those were few and far in between. Overall you were about as unserviced as your truck which was bad in both aspects but you loved the adventure your lifestyle brought and it was easier that way. 

During your inner monologue, you didn’t hear someone come up and start talking nor did you hear the second or third time he tried to get your attention so it was after the light touch to your shoulder that had you jumping out of your skin. That you realized a waiter had come to your lone table. 

“Sorry didn’t mean to scare you, were you wanting to order something?” you looked up to the waiter. The first thing you noticed was the goofy looking bright red cartoon crab that was plastered on his snapback hat. Your eyes traveled down and then you really saw him, 

‘Holy shit he’s hot.’ you thought to yourself, he had a jawline that could cut diamond and plump lips and gorgeous soft brown eyes, you could also see dark brown hair peeking out under his cap. To cover up your awkward silence and blatant staring you coughed and nodded like a dummy,

“I- um yeah i'll take water for now and-” you quickly glanced at the front of the menu and pointed at a picture of something that looked like fried chicken pieces with fries. “ and that…” you prayed he was just some random worker who didn’t care or notice your awkwardness. 

The most gorgeous smile slowly formed on his face followed by a deep chuckle, you couldn’t help the deep embarrassment you felt as he laughed at you. He cleared his throat,

“Alright sounds good, so that will be one order of the fried shrimp and chips and water, got it.” He started to scribble in his little notepad and he reached down to grab your menu but you kept your hand on it 

“No- um…..actually not that-” again your embarrassment had your face inflamed. “I’m allergic to seafood,” you said in a quiet voice, there was a moment of complete silence between the two of you until he busted out laughing, it was a hearty, real laugh, a part of your brain noticed how beautiful his laugh was but the bigger part of your brain was in error mode. All you could do was put your head down as he laughed at your obvious incompetence. Suddenly he reached down and gently touched your hand with his as his laughter died down. He shook his head,

“I’m sorry I’m not laughing AT you, it's just funny, you're allergic to seafood yet the first restaurant you picked has a giant crab on the front.” another round of giggles left him as he leaned on the table. You couldn’t help but laugh too at the stupid situation you put yourself in.

“ I know, I wasn’t really thinking, I just wanted to find a place to watch the sunset.” you gestured to the large window that framed your table, he looked from the shoreline to you, he felt something fluttering in his chest, he obviously noticed how pretty you were and the dress you had on hugged you in all the right places. He smirked then cleared his throat, getting your attention from the seaside view.

“I’m Seonghwa by the way.” he reached his hand out and you took it shyly, his hand was big but soft and his fingers were long and elegant looking adorned with silver rings.

“I’m (Y/N)” you said with a smile. He smiled back.

“Let me make you a deal, You hang here, and I'll go find you something you can actually eat without dying. Deal?” He winked and you could feel your arms losing circulation. All you could do was nod and he flashed a brilliant smile.

“Ok, hang tight (Y/N)” he turned and made his way to the back of the restaurant. You took a deep breath to steady your heart, you decided then and there that night you might act up and see where the night leads you and Seonghwa. Hopefully, it was your hotel room. After about 4 minutes an older waitress came over and put a fancy looking orange and pink cocktail in front of you, 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I ordered water” in the same moment the sentence left your mouth she also put a crisp glass of water down in front of you, then she leaned down closer to you

“It’s from pretty boy back there” You both turned to the restaurant bar where Seonghwa stood behind it, waving in your direction. The waitress waggled her eyebrows at you then sauntered off with a cheeky grin.

You looked down to the bright drink and after a small sniff, you noticed it smelled really sweet and fruity, so it must not be that bad. You took a small sip and the tropical citrus flavor danced on your tongue, it didn’t even taste like alcohol. It was dangerous. Alone again you let your mind wander as you watched each family pack up and start leaving the beach, as it got darker the beach became more and more sparse. 30 minutes had passed and after people-watching you hadn’t realized you’d finished your cocktail and it was the smell of food that brought you out of your trance. You turned to find Seonghwa setting a large plate of Chicken strips and fries down in front of you. You were warm from the alcohol and starving.

“Whoa” was all you said as you looked up at him. You noticed he was dressed differently, his goofy hat and apron were gone and now covering his black work polo was a jean jacket and his hair had been slicked back. Hot damn he looked delicious. He smiled down at you then took a seat opposite of you.

“ Yeah ‘whoa’ is right, for a seafood restaurant their chicken strips are amazing, but I did have to fight the chef to make enough for two adults because these usually come in kids meals.” he rambled as he took a chicken strip off the plate and started eating. You just stared blankly at him, confused as to what was happening, He just looked back at you expecting an answer.

“Um… what’s happening here?” you asked and he chuckled again

“ My shift just ended and you told me you’d stay here while I find food for you, this was the deal” he explained taking another bite.

“But I only had to wait UNTIL you got me food, by law I can leave and take these to go” you pulled the plate closer to you, teasing him. He scoffed then quickly reached over and grabbed another tender before you could pull the plate farther away from him.

“Hey!” you laughed shielding your food. He laughed with you. 

“ Actually I wanted you to stay so I could hear your story” he explained sincerely.

“What makes you think I have a story?” you asked, taking a bite of chicken, holy shit the chicken was heavenly. He shrugged,

“Tourists always come to the beach first and usually they wander in here cause we’re right by the entrance to the beach.”

“What makes you think that’s what I did?” he piqued your curiosity

“Because, that’s what I did when I first got here, and that’s how I got this job.” He grabbed a couple of fries, popping them in his mouth. “although I walked in here because I actually like seafood” he teased you laughing as he got another tender from your shared plate. You laughed with him shaking your head.

“Shut up, it was an honest mistake, what restaurant has ONLY seafood except for on the kid’s menu, I’m going to complain to the manager” You joked and he snorted.

“Wouldn't be the first time. Anyways so, where are you from and what brings you to this godforsaken city” he said the last part a little bitterly. You were taken aback by his words, 

“What do you mean so far this city has been beautiful. Lots of people, but beautiful.” He chewed silently pondering your words. After he swallowed his bite he sighed

“I thought the same thing before I got jumped one night on my way home from work. Took my wallet and cell but not before I got a blade in my ribs.” He explained darkly, not meeting your eyes. You sat speechlessly, what do you say to that?

“No I-I get it...before I came here I was in Phoenix Arizona, some co-workers and I went out one night, I got separated from them and a man snuck up on me, held a gun to my head and made me hand over my bag. Thank god my car keys had been in my pocket, but I remember feeling so helpless and scared.” You told him, taking a sip of water, feeling the buzz of the alcohol leaving you. Both of you were silent, Seonghwa was mentally kicking himself for bringing the mood down, he hadn’t meant too but he had hoped his story could be one of caution to you but all he did was make you relive a bad memory. He sighed and signaled for one of the waitresses to come over. He ordered another cocktail and she was back with it in a couple minutes. He took the glass and slid it over to you,

“Sorry, I killed the mood I wasn’t trying to get you down.” you smiled at him, grateful for the offer but you had to decline, you still had to drive yourself back to your hotel room.

“I’ll drive you,” he offered immediately. You raised an eyebrow and he laughed

“I won’t try anything. I have to work an early shift anyways so I can’t have too much fun, I'll just catch a bus from your place once you're safe inside.”

You felt your heart warm, he was really sweet. You somehow had the luck to run into him on your first day there, you decided if he couldn’t have too much fun, then a little bit of fun would go a long way. You leaned down and took a big sip of the cocktail, but made a face as the burning taste of vodka overpowered the sugar and fruity taste,

“Oooh this one is strong” you voice came out hoarse as you choked and he laughed

“Yeah I’m the only one who can make this drink the right way, it’s kind of my specialty” he examined the glass absently

“What’s the drink called? I’ve never had it before,” you asked taking another small sip,

He looked up and met your eyes, there was something dark in his soft brown eyes, a kind of mischief that made your stomach flip

“Sex on the beach,” he said softly in his deep voice, keeping direct eye contact with you. You breathed out slowly and without breaking the eye contact you responded 

“your specialty is sex on the beach?” you asked, your voice small. He smirked, finally breaking eye contact as he reached down his fingers tracing the lines on the top of your hands. 

“Something like that.” 

Suddenly you didn't care about seeing the beach, You took another big drink of your liquid courage, managing to not make a gross face this time and you looked at him,

“How about instead of escorting me home, maybe you can take me into the city? Cruise around, show me the city lights and nightlife, you don’t have to go home right this instant?” you asked leaning forward giving him puppy dog eyes hoping he’d accept. 

He laughed at your eagerness, after a quick check of his phone he accepted and you smiled feeling victorious.

Quickly getting up and packaging your food to go you went to pay for the food but he just grabbed your arm and led you out the door. 

“Wait, this is stealing,” you said bluntly feeling buzzed.

“I’m an assistant manager, it’s on me.” He responded cooly 

“Oh excuse me I didn’t know I was hanging with a High Roller” you teased. He laughed as you guys came to the parking lot of the beach, there weren’t many cars and your old red Dodge Dakota truck stood out lonely in a far corner. You beckoned for him to follow as you stumbled over to your trusty vehicle. Once you got to the truck you tossed him the keys,

“This is not the car I expected you to have” he laughed unlocking the door.

“Yup i've had this old girl for years, i  saw her in a used car lot and had to have her.” you climbed in the passenger seat and tossed the bag of food in the back seat. 

One you both were in and buckled up he laughed

“So you're just a young pretty girl that drives an old beat up truck that's probably older than you?” he  laughed again turning to you

“I know it's weird right…” you turned to him trying to look intimidating

“You know this could all be a ruse, I could be luring you to the back alleys of the city to kill you and keep your head in my fridge.

After a beat you realized how weird that really sounded and you silently cursed the alcohol for making you so loose lipped. 

Luckily Seonghwa wasn't fazed as he burst out laughing then turned to you and cocked his eyebrow

“Is that a threat or a promise??” he giggled and started the truck, you thanked the heavens he was so easygoing. 

“Wanna know the main reason I wanted this truck?” you asked him, reaching across him to a switch near the drivers door, noting how good he smelled while you did it, and flipped a small switch. There was a groaning and whining noise then the whole top of your truck moved and folded back on itself and after a moment you were both sitting with the salty sea air around you. 

“ WHAT? This is so COOL!” he exclaimed looking like a kid with a new toy “I didn't know that convertible trucks existed!!” he was laughing in excitement and you laughed with him. 

“Lets fuckin go then!” he yelled and revved the engine and soon you guys were on the road headed for downtown L.A.

In no time you both were cruising with the top down, enjoying the nightlife, the city was so big and there were so many people out shopping, and eating and there were a lot of people performing and busking on the sides of the roads. It was all so magical and you felt so exhilarated, In all honesty there wasn't anything about L.A that you had not seen in other big cities, but this city had one thing the others didn't, and that was Seonghwa. Having someone with you to experience things with, made a world of a difference. Every so often when you'd get excited and would point and laugh and sit with amazement he would always look at you with the softest eyes and he looked upon you with this kind of adoration that you had never seen someone look at you with. He would tell you stories of his first experiences with the various locations you guys passed by and he had you laughing and every so often he would rest his hand on your thigh absentmindedly, not in a creepy way, but in a way that felt familiar, like he'd done it a thousand times. His hand was a comfortable warmth on your cool skin and it felt right being there with him, everything about him was perfect.

After a bit of driving he started to head to where he lived, you had offered to drop him off as the night had grown long and he had gotten a few phone calls from his roommates asking when he'd be home so unfortunately he had to head home and you were sobered up enough to drive finally. He pulled into the driveway and parked, not before putting the top back up. There was a silence in the car, neither of you wanted to end the night, but Seonghwa had responsibilities and he had to sleep because he had to open up at work the next day. 

After a bit of silence he reached over again and gently put his hand on your knee, you placed your smaller hand on his,

“Well, (Y/N) i'm glad you stumbled into my restaurant today, this is the most fun i've had with another person in a long time.” he smiled at you, eyes running over your body as his thumb drew circles on your knee. You had heard what he said, and you wanted to respond with something sweet and wholesome but all you could focus on was his lips and his hand on your skin. With the hand that was placed on his you grabbed his wrist and slowly pulled his hand up higher on your thigh pushing back the fabric of your dress until he was a inch away from your center. You felt him tense up and your breathing got heavy as you watched him and waited for him to do something,

“(Y/N)...” he breathed out, voice deep and filled with lust as he stared at the spot his hand was in and were it was going, he gave your thigh a test squeeze, 

“Seonghwa..” you didn't mean for your voice to come out as a small moan but the anticipation and sexual tension was becoming too much for you. Suddenly Seonghwa leaned down and pressed his lips against yours, you immediately opened your mouth to deepen the kiss further, frantically unbuckling your seat belt so you could climb over onto his lap. Without breaking the kiss you settled onto his lap and his hands were all over you. Your brain was a deep fog, there was nothing you could think other than the feeling of his soft lips on yours and the feeling of his big hands as he squeezed your ass. You slipped your hands under his shirt wanting to feel more of him, he broke the kiss only to swiftly remove his jacket and polo shirt. You took a moment to marvel at his body, he was leaned and chiseled, not too much muscle but there were abs and broad shoulders, this man was like a drug, everything he did and everything about him was so intoxicating. You ran your hands up and down his chest and down his back as he pulled you closer, you  noticed a hardnessed pressed against your lower parts and you smiled in the kiss, feeling how hard he got and all you guys were doing was kissing. Ever so slowly you pressed your hips down harder onto his crotch and started grinding, he broke the kiss as his head fell back and a groan escaped his lips,

“Oh my god (Y/N) fuck..” you took that as a sigh to grind your hips harder onto his erection, causing more intense friction on your clit, both of you held each other, a moaning and whining mess. You absently thought about how hot and bothered you were getting with your clothes on, you couldn't wait to get them off. You went to kiss him again, tongue exploring as he grasped your hips harshly, trying to slow your movements because your makeout session was getting really intense really fast.

You were about to pull back and ask if they should go back to your hotel room for more privacy when there was a loud rapping at the driver side window, you let out a surprised squeak as you moved to cover any exposed parts. Both you and Seonghwa turned and standing on the other side of the window was a tall man, he looked young like you guys and he had peach colored messy hair and various stains on his oversized sweater. 

“Yuhno What the Fuck???” Seonghwa said incredulously, The man named Yuhno gestured for him to roll the window down, after the glass was no longer between them Seonghwa snapped at the taller man

“ Yuhno I said I'd be home soon, I was kind of in the middle of something.” he lectured, angrily pulling his shirt back on.

“Yeah I can see that, and as much as hate to cockblock you and this lovely lady-” he looked over at you and waved cutely, all you could do was laugh and wave back embarrassed. “But Wooyoung and Mingi duct taped Hongjoong to the wall and they won't let me get him down, San wont stop crying because he was trying to do a trick off the counter and dropped half our plates. I tried to get Jongho and Yeosang to help but they went into their rooms and refused to come out.” Yuhno explained in the most calm way possible. Seonghwa just silently sat for a moment and sighed,

“The one day you all have a day off while I have to work late and of course there is pure chaos, just- go get Hongjoong down and I'll be inside in a second.” Yuhno just nodded and after waving at you again he hurried back to the shared house. Seonghwa just sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly,

“ Are these your roommates or do you have kids I don't know about?” Seonghwa let out a genuine laugh then he looked tiredly at you,

“Im sorry, my roommates are a bit…. Eccentric.” he said the last word slowly. You giggled, then leaned over and gave him a small peck on his lips. He pressed his forehead to yours and sat for a moment, basking in your scent. Then with another defeated sigh he climbed out and you slid into the driver seat behind him. He closed your door and leaned in the open window pressing another quick kiss to your lips, the longing in his eyes almost made you want to cry as it mirrored your own longing. He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to you and you realized it was your phone, 

“Don't be mad but I put my number in your phone” he chuckled

“When did you get my phone?!” you asked genuinely surprised he just chuckled and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. 

“I have my ways, I just want to make sure I’ll get to see you again.” he said the last part as a question

“Of course” you said softly cupping his cheek to emphasize your adoration. He didn't make any move to leave your side until there was a loud crashing and incoherent yelling from the inside of the house. 

“I gotta go,” he shot you an apologetic smile and turned and jogged up to the front door. As he pulled open the door you could hear high pitched laughter and other sounds of ruckus happening in the house.

“Wooyoung!” he barked as he slammed the door behind him followed by a high pitched scream you could hear from inside your truck.

 You looked down at the new contact in your phone under the name Seonghwa and smiled. The whole drive home you had butterflies as you thought about your day and the amazing man you spent part of it with. You'd never experienced anything like this before all the other times you were with a guy it was a hookup and you never really saw the men again, but you knew without a doubt you wanted to see Seonghwa over and over again. 

“Coming to L.A. was a good choice after all” you said to yourself as you made your way back to your hotel “ I think that I might stay”

[atmilliways]

Dethentine’s Day 1

February 8th - A Romantic Getaway

Today I give you what seems to be the first Lavona/Trindle fic posted to Ao3. It, uh, gets kind of dark towards the end, mostly for star-crossed lovers reasons.  You’re welcome and/or I’m sorry, whichever applies.

What Matters

The late evening air of Paris is clear and crisp as the two women exit the small museum shop that marks the end of the Catacombs tour, arm in arm. 

“Well, Liebling?” the taller of the two asks in German as they cross the street. “Did you like it?”

“It was fantastic.” Her companion, who has a definite American accent, is absolutely beaming beneath her black, touristy beret. The studs in her nose and bottom lip glint silver in the streetlight. “I’ve never seen so many femurs and crania in one place before. Thousands of human skulls and bones. Skeletal remains of more than six million people. You could just . . . feel the dead, all around you.” She sighed. “This entire trip has just been perfect, Lavona. I’m so happy you were able to take the time off.”

“Anything for you, Trin,” she replies with an indulgent smile. “I wanted to make this trip special for you considering the sacrifice you’re about to make for the cause.”

“You’re doing an amazing job.” Trindle beams at the nickname, as she always does. “Where to next?”

“Cantada II,” Lavona confirms. “It’s a heavy metal absinthe bar in the 11th arrondissement.”

“Ooh. So they’ll be playing. . . ?”

“Almost definitely.”

Lavona watches her eyes light up at the prospect of drinking to Dethklok music, and knows deeper than bone that Trindle was the right choice. The young woman has the right history, the kind that the band’s manager won’t think twice about when he orders the inevitable background search: goth since middle school, tattooed and splashed all over social media photos of copious concerts from high school onwards, putting herself through life as a cosmetologist and esthetician. She is, by all accounts, a member of one of Dethklok’s many key demographics. 

Which is exactly why Succuboso Explosion had reached out to her in the first place. She’s perfect. So perfect, in fact, that Lavona sometimes finds herself wavering in her single-minded pursuit of Nathan Explosion’s seed. . . .

Only sometimes. But it’s in moments like right now, drinking in the way Trindle’s normally pale face flushes with whole-hearted excitement. Poor girl has never been out of the United States before in her life. There’s a whole world to explore, and she has an enthusiasm for taking it all in that Lavona had lost a long time ago. If things were different, her first instinct might be to protect that spark, to nurture and tend to it until maybe, just maybe, some of it might rub off on and infect her too. 

But they had both agreed. The mission is what matters. Once they all truly become vessels that hold the future, maybe then there will be time, as pregnancy allows, but for now Lavona knows it’s best to remain as dispassionate as possible. 

So she hails them a cab, and they go to a moodily lit bar with blood red walls and unsettling artistic renderings of monsters and zombies on the walls. Trindle says she recognized it from some Anthony Bourdain thing, whoever that was—Lavona doesn’t own a television, so all she gleans from the comment was that the man had died since filming it, which seemed to heighten the appeal somehow. Excited to try everything, Trindle insists on working her way systematically through the drinks menu. It’s a good night. 

They returned to the hotel late, both slightly unsteady on their feet despite Lavona’s attempts to keep her head. Trindle had insisted that she take at least a sip of each with her, and Lavona hadn’t had it in her to say no. 

It’s far from a fancy suite, the group’s finances being mostly directed in other directions. Just a standard room with two double beds. Until tonight Lavona has kept to her own side of the room, but when Trindle tangles their fingers together and hesitantly tugs her to cross the invisible line with a hopeful smile . . . Lavona follows the pull. 

Later, after Trindle had fallen asleep on her side, Lavona sits up in bed and watches the gentle tide of her bosom. The sheets are thin enough that she can make out the heavy black shapes of her tattoos. A stray lock of hair drapes across her cheek, fluttering with every exhale; gently, so as not to wake her, Lavona brushes it back behind her shoulder. 

How odd to think that soon this view will be Nathan’s. She should be jealous of Trindle. She is—and isn’t. She’s jealous of them both, with a fierce ache in her heart and between her legs, but she also feels a peacefulness that she’s never known before. Dispassionate as possible. . . . Well, apparently that had always been relative. Maybe if the silly girl hadn’t mainlined lessons on both Duolingo and Babbel for several months and then surprised her with rough but promising conversational German, Lavona might have stood a chance. 

If she could, she would suspend this final moment of their romantic getaway in amber and wear it like a jewel. 

But Trindle had agreed. 

Lavona leans across to the nightstand between the two beds and retrieves a slim black case from the top drawer. Unzipping it reveals a pre-filled syringe, which gleams in the moonlight as she uncaps and flicks it to make sure there are no air bubbles. One quick injection and Trindle will stay asleep long enough for the next step. 

When it’s done, Lavona leans down and kisses Trindle’s forehead, kisses her closed eyelids, kisses her slack lips. “I’m sorry, Liebling,” she whispers. “Godspeed. The sooner the mission is complete, the sooner we can reunite. I . . . I hope you can forgive me.”

Then she dresses and goes to the door that connects their room to the one next door, knocks, waits to hear a reply knock, and opens it. The other four members of Succubosso Explosion file in, dressed in surgical scrubs, pushing a narrow stainless-steel table, and carrying trays of sterilized equipment. 

They had outvoted her on this, arguing that the mission was of the utmost importance. Ever since their initial failure with the Loin Extractor, knowing that an outsider would have to be recruited to infiltrate Mordhaus, most of the group’s budget has gone towards the development of behavior modification technology to ensure success even without the rigorous training they’ve all undergone for years. Trindle is merely a tool; this implant will endow her with a single-minded desire to collect Nathan’s spend as often and as diligently as possible, as well as adding a certain amount of “bimbo-ification” that will put her even further beyond suspicion than her otherwise innocuous history already does. 

It hasn’t been tested on human subjects, there simply wasn’t time. They have one slim window of opportunity, a rare and coveted backstage pass which Trindle will use to approach and ensnare her target. 

All Lavona can do now is hope that the plan will go off without a fucking hitch.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

“Stark’s New Intern” Chapter 20

"Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you acting on your best behavior Turn your back on mother nature Everybody wants to rule the world

It's my own design It's my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world"

Tears For Fears – "Everybody Wants to Rule The World"

Erik watched Maria down a shot of tequila and squeeze a sliced lime into her mouth. He sipped on a glass of ginger beer and watched the festivities aboard Le Sirene, Stark's 456-foot-long custom-built yacht. Scalloped sides, silver and turquoise accents and large glass facades gave panoramic views inside the interior. Sailing off the coast of Malibu, the balmy air and fresh smell of seawater relaxed Erik.

Stark spared no expense to wine and dine the interns. Everyone around Erik were in various states of good humor, ecstatic thoughts of the future, and varying degrees of sobriety.

Athena accepted a job with a completely different company in Paris.

Giselle would start a mid-level position in Stark's New York offices.

Valentina accepted a generous package with Stark in Los Angeles under the thumb of Janine.

And Maria…she had two top Stark Industries choices. Stay in Los Angeles with Valentina, or take an opportunity to work for Stark in D.C.

Only fifteen percent of the interns were offered jobs with Stark. The fact that all off his female friends received the careers they worked so hard for pleased Erik to no end. He was also looking forward to being right next to Tony. As soon as Happy from security gave him his new clearance, Erik had access to offices and buildings within the Stark sphere of influence.

Once he was removed from the interns, Erik spent two weeks shadowing Pepper Potts. She informed him that she would guide his transition into more of a junior assistant role. Erik liked Pepper's directness. She wasn't a fun person to hang around. Her tight lips and tight ass personality hid a core rooted in needing to keep the world around her extremely organized. Erik recognized the signs of obsessive behavior. He had it too.

Pepper was easy to read and she seemed to be irritated with Erik's relaxed stance around Stark. She dug into him during a lunch meeting the two of them shared.

"You need to be the one to keep Tony grounded. He's really just a big kid in a candy store and even though he is brilliant, he is also very brash. Impulsive. The key to doing the job right is to keep the riff-raff away from him and make sure he stays focused on the task at hand. He doesn't need another sycophant. Everyone wants a piece of him, so don't be afraid to be rude or abrupt. You and I will be in direct contact and I will be in charge of your itinerary with Stark daily. Any changes that need to be made go through me first."

Pepper always regarded him with a bit of detachment and triple-checked his work often. After two weeks of realizing that Erik was more than capable of handling Tony as her junior, she let up a bit. Just a tiny bit. Erik had to adjust to how he would stomach those other looks she gave him. Looks that always made it seem like she pondered how he was in Tony's orbit. This Black kid with the genius I.Q. and Oakland attitude. So many overly pedigreed interns and Stark chose Erik above all of them. A guy not even out of his teens yet.

Erik also learned another little tidbit about Pepper.

She was annoyed with Devika.

Maybe not annoyed…more like jealous.

The two women maneuvered around each other professionally. But more than once, Erik caught Pepper giving Devika catty looks when she was in Stark's inner office. This piqued Erik's curiosity even more, making him want to know what type of relationship Devika really had with Tony. It made Erik's stomach hurt sometimes to think that his boss had been with his girl in that way.

His girl.

Erik's eyes swept over to the open bar on the yacht's third deck as Devika picked up a champagne flute and tipped the glass against one of the female interns next to her. Prior to coming on board the luxury boat, Erik spent the afternoon with Devika at a café looking for an apartment for him. A basic one-bedroom in a decent neighborhood close to work was averaging three thousand a month.

Money wasn't a problem. Stark made good and gifted Erik with a hefty players fee from the poker game. Erik sent portions of his winnings to his relatives and banked the rest. He could afford a fancy apartment or even a condo himself if he wanted. But spending the night with Devika made him want one thing: to be with her.

He whined to her about having to spend a grip of money in a hotel and hinted that he would look for a roommate situation to ease him into a new living situation. He already had his belongings in her apartment and they were now sharing a bed. He wanted to stay with her during his fellowship. But she was concerned about Tony finding out about them. He was too chickenshit to ask outright if he could live with her hoping she would suggest the idea herself. She didn't.

Erik watched Pepper approach Devika and as the two women spoke to one another, he moved to the other side searching for the man himself. Jazzy tunes were piped in throughout the yacht and Erik tried to go where he last saw Tony.

A wet kiss on his cheek caught him off guard and Giselle's face came into view as she slid around him.

"You're real quiet tonight. Everything okay?" she asked.

"I'm good. Just looking for Boss Man."

"I never got a chance to properly congratulate you on your fellowship. Stark was right about you. From Day One. You were the man to beat."

"You haven't done so bad yourself."

"New York, baby!" Giselle squealed. She closed her eyes and did a little happy dance, "They loved my work with the Expo and I was a good fit for his team out there. I am over the fucking moon. I am going to kill out there."

Her eyes glinted with endless possibilities and Erik caught a glimpse of Tony walking toward him.

"Stevens."

Giselle slipped away from him to join a raucous group dancing in an open space. Tony handed Erik a glass of champagne.

"You missed my grand going away speech," Tony said.

"No, I heard it. I was just up here. Taking it all in."

"This is just one of the many perks of doing what I do. Showing appreciation for everyone giving their best."

"Do you ever get bored with it? I mean, all this," Erik said glancing around at the grandeur and all the decadence.

"Not really. When I was younger, I used to get bored…not with the money, but with the same packs of roving cliques. Money is never boring. Rich people? Yes. Money? Never. I just learned how to spend my money well and surround myself with interesting characters."

Erik drank from his glass and Tony moved closer to him.

"Pepper says you are ready for the big leagues. It's going to be quite a shift from being an intern."

"I can handle it."

Erik followed Tony around the ship, and as the night progressed, he longed to be alone with Devika and just watch a corny movie. She flitted around, and the yearning grew in his heart. It was a new feeling for him. Wanting a one on one. Athena and Giselle were open to him having a goodbye tryst with them, but he wasn't interested, and that shocked him. Turning down exceptional pussy? An abomination in his previous life, but now…

The black sheath dress Devika wore shimmered with tiny crystals at the hem. And she wore the heels that he loved fucking her in. Her hair was tucked into a loose bun on her head and she decorated her forehead with three dark green bindis. He followed her to the starboard side of the yacht and her eyes looked startled to see him come upon her as she stared at the dark water below them.

"Hey," he said, allowing his shoulder to bump into hers.

"Hi."

"You look nice."

"Thanks," she said. Her eyes darted behind him to make sure they weren't being watched.

"I'm on my best behavior, don't trip," he said giving up a bit of space between them.

"I needed a little break from the action," she whispered, folding her hands on the railing she leaned on.

"Pepper and you have been chatty Cathy's."

Devika's eyes narrowed at the sound of Pepper's name.

"Devika, be honest with me. Did you and Tony-?"

"No."

Her tone was curt. But her eyes were soft.

"I didn't cross the line with him. Not all the way. I was…I was really young when I took this job. I was also really good at it. Tony took a shine to me, but it was just an excellent working relationship in the beginning. But shit happens. Late hours. Last-minute trips to exotic places. Billionaire crowd. Working for him is both surreal and astounding at times. The people that he has on speed dial? You would be shocked at who I have called up out of the blue for him."

She took a deep breath and exhaled.

"I had a huge crush on him and he has always been attracted to me. We've had dinners together that had nothing to do with work. There have been times when I could've allowed us to cross the line, and I didn't. Then I met my fiancé and my life changed. Pepper is in love with Tony, and she hates that he still feels something for me even though there is nothing between us."

She turned and looked at Erik.

"I had an emotional connection to Tony and I ended it for the sake of my career. My dignity too, I guess. I look at Tony as a boss and a friend. Pepper hasn't found a balance for her feelings, and we sometimes butt heads."

"Does he still want something with you?"

"I don't think so. He was happy when I first got engaged. Maybe it was a relief for him."

"Does he feel anything for Pepper?"

"I don't think so. She treats him like a child. It annoys him a lot. I think it's why he blows her off a lot. But she is good at what she does so he puts up with her scolding. What's it like for you working with her?"

Erik looked out at the water and gripped the railing with his hands.

"Annoying as fuck. But I'm used to people like her. She doesn't like that I'm not invested in the gig as much as she thinks I should be."

"If you're not invested, why do it? You should go to M.I.T."

Her words made his chest hurt.

"You don't want me around?"

"This has nothing to do with me. God, I hope you didn't take the job just to be around me."

She laughed but then stopped when his face stayed neutral.

"Erik, seriously, you took the job for your future career, right?"

"I have a lot of reasons to take it. You were part of it too."

"Oh…Erik…"

Her eyes dropped away from his.

"Devika…"

"You have to make life choices that benefit you and your dreams."

"I'm still figuring that out, but you're a big perk."

She reached out and rubbed his arm.

"You are so sweet."

"I'm not trying to be sweet, Devika. I'm tryna be your man."

The words not only shocked her, but they made him tumble back from the railing. The champagne had him loose-lipped. Too loose.

Her eyes regarded him with quiet understanding.

"So sweet," she said.

He watched her lean away from him as if she were leaving him. He grabbed for her hand and pulled her toward him.

"You heard what I said, right?" he asked.

"I did."

"You like me, right?"

"I do."

"I wanna be with you. Not just friends."

"We should slow down."

"What?"

His neck tilted to the side.

Hours earlier they had been in her bed and she had whispered crazy things in his ear that made him feel invincible and so grown up. Was she playing him for good dick?

Two weeks of sharing her home together, making him feel like they were a legit couple, and she was standing there telling him they should slow down. He tasted sour spit in his mouth and the muscles in his stomach felt tight.

"You need to focus all your energy on being the best you in your new position. Don't get caught up with me and lose track of your future."

"Caught up?"

He could barely get the words out of his throat. Her words sounded like she was patting him on his head like he was a cute puppy that she no longer wanted to play with. He felt his lower lip tremble and he stepped further away from her.

"Erik…"

"I gotta get back to Stark. I'll see you later."

He felt a little wobbly as he searched for Tony. Once he found him, he stayed by the man's side and finished the evening on his motorcycle by the pier the yacht was docked at. Instead of returning to Devika's condo, he took a room at a Hilton hotel and drank up the liquor inside the minibar.

His cell phone rang and when he checked it, Devika left several messages for him. He called her back at three in the morning after a good hour of sleep.

"Where are you?"

"A hotel. West Hollywood."

"Why?"

"Why? You told me not to get caught up—"

"Erik, you know what I meant."

"I heard what you said."

"Come back here."

"Why should I?"

"Let's talk—"

"We're talking now—"

"Get over here."

"Why?"

"I want you here. Your stuff is here."

"I'll get my stuff later."

"What I said to you earlier…I wasn't trying to be mean. I was being honest with you."

"I don't want to slow down."

He could hear an exasperated sigh in her voice.

"Erik, I'm trying to make you see what I wish someone had told me when I was younger. I'm not trying to hurt you."

"I want to be with you. We get along. You know that. Tony won't find out about us—"

"We need to talk in person—"

"It's late. I'll come over when I check out."

He hung up.

Lying on the hotel bed nude, he stared at the walls.

An hour ticked by.

"Fuck."

He jumped up and put back on his silk shirt and slacks. Throwing on his dark biker's jacket and helmet, he hopped on his motorcycle and roared out of the hotel parking lot.

The highway was quiet as the sky lightened. When he reached Devika's condo, the pink and orange morning glow made him feel easier in the chest.

She answered the door after his third knock dressed in one of his sweatshirts and nothing else.

"Let's talk," he said.

She nodded and he leaned forward to kiss her lips. Her mouth was eager to have his and they took their time with slow drawn out smooching in the doorway. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Suckling his tongue, Devika made him feel that what he needed most was for her to be in his corner. He held onto her ass cheeks to keep her pressed against him, and when she finally released his lips, he had her panting. He slipped a finger down her ass and let it rest against the cotton of her underwear. He could feel how damp she was, her slick saturating the panties. He rested his forehead on hers.

"Tell me your mine," he whispered.

She traced the fingers of her right hand across the back of his scalp sending tingles up his back. His lips touched her lips again and he looked into her eyes.

"Tell me," he demanded.

He walked into her condo with her still wrapped around him and kicked the door closed.

"I'm your man. Say it."

The bass in his voice made her eyes widen. He sent his fingers down into her panties and stroked her swollen vulva.

"Devika, say it…."

He unfastened his pants and pulled them down with his underwear.

"Devika."

Sliding her sticky panties to the side, Erik lifted her up and guided his dick inside of her. She whimpered as he fucked her standing up, her face pressed against his face, her arms laced around his neck.

The squelching sounds coming from her pussy made Erik give her hard strokes as he lifted her up and down his stiffness. She still wouldn't answer him and just gave his ears thrilling moans and yelps from the pleasure he gave her.

His calves began to strain from standing in one place and holding her weight so he spun around and jammed her up against the door. Pressing her into the solid wood, he drilled into her hard and fast, his aggression needing release. She refused to give him what he wanted and it aggravated him.

"Devika…"

"Erik!" she screamed.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and he felt her pussy contract up and down his dick. He reached up and grabbed her throat, his fingers squeezing and pushing her head back. The throbbing in his dick made his back hunch up.

"I want you!" he shouted releasing into her, his head dropping onto her chest as his legs trembled.

He groaned when he felt another sudden wave of semen spurt into her and it made him drop her down to her feet. He faced her with wrinkled clothes and semen still dripping from his tip. He kicked his feet out of his pants and Devika took his right hand and led him to her bedroom.

They made love until Erik was too exhausted to do anything more than stroke her hair as he held her in his arms.

The unspoken was made manifest.

He was going to live with her and she let be known by her loving that she belonged to him.

The world at that moment was his.

Chapter 21 HERE.

###

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[paodequeijofeliz-blog]

I would do it all again

Ride or Die Fanfiction (characters and main story belongs to Pixelberry Studios).

Pairing: Mona and MC (Annie)

Information: this takes place after the first book.

Summary: After what happened at the parking lot, each member of the crew tries to build a new life, following the “every man for himself” motto. But Annie doesn’t agree with that and tries to pull them back together, especially Mona, who she has been waiting for too many years.

Warnings: some Angst talk about not being good enough. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

I would do it all again - Part 6 (ANGST)

“Whatever you choose is fine.” Mona barely glanced at the phone, mumbling the words as her attention was focused on fixing the toaster. Annie kept the screen pointed at her for a few seconds, hesitant, before taking it away and scrolling around the options again.

“Okay…” she sighed, going back to the living room. “I’ll order burgers then.”

The last couple of months were so hard on their relationship. They seemed to be building such a high level of trust before, but something happened in between, and the teacher just couldn’t find out what. Her girlfriend was flipping from distant and rude to extremely loving all the time, each day a surprise. Sometimes, she would go outside to answer a call and come back so cold, quiet, that Annie was too afraid to ask who was on the other side of the line. But then, in the next day, things could change again. Mona would wake her up with a kiss and go back to her normal self.

That cycle was not healthy. Not at all.

Annie tried to talk about it, but the subject was too sensitive. She could tell there was something bothering the Lebanese. The mood switches, short answers, those weird phone calls… Perhaps the parole and the auto shop were too much pressure on her shoulders. The teacher convinced herself that was the reason, there couldn’t be any other explanation. So, she tried to make things easier, to address the parole issue carefully, spend more time at home than at work, help Mona around even if she had no idea of how to fix stuff. Just to be there, hoping her girlfriend would eventually talk about whatever was wrong with them now.

That night, the teacher was patiently sewing a button back on her favourite shirt when a noise captured her attention. Annie thought she heard voices downstairs. It was late, but Mona had been cleaning the shop for hours that day, maybe it was just Toby or Ximena on a videocall. She happily slipped herself inside a robe and went there to check, maybe even convince her girlfriend to finish it tomorrow and come to bed. It was no fun going to sleep on her own, not when there was a gorgeous woman walking around the house.

Slowly, Annie followed the sound to the back of the shop, where they had a small kitchen recently reformed. It was her idea to keep it, so no one would need to go upstairs every time they needed water or coffee. Considering how lazy Toby and Mona could be, that was a smart thing to do.

But before she got any close to the door, an unfamiliar husky voice started talking. It wasn’t a videocall.

“Bullshit and you know it!” A woman. She sounded angry, frustrated. “Why are you lying to yourself, M.? I know you better than this. Don’t be so dumb.”

The teacher swallowed hard in the hallway. That didn’t seem like a nice guest. And it didn’t matter who it was, nobody would talk to her girlfriend like that. She marched towards the kitchen door, furious, ready to put up a fight…

“You don’t love that stupid girl, sweetheart.” Said the husky voice again.

Through a crack on the door, Annie saw the strange woman holding Mona by the waist, pressing her against the kitchen counter.

That sight made the teacher freeze in the hallway, unable to move or say anything. Just listen. Listen to a tall, strong, and hot stranger in a leather jacket saying the meanest things there could be. Arms still involving Mona, their faces so close, it made Annie feel a bad taste on her mouth.

“Go away, Ada. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But the woman didn’t move an inch, only tilting her head to force their eyes to meet. Mona wasn’t fighting but didn’t seem to enjoy the proximity either. She was just standing there like a tense statue, hands inside the pockets.

“I know you. And this… Place? This hole you’re trying to fix, that’s a joke, M. Are you seriously convincing yourself this is what you want? A steady job as a low paid mechanic in an old dusty shop with two ex-convicts? Earning the bare minimum to live here? You’re a woman for luxury, hon. Sports cars, jewels, fancy dresses, the best hotels, that’s your thing, that has always been your thing. Is this dump gonna give you enough money to afford it? No, the real question…” Ada got even closer now, lips brushing against Mona’s. At that point, Annie already had her vision blurred by the tears, so she wouldn’t be able to tell if they kissed or not. “The real question, babe, is why on earth are you dating a woman that can’t give you what you deserve? And a fucking teacher. Seriously? The most boring thing ever? She’s not even hot enough to explain it.”

Annie fought against the tears, desperate to see what was happening, but she couldn’t make them stop coming. Her hands went to cover the mouth, afraid to make a sound. Something inside of her wanted to hear the whole thing. Some sort of hope, whispering, it will be okay… Mona will defend you… At any moment now…

“I know that sooner or later you’re gonna get bored of this cute marriage role play going on here.” Ada had icy green eyes, piercing through the Lebanese like a hypnosis, dragging her back to the worst memory of her past. “I took care of you when we were in prison. I will take care of you now. It was our agreement, you gave me your word when we killed that girl. Now, let’s go home. I can give you exactly what you want.”

Silence. A long, hurting, meaningful silence.

That was it. Annie still had the shirt on her hands, and the touch of the fabric made her feel like the most stupid woman in the world. Everything around her, every single object, even the walls, it was all making her believe she was an idiot. A dreamer. A child. A naïve woman who did it all wrong. She had six years to plan their lives and even with all that time, still managed to screw it up. Whoever the stranger was, her words glued in the teacher’s head, mocking her feelings.

It made her feel small. Like a little toy a kid was tired of playing with.

Anna walked away from the door. Her heart couldn’t take another word. Tripping and stumbling along the hallway, she finally reached to the old car. Her chest was burning in pain when she turned the engine on, opening the new electric gates with the remote control. When Mona heard the sound and got to the front of the shop, the car was long gone, driving in full speed down the road.

“No, no, no, no!” she kicked an empty trash can, hands roaming through the hair, trying to think faster. Suddenly, Ada was there too, a cocky smile on her face. “Get away from me.”

“C’mon, what’s with all the drama? Let her go. Good for you. Now we can continue from where we stopped…”

“Get the hell away from me!” Mona’s voice had a dangerous tone. Without waiting for another word, she just left Ada behind and went to the one person who could help solve the situation.

Dominick woke up with the sound of someone banging on his door. His heart raced as he took a bat from under the bed, glancing at his son’s room with concern. The left hand was holding the weapon tightly when the right turned the knob to open the door, but both relaxed when he recognized Mona’s face. She was about to make fun of his Monsters Inc. pajamas, but there was no time to waste.

“I need your car. It’s an emergency. Now.”

“What happened? Is Annie ok?”

“Now, Dom! I don’t know, probably not, don’t make difficult questions, damn it!” her eyes scanned the living room, then she jumped to take the keys from the table. “I’ll bring it back before dawn, I promise!”

“Wha…”

“No time to explain!”

Every second was counting. Mona had a few ideas of where Annie could’ve gone, but the more time she wasted, the worse would it be to fix this mess. When the Lebanese drove past the auto shop, Ada had disappeared already. At least, for now.

Think, you idiot. Think. Her fingers flexed and held the steering wheel again. The adrenaline was making everything a blur. What’s the first place she would go? The library? It’s closed. The park? Too dangerous at this hour. She’s crying, so it has to be somewhere calm. Where would she feel safe…?

Then, it her. So obvious.

Mona turned the wheel to take an exit on the right and stepped on the gas. The road was desert, making it easier to speed, but it had some dangerous curves that forced her to be more careful.  

Half an hour later, she was parking at the back of the university. There was no student or teacher in that darkness, only two securities, a janitor taking out the trash and…

Harold. Annie’s old silver car parked just a few spots away.

I’ll fix it. Said Mona to herself, taking a deep breath. I’ll fix it all.

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, bidnezz!

For @bidnezz. Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it.

Read On AO3

*****

wouldn’t it be the perfect crime (if I stole your heart, you stole mine)

If Alec knew that being an FBI agent would involve long hours of schmoozing at a fancy party in the Hamptons, he might have chosen a different career. He thought he’d left this kind of thing behind him along with his parents’ plans for a future they’d never even bothered to consult him about when he chose Quantico over Columbia Law. But, no. It turns out that years of enduring tedious socialites means he’s apparently the perfect person to send undercover in a gathering of tedious socialites.

“Quit looking so bored out there, Lightwood.” Lydia’s voice is flat and tinny in his earpiece. “I’m the one stuck back here watching the cameras all night. At least you get to sample the canapes.”

Lydia Branwell had been a class ahead of Alec at Quantico, and as the newest member of the team, it should by tradition be Alec on camera watching duty, but Agent Aldertree thought he'd blend in better. Not only does Alec disagree, but he's certain he and Lydia would both be a lot happier with their roles reversed.

Alec grabs a couple canapes from a passing tray and makes sure he's in full view of the nearest security camera as he wraps them in a cocktail napkin and tucks them into his pocket to give to Lydia later. He hears a soft snort, and Alec is glad to have brought a little levity into this very, very boring assignment.

The whole mission is a long shot. When the host of the party contacted the authorities about a series of notes he received that could maybe be construed as threatening and explained his very tumultuous history with a man who just so happened to be on the FBI's most wanted list, Alec's superiors at the Bureau decided it was a lead worth pursuing, especially since the notes made repeated references to this particular party, which was apparently an annual tradition. Personally, Alec thinks the notes sound more like an annoyed neighbor or fed-up employee than actual threats, let alone threats from a guy wily enough to have evaded authorities for almost two decades, but his superiors think this op is worth it, and they’re the experts.

Alec takes up a position near some kind of decorative pot thing, pretending to examine it while he scans the other side of the room for any new faces or anyone that looks even remotely like their target.

“That’s a lovely piece,” says a voice over his left shoulder.

Alec starts. He didn’t notice anyone approaching him, and he’s usually a hard guy to sneak up on. His surprise only grows when he turns to the man who’d spoken. Alec cannot begin to fathom how, in his hours of surveilling this crowd, he’s managed to miss a man who looks like that.

Deep brown eyes are rimmed with kohl and accented with a just a hint of vivid blue that perfectly matches the streak in the man’s hair and the stitching on his brocade waistcoat. His nails are lacquered in a deeper blue set off by the array of silver rings that adorn his fingers. His lips quirk in an amused, almost secretive smile that steals Alec’s breath and gives him a number of thoughts that aren’t entirely appropriate to be having about a man he’s only just met, and definitely not appropriate to have while he’s working.

“Are you a fan of ceramics?” the man asks, and Alec flushes, realizing that he’s been staring. He’s a little surprised he can’t hear Lydia snickering at him in his earpiece. She must have decided to be kind and mute her mic.

“Not really,” Alec admits. “I just, um. I like the blue.”

The way the man’s smile widens makes it clear he knows Alec isn’t talking about the pot. Still, he nods at it and says, “Cobalt oxide. That’s what gives that vivid blue when fired at high temperatures. Very emblematic of Ming dynasty porcelain, although the style did spread to the West in the following centuries.”

Alec blinks. “Wait, is that thing an actual Ming vase?” He doesn’t know much about ceramics, or art in general, but he’s heard his parents’ friends go on about it enough to know that a Ming vase is very valuable, and not the kind of thing most people have just sitting around their house. Although, this particular house could probably be more accurately described as a mansion.

“Oh yes,” the man assures him, reaching out a hand to point at the vase. “See that faint rust color down near the bottom rim? That’s not something you tend to see except on real Ming dynasty porcelain. It’s caused by a reaction between the firing process and the iron in the particular Kaolin clay used. It causes that rust color on any parts of the piece that aren’t fully glazed, most often seen near the bottom rim.”

Alec nods, but he’s not paying attention to the vase anymore. Instead, his eyes are caught by the strip of skin revealed when the man pointed at the vase, and the color that adorns it. He’s surprised by the sharp disappointment that wells up, and he feels immediately foolish for it. What does it matter that this man who he’s barely exchanged a handful of words with and whose name he doesn’t even know has a soulmate? Especially since the indistinct gray lines on his own forearm mean Alec has a soulmate somewhere out there, too.

It shouldn’t matter. But, somehow, it does.

“It’s not a sure sign, of course,” the man is saying. “A competent forger could fake it. But Lorenzo is notoriously thorough in vetting his collection for authenticity, so in this particular case— Oh.”

Alec pulls himself out of his own thoughts, wondering what caught the man’s attention so suddenly, only to find the man’s gaze fixed on him, sharp and intense. Alec can’t look away.

“I’m Magnus,” the man tells him.

“Alexander. Um, Alec. Everyone calls me Alec.”

“Alexander.” Magnus says his name almost like a prayer. “Would you—”

“Darling, there you are.” It’s the word ‘darling’ as much as Lydia’s hand on his arm that finally breaks Alec’s lazer focus on Magnus. ‘Darling’ is their code word that an op has gone off the rails, and if Lydia is out here talking to him in person instead of over his earpiece from the security room, then something is definitely very wrong. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I didn’t realize,” Alec tells her. He turns back to Magnus, excuse already on his lips, only to find that the other man has already disappeared back into the crowd.

Alec firmly pushes aside the ridiculous sense of loss that accompanies that realization. He has a job to do, and he shouldn’t have let himself get distracted in the first place. Especially not by a man who’s already found his soulmate.

“All our cameras and communications went down about five minutes ago,” Lydia explains in a low voice. “Aldertree and Fairbrand are running protection on Rey. We need to round up Starkwright and Heygrove.”

It takes two hours to clear out the guests without causing a panic and another half hour before they discover the missing painting: a Renoir that had hung in the library on the second floor. It was expertly cut from the frame without setting off any of the alarms meant to protect the precious piece of art.

It isn’t until he’s back in his hotel room that Alec sees it, the dark curl visible as soon as he unbuttons the cuff of his shirt sleeve. He can barely breathe as he rolls his sleeve up to reveal his now fully-formed soulmark.

Alec stares down at the image of a sleek black cat with eyes such a vivid gold they almost seem to glow. Something in the tilt of its head and set of its tail are distinctly reminiscent of Magnus's smile. Alec isn't sure if he wants to laugh or cry.

He's still unsure two days later when the Art Crimes Team announces that the Renoir was stolen by the notorious art thief Le Chat Noir.

~!~

Magnus is on his fourth glass of whiskey when Ragnor and Cat make it back to the rendezvous.

"I'll have you know," Ragnor says, "that it is deeply unfair of you to start celebrating without us when we did most of the work on this—" He stops mid-sentence and mid-stride when he actually processes what he's seeing.

"Magnus," he says slowly, "are you drinking whiskey?"

And Magnus is so, so grateful that his friends know him as well as they do. Well enough to recognize his heartbreak drink. Well enough that all he has to do is show them his arm, now bearing the image of three crossed arrows fletched in blue, and they understand without him having to say a word.

Catarina stows their prize and gear while Ragnor grabs two more glasses. For several minutes, the three drink in silence.

"You know," Catarina offers as Magnus fills his glass for the fifth time, "we don't have to go Prague right away. It's more dangerous to stay in the States, but if you want to stay, Magnus, if you want to find your soulmate again, you know we'll help you look."

Magnus shakes his head. There's a part of him that does want to find Alexander, desperately wants to recapture the hope he had in those first moments after he noticed that his mark had changed. But that hope was built on a fantasy, and Magnus is fairly certain Alexander doesn't want to be found. Not everyone who has a soulmate wants one, after all.

"He's married," Magnus says.

He doesn't tell them what it felt like to watch the pretty blonde slide her arm through Alexander's, light glinting off her gold wedding band. He doesn't say that it felt like a physical blow to hear her call him darling.

They leave for Prague in the morning.

~!~

It takes Alec two years to get reassigned to the Art Crime Team. Two years of spending all his off hours studying, because he knows nothing about art when he starts. Two years of gathering evidence for what he knows has to be true, because Magnus was standing right next to him when the Renoir was taken, but no one actually on the case seems to have figured out yet.

He doesn't let himself feel guilty when he presents his case and the SAIC praises him for figuring out that Le Chat Noir is a team rather than a single person. He can't let himself feel guilty, because he has to find Magnus. He just isn't sure yet what he's going to do when he does find him.

It should be easy. Alec is an officer of the law. Magnus is a criminal. Soulmates or not, there's only one way for this to end.

But.

But the longer Alec studies Le Chat Noir's crimes, the more details he learns, the less certain he is about, well, anything. Because Le Chat Noir never hurt anyone in the course of their heists—not even minor injuries—and a lot of the art they take only technically belongs to the people they steal from. And all of those pieces—taken from families by invading armies, plundered by early archaeologists who gave no thought to the supposed savages whose cultural artifacts they took—always seem to find themselves back in the hands of their original owners' descendents.

That’s not all Magnus and his team steal, of course. Some of the pieces they steal, like the Renoir, are clearly chosen for their monetary value. But even then...

When Alec joined the Bureau, he did it with dreams of protecting people from violent criminals who prey on others. He can’t help noticing that the people Le Chat Noir steals those valuable pieces of art from all seem to share much more in common with the sorts of people Alec always thought he’d be putting behind bars than those he thought he’d be protecting.

"I've got the neighbor's security footage from the Rouse case for us to review."

Alec winces at the thought of reviewing yet more grainy security cam footage, especially first thing in the morning in the company of his distressingly chipper partner.

"I also brought you coffee."

His distressingly chipper, but also very thoughtful partner.

"You're a godsend, Fray," he tells her, accepting the cup. "What have we got?"

"Simon cut out all of the footage with no movement on it, but we're still looking at about ten hours."

"Which leaves us with five hours each if we split it," Alec says. "So let's see if we can get this done by lunch."

Alec finds Magnus in the third hour of footage. He's only in frame for a few seconds, and Alec has to backup twice to be sure. And then he backs up several more times just to satisfy the part of him that's desperate for even that much of his soulmate.

He doesn't tell Clary. He tells himself it's because Magnus isn't doing anything on the security footage besides walking down the street the morning before the theft, that he would have to explain who Magnus is and how Alec knows who he is.

He's relieved when someone else on the team puts it together that Le Chat Noir is responsible for the theft.

~!~

Magnus manages to ignore his soulmate's existence for almost three years, or at least make a good show of it. And it’s fine, really. He reassures Cat of this every time she asks, reassures Ragnor every time he gives Magnus one of those looks. Any foolish, romantic fantasies Magnus might entertain between sleeping and waking are between him and his idiot heart.

Except then Alexander is there on the television, standing among the team of FBI agents investigating Le Chat Noir’s latest stateside heist (one that Magnus is particularly proud of, thank you very much), and looking just unfairly hot in his dark suit. And there’s really just no ignoring that.

Magnus spends the next week researching. Some things are easy to find out. There are only twenty agents on the FBI’s Art Crimes Team, and currently only one Alexander. From there, it’s easy enough to track down Alec’s employment and school records, his family, even his gym membership. Other things take a bit more work, like his current address, mobile number, and email.

One thing is very clear, though, no matter how many times or places Magnus checks: Special Agent Alexander Lightwood is not—has never been—married.

“I messed up.”

Ragnor and Catarina exchange a worried look.

“Magnus, he’s an FBI agent,” Catarina says gently.

“An FBI agent currently trying to track down and arrest all of us,” Ragnor adds, somewhat less gently.

Magnus knows they’re right. He does. But...

“He’s my soulmate. And I just left.”

There’s no fixing this, Magnus knows, but he can’t leave things the way they are.

~!~

The first note comes on heavy cream cardstock, delivered to the PO box Alec uses for anything that might get him put on a mailing list. It’s addressed simply to “Alexander,” and he knows as soon as he reads it who sent it.

It takes almost a week to determine that the anonymous tip about their current case is legitimate, and only a few days longer before they have the perpetrators of the string of violent home invasion robberies in custody. It’s the first case Alec has worked since he transferred to the Art Crimes Team where the criminals seem as interested in hurting the people they steal from as stealing valuable art, and he’s very, very glad to have it behind him.

After that, the notes become a regular thing. They come in a variety of formats: cards sent to Alec’s PO box, his home, his office; texts from burner phones; emails from non-existent addresses; tucked into a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses on Alec’s 28th birthday. They don’t come for every case Alec works, probably not even one in ten, but they do keep coming.

Alec never mentions the notes to his team after the first one. He can’t keep them from Clary, not all of them, but she never mentions it to anyone else, never suggests that they should. For once, Alec is very grateful for his partner’s tenuous relationship with following rules.

Alec keeps that first note tucked into the billfold of his wallet.

~!~

Magnus isn’t sure why started sending the notes. No, that’s not true. He sent the first note because those sadistic bastards were giving all art thieves a bad name, and they didn’t deserve to have beautiful things any more than the people Magnus steals from do. He sent the tip about how they were offloading the pieces they stole (and really, how sloppy were they that Magnus had found it so easily?) to Alexander because, well, it was the closest he could get to an apology.

Magnus isn’t sure why he keeps sending the notes, but he can’t seem to stop. It would be easy to say that it’s the only way he knows to be—in some small way—a part of Alexander’s life. And that is a part of it, but...but the truth is, it’s also fun. There are too many art thieves who have no place in the business, either just because they’re terribly sloppy (really, do they have no respect at all for their craft?) or because they’re horrible people who Magnus has no desire to share an occupation with. Screwing them over while also making Alexander’s life a little bit easier is doubly satisfying.

“I think we should retire,” Ragnor says. They’ve just finalized the sale of their latest score and are having drinks in Barcelona to celebrate.

“Retire?” Magnus asks. “Why?” He can’t help noticing that Catarina doesn’t look surprised.

“Because,” Ragnor says with a shrug, “I don’t think any of our hearts are really in it anymore. I started doing this for the money and the thrill. Now, I think I’m getting a little too old for thrills, and I have more money than god.”

“You’re thirty-eight,” Magnus points out irritably.

“Even so,” Ragnor says. “And you’ve gotten all wrapped up in your,” he waves his hand, “side project.”

Magnus can’t deny it, he’s been distracted. But that doesn’t mean he wants to quit.

“Cat?” Magnus asks, turning to look at her.

“When I was little,” Catarina says, studying the dregs of her Manhattan, “I wanted to be a nurse. After my parents kicked me out, I gave up on that dream, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe I could settle down, go back to school.” She looks up, meeting Magnus’s eyes. “This, what we do, it was great when I was sixteen, when I was twenty-five. But it was never supposed to be forever, and I think. I think I’m done.”

“I see.”

It’s Magnus’s turn to stare into his drink. The truth is, he’s never thought about retirement, not really. Cat and Ragnor chose this life, and maybe it wasn’t much of a choice for either of them, but they weren’t born into it the way Magnus was. Stealing is something his friends do, but it’s who Magnus is. Going straight just isn’t an option for Asmodeus Bane’s son.

Is it?

“Maybe you’re right,” Magnus says.

If Cat and Ragnor want to retire, he doesn’t want to be what stops them. Magnus can always take some time off, and when his friends are settled into their new lives and well clear of him and his father’s influence, he can look into putting together a new team. It won’t be the same without Cat and Ragnor, but Magnus will survive. He always does.

And maybe... Maybe it means something that Magnus’s soulmate isn’t a thief. That Alexander is about as far from a thief as you can get. Maybe...

Magnus doesn’t let himself finish the thought, but he doesn’t let go of it, either.

~!~

“Come on, we’re going out for lunch.”

Alec looks up from the report he’s in the middle of. “Uh, not today. I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on.”

“Yes, today,” Clary says, reaching down to flip his folder closed. “We’ve been working crazy hours all month, and I’m not letting you skip lunch again now that we’ve closed the case just so you can do paperwork.”

For all of Alec’s protests, he finds himself in the passenger seat of Clary’s car not ten minutes later. He frowns when realizes they’re headed out of the city.

“Where are we going?”

“Just a little hole in the wall place I found.” Clary’s voice is light, but she has her mission face on. “I think you’ll like it.”

Alec is suddenly on high alert. He has no idea what’s going on, but it’s clear Clary is worried about someone listening in, and whatever this is, he trusts Clary. He doesn’t always like her, but he trusts her.

“There’d better be melted cheese involved,” Alec tells her.

By the time they pull up to a modern, high-rise apartment building in Bethesda, Alec’s stomach is doing somersaults. He follows Clary up to an apartment on the fourth floor, not sure what to think when she pushes open the door and motions Alec inside.

The inside of the apartment looks like the platonic ideal of a nerdy bachelor pad, with an entire wall of the front room devoted to an extensive video game collection punctuated by superhero figurines, and an empty pizza box on the coffee table.

And the platonic ideal of a nerdy bachelor sprawled on the couch with a laptop.

“Lewis?” Alec says. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh,” Simon answers, “you’re in my apartment, dude.”

“It’s the only place we could think of that we’re sure the Bureau doesn’t have under surveillance,” Clary explains. “And you might be my partner, but I don’t actually want to lose my job for you if I can help it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I sweep the place for bugs every couple weeks,” Simon says. “I helped develop a lot of the current surveillance tech, so it’s easy enough to find them. They spy on all of us, you know. Like, all the time.”

“No, I—” Alec shakes his head. “Why are you worried about bugs? And what’s this about Fray losing her job?”

Clary and Simon exchange a look, that wordless communication they have that never fails to give Alec a headache.

Finally, Clary looks at him, just the faintest hint of uncertainty in her smile. “Simon figured out where your notes are coming from.”

Alec feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. “What?”

“I’ve actually been tracking them for a while,” Simon explains. “But they were never sent from the same place more than once. Not until recently.”

“But why?” Alec knows his poker face is terrible. It’s why he never goes undercover anymore. Still, he tries very hard to act like this is no big deal. “They’re just anonymous tips.” He’s pretty sure he fails.

“Because they’re from your soulmate?” Simon says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“That’s not— I don’t—” Alec can feel the panic rising in his chest and does his best to push it down. If he lets it overtake him, there will be no getting out of this. “Why would you even think that?”

“That time in Atlanta,” Clary says, “when you got stabbed. I saw your soulmark when the nurse put in the IV for your antibiotic drip.” She shrugs. “After that, it didn’t take a genius to figure it all out.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Fuck, Atlanta was years ago. “Why didn’t you turn me in?”

“I told you, you’re my partner,” Clary says, looking almost offended. “And you haven’t done anything actually illegal.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t tell me if you have. Please. Besides, your soulmate’s been helping us solve cases.”

“But you decided to tell Lewis?”

“He’s my best friend. I trust him.”

“Also a hopeless romantic,” Simon adds cheerfully. “I’m kinda jealous of this whole star-crossed lovers thing you’ve got going on, to be honest. Like Romeo and Juliet, but with less death.”

“Oh god,” Alec says, sinking onto the couch and burying his face in his hands. He can’t believe he’s been this careless. Who else knows?

“I can see your panic wheels spinning, Lightwood,” Clary says. “And I think you might have missed the important part, here.”

Alec raises his head to look at her. “Missed what?”

“Simon found where the notes are coming from. We have an address.”

“The messages have been coming from the same place for over a year,” Simon adds.

Alec stares at the slip of paper Simon holds out to him like it might bite him if he touches it. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“That,” Clary says, “is above my pay grade.”

Alec takes the paper with a shaking hand. If Magnus has stopped moving around, does that mean he wants to be found?

~!~

Magnus watches the sun dip beneath the Paris skyline. Nearly two years into his stay in the city, and he’s still not tired of the sight. It’s the longest he can remember ever staying anywhere. Maybe there’s something to this whole retirement thing.

He sips his martini and flips open the stupidly expensive imported issue of The New York Times he purchased entirely for the very grainy photo of Alexander, along with the rest of his team, on page A-7. Magnus didn’t help with the case they’d recently closed, but he can’t help being just a little proud of Alexander, regardless. There’s a part of him that knows this whole thing is foolish. He can’t spend the rest of his life pining after a man he met for five minutes a decade ago, soulmate or no soulmate. He needs to let it go, needs to let Alexander go. He runs his fingers over the photograph, staining them with newsprint. Just. Not tonight.

A sharp knock on his front door pulls Magnus out of his thoughts. It’s probably Madame Boucher from upstairs again. The woman has to be old enough to be Magnus’s grandmother, but she’s still a terrible flirt and comes up with the most ridiculous excuses to stop by Magnus’s loft at least twice a week. Magnus adores her.

“Êtes-vous à nouveau à court de sucre, ou—” Magnus freezes in the act of opening the door when he registers who, exactly, is on the other side.

“Uh, my French is pretty rusty, but I definitely don’t have any sugar.”

“Agent Lightwood,” Magnus says, holding onto the door like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. Maybe it is. “I’m fairly certain the FBI doesn’t have any jurisdiction here.”

Alexander frowns, a tiny crease appearing between his eyebrows that Magnus refuses—can’t afford—to find endearing. “I’m not here in a professional capacity.”

“Then why are you here?” Magnus’s voice comes out sharper than he intends. He doesn’t know what to do with any of this, with Alexander standing in his doorway, with the longing trying to claw its way out of his chest.

“I thought— And then, you sent all those messages.”

Alexander pushes up the sleeve on his sweater, and Magnus sees his soulmark for the first time. Magnus has to dig his fingers into the doorframe to keep from reaching out to trace its lines. It’s startling how a cat can bear such a striking resemblance to him. He wonders if Alexander would have the same reaction to his mark.

“Oh god,” Alec says, misinterpreting Magnus’s silence. “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I’ll just— I’ll go.”

“Alexander, wait.”

The moment Magnus’s hand closes around Alec’s wrist, a frission of energy goes through them both. Magnus should let go. He should.

He doesn’t.

“It’s just,” Magnus says, “I’m a retired art thief and you’re an FBI agent. What kind of future could there be for us?”

“Former,” Alexander answers.

Magnus frowns in confusion. “What?”

“Former FBI agent.” Alexander gives him a sheepish smile. “I, um. Resigned. Before I got on the plane to come here.”

“You quit your job?” Magnus understands the words, but he’s having trouble assigning them meaning. “Why?”

Alexander shrugs. “Why’d you retire?”

“I—” Magnus wants to say that it’s not the same. But, then again, maybe it is. “So, where do we go from here?”

“I was thinking we could start with dinner?” Alexander smiles, hopeful and earnest, and Magnus feels that same spark of hope light up his chest that he felt all those years ago when he realized who Alexander was to him.

“I’ll get my coat.” Magnus lets his fingers slide free from Alexander’s wrist, and it doesn’t feel like letting go.

[caeows]

      jeon jeongguk  .  cis male  .  he/him  ／  graeme bae just pulled up by blasting dirty little secret by all american rejects --- that song is so them  !  you know  ,  for a twenty three year old actor  ,  i’ve heard they’re really gullible  ,  but that they make up for it by being so tenacious  .  if i had to choose three things to describe them  ,  i’d probably say tousled hair  ,  triple dog dares and a closet full of black  .  here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble  !  

hello  !  i’m deni  (  she/her pronouns  ,  gmt+9 timezone  )  .  i’m best reached on discord at gayfairy#6371 for plotting  .  below the cut is  ...  a ridiculous amount of keyboard smashing but it was a holiday and i was feeling inspired so  !!  i included a few TLDRs for some quick scanning  .  there’s also some plots at the bottom i’d LOVE to see  .    looking forward to writing with you all  !

* ☆ ·˚  background.

you could say he was destined for the spotlight  .  

      an only child  ,  he grew up watching his parents performances on the stage  ,  accepting their kisses and gentle smiles before they set off for tours around the country and left him with his cousins  .  sure  ,  they were absent --- but they tried  --- and graeme knew he wanted to be just like them  .  when his parents delighted in his little home-staged sets he presented ,  they quickly enrolled him in acting classes and coached him through first auditions  ,  even moved back to korea when it was clear some american roles wanted to confine him to one note  .  after gaining exposure  ,  graeme shared the screen with one of the biggest names in the american industry in a dramatic hit that led to some ridiculous fanmail being sent to him as a kid  ,  then excitedly landed a role in a revamped science fiction film he was stoked af abouy !!! unfortunately  ,  the film was met with an absolute brutal blowback from fans  ,  some of that hot  ,  petty anger taken out on graeme  ,  and at thirteen years old  ,  his parents made the decision for him to step back and focus on school  .   (  he still holds onto those spiteful letters------  all that hate from grown ass adults thrown at a child  ) 

      performing arts high school  ,  but graeme stayed away from the public stage for a bit  .  worked on some sets as a tech to get a better idea of the film making process  .  kept a low profile occasionally caught by curious paparazzi at a basketball court or baseball game  .  recognizable  ,  but not to the point where he couldn’t be seminormal  .  there were a few bumps in the road  ::  leaked photos of a beer at a high school party  ,  couple of fake friends sliding in for clout  ,  people pushing questions like when are you returning  ??  how does it feel to ruin one of the most important films of all time ???  shitty  .  but  ,  with the help of his parents  ,  friends and coaches  ,  graeme returned to student films to grow more comfortable in front of a camera  .  his official comeback was in the background of a friend's directorial debut  ,  a lady-love drama critics salivated over but failed to earn is’ nominations  .  still  ,  graeme’s name was back and out there  .  jumping headfirst into the thing that scares him  ,  graeme’s slated for teen flicks  ,  romantic dramas  ,  action films  .  a diverse portfolio  .  people love a comeback  .     ------as if there was something wrong with what he did before  .  

TLDR.  former international child star who took a break after experiencing a massive fan-driven backlash  .  pseudo retired  ,  did the performing arts school thing  .  popped back on the screen about a year ago and working his ass off since  .  early career inspiration : jake lloyd  ,  natalie portman  , yeo jingoo

* ☆ ·˚  current.

      suddenly  getting all this praise and earning cash  ,  living on his own in a sprawling city of work and sin  .   hasn’t stop busting his ass  ,  no  ,  but maybe he’s found outlets for all his stress in  . . . less than healthy outlets  .  some of the headlines are way off the mark  ,  some a little too close to home  .  either way  ,  it’s not something his parents or his management company are thrilled about  (  doesn’t he want to be taken seriously as an actor ,  they say  )  and he does  .  of course he does  .  but what else does he have to sacrifice to be taken seriously ?  and how serious does any twenty-something year old wanna get  ?

      late hours on dance floors  ,  strips of things he doesn’t know the name of on his tongue  ,  lips on any pretty   ,  wanting pair he can find  .  he’s young  ,  virile and at the top of his game  .  who can blame him  ?  it starts with a string of tabloid images  ,  a rumpled and sleepy-eyed graeme leaving apartments that aren’t his in clothes he was spotted in the night before  .  zoomed-in  ,  fan-cropped photos on twitter of hickeys and swollen mouths and unbuttoned shirts  .  america’s sweetheart  ?  maybe  ,  but clearly not around the clock  .  him  ,  scaling rails of hotels and dancing on top of cars  .  grabbing mics at clubs and taking over DJ boots at parties   .  twitter explodes when he moonwalks through the airport one time and baristas trend his insane coffee orders  .  

      and even though he’s got his own name --- and a variety of different spellings  ,  hashtags  ,  and whatevers --- blacklisted on social media  ,  every now and then he’ll run along a stream of grueling comments  ,  petty nitpicks about his performances  ,  his looks  ,  his voice  ,  his goddamn smile and it’s-----   it’s rough  ,  even for someone who grew up in that environment  .  there’s days where he’ll hole up in his apartment and refuse to see anyone  ,  refuse to leave  .  the guy in the interviews with the wide smile and sparkle eyes is so  ,  so far away and people almost forget that he’s human  ,  too  .  he pushes himself out of that mindset  ,  sometimes with help  ,  but it’s always a shadow on his back  ,  waiting to catch him at his weakest  .  

TLDR.  tabloids gossip about speculated hookups and strange behavior  .  potential alcohol abuse  .  pushback from management and parents  .  anxiety towards social media  .  current career inspiration : ansel elgort

* ☆ ·˚  tidbits.

      sporty as fuck —— basketball  ,  soccer  ,  skateboard  ,  swimming  ,  climbing  .  says he would’ve been an athlete if not for movies  .  fit as fuck despite a steady diet of ramen and pizza  .  claims to like horror movies the most  ,  but he’s a total schmaltz snob  .  can hold a pretty tune well enough to pass  .  has a private twitter account for the memes   ,  public accounts are all operated by a social media manager so he doesn’t have to read comments   .  watches college basketball championships religiously  .  has very strong opinions about scented candles  .  likes sugary drinks more than coffee but claims to be a connoisseur  .  loves biopics  .  punk and 2000s emo rock fan .  gets anxious easily  ,  suffers through interviews and avoids personal topics as best as he can  .  is rumored to be difficult to work with  ,  but keeps to himself on sets save for a few opinions about blocking  and lighting  .  pan as fuck and fairly open about it  .  mom and dad are chill  ,  but don’t understand much of anything past bi  .  they get on to him more for his diet and job  .   when not on the court or working  ,  spends free time rewatching anime in the safety of his bed in an threadbare pair of boxers  ,  eating Doritos by the fistful and leaving his manager on read  .

      even his underwear is black  .  occasionally, he’ll change it up with a screen printed vintage t-shirt and wears whatever kind of fancy thing his stylist squeezes him into  .  otherwise wears by a black or white t-shirt  ,  black pants and combat boots  .  seventy percent of his sneakers have sharpie drawings on them and he’s got a lot of holes in his ears and another in a place you’d be lucky  (  or unlucky  )  to see  .  loves dangy earrings and wearing his hair loose  ,  a bit long with a mild perm  .  silver on his wrists and friendship bracelets from yesteryear but no rings  .  tattooed up  !  recently collaborated to design a line of temporary tattoos  .  extensive collection of sunglasses  .  hit up a lot of music festivals in the past but that’s died down in recent months due to a busy schedule  .  swung his way into VIP passes before  .  he was a total Warped kid in the past  ,  no shame  .  no longer does fan conventions because of a negative experience a few years back  ,  and even fan meets are a little awkward  ,  but he manages to push through  .  can’t drive worth a damn but he’ll kick your ass at any arcade game  .  occasionally  ,  he’ll stream over twitch but that’s becoming less and less common  . was banned from several dave & busters before he made it back on the screen  .  moody as fuck  .

* ☆ ·˚  plots.

      so  .  bonds  .  there’s a best friend who may not have been there since the beginning  ,  but they’ve been there when it matters  .  the friendship is new  ,  fresh  ,  and maybe graeme shouldn’t be as dependent on it as he is  ,  but he can’t help it  .  clinging to them like crazy --- let’s hope it doesn’t fall to the wayside  .  (  ? / 1  )  there’s several of his idiot friends who  ,  after being stranded on too many red carpets  ,  a hundred hotel rooms  ,  and hours of press junkets  ,  have learned to survive by snapchatting each other random dares throughout the day  .  (  1 / unlimited  )  there’s a few childhood friends who  ,  like him  ,  grew up either in or close to the spotlight and they have this  ,  like  . . .  support group kind of situation  .  i don’t know  .  graeme checks on them from time to time  ,  even as they’ve grown apart  .  (   2 / unlimited  )  he’s got some partying buddies who may not have his best interest at heart --- who may or may not stop him when he’s slurred out and whining about twitter trolls .  some gaming partners he teams up with over stream  ,  but lately they’ve drifted apart  .

      it’s such a cliche that his management’s set him up for a fake dating situation  .  if graeme wants the dramatic  ,  serious roles  ,  then he needs to show he’s a mature and capable young man  .  how else to do that than jump headfirst into a few awkwardly orchestrated dates with another hotshot on the radar  ?  (  ? / 1  )  but they’re not serious  .  so  ,  he hasn’t stopped hooking up  ,  or thinking about a one night stand that totally rocked his world  .   (  ? / 5 )  and  (  ? / 1 )  media and fans definitely know about a few of these  .  the jury’s out for how they feel about it  .  then there’s his competition  ,  actors in the same demographic targeting the same roles  .  it’s a tough business and they know it  ,  but the press picks up on all these weird quotes and posts that twist shit into beefs  .  what other misunderstanding will cause the casket to blow  ?  (  ? / unlimited )  there’s some co stars on old and upcoming films  .  people who see how hard he works and how much effort he puts into what’s seen on the screen  .  they tough out hard days on set and the press circuits during promotion  .  see him at his worst and best  .  (  ? / unlimited )

[thiswasinevitableid]

76. it’s my birthday and you just fucking ruined my party and I don’t even know you

Danbrey, sfw or nsfw, please!

Here you go! I went SFW on this one

“Wow, dude, this is so fancy.” Jake takes in the dining room of Yosemite Lodge, “look, napkins!”

“Jake, we have cloth napkins back home.” Dani smiles fondly; while she’s more interested in the location and the decor, she agrees with her brothers overall enthusiasm.

The rest of Amnesty Lodge, where Dani lives and works, pooled their resources to surprise her with a weekend trip to Yosemite for her twenty-fifth birthday. She would have been happy camping, but they even went to the trouble of booking rooms in the main lodge and scheduling her a birthday dinner in the restaurant that looks out onto the valley.

Mama whistles at the menu from her seat at the head of the table, “damn, this is a good lookin dinner.”

Dani picks up the single sheet of paper, the silver writing informing her the meal with consist of a summer salad, shrimp scampie, and a strawberry rhubarb tart for dessert. When she glances across the table, Barclay is smiling down into his water glass.

“Oh my god, did you request a specific menu just for me?”

Her friend nods, blushing a little, “Head chef is an old friend from my line cook days.”

“Aw, you guys.” She sips the fancy cider Barclay ordered for the table, “you didn’t have to do all this.”

“You ain’t had a real party in years; seemed time to fix that.” Mama’s about to say something else when the fire alarm blares through the room and a server asks that everyone please exit through the side doors into the courtyard.

“Probably just a false alarm.” Barclay leans against a decorative rock.

“Uh, dudes? I smell smoke.”

Dani cranes her neck, tracks the path of the curling smoke through the lights from the windows to the main meeting room on the bottom floor of the hotel. A woman about her age, dressed entirely in red and black with, “The Lady Flame” emblazoned on her sparkly jacket, is talking and gesturing rapidly with disgruntled staff.

Two minutes later, the same woman steps onto the lawn with a sheepish smile.

“Hi everyone! It’s safe to go back in now. I, um, there was a tiny accident with some flashpaper. I think. Anyway, point is, I’m super sorry and there’s no more fire so please come enjoy my show. Oh, but, um, we have to move to the dining room due to some, um, ash.”

Just as she says this, one of the servers whispers in Barclays ear.

“Fuck. Sorry gang, sounds like we gotta postpone until tomorrow; whatever party booked ms fireball over there is gonna take up the whole restaurant.”

Dani sighs, resigning herself to a night of vending machine dinner as they head back inside. Then a hand settles on her arm and she’s locking eyes with the person who just ruined her evening.

“Hey, I always ask the cutest girl in the audience to be my assistant for the next bit. Do you want to-”

She pulls her arm away, “Yeah, hard pass, I’m not in whatever group decided to book you. I’m the person who’s birthday is getting turfed for your party.”

The magician cringes, “EEsh, I’m so sorry, I’ll, um, I’ll just.” She steps back, eyes glued to her black boots. As Dani continues into the lodge, she swears she hears the same voice go, “aw beans.”

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

The spring sunshine feels perfect, the breeze is gentle, and there are literal bluebirds calling around her. Dani feels like a dang disney princess as she naps on a rock near one of the meadows.

Something--a chipmunk, she assumes--munches the grass below her.

“Dr Harris Bonkers, no! This is a national park and I’m not letting my only son go to jail for vandalism.”

Dani rolls onto her side in time to see the magician from last night scooping a massive, orange rabbit from the ground. When she straightens enough to notice she’s not alone, the woman freezes.

“Um. Hi. Again.”

“Hi.” Not feeling like rehashing last night, she studies the rabbit, “should he really be running around out here?”

“Not even remotely. He was supposed to stay in my room, but he gnawed his way out of his carrier, hopped onto the windowsill, and decided to bounce when he saw all the plants out here.” She cautiously sits on the edge of the rock, rabbit in her lap, “I really am sorry about last night. I never used to have problems during my shows, but lately it’s like my flashpaper has a freaking mind of its own. I was kinda hoping it wouldn’t screw with anybody’s plans but mine.”

“It’s fine.” Dani shrugs, “we’re just going to do a dinner re-do tonight.”

The woman bites a matte black lip, “Could I, um, make it up to you?”

“How?”

“Well, it’s your birthday, right? You’re supposed to spend your birthday doing things you like, so I could, like, keep you company while you do them?”

It would be nice to have a hiking buddy. Mama is taking a well-deserved nap, Barclay is off for a swim, and Jake found some rock climbers to hang with. And while the Lady Flame looked good last night, today she’s downright gorgeous. The dyed-red streaks in her curly, black hair, the freckles, black shorts that make her butt look incredible, all of it adds up to someone Dani wouldn’t mind spending the day with.

“Do you have shoes you can hike in?”

She kicks up one leg, showing off her Doc Martens, “I once walked five miles in these with no problems.”

“Great. Let’s get the doctor” she rubs the rabbit’s ears, “somewhere safe and get on the trail.”

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

The hike’s only three and a half miles, but it’s taking them a long time to complete it. Not because they’re slow, but because Aubrey (as the Lady Flame calls herself) keeps stopping to look at or point out any interesting thing that catches her eye. It’s adorable.

Dani likes when she points out plants, because then she can show off a little.

“Dang, you really know your plants.” Aubrey stoops to take a picture of some Scarlet Monkeyflower.

“I run the teaching garden out back of the Lodge. Uh, Amnesty Lodge, where I live, not this one.”

“Coooool. I keep thinking about making Dr. Harris Boners a little garden when I finally find a place to stay put for awhile, but everything is always about how to keep bunnies out of your garden.”

“I mean, they can really trash it if you’re not careful.”

“I believe it, Dr. Harris Bonkers can take out a whole patch of rug in, like, ten minutes.”

“Herbs would probably be okay, clover too. I guess it depends on how much space you have.”

“Probably not much” Aubrey holds out a hand to help her across a creek, “traveling magicians don’t make much.”

Their talk turns to Aubrey’s life on the road, and her various misadventures trying to transport a fifteen pound rabbit on public transit. When they reach the waterfall that marks the trails end, they slip off their shoes and socks to dip their feet in the nearby pond, shoulders touching as they compare notes on growing up in sometimes stressful family situations.

It’s well after lunchtime when they get back, so they sit in the meadow and split a bag of chips, shooing away several overly ambitious squirrels. Mama joins them for a bit, and Dani smiles when she notices how quickly the older woman takes to Aubrey. Mama can never turn down a stray.

Dani’s already scheming for how to spend the last day of her vacation with Aubrey when the magician turns down her invitation to dinner. She’s a little disappointed, but Aubrey promises she’ll see her later.

Her birthday dinner redux is halfway into its second course when the lights at the front of the room brighten and the ones above her dim.

“And now, as an added, surprise treat for this evening's meal, the magnificent Lady Flame is here to dazzle you all with her astounding feats of magic!” The server at the edge of the room gives a thumbs up and Aubrey bounds into view, smile glittering brighter than her outfit.

To Dani’s delight, Aubrey is an amazing magician; her tricks are interesting, her patter is the same funny, energetic pace that their conversations were this afternoon, and her assistant is adorable. When she declares she needs a volunteer for her next trick, she’s holding her hand out to Dani before anyone else can raise theirs.

The trick turns out to be picking cards and showing them to the audience, though Dani notices Aubrey devotes as much sleight of hand to brushing their fingers together as she does to her act.

“And now, esteemed audience, I will produce a flower from my lovely assistant's hair!”

Dani smiles, then claps along with everyone else as Aubrey produces a spring of Larkspur from thin air. Literally, Dani cannot for the life of her tell where she was hiding it. Or how she was able to get what Dani said was her favorite flower on such short notice.

Aubrey finishes up her act (and doesn’t set anything on fire) to thunderous applause, and Dani spots Mama leaning over to whisper something to Barclay, who nods thoughtfully. It’s only after the magician has taken her last bow that Dani has a horrible realization; Aubrey went to all that trouble to make her birthday dinner memorable, and she didn’t get to eat any of it.

Her white sandals sink into the carpet as she carries a plate down to Aubrey’s room. When her new friend opens the door, she’s between worlds; sparkly jacket on top, red pajama pants on the bottom.

“I brought you some cake. Or, uh, I guess it’s a tart.” She holds out the plate and Aubrey takes it, cheeks going pink, “since you didn’t get the rest of the dinner.”

“Thanks” Aubrey steps back so Dani can join her in the room, “it’s chill that I didn’t get to join you all; I wanted to make up for ruining your dinner last night.”

“You already did way more than that. Aubrey, this was the nicest day I’ve had in months, and most of that is because I got to spend it with you.”

“I dunno, feel weird getting cake from a thing I crashed.” Aubrey is fidgeting with her bracelets, blushing harder every time she looks up and finds Dani still smiling at her.

“Can I give you something else instead?” Dani takes a half-step forward.

“Sure! What-” Aubrey’s words fade into a little sigh as Dani wraps her arms over her shoulders. Then her back bumps into the nightstand as Aubrey throws herself into a kiss.

“Hey” Dani teases, nibbling her ear as Aubrey holds her tighter, “you messed up my big reveal.”

“Aw dang, guess I’ll have to make it up to you.” Aubrey slips her hands down to the small of her back, “how does even more making out sound?”

Dani pulls her towards the bed, heart buzzing with warmth at the sight of her smile and the touch of her hands, “like the best birthday gift ever.”

[raleigh-ocean]

the originals & valentine’s day | headcanons

Dara Ann Lynch

Billie couldn’t get her eyes off Dara, not today at least, but she had the feeling that she wouldn’t be able even if she was forced to. Her lover was searching for something in the wardrobe, clad in that flowery silk robe she had always owned and only that; her tattoos on display, thighs as well and even her scar was nothing compared to the beauty of the rest of her body; sporting again her hair short, disheveled from spending a day in bed with Billie; and then she singsang happily a ‘gotcha!’ and turned around with a tiny envelop in her hands.

“Close your eyes, honey,” and Billie looked at her like ‘do I really have to’ while sitting up in bed, which gained her a smirk and then the cutest pout ever, making her comply but open her arms so Dara could get in them, sitting in her lap. Which it was what the woman did automatically, having Billie’s arms circling her. “Was it that difficult, mhm? Okay, in the count of three. Three, two, one...”

When Billie opened her eyes, chin resting in Dara’s shoulder and caressing with her thumbs her belly over the robe, the tiny envelop was in reality a tiny velvet box. Open now, there was a metal pendant with a black stone - a black tourmaline - in between strings to hold it in place in the middle of it. “I know you don’t do the ‘stupid crystal stuff’ but...I have a friend that do handmade things with them, pulling a favor they owed me I got them to teach me and tada!” Billie lifted her hand so she could take it from the box by the silver chain attached to it. “Do you like it...?”

And Billie can only kiss Dara because she doesn’t even have words to say how much she likes it, loves it; she doesn’t know what to do to surpass this gift and, on top of all, she doesn’t want her lover to see how she actually teared up. Her chest is roaring, so loud that her heart hurts a bit, and when they finally broke the kiss the only thing Billie did was to press her forehead softly against’s Dara’s. 

“Will you help me with the clasp, my Valentine?” she whisper softly, afraid to give away she’s really moved with the gesture. 

She doesn’t need to say another word, because as soon Dara’s done, she can catch how full of love her lover’s eyes are filled with. And maybe Billie’s mind made up and making love to her once more was the best option, that sweet ol’ good love making. 

At least it would give her time to rethink what to get her, because her now ‘lame’ plan of buying her a rose and inviting her for dinner sounded too little, too little for someone that deserved all the red roses Billie could buy in California and all the stars in the universe. 

She was very much afraid of saying those three words Dara wanted to hear but let her take her time with, eight years already since they were together, but upon seeing how Dara’s eyes lit up in that way that made her younger later in the night when she gave her a whole bucket of roses...maybe, maybe, it made her feel that oh so awaited day was about to arrive.

Adriana Girardi

Sally has a hard time around these dates, who could blame her? But what she did not expect was for someone to get it worse than her. 

When she had come downstairs, she couldn’t find an explanation of why Elizabeth had come down from her own room to the bar. But then she looked a bit better just to see how Adriana was all dressed up, days without actually doing so and just wearing sweatpants, with what it looked some really fancy clothes out of the 30s, her hair styled the same way and making Sally to picture her right there.

She was drinking from a tall champagne glass, as did Elizabeth, and then is when Sally managed to see that Adri was holding a dark blue velvet box in her free hand, dancing softly to the rhythm of the jukebox she managed to save in an auction. 

“Every twenty years, she does that,” Elizabeth spoke up, hearing the silent question of her fellow ghost. “It’s a tradition already. She gets drunk on champagne and dance on her own for as long as she’s standing up, holding to the box she never gave her,” and her voice is not full of snark, there’s only a softness Sally’s sure she never heard in her. “My girl got it bad, Valentine makes her miserable...yet she manage to hold up to see another twenty years.”

Sally knew mere bits of Adriana’s life, but through the years together in the Cortez, she managed to catch as much as knowing her friend had lost someone so important that totally wrecked her. They stood there until Elizabeth had to pull her friend to sit in a couch nearby and Sally decided to sit by her side, full knowing Adriana wasn’t remotely sober enough to talk probably. But she stick to her, letting Elizabeth know she got her even when she was watching over from a corner of the bar. Adriana didn’t even muttered a word, she just sat there in silence and moving her arm just to keep the champagne getting in her system.

Worrisome? Of course, but rare? Not at all. She had watched the afflicted drink two whole bottles of vodka without blinking an eye, so this wasn’t weird at all. However, Sally was sad and needy and the question popped out of her when she saw how Adri managed to focus her eyes in something else that wasn’t her glass.

“Do you think someone will gift you something again?” it was a rude mumble, but it got the reaction of having her blink and look at her. “Today, I mean...I don’t think I’ll ever will anymore.”

And Adriana seemed to restart her whole being, like she really saw how from behind the drunk haze, something moved. And then her voice came out as steady as you can be after like ten champagne glasses.

“You wait here, okay? Don’t move, don’t you even dare, I’ll know,” her voice was so fucked up, but Sally stayed where she was. “Promise? Pinky promise.”

The only thing for Sally to do to let Adriana go was to accept her pinky. Then she set off somewhere, making Elizabeth to get in panic because she couldn’t be able to follow her, taking in count Adri was pretty much alive and could leave the Hotel as she pleased...which was what she always did, getting everyone worried.

However when she came back, a big box in her arms and a paper pocking out of her back pocket, Sally was too focused in her phone to notice her. Elizabeth’s features relaxed visibly but also she lifted an eyebrow in confusion. Under the surprised gaze of Elizabeth and Liz, Adri managed to stand up on a chair behind Sally and then...

...she started to shake the now open box to make a petal shower start to fall lightly over Sally. The woman looked up to her, between the tears and the petals, to see the dorkiest smirk in the other woman’s lips and when she ran out of petals, she jumped off the chair to look directly at her before handing Sally the paper.

“What’s this...?” Sally mumbled, finding out it was a card. In the front there was something very bad drawn, maybe could be a cat or a skateboard or a tree or maybe a Picasso, who knows, but when Sally opened the card...well, she couldn’t help but laugh out loud, more tears running down her cheeks. “You’re such a dork, smarty pants.”

“If someone deserves to have a good Valentine is you,” Adriana put her hands in her own hips. “So I’m genie for you, girl, what do we do today?”

Sally couldn’t help but stand up and hug tightly her best friend. From that year onwards, every Valentine’s Day Adri would gift her a card with the corniest pick up line, styled with Adriana’s illegally beautiful handwriting inside and illegally awful draw on the front, but Sally would always put the one she gifted her that year (the one with ‘Well, here I am. What are your other two wishes?’) as her favourite of them all.

Adriana could hate Valentine’s Day with her all, think that she didn’t deserve anything, but seeing Sally enjoying...maybe that was enough for her. And Sally didn’t waste her last wish, because deep in her she knew one day she will need it to save her best friend...save her from herself.

Raleigh Ocean

“Did you really used our son as your Cupid?”

Wilhemina tapped the floor softly with her cane, drawing Raleigh’s attention from her laptop. Her wife was all cuddled in bed, glasses perched in her nose, and tired expression in her features. For sure that year didn’t start well, Raleigh still recovering from her breakdown in early January, but that day proved that there was a minimal chance that she was getting better. Raleigh quirked her lips ever so briefly, putting a hand to her lips and faking feeling offended.

“What are you implying, miss Venable? I would totally never do something so atrocious,” her voice was a bit monotonous, as usual these days, but Wilhemina heard the joking tint laced. “What’s a God to a non believer? If Cupid wanted to show up and do their thing, I have nothing to do with it.”

She closed the door behind her softly, shaking her head a bit. Eric, their nine years old son, had spent the day delivering tiny boxes with chocolates to those who were his family. Queenie, Zoe and Mallory, Madison, an scandalized Coco, Rhiannon and Victoria, and a delighted Misty (even a confused Kyle) had received the tiny gifts from the kid gladly. But when he had showed up to Cordelia and Wilhemina’s office, delivering the final part to both women, she had known her wife was behind everything.

Who used chili powder with homemade chocolate if it wasn’t Raleigh? 

Cordelia, the old sap, had hugged Eric and thanked him right away, Wilhemina was sure she even teared up because she was like that. But she had seen how her kid didn’t get close to her afterwards, indulging in how his godmother was loving him, and she could see how he was hiding something in his hoodie. Oh how surprised Eric was when Mina asked him with a soft smirk if he was sent by his mother, which made Cordelia to look scandalized for a second but then Eric had put that lost puppy face that gave every lie away and she just knows. Eric quickly makes his way to her, kissing her cheek before she can catch him, and leaving her chocolates and something that looked very much like a book.

“Also that would mean you are Venus and I Mars,” Wilhemina reach for the bed and seats on the edge of it close to her wife. “Or maybe the other way around? Oh, that would be so romantic of you, but you forget that I’m a simple mortal upon your magnificence and not a God, as much as you repeat every so often.”

“Nerd,” it’s the only thing she can say before leaning to capture Ray’s lips with her own, getting a big kiss in return and a delighted hum. 

“Not as big as you, mi reina,” and Ray looks at her directly in the eyes after pushing her glasses up in her head to rest, her tone ever so soft overwhelming the automatic one she has these days. “Did you liked your gift?”

And Mina couldn’t help but chuckle, looking at the copy of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ that she has in her lap right now. Pocking from the pages there’s a bookmark and she takes it so they both can look at it. Written in Raleigh’s hurried handwriting, there’s a date and a ‘would you like to take a walk with me?’, and before taking the bookmark out it was marking a bit of the sixth scene in the second act. Wilhemina memorized it, taking to her heart all that.

‘Beshrew me but I love her heartily, For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath proved herself. And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placèd in my constant soul.’

“I hope this means we are taking a walk to the French quarter,” and Ray placed her laptop in the free side of the bed to be more comfortable, sitting with her back to the headboard and lacing her fingers with Mina’s. “And not actually flying to Italy.”

“If that’s what I wanted to mean, don’t you think I would have gifted you ‘All's Well That Ends Well’ or ‘King Lear’?” they both end up chuckling to that, because every surprise with Raleigh has a meaning in her perfect way. “I thought we deserved this, only us...but mostly you.”

“Little Cupid isn’t coming?” there’s a hint of worry in Mina’s voice but she’s now climbing to the bed, hearing the door getting magically locked.

“I got an A plus babysitter for that,” Raleigh was welcoming her wife with open arms, holding her close to her body and kissing slowly from her shoulder through her neck and her lips again. “This means we have a date?”

“Let me give you an answer later, I’m not really sure about it yet,” and the teasing tone in Wilhemina’s already means a big yes, but they know how to drag everything just for the sake of it.

“Oh, definitely you are Venus, how whipped you have Mars.”

That’s the last thing Raleigh says, because now both are too busy to think or say anything more. Having a bit of intimacy after weeks feels great, the thought of spending time away from their daily lives even better, but what makes Wilhemina feel that everything is finally moving forward again. 

And overall, that her wife still had that soul that drew her in eigthteen years ago in a pub in Los Angeles, strong enough to make her move across the country barely a few days after they said ‘hello’.

Karina Sväre

Lana felt herself wanting to laugh, because this was truly something else. Well, she actually didn’t expect anything to begin with, but she couldn’t really picture Karina to do that.

Again, they’ve been off for a few years, but a couple months ago Lana had broken up with the girl she had been seeing for a couple years. It didn’t pain her that much, not this time at least, but after a few days of recovery she had showed up in Karina’s doorsteps with an invitation to get coffee and a couple new books she was sure her dearest friend didn’t have in her bookshelves. 

Karina had welcomed her to her new home...and also her work space. She couldn’t say she was surprised when she had told Lana about what she wanted to do, to help all those girls and kids in need of a home, but what surprised her was that today the living room of Karina’s home had been decorated with some stuff to make it look thematic.

“Sorry,” a little voice came from behind her and when Lana turned around, a girl barely twelve was waiting with a cat in her arms to walk in the living room. “Aunt is in the kitchen, if you are looking for her.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” she didn’t even took off her coat, just walking towards where Karina was, in words of that little girl.

And when she arrived there, Karina was hand in hand with an older girl mixing something in a big bowl. Something twitched in her brain for a second, taking a better look to her lover and then...

“I can’t believe you cut your hair...that short, oh my.”

Karina turned her face enough to catch the surprise in Lana’s face, feeling how her ears were getting red and warm really fast. She was sporting an garçon haircut, her ever so black hair barely having white hairs here and there, which was a truly surprise because she had spent ten years growing her hair along the hippie movement. Lana couldn’t say she wasn’t a bit sad, mostly because she loved brushing with her fingers Karina’s hair, enjoying how soft was...but this new change suited her.

“Oh shut it,” was the first response she got from the woman, who was now gesturing the girl to leave it to her. The girl chuckled but complied, closing the door after her and leaving the two women alone. “Are you gonna give me a hand or should I kneel and ask, princess?”

That earned her a soft push to her shoulder before Lana took off her coat, leaving it in a chair from the tiny kitchen along her bag. And when Lana took the spoon from her hand, Karina kissed her shoulder with love.

“So this is what are we doing this year?” Lana smiled at the gesture, starting to mix the chocolate batter. “Spending Valentine’s at home instead of going to our favourite restaurant?”

“I thought it would help Carla and Vivien to adjust, being together with people,” Karina whispered, rubbing her ear a bit and getting the freckled skin there red. “I don’t know, maybe with this we make Georgie to come out of her room...” Karina sighed and looked at Lana with the shadow of a smile in her lips. “And I’m baking your favourite chocolate cake, so don’t complain.”

Oh, Lana won’t ever do that, as much as she liked to tease her lover here and there. Honestly, she kinda loved staying at home for once, being able to spend time in a space where they were safe. And, well, she had to admit that ever since Karina started her home for youth, it was more difficult to see where to make time to spend it together idly. That and Lana’s show getting that famous.

“Aw, you only bake my favourite cake when you...” then she realized that Karina was looking away, her hand in her pocket. “When you want me to stay for more than one night.”

“I’ve been having nightmares again and I thought...that maybe you could stay for a few days, if it’s okay with-”

And Lana didn’t let her finish the sentence, because she would say ‘yes’ a thousand times and more, without a doubt. She leant to capture Karina’s lips with her own, having missed her all that time they were apart, and then pressed her forehead to Karina’s so she could look at her eyes better. It always amazed Lana how green could be her eyes, but at the same time have gold and hazel around to bring it out.

“Of course it is, but you’ll have to lend me some clothes for the day, Nina,” was the only thing she said before going back to the task Karina asigned her. 

“Yeah...” Karina was now beet red, fumbling with whatever she had in her pocket, and then her hand was in front of Lana’s view. “I got you this, by the way...I know it’s not much, but, well...”

When Lana opened her eyes, with the sweet memory fading as the make-up girl finished the last touches for the interview, her eyes went first to Marion and then to the ring in her left middle finger, an old golden band with a tiny green agate in the middle.

How could nothing meant so much? 

That’s what she thought, taking in count the tiny chaos that was her old mind in that moment. A new Valentine and she was going to spend it giving an interview,..the interview in which she would tell the whole truth finally. How much she wished to not even be there, but the only thing she promised herself was to get through it and maybe, after dinner, she would indulge in calling Karina.

Telling her what she did during the day and maybe remind her about that Valentine’s day around mid eighties in which Karina almost made her stay forever by her side.

Danna Bishop

“And now, we will need a volunteer for the next trick, would someone in the crowd give us a hand?”

Ally couldn’t help but laugh at her fianceé’s antics, watching Danna faking to doubt who to pick out of none int the living room. Ozzy was with her, clad in a tuxedo almost identic as Danna’s, doing the same crowd searching until Ally raised her hand innocently. They both faked a surprised gasp and then Danna offered Ally her hand.

“The pretty lady in the front, please, come here,” Danna winked at Ally, making her giggle once again and they laced fingers almost immediately, matching rings meeting with a soft clink. “Now! I need my assistant to bring the deck, because we’ll get this lovely woman’s card!”

When Oz was off the retrieve the deck, somewhere in the kitchen, Danna took advantage to kiss the ‘volunteer’ all big and eager. 

This was the first time in three weeks they had been able to relax, taking in count Ally’s new campaign was starting, so at least having a moment to breath was good. But Danna had differently ideas of what a ‘moment to breath’ meant, which went along the line of what they were doing now instead of the old ‘let’s have wine after dinner and maybe we can cuddle and then not cuddle?’. She always thought of the bigger picture, the bigger and unexpected picture that kept Ally’s life to get a boring turn. 

And she loved that...and the way the tuxedo fit her in the right places, but that was another story.

When Ozzy finally made his way back, Roberto was following him with a tiny bow tie in his collar. The too tiny and maybe a bit ugly old chihuahua quickly made his way towards his humans, making Ally pick him up as soon as he was by her side and kiss his head lovingly. Danna smiled widely when Ozzy went to her with this big card deck, too big even for doing tricks, and Ally looked at them with somewhat of curiosity peaking out from her eyes. 

“I’ll need you to pull a card and I’ll try to guess it,” she offered the deck and as soon as Ally touched one card, she knew it was handmade because of the paper. “C’mon hurry, hurry, magic waits for none.”

“Okay, love, just,” she laughed, supporting Roberto in her shoulder a bit while flipping the card to read whatever was there or see whatever drawing it had. But what she encountered wasn’t hearts, clovers, spades or diamonds; it was something completely different. “Wait, what’s this?”

“I don’t know, what is it?” oh, when Danna played dumb she got this softer look in her eyes and the goofiest grin on ever.

The ‘card’ displayed a few plant details here and there and in the middle, with elegant font, there was a tiny message. An invitation, well, it looked more like a reservation for a few days in a spa...in Los Angeles. It started to raise too many doubts in Ally the second she read it all, but then Danna put her hands in her face to make her look directly at her eyes.

“Danielle’s gonna watch over Oz so we can have some time alone, and she even agreed to take in Bobito too,” Danna smiled at Roberto, which had his tiny head all cuddled in Ally’s neck. “I got the flights, have the money aside for it, schedules, everything so you don’t have to worry about anything but enjoy.”

“But what about...”

“Mom, let mama take you in vacation, it’s a surprise! You always wanted to do that!” Ozzy took Roberto from Ally’s arms easily before stepping back a bit so he could watch them with a huge grin on. “And Damien told me they will show me a really cool comic store, so please let’s go!”

And when Ally only nodded with the softest ‘okay, we’ll go’, words stuck in her throat, Ozzy cheered and ran to his room leaving both Ally and Danna in the living room, speechless. Every second in silence passed with a heaviness and then a sob broke it. Ally got startled because it didn’t come from her, which was a surprise, and her eyes went to Danna. She was trying to press the heels of her hands in her eyes, trying to stop the fat tears running down her cheeks somehow.

“Ally, he called me mama,” something inside Ally vibrated with new strenght, enough to feel like she was able to fly in that moment, when Danna managed to say something without looking at her. “Fuck, he called me...fuck...”

It was supposed to be Valentine’s day, but right after Ozzy did that, that day was one of the most important for both Ally and Danna and not because of something any of them did for each other. They would go to the spa, for sure, they would have a blast there and Ozzy would enjoy his stay with Danielle, Damien and Audrey as much as if he was with them...

...but for the day, Ally was trying to not cry herself to death because her son gifted them two the prove that this was working out really well.

Dahlia Deen

Her body felt like she was going to break in a million pieces.

Dahlia had a while without feeling like that, but it was a good feeling this time. Well, good feeling, more like this time she was grateful of feeling like that instead of wanting to pull her hair out in a maniac tired rage. She barely managed to fall backwards in the bed, letting go a ‘ufhg’ when her column relocated after the whole day.

She wasn’t the best at building furniture, okay? Indeed, she had to check too many times the manuals to build it correctly, but she managed to do it with patience and a phone call to her dad when Shelby had went out to buy some sandwiches. But there was some kind of relief knowing that she managed to do something like that, taking in count they didn’t have much time before they arrived.

“You should take a shower, Li,” Dahlia had her eyes closed and hummed in response upon hearing Shelby’s voice. “You’ll feel better.”

“I don’t think I can get there By,” a soft laugh got out of her chest more than her throat, making her feel her joints hurt with the slight movement. “Do I even have bones and muscles?”

“Of course you do! Turn around and take off your shirt,” and Dahlia complied, because Shelby could tell her she wanted her to jump in the ocean and she would do right away. She didn’t mind at all, she indeed loved that part of them as a couple because Dahlia trusted in her wife with all she got.

Dahlia couldn’t see Shelby because her face was pressed to their pillow, not caring a single bit about her glasses getting a bit smashed by doing that, but she did feel her climbing in the bed and then straddling her like that. Groaning softly because of that, loving how Shelby’s weight pressed her body against the bed, and then giggled when the wet ends of her hair dropped some water droplets in her bare back. Shelby’s hands, sweetly cold, started to work and her fingers pressed in those spots her wife always had trouble with, doing wonders.

“The fact that you have healing hands is distracting me of the fact you are just in bathrobe sitting on my ass, you know?” Dahlia mumbled, turning her head enough to rest better in the pillow and Shelby laughed, leaning to press soft kisses down her spine. “Miss Deen, you’re such a tease.”

“Ah, am I, miss Deen?” they both laughed at that and Shelby pressed her fingers right in the base of Dahlia’s head to ease the knot there, earning a soft moan. “And having you strip like the easiest thing what makes you?”

A fool in love with an angel. Dahlia thought, keeping it for herself and just chuckling as a response. Things like this reminded her why they were together, why they decided to fight for each other and keep going, now with new rules, new feelings and new old heart.

Shelby kept massaging Dahlia with care, touching here and there as she knew. It was the least she could do, after being all day working around the house. It was easy to love Dahlia, she was caring and soft and too good for anyone in this world. Sometimes she wondered how Dahlia kept on loving her, many of them she wanted to ask her, but she knew it was something that her wife kept close to her heart. Focused on the task, Shelby barelly noticed how Dahlia had relaxed enough to start breathing deep and slow, falling asleep deeply.

“Happy Valentine’s day, dearie,” Shelby always felt calm when they were together, Dahlia always making her feel at ease and not on the verge of a violent outburst of unspoken feelings. She leant with care, leaving a kiss in the back of her head and then behind her ear, whispering her next words while taking off her glasses. “I love you more than words can say.”

At that, however, something unexpected happened. Shelby didn’t have time to climb down from the bed nor from her wife, because Dahlia turned around to place herself between her legs and over her, making her circle her waist with them thanks to that. Then she took advantage of the new position to kiss her fully on the lips, deep and calm as the ocean Dahlia was so afraid of.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything, or cook you something nice for dinner,” Dahlia managed to sound small and shy in such position, kissing Shelby’s neck slowly in between words. “It’s no excuse, I know, but...”

“It’s okay Li, I prefer you loving me all year long than showing me one only day that,” Shelby chuckled breathlessly at that, getting turned on as the seconds and kisses went by, her hands finding their right places at Dahlia’s nape while her wife loosened her bathrobe. “Also, you already gave me the greatest gift...”

And when Dahlia looked up at Shelby, which was a bit blurry because without glasses she was blind as a mole, she could discern the soft redness in her blue eyes. Something in her chest swelled up, all warm, sweet and maybe a bit scary...but the good one of scary, that type which made you be more excited and make your tummy churn for it.

That’s why they’ve spent the day reforming their shared office, building bunk beds and accomodating everything so the new lives they were gonna receive would be comfortable. It took a lot of hard work, a lot of thinking, a lot of everything so they finally were ready to be foster parents.

If there was one thing Shelby still wanted was to be a mom, but the only thought of getting pregnant again scared her to death and Dahlia didn’t want her to go through that again, and also she wasn’t sure she was ready to give birth now...or never. So adoption was the next thing they thought and then, well, there they were.

“You’re gonna be an amazing mother, By,” it was time for Dahlia to be breathless, pressing a new kiss to Shelby’s forehead. “I saw you with my nephews and nieces, you truly...glow. Even with the oldest, and you know how is Eva with her things.”

Shelby wanted to say something else, but she was moved by Dahlia’s words. It was going to be hard, that for sure, but she believed they were meant for this. They had overcome too many bumps in the road, they were in a place where they had been able to heal...and it was about time to take a new step in their lives.

Leah and Johnny were in their way, and Dahlia and Shelby were going to give them the home they deserved.

But for now, still childless, Shelby let herself drown in Dahlia’s presence and warm arms. She would have to shower again, that was for sure, but as soon as her wife had her hands on her, fingers caressing in the right places...well, let’s say Shelby knew her ocean arrived to swallow her whole.

Gabrielle Summers

Winter looked up to the doorframe once again, encountering another little bundle of mistletoe of all things tied up there. Annoyingly, she looked around to see if her girlfriend was somewhere to be seen and then jumped to take it off, not wanting the glue to ruin the wood and having their landlord make them pay for reparation.

Seriously, it was the seventh mistletoe she took off around the apartment and the place wasn’t that big! They weren’t even in Christmas, why was there mistletoe to begin with!?

And when she got to the kitchen, there were fake spiders with candies attached from Halloween here and there, making Winter to rub her forehead and sigh deeply before going to get all those things off...and maybe eat the candies while she was at it.

At times Winter didn’t know why Gabrielle was that way, but as she was cleaning the corridor from more spiders, mistletoe and...were those petals? she thanked to be with her in that tiny apartment in Queens. Indeed, she was very thankful of having such lovely idiot loving her every day, without a fail, because at the end of the day Gabrielle was her idiotic heroine, and that wouldn’t change for the rest of their lives.

Getting used to live without fear was...an experience, to be completely honest. But Winter still got nervous when things around her started to happen all of a sudden, per example, how their stupid apartment was decorated in all those things from different festivities.

However, when she opened the bathroom door, she felt herself loosen the grip she had over all the things she had been picking up to drop it in the tile floor. Feeling how her mouth opened a bit, speechless, Winter tried to wrap her head around the fact that her too tall girlfriend was barely fitting in the small bathtub they had, legs handling from one edge and over the other near the wall. There were more petals here and there and Gabrielle smiled widely at her, as if she wasn’t being so effortlessly sexy doing such stupid thing.

For some reason, Winter loved every weird stupid thing Gabrielle did.

“About time, Winnie,” she laughed, hazel eyes shining with happiness. “Wanna join me in this so special Valentine’s day?” Gabrielle was...charming to say the least, black short wet hair all back and strong arms waiting to hold her. “Oh, you found all the clues to find me, did you like them? I couldn’t buy like...dozens and dozens of petals, we don’t make that much money, so I had to get creative.”

Sexy, charming and all...but she was just the dorkiest of them all...and all hers.

Winter laughed from the deepest part of her soul, using her feet to kick the stuff she dropped and soon she was out of her clothes, trying to fit with Gabrielle in such tiny space. It was difficult for sure, but they managed to make it, Winter basically sitting over Gabrielle and having half her body out of the water though.

“You’re unbelievable,” Winter traced with her fingers the curve of Gabrielle’s biceps, taking her time and making the other girl to close her eyes in pleasure. “I thought I was going crazy with all those mistletoes.”

“Why do you freak out with harmless plant but not with murderous spiders,” Gabrielle chuckled at that, taking in count she hated spiders so much.

“Because spiders doesn’t bite and if you get under the mistletoe...that’s what you get,” she replied, giving a knowing look to her girlfriend, who only laughed because last Christmas their making out went overboard. “They are quite nice.”

“You are quite nice,” Gabrielle’s hand moved to caress Winter’s belly, slow, tracing her thumb over the skin there and getting Winter to roll her eyes back and bite her lip. “I took the night off from work, so...we have all day for us, honeybun,” there was a soft tint of sweetness in Gabi’s voice and that only made Winter to move her hips. “So...what my queen wants to do? Aside of the obvious.”

How could Gabrielle be like that? That was a question Winter always asked herself since the day they met. But also...how Gabrielle could look at her in the eye, knowing all what she did. She never replied, because Winter was the one asking always everything and nothing, but sometimes she got the feeling that the only thing Gabrielle wanted was to rebuild and forget about Michigan.

And that was something Winter was wishing too, to forget all the pain, all the trauma, all the nightmares that plagued her every night since they left.

“Having pizza on bed and watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’,” she mumbled in response, leaning in to kiss Gabrielle as her life depended on ti, making at the same time that the water threaten to overflow. “Buying that videogame in discount you liked and playing until I want to fuck you again, what does my knight in not that shiny armour thinks?”

They were weird, that’s for sure, but they loved each other very deeply and in a way they both feel like they belonged somewhere.

Joking between the walls of their tiny apartment in Queens, waking up every morning to go to uni hand in hand, eating lunch while talking about the day, bidding farewell when Gabrielle had to go to work and welcoming her home every night.

Gabrielle knew Winter hated many festivities, even Valentine’s day, but having her indulge was one of her biggest achievements. She knew her girlfriend indulged many times for her, but those times were she was just doing it because she actually wanted...well, those were trully a blessing.

“Knight in shiny armour is all in.”

Rowan Ramírez

Oh shit, his hands were sweating so bad. 

Rowan was trying to calm himself down, rubbing the back of her neck and then trying to swipe his hands in the back of his thighs. In his head, all he could think about was all those tiny advices his sister gave him, going through them with the outmost care because he didn’t want to fuck this up.

After a while of trying to take a faith leap, Rowan finally did it after finding himself thinking all day and all night about Coco. He knew that it was going to be hard, taking in count they lived as far as each other in the other side of the country, but he wasn’t remotely scared of from trying to start the relationship. And that was almost more than a half year ago, time making him bolder and more like Raleigh than any of them expected...at least in the being stubborn and spontaneous in times of need.

However, he couldn’t figure out how all of that had brought him to New Orleans in secret just to surprise his girlfriend for Valentine’s day. 

Maybe it was that he was head over heels in love with the blonde witch, that he wanted to make her as happy as he could, that he was trying to picture himself by her side as long as his mind could...and in between all of that, Rowan found himself finally knocking on the front door of the Academy.

Raleigh had let him in from the other house, so he didn’t have to go through the ‘the Academy’s barrier would want to eat you if you touch it’ part of the plan. After letting Sidonia know he wasn’t going to play fetch with her, kissing his baby nephew’s head and saying ‘hi’ to his sister-in-law, which was reading in the kitchen in that fine Sunday morning; he had armed himself with the bouquet of roses he bought in his way here and went to retrieve his girlfriend in the other house.

The waiting was so painful? He thought to himself, putting a lock of his hair behind his ear, trying to not go and start jumping to relieve some of his stress. But it was then when the front door opened, just to show Misty’s concerned face...that eased into a funny one as soon as Rowan came into view.

“Ahm...uhm, I-I’m here to...well, oh God,” fuck, fuck, fuck him and his shit ass nerves. Now words didn’t make sense in his head. But Misty took pity on him, putting a reassuring hand in his shoulder before throwing her head back enough to yell.

“Coco, there’s an Amazon guy in the door askin’ for you!!” and that only made Rowan to go beet red, because the white lie kept rolling in order to let him surprise his oblivious girlfriend. Girlfriend that was frying his phone, in her back pocket, with messages at that point of the day.

The new waiting time was even harder than before, but as soon as Rowan overheard the quick click click of Coco’s heels along feeling her magic approaching, he started to relax. He felt how her lips quirked in a goofy yet shy grin and when Coco realized it wasn’t an Amazon guy but Rowan who was waiting for her in the front door, her hands went directly to cover her mouth and her eyes visibly watered.

“Don’t cry pretty, please,” was the first thing Rowan said, because his inner panicker jumped in action. Then he handed the bouquet to her, still goofy grin on. “So...I hope you don’t have date for Valentine’s, because I’m asking you for one now,” he chuckled to let the last bits of nervousness go away and Coco hugged the bouquet to her chest with care before reaching for him. “Would you like to go on an ice cream hunt to the French quarter with this poor warlock in love?”

“Of course I do!” Coco let out the cutest yelp as response, Rowan finally taking her hand and pulling her close to lean and kiss her lips, a peck that started the biggest bonfire in his whole body. “Just let me take my purse and put the flowers...”

“No, no purses, I’m inviting you today,” Rowan knew Coco was happy to always pay for everything, but he had been working hard all year to earn money and spend it on his loved one for once. Maybe it was because of the way his mother raised him, that his aunt Abigail raised him, but he usually didn’t like to be treated to things (and Rowan only let his big sister to treat him because a) Raleigh was a bit scary; and b) ‘Twenty years apart gave me the right to treat you for another twenty, so shut up.’)

“And I’m taking the flowers, so!” Mallory appeared behind Coco, giving Rowan the biggest smile ever because of how happy it made her know her cousin was being happy and in love with her best friend. “Take her before she start her yearly rant about red velvet cake, Roro!”

Rowan complied, laughing at that because he knew how his girlfriend was with food. But having Coco by his side again, after months of chatting and videocalling through their phones and laptops...well, for him it didn’t matter if she went a bit overboard with her powers...and with her chatter, for that matter. He was always more like a listener than a ‘talker’, which was good for how many stuff Coco had to say, and Rowan tried to kiss Coco’s cheek from time to time to see her trail in whatever she was saying.

Overall seeing how happy was Coco, made all the sleepless night planning this trip worth it, but what made Rowan the happiest was that he was able to find someone who loved him for who he was.

Danielle Bishop

Audrey could tell Danielle was feeling on top of the world right now.

It obvious by the way she was talking more confident, her face glowing up without any trace of the usual tiredness she carried, and drinking red wine like it was water. Maybe that last bit was because she was a bit nervous, making Audrey to chuckle when a new anecdote fell from her lips because seeing her girlfriend nervous was truly a thing, taking in count it was more a thing of Danna than Danielle’s.

For Audrey, it was cute and heartwarming. Mostly because she didn’t expect to come home to having the kitchen all ready and set to have what it looked like a romantic dinner. Of course they’ve been exchanging messages, kisses and Audrey had woken Danielle up with a nice surprise just because. It was the third Valentine they spent together, being the first one and the second one spent having a little date to a coffee nearby to Danielle’s office because she was working on a case for several days and didn’t have much time, and Audrey was thankful that her girlfriend gave her such big private thing.

Damien wasn’t there, mostly because her father had come to visit her and he was spending as much time as he could with her, so they didn’t have to worry about her much aside of waiting for Dara’s call that she arrived to Billie and hers’ house safely since they wanted to have a bit of privacy for the day. The fact that Danielle’s ex husband was around, also, had them both worried and this was truly a shot of fresh air from thinking.

Cliché as it was, they shared their classic dinner in between laughs and kisses. As far as Audrey knew, Danna had helped Danielle to cook everything through videocall, which knowing both probably was full of yelling, reassuring words, two times almost giving up and Danna cheering the loudest when something turned out what it was supposed to be. But Audrey loved every bit of the cliché situation because her life wasn’t full of those at all, taking it with her whole heart because after moving in with Danielle, each day it passed it made her see that she was feeling at home finally.

It was a good sensation, it made her want to go back to Danielle’s arms all the time they were apart, to provide with the same love she was being pampered with. And after all those years, it was the only thing she wanted, being completely honest. Any doubt she had was reassured and kissed away, any problem that might rise was taken care diligently so it wasn’t a bigger problem...and having some control over the chaos that her life was, made Audrey to go and thank her partner endlessly...even more.

“Okay, are you ready for my amazing strawberry cake?” Dani announced, after downing her third glass of wine with, food finally gone and Audrey wanting to leave her seat and go reclaim her rightful spot in Danielle’s lap. “It’s ugly and maybe a bit too sugary? but I did it all by myself.”

“I’m sure it’s amazing, my darling,” Audrey was looking at Danielle dreamly, detailing how she chose the burgundy shirt Audrey loved and those dressing black pants that fit her too damn well, long black hair pulled back by her nervous hand and wide smile clinging to her lips and making her want to kiss it for the rest of the night. “You know I like sweet stuff.”

Audrey winked at that last thing, getting a big hearty laugh from Danielle and a kiss that knocked the air out of her lungs before she went to retrieve the cake from the fridge. She took advantage of that to check her phone, sending a picture to Billie of the whole table and brag about it, because why not? Audrey checked her texts while Billie replied and soon she got a picture of Dara, sleeping over Billie with the cutest pout in her lips and ‘I’ve tired out my Valentine :(’ under.

She giggled to that, typing a fast ‘you two are truly unbelievable’ before she overheard Danielle’s steps coming back. Putting down her phone, she waited for Danielle to put the cake in the middle of the table but her girlfriend had another plan it seemed. So she walked towards her, leaving the whole plate in front of her and then kissed her temple with love.

“Are you expecting me to eat all of this by mys-” Audrey started to say, but was cut mid sentence when Danielle didn’t go back to her seat, kneeling by her side so that way Audrey had to look down to make eye contact with her. “What are you doing there, silly?”

“Well, it’s kinda obvious...I think?” Danielle laughed softly at that, one of her hands resting in Audrey’s thigh while the other was out of view because she was getting something from inside her shirt. Like, Audrey saw her do that many times before, hiding stuff like money or her phone in her bra, so she was over that already...however she didn’t expect Danielle to pull out a tiny velvety box. 

It was then when Audrey’s heart stop beating for a second.

“Look, all this time I tried to be sincere with you, and sometimes I wished to do things...in a better way, but it didn’t matter because we got through it and you never left me, even when I thought the worst of me, even when things weren’t as pretty as we both wanted,” Danielle was trying to keep looking at her and Audrey was feeling how her body re-started with the sudden speech. “I...well, after my divorce I didn’t think I would be able to love someone this...deep, but you didn’t give up on me, you showed me that not only me but both deserved another chance, and what the hell, we make a good Uno couple...and Damien loves you,” that drew a choked chuckle from Audrey, in the verge of the sob. Damien truly liked her, and that was one of the biggest goals she accomplished. “I thought we could step up our game...because you are the only one I see myself getting married with and I want to keep on make you happy till the end of our days and beyond. So, Audrey...would you marry me?”

And then Danielle opened the box with trembling fingers to show her girlfriend the gold ring with the tiny jewel in the middle of it.

Three years had passed and Audrey still couldn’t believe Danielle, of all people, had trouble to do long speeches taking in count her line of work. But she got why she couldn’t, because for years she didn’t show she had feelings at all and talking about something you so worked so hard to hide was difficult...and that’s when Audrey entered the picture, being emotional, being vocal about everything, showing her that it was okay to show what was inside without fear of judgement.

“Dani...” Audrey closed her eyes late, her tears spilling in a very dramatic turn of the events, but one that entered the million possibilities Danielle had planned in her head. “Of c-course I do, damn it, yes, yes and ten million times yes!”

it was time for Danielle to laugh, to let out the breathe she was holding in a ragged way because all the nervousness melted the moment she slipped the ring in Audrey’s finger. She didn’t take in count, however, that Audrey would take her to the ground, hugging her like no tomorrow and kissing her as if she needed her to keep being alive.

In between kisses, laughs and trying to make it to the couch, forgetting about the cake over the table, Audrey thought that Danielle, in the end, was what she was looking for all those years. She didn’t need someone that complied to everything she said, she only needed this someone to feel she was enough for her, that she was loved and cherished by her...

...and, as her fingers found every button from her favourite Danielle’s shirt, that someone finally had a face, and a body for that matter, to die for. Which wasn’t necessary but oh good Lord help her that it was a good plus.

Cold-hearted Severa

Mr. Mumbles cooed in her shoulder as they moved through the camp, feeling how a little happy tune was bubbling in her chest and getting through her as a little hum. Selene wasn’t much of a happy-go-lucky person, always worried about everything and nothing, but today she felt lucky enough to get things right through the day.

She was one of the few that were lucky enough not to get many looks when she went to town, so that morning she had rolled down along Jimmy to get some groceries there and also the bouquet of daisies and dandelions that she was now holding tightly in her grip. There was this giant field in the way from camp to town and she only trust in Jimmy to not spill the beans, so she had asked him to take her with him to pay a little visit.

Taking a few breathings to calm herself down, Selene used her nose to give a cuddle to her companion, her face taken hostage by the monkey like always. She chuckled and poked him in the belly, his weak spot, and then she was free to keep walking towards the siameses’ tent. 

It was her main goal and the reason she was taking this big ass step, all the courage she had tied in a knot so it didn’t fly away. She had fixed the handmade bouquet specially for Bette, but since they both would see it, Selene had fixed it with two different flowers so that way both had something pretty to look at for a while.

Her heart was hammering its way in her chest, reminding her sweetly that she was very much alive. She was taking advantge that she saw them in the main tent to do this, because she wasn’t as courageous to actually look them in the eye to give them the gift. Selene didn’t want to impose in them, she much preferred to look from the distance and watch them being happy, knowing she wasn’t enough for any.

Bette and Dot had made it very clear that their feelings weren’t the same, and Selene took that to her heart, her love for both still there but also growing when Bette confessed later that she was confused about what to feel. That was enough for her, to be honest, she thought while leaving the tiny bouquet over their desk and starting to run back to Eve’s ban. 

It didn’t matter they didn’t love her, she was pretty much content with being their friend at least, and as a friend she had left those pretty flowers to make this Valentine’s day better for them.

When she arrived with Eve, she looked at her with a lifted perfect eyebrow, asking silently why such hurry...only to see that Selene was handing her something. She loved the twins, that for sure, but Selene wouldn’t forget about her best friend and how much she also loved her.

“Is that for me?” Eve blinked confused upon seeing the tiny present, the one that Selene spent her savings in, and took it in her hands with care before unwrapping it. “Oh dear, it wasn’t necessary.”

But Selene smiled widely, in silence like always, waiting for Eve to see what was inside. She had taken note of how pretty her friend found those earrings she was now pulling out of the box, once they went to take a walk in town and passed by a jewelry shop. Selene was always taken little notes about what other people needed, it was common for her at this point.

“I can’t believe you went back and bought them,” Eve shrieked in delight, standing up fast to wrap her best friend into a tight hug before planting the biggest kiss on her lips, like she always did. “You’re a blessing for sure, sweetheart, thank you very much.”

Maybe Bette and Dot didn’t love Selene back, but when Eve looked at her with that shine in her eyes, it made Selene think about the possibilities of staying with her best friend for the rest of their lives.

She didn’t know what the future would hold for them, but as long as she kept at least Eve by her side, she was quite content to keep living her life as it was. She could learn to love better, she could learn to be more brave, maybe a bit more unspoken at times? And maybe someday she would be able to feel at ease in a place.

Because, yeah, the show was all she got but she couldn’t call it a home.

And when Eve asked her to get dinner only the three of them, because she always included Mr. Mumbles, Selene thought that maybe one day her true home would become a place in which none felt left out.

[let-me-love-you-loki]

Waking Up in Vegas--Ch. 10

Chapter 10: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Dean, Evening, 6:45 PM

           Luckily, I had a decent enough outfit. On the way back to the hotel from my—our—new house, I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to take my new wife out on a real date. Dinner and drinking with half the roster and a coffee that ended in a fistfight wasn’t exactly the most romantic or best way to start a life together. I’d promised something nice, but not fancy. After all, I’d been living out of a suitcase for the better part of a week. There wasn’t much in there that was still clean.

           I made sure that my shirt was ironed and that the one jacket I had was clean. Nerves made me nitpick every piece of my reflection. I was determined to make this a night to remember for Mera.

           Ten minutes before I was supposed to pick her up at her room, I stood in front of the full-length mirror. Dark tailored slacks and a white collared shirt. Hair turned into something that looked presentable.

           On a whim, I put on some cologne before I headed out the door to pick up my bride.

Mera, Evening, 6:45 PM

           The thought of spending an evening alone with Dean was exhilarating. I’d seen him dressed up at major events before, but this was something different. This time, there was no quiet longing, no watching and wishing. Whenever I saw him that night, it would be as mine. My date and my husband.

           I took special care with my makeup and hair. I carefully chose my clothes from what I had left in my suitcase. As the time for him to pick me up drew closer, I felt my pulse rise. It was like being a teenager again—although I refused to think about who had stirred those feelings originally.

           A spritz of perfume and a final glance in the mirror, and I was ready.

 Dean, Evening, 7:00 PM

           I knocked on the door, ignoring the fact that my palms were starting to sweat. My heart hammered in my chest, anticipation flooding into my veins as my brain tried to conjure up the path the night might take. I took a deep breath and tugged on my shirt cuffs.

           When the door swung open, I felt my soul leave my body. It was more than just the sight of her. It was the scent of her, the heat of her skin, the pure glory of her presence. Each time I came near her, I was reminded anew that she was breathtakingly beautiful and that she held my heart in the palm of her hands.

           Her hair fell down her back in soft curls. Silver lined her eyes, made the shades of gold and copper flash in her irises. Her lips were pink and coral, something about them looking like petals coated in morning dew. She wore a dark grey dress that seemed to hug every curve from collarbone to knees, where black leggings took over and ended at a pair of grey flats. The white linen jacket made her look…

           “Stunning,” I murmured, unable to look away from her. Everything about her screamed class and beauty and perfection. Tried to remind me that I wasn’t anywhere near her league.

           Mera tucked hair behind her ear as she pulled the door closed. Heat burned in my limbs as she reached out and smoothed down the collar of my shirt and worked the top button free. She grinned.

           “I’ve never seen you completely buttoned up if you didn’t have to wear a tie, Dean,” she said teasingly. “Don’t change that on my account.”

           I slipped my hand into hers, threading our fingers together. “If I’d had a tie, I’d be wearing one. Even if I hate the damn things.”

           She laughed. It was like lightning and sweet summer nights and that feeling of an open road and no restrictions. I could get drunk on it. Hell, I think I could have survived on nothing but that.

           “Where are we going?” she asked, her voice a little breathy.

           I fought down the urge to turn around, take her right back to her room, and worship between her thighs for the rest of the night. She deserved everything wonderful in the world, and I would do my best to give it to her.

           “It’s a surprise,” I replied, drawing her hand up to my lips. “I just hope you like Italian.”

 Mera, Evening, 7:25 PM

           I watched the desert go by as Dean drove out from the Strip. The sky was growing dark, deep blue velvet spreading over the horizon with pinpricks of stars shining through. Brief moments from the night before flashed through my mind—standing beneath the stars in Dean’s arms, the wind blowing through my hair.

           “When we have some time to ourselves, I’m going to bring you out to Red Rock during the day. It’s one of the most beautiful places on the planet.” He glanced over at me, a half smile on his face. “How do you feel about hiking?”

           I grinned. “I’ve never been.”

           He gave me a shocked expression then laughed. “I’ll have to fix that, then. We’ll have to get you all decked out.”

           “I’d like that.” I reached over to brush my fingers through his hair. My heart skipped a beat when he leaned against my hand. He was truly mine. It was both wonderful and terrifying to have someone who so completely owned my entire heart and soul.

 Dean, Evening, 8:30 PM

           Soft music filtered through the speakers as we ate. She laughed at my jokes, even when they weren’t that funny. She talked me into splitting a plate of chicken parmesan when she finished her primavera and found herself still hungry. We drank a bottle of wine and talked about what might come next.

           The staff had cleared away an area of tables and chairs for a makeshift dance floor. Couples were starting to gather and sway slowly to the music, and I caught sight of Mera watching them with longing. Her face was wistful, something soft and sad in her eyes.

           Not for the first time, I wondered the truth of how thoroughly Seth had broken her heart. He had been my friend for years, but it seemed there were certain things it was time for him to answer for.

           Pushing the thought away, I stood and rounded the table toward her. She looked up at me with hope filling her amber eyes.

           “Dance with me?” I tried desperately to keep the nervousness from my voice. I held out my hand, waiting.

           She smiled like the blazing midday sun as she stood to join me. Her fingers settled against my palm. I closed my hand around them, thumb stroking her knuckles gently. I lead the way toward the dance floor with her hovering closely at my side.

           I gathered her into my arms—one hand resting on her waist, the other holding her hand over my heart. She slipped an arm around my neck and beamed at me as we swayed clumsily.

           “I’m not very good at this,” I mumbled, too embarrassed to look at her. It was one more reminder that she was far too good for me, that I was playing at being a prince when all I really could claim was to be the pauper.

           Mera brushed her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. Her touch sent liquid heat burning through my blood. “I think you’re doing wonderfully.”

           Her words filled me with pride at being hers. I was overwhelmed again with the desperate need to make her happy, to give her each and everything that she could ever desire in life. She was the whole of my desire now—years of loving her from afar come to light, the full driving force of my life, the deity to whom I pledged my everlasting soul. Perfection was her smile, the sound of her voice, the feel of her in my arms and the scent of her skin. There was nothing more that I could want in life if I had her by my side.

           “I love you, Dean,” she whispered, eyes meeting mine. “No matter how we got here, I’m happy we did.”

           I pressed my lips to her forehead, letting the kiss linger. I breathed in the scent of her—a mix of black cherry and something else. The feral thing in my chest purred with contentment. Everything about her tamed and roused that beast within me all at once. It was a power she had over me, a power that I would give her gladly with the last breath in my body.

           “Stay with me,” I murmured, voice rough and deep. “Let me make you happy.”

           She smiled. It was a glorious thing. Like looking into a supernova. When she rose up onto her toes and kissed me, I couldn’t help but groan in response. I wrapped my arms around her, lifted her from her feet, kissed her with as much fervor as I dared with a hundred eyes all around.

           “Take me back to the hotel, Dean,” she breathed against my ear.

           How on earth could I say no?

 Mera, Evening, 8:45 PM

           I couldn’t believe my own courage. Dean had given me such a wonderful night, and he looked so wonderful. He was more than I could ever have asked for, more than I had ever dreamed I would have in a man at my side. I loved him so completely that it burned in every cell of my body.

           In that moment, more than anything, I wanted to show him how thoroughly I loved him. How truly happy he made me simply by existing, by breathing the same air, by brushing his fingers against my skin and smiling at me with his dimples and cornflower eyes.

           He was my husband, no matter how new. He was mine, and I was his.

Tag List

@bethany99stuff-blog @houndsofjxstice @xbutterflius-effectusx

[the-canary]

Pastel Colors - B.B (13/15).

Summary: If only the cute teacher would stop pestering you for a pen.(Library/Teacher AU! Reader/Bucky Barnes)

Prompt: you’re always asking me for a pencil because for some damn reason you don’t know that there is a whole store for stationary—happy birthday here’s a gift card to that store. wait, you work there? what the hell?

Masterlist

A/N: This is for @bithors writing challenge. Welcome to me getting out of work early and blasting through this chapter. We’re on the road of wrapping up some loose ends and giving these lovebirds some time together. There is still some time left for drabble requests too! 

Feedback is always appreciated.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |  Part 12

You and James decide to wait for the rain to let up before walking back to where his friends and Rebecca are supposed to be at. It was laughing and kisses for awhile, until you finally decided to walk back with his arm on your lower back, pulling you close in order to share whatever body heat you had between the two of you after everything you had gone through beforehand. Bucky whispers everything he can remember about the old park and how his parents would take him and his sisters all the time, only for them to get into the craziest of situations. You laugh and he can’t help the huge grin on his face from having you so close, that after all these years of pinning he finally confessed. He stops walking for a moment, as you look to stare at him with a soft smile.

“I haven’t asked the most important question,” he pulls you in closer until you’re face-to-face. Your eyes shining brightly as his heart speeds up, “But, will you be my girl?”

“Absolutely, starboy,” you giggle at the huge grin on his face, before he grabs and spins you again. You cup his face and drag him into a kiss again, your hands on his cheeks so he can’t pull away -- like he would want to.

“FUCKING FINALLY!” a voice can be heard in the back, as Sam raises his beer only for the others underneath the shade of the picnic table clap and cheer with Rebecca even talking a picture with her phone, as William reassures that everything ended up well because of her.

James swears it's one of his best birthday parties.     

March 3rd.

It’s less than 48 hours later when you are standing in front of Bucky’s apartment building, as he packs his stuff away in the yellow cab that is to take him to the airport. James had told you about his conferences and while you were excited and proud of him due to his more recent papers, you knew you were going to be a little lonesome especially after only just getting him back from those 2 weeks he ignored you. He walks back up the sidewalk and guilty smile on his face. You pout as he laughs for a moment.

“I promise we’ll go on a date once I come back,” he sighs out, while rubbing your cheek softly. You nod and give him a quick peck before the taxi driver honks at him.

“Gotta go,” he pulls aways, though his fingers linger on your cheek for a moment, “Take care of the library punks for me! Becca too!”

“Good luck at your nerd expo, starboy!” you yell, as he gets into the car. You keep waving at the disappearing vehicle, ignoring the early morning on lookers, until you can’t see it anymore. Eventually, you start making your way to your favorite bistro when your phone pings twice. You take it out from your coat pocket and can’t help the giggles rising from your throat. You swear you haven’t been this happy in a long time.

⭐Boy:  Missing you already, doll!  

Becca: So, what are you planning for his late birthday?

March 6th.    

It takes them a few days to notice, what with Mr. Barnes being gone and all, but Michelle can see the happiness shining brightly on your face compared to a few days ago. She notices you looking at your phone every so often and sighing or laughing at whatever you are looking at on the bright screen. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to, from getting the final touches of science fair put together to finishing your classes before finals pick up to simply keeping everything in the library together, with a softer, dreamier look on your face. It was completely different from the last time she had seen you, sad and mopey, and she needed to find out why though without causing a scene. She waits, like always, until lunchtime ends and she is the only one still there. You glance at her from across the table, you know she knows, as smile on your lips as you wait for her next action.

“Lib, did you--” Michelle starts, but your excited nodding stops her. A huge, cheshire grin on her face as she leans into the table. You tap your fingers onto the table for a moment before taking out your journal, the teenager can’t help but cock a curious glance at that pastel colored gel pens you seem to be carrying now.

“I...confessed,” you admit shyly as Michelle hits the table in surprise, “And we’re ummm yeah, official.”

Michelle makes a flustering and embarrassed you tell her every single detail and she can’t help but congratulate you and say how disgustingly cute it is all in the same sentence. You laugh at her comment, as it echoes happily in the empty library. However, she is also now completely overjoyed that the rest of the Library Club owes her lunch for a month now.

March 10th.

The lazy morning sun spills into an unfamiliar hotel room, as the man on the bed groans before turning over to the other side. He had gone out the previous night to celebrate his actual birthday late into the evening with Dr. Banner and some other colleagues he had been introduced to, hell even Stark was there was a moment. However, James Barnes didn’t expect for the quiet man to hold his liquor and so much of it so well, he was truly a beast -- and Bucky got drunk under the table before he knew it. At least he was taken back to his room without any problem. Though, now he had a pounding headache, as his phone began to light up with messages.

However, his head shots up at the sound of a completely new ringtone, as a familiar name pops into his notifications. Bucky gets up a little, blurry-eyed and groggy, to see your message.   

Starlight: Happy Birthday, James! I hope you have a great day today <3

Bucky can’t help but grin into his pillow at the attached picture of you and Matcha wearing party hats, as he wonders how much you had to fight with the cat in order for that to happen. He laughs when he notices that there are bandages wrapped around some of your fingers, already thinking about how he had seen you fight with said cat before. He rolls over and can’t help but fall back asleep with a smile on his face.

Bucky thanked his lucky stars that he was fortunate to finally have you by his side, and that he would cherish it as long as you allowed him.  

March 14th.

It takes you awhile for figure out what you are going to do, planning and strategizing takes you awhile but it makes you feel better about the plan in the long term. You get a mini journal, blue with silver lining, from your unused pile and begin to write down everything you need and how you could call on. There is a little tremor in your heart about if this is too much for a first date, but you want to celebrate Bucky’s birthday your own way, even if it’s a little late.

“Nah, he’ll love it,” Rebecca explains, as she looks over your layout and notes, “Bucky is sort of dramatic. You’re going after his heart right here.”

“Really?” your eyes light up and she can’t help but grin smugly at all her hard work, though she knows deep down that you both deserve all the happiness you can get, even if it makes roll her eyes at just how potentially lovey-dovey the two of you will get. She grins before putting the book down, her blue eyes on you as she moves from one accomplished plan to another.

“So, what help do you need from me?”

March 18th.

James had spend the previous day packing and simply resting a bit before things picked up again and school was back on his mind. However, all he wanted to so was see you again, while your relationship had just barely begun, Bucky was trying hard to keep 3 years of longing at bay. He wanted you close, he wanted to get to know better than he did now -- there was so much he wanted to say and see, but he didn’t want to scare you away either. James knew he could be too intense with his emotions, “dramatic” was what his sisters liked to call it. He looked at his cellphone, the last message you had sent was wishing him good luck on the plane ride back. You hadn’t answered when he landed at JFK, though he simply pushed it to the back of his mind and caught up with everything he had missed.

Now, that he was done with everything the thoughts were resurfacing again. He picked up his phone from the nightstand after taking a shower, ready to send you another message, when it pings on its own.

Stevie: Get fancy, picking you up in 20.

Bucky: What? Why?

Stevie: Secret. From ya gal ;)

Bucky can’t help the huge growing on his face at the last part of Steve’s message, as he starts walking around his bedroom, unsure of what to wear though eventually deciding on a pair of dark jean, dark button-up, and blue motorcycle jacket with his hair slicked back just a bit. Steve arrives just a promised and the blonde can’t help but grin at the excited look on his best friend’s face. Steve hadn’t seen his friend this happy and in love in a long time, he could only imagine how Bucky would get when he say what you had in store.

“So, where are we going, punk?” Bucky finally decides to ask, as his oldest friend shakes his head and effectively keeping his mouth shut. James shakes his head, but he’s feeling like a kid on Christmas day. He decides to catch up with Steve instead, asking what has been going on in school and with Peggy, which allows the car ride to move a bit faster. The car stops in a familiar little coffee shop, though there are fairy lights string around the opening and the owner, Stan, is sitting in front in his usual attire -- a white button and slacks. Blue eyes clash with as Steve shrugs.

“She’s gonna knock your socks off,” Steve smiles as Bucky begins to get out of the car, “I hope you have a good time.”

“Good evening, James,” the old man smile as he opens the door to a very confused younger man, “Your sweetheart is waiting upstairs. I hope you have good night, and happy belated birthday.”

“There’s an upstairs?” Bucky questions for moment, before grinning, “Oh, thank you...I guess I’ll be heading up, then?”

Stan nods, leading the way to a smaller back door near the the kitchen area. James looks at Stan from a moment as the old man nods and he heads upstairs step by creaky step, only to be surprised at the sight of more fairy lights around the whole room. There is small table in the center filled with food and a small cake and another table near the far right corner with a record player playing a familiar song. And that’s where you are standing, wearing a floral patterned skirt and dark short-sleeved shirt, a bright smile on your face that takes his breath away all over again.         

“Doll, what is all this?” he questions as he walks over and takes your hands into his, already swaying to the background music. You smile and he catches it just as quickly.

“I know you said we would have a date after you came back,” you explain, as he slides his arm around your waist, spinning you around for a moment, “So, I planned ahead.”

“You’re setting the bar pretty high, starlight?” he chuckles softly, as you shake your head.

“I better be,” you grin, “But, you won’t win me over unless you tell about Orion and Diane.”

“Well, I’ll just have to unleash all my astrology knowledge on you,” Bucky dips you while looking at the dinner on set up with a box at the center.

“Maybe, over dinner?” he looks down to look at your smiling face, as you nod. He starts to pull you back up, but you grab his neck and drag him to your level for a gentle but quick peck on the lips.

“Happy belated birthday, James.”

“Thank you, doll,” he grins as you look him with eyes shining like starlight, as he leads you to the table looking at at the things you had made and bought.

Stories and laughter are shared throughout the night, James swears it’s the best late birthday and first date later on, but nothing has you laughing more than when you give him his birthday gift -- a gift card to B’s stationery.

Part 14

[poemsforcowboys]

What a Feeling // Freddie Mercury

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Five 

Pairing: Freddie Mercury and Katy Newton (OC)

Summary: Before she moved from London to New York at the age of thirteen, Katy Newton had always been friends with Brian May. He was the only one she knew who encouraged her creative side, especially her designs for fashion and makeup. So much so, that Katy is hired as Queen’s newest stylist. But what she doesn’t expect is her knew found friend, Freddie Mercury. Will their casual flirts lead to anything of substance? Or will their relationship just become another lost love as they both make their journey towards self acceptance.

Warnings: there will be smut eventually but not in this chapter, bisexuality (?), feels, mentions of alcohol and drugs

CHAPTER FOUR 

“Okay so make her wearing something super cute and she’s looking at the book infront of her but make sure she’s glowing too and that you get her hair right and-”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more descriptive, I’m not exactly sure what to draw”

“Katy. I don’t know how much more descriptive I can be. She is an angelic princess and basically floats instead of walks”

“Joey”

When Jo had asked Katy if she could come over the next day, she thought it would be the perfect time to announce her new job, and soon departure. But instead, Jo needed her help with drawing the storyboard for a new film she was making, with Michelle as the lead. “Michelle is SO perfect I need a true artist to draw her, Katy she can’t be a stick figure this is why I need YOUR help” Katy had appreciated the sentiment, and would miss the times like this when she goes away.  

“Mich is just so pretty, usually I have to tell the actors to wear makeup but she doesn’t need to, she’s a bartender too you know. The fact that I get to watch her make drinks?” Jo put her thumbs up and clicked her tongue, Katy rolled her eyes but smiled. “Last night she made one called a pink lady and hold shit Kate I was swept away at first we were just drinking and sitting on her couch and then oh my god is she so good with-”

“Okay, okay enough Jo I get it you’re in love we’re not all as lucky as you are” Katy laughed, but looked down.

“Oh come on Katy don’t worry about that, you have your future in front of you who knows who you’ll meet!” Jo said, putting a hand on her shoulder, she didn’t mean to make her feel bad.

The last person Katy had dated was Harry, they loved each other, she thought they did; he was a philosophy professor at a private school and she actually that thought they had something, but then he was offered a teaching job in California. They had been dating for two years but split because the distance was too much. That was months ago though, she needed to stop thinking about him.

The future. Katy was hopeful, her mother had said yes, and it was time to relay the news to her best friend, who was still feeling bad for her.

“Jo, you know how the band came over for dinner last night?” Katy asked, playing with the hem of her shirt and now trying not to smile. “Yeah, you told me, how were Roger and Freddie?” she smirked, knowing that they must have caused some trouble.

“They were fine actually, Jo something a lot bigger happened than that”

As Katy recounted the events of last night, Jo’s eyes grew wider and wider. When Katy finished with her mother’s approval, Jo literally screamed - something Mrs. Newton was definitely not happy about downstairs. She ran towards her friend to hug her, picking Katy up and swinging her around.

“I am SO proud of you! Katy we are celebrating. Tonight. I’m gonna call Michelle right now we can visit the bar she works at! We’ll get free drinks and holy shit I could not be happier for you, you deserve this” she hugged her again and smiled. The two of them couldn’t stop laughing, both just ecstatic about the events unfolding in front of them.

Katy walked over to her record player and put on some music the two of them started dancing before Jo asked for Katy’s consent to raid her closet, looking for something to wear tonight.  Of course Jo was upset that Katy would be leaving New York the next day, but she knew how unhappy she had been here and that she had to for her own sanity.

“Can I borrow this one?” Jo pulled out a low cut navy blue long sleeved shirt, the ends of the sleeves poofing out dramatically. Katy nodded enthusiastically, half of the items in her closest she never had the confidence to wear herself so they remained untouched.

Katy put on a white crocheted cropped tank top and high waisted bell bottom jeans. Even though she was short, she still somehow enjoyed her appearance in the mirror. Jo helped by hyping her up like the amazing friend she is. Halfway through finishing their hair to go and visit Michelle at the bar she worked at to celebrate, they heard a knock on the door. It was James, Jo squealed and ran over. “It’s going to make me so sad not being able to come over and see you anymore” she laughed, pinching his cheeks. His face turned bright red, he secretly had had the biggest crush on Jo since he met her. If only he knew.

“Katy” he managed to make out, ignoring Jo’s comment although touched by it “Brian is on the phone, he wants to talk to you. It’s off the line down stairs so all you have to do is pick it up up here, don’t worry, I’ll make sure Mum isn’t listening”

“Ooooooh” Jo bounced her eyebrows, Katy rolled her eyes but happily picked up the phone and mouthed a “thank you” to James.

“Mayday!” Katy smiled into the phone, looking at herself in the mirror, and pressing the phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“Kayday” his familiar voice laughed back.

“I know we’ve been together a lot lately, but what are you doing tonight?” he asked a little awkwardly, hoping he isn’t a bother.

Being the crappy phone it was, Jo was able to hear everything the two of them were talking about. She took the phone from Katy, much like Freddie had taken Brian’s phone to accept her Mum’s dinner proposal.

“Katy is hanging out with Michelle and me since you’re stealing her away, sorry dude” Jo said nonchalantly, looking at her cuticles.

“Well” Brian coughed awkwardly on the other end of the line “there’s a party tonight in the city, we wanted to celebrate the new job, you guys are more than welcome to come with us it’s at the-” “What time” Jo was still nonchalant. Katy was annoyed that Jo was probably scaring Brian into thinking she doesn’t like him right now.

“What? I think around eightish but we aren’t really sure we were thinking of-” “Eight sounds great to me, we will see you at this party!!” Jo wooed, smiling and snapping her fingers. Brian laughed, he appreciated her abruptness and wished her and Katy a goodbye and that he’d talk to them later to tell them the party info.

Jo hung up the phone and turned her attention to Katy.

“GUESS WHO’S PARTYING WITH HER FAVORITE BAND AND FAVORITE FRIEND TONIGHT” she put up her arms, their giant poofy sleeves falling down to her elbows.

“Wow, favorite band first and friend second?” Katy scoffed, realizing now that she might need a little more makeup than she had on.

“Whatever you know I love you” Jo smiled, “but I’ve gotta call Michelle and tell her to try to get someone to cover her shift, her bartending skills are needed elsewhere, among other things” she winked.

“Just call her please”

Moments later, the plan was set for the three of them to meet the band at a high rise apartment in Chelsea, and they were listening to music while Katy applied makeup to Jo’s face and Michelle made her way over. 

“Fat bottomed girls make this rockin world go ro-”

“Joey, I swear if you keep singing I’m gonna stop” Katy had not even gotten halfway through applying the silver to Jo’s eyes when she started moving her entire body to the beat of the song she had forced Katy to put on.

“But Katy this song”

She huffed and shot Jo a glare. The glare was enough to get Jo to stop and close her eyes again, Katy sighed in relief and continued to apply the glittery shadow.

Katy always noticed that Jo didn’t change the songs she was singing when she was. That might not even make any sense, but she was used to her friends replacing the pronoun in love songs to keep it in line with their sexuality. Jo was staying true to hers which Katy thought was really cool, but she didn’t know what pronouns she liked the best, they all sounded pretty nice to her.

If it wasn't for that calming train of thought, she would have stopped doing Jo’s makeup all together, and she did yell at her for moving but Jo claimed that she had no idea that dancing counted.

-

Freddie was rather rudely awoken by the feeling of someone taking a seat on his hip as he slept sideways on the band’s New York suite couch. The boys shared their rooms in pairs, and Freddie had hesitantly agreed to sleep on the couch while Roger had a girl come spend the night.  Also why he had been paired with Roger in the first place he wasn’t quite sure of. Nonetheless, his face was pressed into the cushions, his back facing the television as he had fallen asleep with it on in an attempt to hear nothing, it didn’t really work.

Roger began eating his cereal loudly, was he just trying to piss Freddie off? If he was, it was working. Freddie, knowing what he was doing, jolted, the little movement sending Roger off of the couch and spilling the cereal onto his shirt.

“Are you kidding me, Fred?” “Are you kidding me, Rog?” he mumbled into his pillow, not wanting to face the day. The shirtless singer eventually sat up and rubbed his eyes, Roger took a seat next to him this time after cleaning up the mess he had made. It was already one pm and Freddie had still not gotten the most refreshing sleep to say the least. The thought of going out and actually having to talk to people was not at the top of his priority list at the moment. As if he could read his mind, Roger started “there’s a party tonight Freddie, at a fancy hotel in Chelsea, lots of people are gonna be there” Roger winked and nudged his arm.

“Well then I think tonight you’ll find me in the opposite direction” he mumbled, holding his head, he didn’t always get like this but when he did, he’d rather be at home with a quiet conversation and a person he loved than a rager. He wasn’t really going to get that in the middle of New York City with his three drunk friends.

“Katy’s going, Bri already asked her,” Roger chewed loudly and started flipping through the channels. Freddie had changed his mind, he was going to go. “but do you think Jo’ll be there? She was something else too I mean I know you’ve got your sights set on Katy but-”

“Will you PLEASE stop saying that? I never said that to you Rog, and it’s really fucking annoying especially when she’s going to be working with us” Freddie said angrily, turning off the tv to get Roger’s attention.

“Fred, come on, we both know you. She’s kinda spunky and she’s your type, if you don’t like her now, you’re going to. Plus, if you didn’t like her, you would always be making jokes about liking her. Just think about it” Roger said prophetically, he hadn’t even been phased by the anger Freddie had previously shown, and honestly Freddie appreciated that. He didn’t want to admit it, but Roger did know him well.

Freddie also rationalized that of course John would need backup in taking care of Roger, and he did love a good party after all. 

He walked over to his suitcase and sighed. He needed a look, his current joggers and tank top would simply not do for tonight. The worst part about touring was how all of his best shirts and pants became wrinkled so easily. This was going to be difficult, maybe even too difficult to do on his own. He needed the help of a stylist. Good thing he had one.

“So you just need help for this party tonight? This is my first official gig?” Katy was smiling way too wide. After Katy had finally finished both Jo’s and her own makeup, Freddie called asking if she’d come to his hotel room to help him choose an outfit. An eruption of “oos” of course followed from Jo and Michelle but she ignored it and blushed.

Now, they were the only two in the fancy room (Freddie had to pay Roger to leave, the situation going something along the lines of “so you don’t fancy her, but you need help with an outfit? I need help with my outfit for tonight too Freddie can I stay here?” “Rog, please”), and Freddie had laid out about half of his wardrobe on his bed. Patiently watching as Katy carefully sifted through the large pile.

“It’s not going to be as easy as it looks darling, I’m indecisive” he laughed, shaking his head “no” as she held up a bright green shirt. She shrugged and put it back.

“We all are, I mean this” she gestured to her outfit, which she had changed since coming over, it was a yellow sundress instead “is like my third outfit today, and I will probably change again before the party.”

Freddie furrowed his eyebrows “you would look absolutely stunning in anything you wear, and in nothing I’m sure too” he winked, not sure where his sudden confidence was coming from, maybe because everything he was saying was true. Katy playfully hit his arm and turned bright red before turning to look back at the clothes.

That’s how Freddie was going to manage, he decided, making her smile and soaking it in, but she wasn’t to know how serious he was really being. He had doubts that she would be interested at all in anything remotely different from co workers and friends. Time continued to float by, Freddie rejecting every one of Katy’s suggestions (she now realized this was why she was getting paid, and maybe by Debbie had disliked her job so much).

She held up another shirt, this one yellow and extremely low cut, the collars meant to be flared.

“Oh come on love, you must be able to imagine what my arms look like in that thing” he scoffed and shooed it away. It was Katy who was upset now, although when he called her “love” it made her heart beat faster.

“What about your arms love?” she asked in the same way, she couldn’t let him know she had appreciated it, Freddie shrugged and looked away. He didn’t really want to talk about his insecurities right now. “You. Always. Look. Like. A. God.” Katy grabbed the yellow shirt and basically pushed it into his chest, causing him to retreat for a second.

“Go try this on, actually what am I saying I’ll be in the bathroom, let me know when I can come out” Katy didn’t even give Freddie a chance to respond to her calling him a god. He didn’t know what he would say anyways, it wasn’t often that a girl had him so tongue tied, she was different. He begrudgingly took the shirt, and she walked away. He stared at her blue hair as she did, it swayed and complimented the pale yellow of her dress. They’d be matching.

After five minutes of posing and different smiles in the mirror, Freddie knocked on the bathroom door. He looked fit. Katy didn’t know how else to describe it, or exactly what to say. The silver chain that hung loosely around his neck was the perfect accessory, the shirt accentuated his muscles and brightened his face, he was practically glowing in Katy’s eyes, and in Freddie’s, he saw himself as okay.

“Oh Freddie, I love it”

He blushed and looked away, fixing and tucking in the end. The two of them were just bad at taking compliments, especially from each other.  

“Could you do my makeup, too?” he asked shyly, he smiled with his mouth open, but quickly moved his lips to cover his teeth again. Katy frowned, but decided not to mention it, she was sure she had made him uncomfortable today and didn’t want to again.

“Absolutely, come sit” she patted the bathroom counter. He raised an eyebrow, but took a seat next to the sink. “Damn, you’re still much taller than me” and he was,

“It’s not too hard to be when you’re a pixie” he may not have been as tall as Brian, but Freddie was still a good nine inches taller than her, and sitting on the counter didn’t change that.

“Okay, hm” she ran her fingers through her blue hair thinking. Freddie wished he could reach out and do the same.

“We could sit on the floor, and I could put a record on too if you’d like” Freddie clapped his hands. Katy laughed as he got up suddenly from his idea and ran out of the room. A couple moments later, she could hear the sound of Elton John making its way into the bathroom and Freddie was back. He looked down to see Katy already on the floor, going through her makeup bag and looking for the best eyeliner. He took a seat across from her, sitting cross legged and admiring her dress, she felt his eyes on her.

“It’s going to be so refreshing doing makeup for someone who isn’t constantly singing, whenever I do Jo’s she just won’t stop moving.” Katy laughed as she finally found out the right one and Freddie gently closed his eyes, she began to apply it.

He smirked, and she noticed it, as much as she loved that smirk she didn’t want to see it right now. Freddie started singing along to Rocket Man, he looked adorable and Katy couldn’t stay as irritated at him as she could Jo. “I’d be mad if you weren’t so friggin cute” she mumbled to herself when her back was turned to Freddie, looking for another color shadow from her bag.

“What was that, darling?” he smiled, his eyes still closed. As she did his makeup, his confidence began to return.

“Nothing, what?” Katy had truly not wanted Freddie to hear that. But he did, and decided not to make her repeat herself although he mumbled a “not a cute as you love” back as he started to fix his hair.

He finished and stood up, taking a look at himself in the mirror, Katy stood and joined him, he liked how the two of them looked together, now both in different shades of yellow.

Three hours later, and the music was louder than ever. What from the outside looked like any New York City building, turned into something of a glamorous penthouse with high ceilings and high occupants on the inside. Covered in modern art and leather furniture, no one was quite sure who the house had belonged to, Roger was just known for his connections and this time it really worked out. Everywhere you looked, there was some type of action going on.

Katy had left Freddie to change her outfit again and arrive with Jo and Michelle, volunteering herself as third wheel pretty much. When Katy, Jo, and Michelle had arrived, they saw no one they recognized in sight but absolutely everyone and thing looked fascinating. Jo and Michelle discreetly found each other’s hands and held on tight, here was a place they felt comfortable at least doing that. Jo at the same time was looking for the bar, she wanted Michelle to show off the tricks she had learned.

In the midst of the chaos, they first found John, who was pressed up against one of the walls, unsure of what to do. John tagged along and joined Katy at the front of the pack, he too was extremely happy to see a familiar face.

A blonde woman in tight leather approached them with drinks in her hand, she kissed Deacy on the cheek and handed Katy a drink, she couldn’t stop staring at her. Katy took the drink from her ringed fingers, it was only a little larger than a shot glass and bright pink. She looked over to see Deacy downing it, so she decided to join him. The liquid burned the back of her throat but at the same time reminded her of pink lemonade. Jo always made fun of her for being a lightweight, but she didn’t mind that, and maybe things would change by the time she returns from the tour.  

Somewhere on the other side of the room, Freddie was also getting drunk, with Brian, as they watched Roger chat up some girl on the couch. Freddie had really enjoyed the moments he shared with Katy earlier, and decided to keep on the yellow shirt. Brian had asked him more than once if his plan for the night was following in a similar pursuit as Roger was doing, but Freddie wasn’t. Sure there were many beautiful people here, he already was approached by a few fans who whispered things in his ears, but it didn’t felt right tonight for some reason. And of course he couldn’t tell Brian any of this, he’d hit him. So he decided to do something else that he did best, get plastered.

The music was extremely loud, and the low lighting gave everyone a little run for their senses. The large amount of people in the small space coupled with the cigarette and marijuana smoke was a lot for everyone to take in, but for right now Freddie loved it. He felt invisible, he and Brian decided to continue to move through the crowd rather than wait for Roger to stop, they both knew he wasn’t going to. Brian was pretty drunk too, the two of them stumbled through the crowd.

Eventually, the crowd moved them to the bar, fate working out nicely as it united the seven of them. Michelle was making drinks and people were cheering around her, Jo was sitting at the bar, sipping on her straw and never stopped watching Michelle move. Katy was taking shots with some girls she had just met who were all beautiful. John was trying to get the attention of said girls, but the red head he was talking to couldn’t stop staring at Katy, who was staring back.

Brian was happy to see his friend having so much fun “Katy ladyy!” he partially slurred, walking over to her and hugging her.

“I am just SO happy that you’re touring with us! Maybe you can weigh in on the vote I’ve been trying to have, I propose that the the band needs a pet” Brian was clearly drunk, his arm was around Katy’s shoulder now and he held his hand out trying to paint the picture for her.

“Freddie wants a cat but I’m not really sure-” he continued but was interrupted by Freddie walking over. He wasn’t sure where Brian had gone to but when he saw it was Katy he was with, drunk Freddie just needed to say hello.

“Hellllooooo, darlings” he screamed, put a hand on both of their shoulders. Katy was really happy to see him, she had been looking for him all night.

“Fred! Tell Katy about my pet idea!” Brian said enthusiastically, shifting his eyes between the two of them.  

“Sorry Bri, I’d rather tell Katy that she looks absolutely radiant right now. I mean stunning, Bri have you seen her?” Freddie said, taking Katy’s hand and kissing it, she giggled. Brian rolled his eyes and walked in between them dramatically, breaking their hands apart.

“She looks” he looked her up and down “fine. I’m going to go ask Deacy what he thinks. I’m thinking a turtle” he stated very nonchalantly, causing Freddie and Katy to look at each other awkwardly for a second, and then break into laughter.

“I” Freddie started, now he and Katy now sitting on a loveseat and talking to each other as people surrounded them “am VERY interested in the art in this house” he stated, he was pretty drunk, and when she got like this, everything fascinated her. Katy smoothed out her black skirt and turning to Freddie, she fixed her hair, she was very jittery right now.

“I am” Katy paused in the same fashion he had “am VERY interested in the art right in front of me” she flirted. His eyes widened and eyebrows changed, he broke into a smile until he shut his mouth quickly.

“You must be hammered to think that this banana colored chap looks like art right now” he referred to his shirt that he was still a little unsure of.

“Oh I am, Michelle kept making me these little clear drinks and they were so good so me and Deacy decided to have a drinking contest and he won but I really gave it my all he was still proud of me, Deacy’s a team player” her emotions continuously changed throughout her ramble. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be art! And I love the shirt!” she started to play with his collar, brushing her skin against his, Freddie wasn’t expecting that kind of intimacy.

The two of them continued to talk, and they talked about everything. They started to talk about the name Mercury and it digressed into her love for astrology and contemplations of time and the future.

Just then, Roger came to join them, he took a seat in between them, and accidentally spilled Katy’s drink all over her white shirt, she stood up and kinda yelped but quickly contained it.

“Rog! What the fuck?” Freddie asked angrily at Roger, he shrugged his shoulders, not exactly sure what he did. Freddie looked around for any napkins in sight, he found some tissues and awkwardly started to pat her chest before she took the napkin from him gratefully and continued to dry herself more feverishly.  

She couldn’t help before a yellow stain formed right in the center of her stomach though, unavoidable to sight. She sighed, Roger had really completely ruined that moment, and her shirt.

“Rogerrrrrrrrr” Katy dragged out his name, turning the last part of it into a grr aggressively and throwing her head back to look at the ceiling. He put his hands up defensively, he had been having a great time talking to Jo and Michelle since the other girl rejected him and had been thoroughly enjoying himself up until that moment, now he was a little scared. Freddie also wanted to kill him.

“Kate” Freddie handed her another tissue, he thought that name was pretty on her “I can call you a cab home if you’d like, I kinda would like to head back to the hotel soon, I have to be up early anyway like the rest of these fellows, but unlike them I’d rather get some rest” Freddie said softly to her. She sighed, she probably should be going home anyway. She had no idea where Jo and Michelle had snuck off to and wasn’t exactly in the mood to find out.

She nodded her head “I think that’d be best”

“I know” Freddie said, out of the blue. They now were sitting next to each other in the small yellow cab he had ordered to take her home, he insisted on making sure she got inside safely and she had no problem with that. The beginning of the car ride was a peaceful silence, not awkward at all, Katy staring out the window and Freddie closing his eyes, or opening them to take a peak at what Katy was doing. His sudden voice got Katy’s attention instantly, and she turned to him.

“Katy Kat” he stated, opening his eyes to face Katy who broke out into laughter at the cuteness of the name.

“And you said you weren’t drunk” she booped his nose and laughed loudly.

“I never said I wasn’t drunk” he held up a finger, Katy smiled at the polish “I just said I was sober enough to help you get home. And Katy Kat, that’s your nickname from me. I have decided. I really like cats, and I really like you, and your name sounds like cat, and, oh shit” Freddie’s eyes widened and he stopped smiling, he had been ranting, he clearly was still drunk too, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to ensure Katy was okay “what if I like you so much because your name sounds like a cat, but WAIT, what if I like cats so much because it sounds like Katy, wait no that can’t be right I knew a cat before I knew you” he was just talking to himself now. How desperately did drunk Katy want to just shut him up with a kiss; and maybe she could, he did JUST say he liked her a lot, but no. He was drunk, she was drunk, and it was in the context of cats, she didn’t want to ruin anything and also did not want her first kiss with him to be drunk in the back of a taxi to get him to stop talking about cats. She giggled “I love it Freddie that is a marvelous nickname” she spoke her faint British accent making a slight comeback. He was excited by that “Your accent is so weird” he said teasingly. “Oh shut up” she said, now in a complete British tone to make him smile. Eventually the cab slowed to a stop in front of her apartment, Freddie still rambling on about the various cats he had had throughout his life. 

It didn’t matter what it was, Katy could listen to him talk all day and in fact that’s all she wanted to do, ever.  The taxi driver turned around in his seat and faced them

“Ma’am? That’s gonna be-”

“Oh please sir, I’m the gentleman, just keep the change” Freddie took a fifty dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the taxi driver, whose eyes widened.

“Thank you so much sir, you two make a lovely couple”

“Thank you for saying that, so much truly, love did you hear that? He said we were a lovely couple” Katy said laughing putting her hand on Freddie’s. He blushed and just nodded to the driver, taking her hand and thanking the driver, he guided her out of the car.

“I did hear that love”

“You should sleep over sometime so I can show you MY wardrobe!” she said excitedly, she almost sounded like a little kid when she was drunk, a little kid with a sailor’s mouth.

“That would be an absolute pleasure, darling” he laughed, walking her up her stairs and making sure that neither of them stumbled or tripped. They finally made it to the top of them successfully.

“Thank you for leaving the party to help me, this was super embarrassing to be honest. I can usually hold my liquor a little better, literally and figuratively, ha” Katy smiled softly. That last part might have been a lie but that’s okay. She was caught staring in Freddie’s glazed chocolate eyes, and he was staring at her mouth as she spoke, watching her smile play on every word.

They stayed staring for a moment, then Freddie remembered he should probably respond to what she had said.

“No worries, I’d much rather be right here with you” that was the complete truth “well um” he coughed “I’ll be seeing you bright and early tomorrow, yeah?” he asked, rubbing his neck, suddenly nervous.

“Okay Freddie, I’ll see you then” Katy said happily, not picking up on his nervousness, she kissed him on the cheek. She really was confident when she was drunk. He laughed, a little annoyed at himself that he wasn’t the one to think of that.

“Okay, goodnight Katy Kat” he smiled again, and finally let her go inside.

As he walked back down the steps alone, he started to quietly hum a song he hadn’t written yet. This was going to be a great tour. 

CHAPTER FIVE 

AN: hey guys! I know this was a long one but thank you so much for all the positivity I have received so far! If you like this fic, please let me know! I also do Queen ships if you’d like one just send me an ask :) -June 

tagged: @come-with-me-and-imagine, @runawayxwithme, @feministsatanworshipper, @axxl-rose, @strawberry--harrington

[zecretsanta]

Fic: Out Under the Neon

To: @kiichu

From: @pomegranate-belle

Merry Christmas, Emi! Hopefully someday there’ll be more of this AU, but I figured I could at least get the good cutesy stuff to you! (Obviously, the whole AU has to end happily, so rest safe knowing it all works out!)

AO3 link

It’s not raining anymore, not really. More of a drizzle. But the streets are wet, and green and pink light glows back out of black puddles, reflecting the neon off the buildings. Ambidex Street is empty as Dio walks down it. It usually is, this time of night, besides the Myrmidon patrols. And the stinging, ice-cold rain from ten minutes ago wasn’t much incentive for trespassers to try and sneak onto the restricted streets near the Cradle Pharmaceutical compound.

There are more every week, though. Some sick. Most civilians. All desperate.

They can’t afford treatment, can’t afford the prices Cradle wants them to pay for its genetic manipulation codes. ‘Cybertreatment’, the Cradle Pharma adverts call it. The Myrmidons call it ‘hacking’, to a man, and Dio might have broken the mold a little but in this he’s no exception.

Like all the company’s clones, he gets free access to hacking, if he’s ever injured or ill. But he also doesn’t get paid for his work and has to share a room with two other clones on the compound grounds. All the human workers can opt out of the dorms, rent apartments in the neighborhood, get paid at least decent money – but in exchange, they have to pay for hacking same as everyone else. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, Dio figures.

There are a lot of people in the city that still rely on pills, shots, cough syrup, all that shit. The middle ground between the dickwads rich enough to afford hacking and the impoverished idiots dumb enough to try and steal it. They get along with their lot in life same as Dio does – just doing what they have to.

And then, of course, there’s Crash Keys. Dio’s never seen them himself, and like fuck he wants to – their handiwork has left nine clones in the compound’s hospital wing. He knows they’re the real reason Hongou and the other Cradle Pharma bigwigs make the Myrmidons patrol the perimeter streets so much. Some jumped-up kid trying to steal the code to fix his sister’s cancer is inconsequential compared to an organized force trying to leak all the treatment codes to the public like they’re all in some fucking Robin Hood flick.

Not that Dio isn’t aware that the crazy fuckers are probably in the right. Cradle Pharma is shit awful. But what’s he supposed to do about it? Things are how they are.

Dio tilts his head up, lets a few stray raindrops splatter across his face and run cold tracks down his neck. Then he shakes his head, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and keeps walking – kicking through oily puddles as neon signs flicker and fizzle overhead. It’s going to be a long night.

The very next morning Dio’s reassigned, and he’s indifferent. Work is work, and there’s no more or less prestige in any job given to a Left clone, though he might secretly wish there was.

He’s been assigned to watch the GAULEM – Cradle Pharmaceutical’s compendium of medical knowledge, the thing keeping them exclusive and profitable. You’d think that would be a step up, but he’s heard from a few other clones who’ve had the position and they told him it’s a boring job. Stuck in one suite of rooms at the center of the Cradle Pharma compound, day in and day out. At least when he had patrol duty, Dio could stretch his legs across a borough of the city.

But he’s heard the rooms are nice, at least. Posh. So there’s a silver lining or something to being assigned to a job where he has to sit around and watch a fucking computer day in and day out.

They want Dio to start right away, apparently, because he’s herded off after breakfast by his direct superior, Marcus Call. They wind their way through a maze of corridors Dio’s never had any reason to bother with and stop in front of a pair of fancy-looking double doors. Marcus pulls a key off the ring on his belt, unlocks the doors, and flings them open.

The rooms really are nice, Dio thinks when he sees them. Not to say that the rest of the Cradle Pharma compound is poor quality or cheaply made, but it’s definitely more functional than fashionable. This place, on the other hand? It’s fucking plush. Fancy armchairs, actual wallpaper and carpet instead of industrial steel, paintings hanging on the wall like it’s some fucking five-star hotel suite. It’s the sort of place the CEO would stay, but he’s not here – would almost never be caught dead in the compound when he can give his orders from on high in his fucking penthouse uptown. No, the only people in the GAULEM suite are Dio, his superior, and…

A woman in a purple dress, staring at one of the paintings with her hands folded primly in front of her.

She’s beautiful. Big blue eyes in a freckled face, flame-orange hair braided up precariously. Dio’s never seen anything like her. Some of the women working at Cradle Pharma are beautiful, but they all dress stern and sharp and smile like they want to bite off your fucking head. This woman has none of that aura – she’s wispy and soft.

“This is the GAULEM,” Marcus tells Dio matter-of-factly. “GTF-DM-L-016.”

“… What.”

The GAULEM was supposed to be a machine. A computer. Just some console he had to guard and keep from overheating. Not a— a woman.

“It and the other GAULEMs in storage are the last of Dr. Klim’s creations,” explains Marcus. “They’re androids capable of storing every cybertreatment code, encrypting and distributing them securely for the company’s use, diagnosing patients, and utilizing medical knowledge. Keeps this whole place running.”

“She’s… A robot,” Dio settles on saying at last.

“It can be something of a shock for new guards,” allows Marcus, and the ugly amusement on his face tells Dio that he takes great pleasure in throwing his subordinates off-guard with this reveal. “Yes, the GAULEM is a humanoid robot with a sophisticated artificial intelligence program. You will live here in the suite and guard it, oversee routine maintenance, and other miscellaneous duties. Can you handle that, Dio?”

As if there was any question of it. Dio scoffs.

“’Course I can. Who do you think you’re dealing with here?”

“Good man,” Marcus replies. “I’ll leave you to it, then. First maintenance check is in three days, so just get settled in for now. Don’t fuck anything up in the meantime.”

Then, with a jaunty wave, he steps out of the suite and Dio is left alone with the woman—robot. GAULEM. Whatever. He peers at her out of the corner of his eye, wary, but she doesn’t even turn her head. Just keeps staring at the painting in front of her like he’s not even there.

‘Get settled in’ was a hell of a way to phrase it, Dio considers on the second day of his new assignment, because the GAULEM suite is more unsettling than anywhere else he’s ever been. And it’s not the place itself, it’s the GAULEM. She wanders the rooms of her suite like a ghost – pale, silent, and tragic. Makes Dio feel like the victim of a haunting or some shit. Just spends all her time staring at the paintings or looking up at the sunshine drifting in from the skylight. Everything she does is soundless and it creeps Dio the hell out.

“… Hey,” he says at last around midday, the first word he’s ever spoken to her.

She turns to look at him. Her blue gaze isn’t as listless as her movements would suggest, but she’s obviously not emotionally engaged. If she even can be emotionally engaged, he’s not sure. Fuck if he knows what a GAULEM is capable of.

“Y-yes?” she asks. “Did… Did you need something?”

The stutter is kind of a surprise, but Dio shrugs it off. He’s about to open his mouth and address her by her ID number, but just thinking about it makes his stomach curdle a little. He doesn’t really like the idea of calling something that looks like a person – even if she’s just a robot – by an ID number. Hasn’t liked being called by an ID number himself for so long that denying her a name itches under his skin. To the other Myrmidons and Marcus, he gets to be Dio. They don’t care about idiosyncrasies as long as the job gets done. But he remembers being Clone 410 clearly enough that it still burns.

“D’you have a name?” he asks at last. “Like an actual name?”

The GAULEM comes alive a little at the question, brightens.

“Luna,” she says in a quiet, wistful voice. “The doctor called me Luna.”

She’s one of Klim’s, so there’s pretty much no other doctor she can mean. Dio nods.

“Right. Luna, then. I, uh… I’m Dio.”

For the first time, Luna smiles. It’s small, weak – but it transforms her. Sure, she was pretty before, but… Something about the smile makes everything about her more vibrant. Like going from black and white to color or something.

“I-it… It’s nice to meet you, Dio.”

“Uh, yeah.” He clears his throat, stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Right. You too.”

Still with that tiny smile, Luna returns to gazing at the paintings on the walls.

After that, she’s more interested. Attentive. Something. Watches Dio cobble together meals in the suite’s kitchen, asks him about the card games he plays against himself, stuff like that. Doesn’t really offer any information about herself, but… Well, Dio’s just the guard. Not like she has to share her whole fucking life story with him or anything.

If she even has one. The thought slithers uncomfortably in his stomach. Maybe she’s never left the suite at all. Which is just completely fucked up in about a billion ways, but— she’s a robot. Technically speaking, like him, she belongs to Cradle Pharma. Dio tries to discard that line of thought because imagining having only known, you know, four walls, or whatever, is…

But he just can’t. Stop. Fucking. Thinking. About. It.

Dio avoids it as best he can. But spending so much focus on not thinking about the shitty kind of life Luna might have lived means he’s not spending it on warding off nightmares, which comes back to bite him in the ass almost immediately.

Everything is fire and darkness and falling. Dio knows some of the others have dreams like this too. He’s never asked, never talked about it, but he knows. They all know. All he can do in the moment is struggle against the burning, the rush of air – try not to be consumed. It’ll be over eventually. It has to end sometime.

And it does, even sooner than expected. Dio lurches up in bed with a ragged gasp at the feel of a cold hand clasped around his sweating arm.

“What the fuck?” he demands, wheezing out the words as he drags his other hand through his damp, tangled hair.

“Y-you were having a nightmare,” Luna says quietly, and releases him.

She refuses to meet his eyes, instead staring intently down at her hands as they twist the fabric of her skirt.

“Right,” Dio chokes out, because it’s about the only response he can think to make, nonsensical as it is. “I. Shit. Thanks, I guess.”

He rolls over, a dismissal, an attempt to hide the fucking embarrassment of being woken from a nightmare like a damn kid. But he knows he’s not gonna be able to fall asleep again any time soon. He never is.

And then a tinkling melody starts up, slow and pretty. The notes are too bright to be sad, but there’s something upsetting about it anyway – fuck if Dio knows what. He rolls back over, looks up at Luna in confusion.

“I thought it might help you get to sleep,” she says. “It… It’s quiet. And soothing, I think.”

The sound, the music, is coming from… Her necklace?

“What…?”

“It, it’s a music box. It was a gift, from Dr. Klim,” Luna explains, cradling the pendant in her palms like it’s some kind of delicate animal.

She always talks about the doctor that way, reverently. Maybe it makes sense – he created her, after all. But… He left. He left her, left her alone in this prison. No matter how gilded the bars, a cage is still a cage. Dio knows that.

“Thanks,” he says to her again, softer this time. “That’s… Thank you.”

“Y-yeah. Of course. Anytime.”

Luna sits lightly on the side of the bed, pendant still cupped in her hands. Dio falls asleep with her watching over him – and the nightmare does not return.

Dio’s discomfort returns in the morning, the shame and humiliation. But Luna doesn’t talk about it. She offers to help him make breakfast for himself instead. Smiles, gently. She’s soft, he thinks again. It stirs a bizarre protective instinct in him, the desire to see her safe and happy.

“D-Dio…?”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Lost in thought.”

“That… That’s ok,” replies Luna as she passes him the salt. “S-sometimes I get lost in thought too.”

He wants to know what about, but doesn’t ask. They’re… It’s not like they’re friends or anything, it’s pretty fucking clear that Cradle just sees Luna as a tool and even if the thought squirms in his gut like an eel he’s not deluded enough to think he’s not part of the fucking machinery that keeps her trapped here.

So he doesn’t ask. Just changes the subject. Asks her how many guards she’s had, anything to return to a surface-level subject.

“S-six, I think,” she tells him. “A-and you.”

“Mm.”

He spends the day on pins and needles, hating it, and has another nightmare. Luna wakes him from it, again, and plays her little music box. After three nights of that routine, she offers to lend it to him at night so he can listen to the melody as he falls asleep.

The nightmares don’t come back after that.

“You like those a lot, huh?” asks Dio a few weeks later, following Luna’s gaze to one of the paintings on the wall.

Luna shrugs her shoulders.

“They’re mine,” she says, utterly without defensiveness or ownership. “I painted them.”

“You. You painted these?”

Luna nods. Suddenly, the paintings are more than just fancy set dressing to match the rest of the GAULEM suite’s opulence. They’re— art. Luna’s art. But the thing is, Dio’s never seen so much as a fucking paintbrush while staying in the suite.

“I-I haven’t painted in a while,” Luna explains, like she’s reading his fucking mind. “It’s. Um. I don’t really h-have, the, um, supplies. Dr. Klim would get them for me, b-but…”

But he’s gone. Dio goes a little cold and frowns, rubbing his arms. So. Only a couple questions and he knows a hell of a lot more than he’d like to. She hasn’t had anything like a life since the doc jumped ship. Used to have hobbies, someone to care about her, give her gifts… And now Luna’s just treated like what Dio thought the GAULEM would be – a glorified fucking computer. She could be so much more, deserves to be more.

And, well, he’s about the only one who can do a damn thing about it.

Dio scratches the back of his neck, can’t make himself meet Luna’s eyes.

“I could probably work something out,” he says gruffly. “Get you some art supplies and shit.”

“Y-you don’t need to do that,” insists Luna. “I’m fine. R-really!”

She fidgets a little with the fabric of her skirt like she always does and shakes her head. And, sure, she’s not gonna croak or anything without art supplies – she’s survived this long, after all. But so what? Surviving and living aren’t the same. He’s seen what surviving looks like and it’s fucking pathetic. It’s good enough for him. He’s fine with it for himself, doesn’t have any aspirations to reach for. But Luna? There are things she wants.

Things he can help her get back. And Dio’s stubborn as hell, so he’s going to do it.

“You want to paint again,” he says. “Don’t you?”

And it takes a while for her to give him a straight answer, but he already knew what it would be. Yeah, Luna wants to paint again. So. That’s that.

The only free time Dio has – or, well, to be accurate the only time he’s allowed to leave the GAULEM suite, because to be honest the entire fucking assignment has effectively felt like ‘free time’ – is during the weekly maintenance checkup. The whole fucking GAULEM maintenance team troops into the suite in their lab coats to, as far as Dio can tell, poke and prod at Luna and stare intently at tablet screens. Luna doesn’t seem to mind, although she’s stoic as shit when she wants to be so who even knows. But it’s uncomfortable to watch, and this week he actually has something to do with his ‘break’, so he slips out of the suite.

None of the Left clones have money because they don’t get paid. Duh. But it doesn’t mean they don’t have a thriving bartering economy. Just gotta know the right person and you can get pretty much anything. A lot of the scientists are willing to fork shit over for a favor, and most of the Myrmidons on patrol have at least one person on the outside supplying them with contraband. Lots of it is junk food or jewelry. Extra blankets. For art supplies, Dio’s gonna have to go pretty damn far afield.

Which means going to Beta. Ugh.

But at least in that regard, Dio’s got things well in hand. He might not like Beta, but he knows the guy’s tastes. He’s a total diva who, despite having perfect eyesight like every other Left clone, is obsessed with eyeglasses. Lucky for him, Dio happens to have a pair set aside – just in case, you know. Dio thinks ahead like that.

When he knocks on the dorm room door, Beta opens it right away. He’s wearing an ugly-ass tracksuit deal and he’s got a pair of oval frames perched on his nose.

“Oh. Dio,” he says, in that fuck-off polite way people have when they aren’t happy to see you. “How… Unexpected.”

He’s really not here for niceties and dancing around shit.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I have some glasses, you gonna deal or not?”

The door opens wider and Beta steps aside with a little bow. Prick.

“What is it you’re looking for?” he asks, gesturing to his fucking garbage dump of a room.

It’s like a dragon hoard, just a bunch of shit all piled up everywhere. Gotta suck for the poor bastards who have to room with him.

“Art supplies,” Dio says, studying it all. “Paint, canvas, brushes. Shit like that.”

“Hm. Well, I might be able to find what you’re looking for, but for only one pair of glasses—”

But Dio knows what the fuck he’s about. He tugs the glasses case out of his coat pocket and flips it open. High-quality, name-brand rectangle lenses. Basically the holy grail for Beta. Dio’d had to trade a lot of shit to get them, but it had been worth it to know he’d have an ace in the hole with Beta whenever he ended up needing it.

Never thought he’d be using it to get a gift for someone else, though.

Not that he… He’s not upset about it. Not when he thinks about what Luna’s done for him. Not when he imagines what her expression will look like when she gets some new art supplies to work with.

“Oh,” Beta says, stunned, pulling Dio out of his thoughts.

He smirks, waggling the open case and watching Beta’s eyes follow the glasses intently.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. You want these? Hand over all the painting supplies you’ve got.”

And, well. Not to brag, but Dio walks out of that room with his arms full of art shit. So. Mission success.

Even better than the thrill of victory, though, is watching Luna’s blue eyes go wide and her face pale with ABT fluid when she finally catches sight of him past the maintenance crew filing out the door. Her expression, all startled and awed and pleased, is about the best thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“Is… Is all of that f-for me?” she asks, and lifts a hand but doesn’t reach for the stuff piled in his arms.

“Yeah,” Dio replies.

He sets it all down on the coffee table – tiny canvases, a whole damn forest of different size brushes, and a rainbow of paint colors. Bolstered by his yes, Luna makes her way over to the table to start picking through the haul. She starts grouping paints by some pattern Dio can’t pick out. He leaves her to it – he’s tired as hell from trekking all the way across the compound and he wants a nap.

The soft clatter of art supplies on the wood of the table lulls him to sleep.

Luna returns to painting with gusto. She spends almost all her free time at it, slow and careful. When she’s concentrating, she sticks out her tongue and it’s cute in a way that makes Dio’s heart squeeze a little bit. He tries not to think about shit like that, though. Keep a lid on things like a fucking professional.

Doesn’t mean he’s gonna stop interacting with Luna, though. Fuck that.

“You paint flowers a lot,” he notes as casually as he can, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

Luna pauses, glances back at him with a smile that hits his heart like a bolt of lightning.

“Yes, I… I really like flowers. Um. A-any plant, really. Growing things. They’re very soothing.”

Only when she turns back to her painting does Dio lift a hand to rub at his chest. The hell is wrong with him, seriously?

Like every-fucking-thing else Luna says, her words stick with him. Dio finds himself thinking about them when he should be doing other things. He burns about five different breakfasts that way before he gives up and decides, like the art supplies, he’s gotta do something about it.

But he’s not going back to Beta. No way in hell.

Not that his other choice is much better.

Hazuki Kashiwabara is a programmer. She’s awful and Dio hates her. The feeling is mutual. Unfortunately, they’ve kind of become friends anyway, out of necessity. There’s no one in the compound better to talk shit about everyone else with. He’s become even more reluctantly fond of her because they both fucking hate the maintenance team.

Dio catches up to Hazuki in a hallway off the main labs, steels himself, and demands a favor.

“Yeah?” she asks, laughs at him a little. “And what the hell do you want from me, hotshot?”

“A—a flower,” he stammers angrily. “A potted plant, I don’t know. Something alive. Growing.”

“Hm…”

Hazuki leans forward, studying him a little. Even though his first instinct is to back up, to get more space between them, Dio plants his feet and resists the urge.

“What,” he demands sharply.

Hazuki lifts her shoulder sin a lazy, elegant shrug.

“I’m sure I can find something like that,” she says.

And that’s all. Tension and irritation itch under Dio’s skin – there’s more she isn’t saying, and he wants her to spit it the fuck out already and get it over with. But she doesn’t. Just smiles mysteriously and saunters off down the hall. Ugh. Bitch.

Still, he gets a text that she’s got something for him by the next maintenance checkup. She moves fast, he’ll give her that much. They meet up in the same hallway as before.

“It’s an Echeveria laui,” Hazuki tells him. “A succulent. They’re hardy, difficult to kill. Should be easy to take care of as long as you can get it some sunlight.”

She hands him the little potted plant – its leaves are kind of a dusty purple color, and it’s shaped a little like a rose. Pretty. It reminds him of Luna, and he’s glad about that but also pretty pissed at Hazuki for having him all figured out.

“Thanks,” he tells her, because he’s not a complete fucking philistine.

“And don’t water the plant,” Hazuki adds over her shoulder, already walking off. “Water the soil. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

If he cradles the plant a little closer to his chest than he has to, well, fuck it, no one’s there to see him.

Though Dio’s head swirls with stupid fantasies of presenting the little succulent directly to Luna – like an offering, like a gift – he knows them for the idiocy they are. Nothing ever goes to plan in real life, and he doesn’t like explaining himself. So he sets it on the low coffee table and leaves it there without a word.

That evening, he catches Luna stroking its leaves with a single fingertip, careful and tender.

Maybe he smiles about it, but there’s nobody to catch him at it.

According to Marcus, the maintenance team is recording a higher efficiency in Luna’s transmissions since Dio started guard duty. Dio gets commendations for it, not that they mean anything. When he offers that letting her paint and take care of a plant seems to help, though, the GAULEM suite fills with art supplies and more succulents on fucking command. So at least someone’s getting something out of it.

Still, it’s irritating that they’re all so fucking shocked about it.

Turns out that, just like any human, the sentient robot that’s the cornerstone of the company works better when happy, Dio thinks to himself scathingly. Who’d’ve thought?

The fact that no one before him cared enough to find out – or didn’t even consider Luna capable of happiness in the first place – burns him up. But he’s here now, and unlike the others he’s not a fucking idiot.

Things continue in about the same manner — and Luna smiles more every day. It’s not boring, because he’s not bored. Not in Luna’s company. But it is quiet, and peaceful, and he sort of… Acclimatizes to that.

And then the break-in happens.

There’s hardly a fucking warning at all. No alarms, no crashes, no shattering glass. Just the click of the lock. It’s night. Normally, Dio would be in bed, but it was just his fucking luck he’d woken from a dream earlier and wasn’t keen on going back to bed. Not a nightmare, because he never had nightmares anymore, but…

Dreaming about holding a hand in yours was downright fucking uncomfortable. Left clones just weren’t built for romance, or affection or… Whatever. A dream like that is troubling. And there’s no one he can tell about it. He’s still struggling with the thought, which is probably how the intruders manage to make it all the way into the room before he sees them.

They’re both dressed in black – a man and a woman – and Dio knows what they are immediately. Assassins. None have ever made it this far into the compound, but he’s heard stories. Crash Keys operatives that want to destroy the GAULEM and steal the codes it contains. It had been a danger before, but now that Dio knows what a GAULEM really is, now that he knows Luna, the idea is fucking chilling.

“Hey!” he snaps, losing the element of surprise but disrupting them from their search for Luna.

The girl is closer, so Dio grabs for her first, crushing her wrist in a tight grip to yank her closer. She lashes out with her other hand, but it’s not like Dio’s a fucking amateur, and he catches that one too. That means Dio doesn’t exactly have any hands left to deal with the other assassin – so he kills two birds with one stone and flings the woman into her partner. They knock over an armchair with a crash.

“… Dio…? I-is everything ok?”

Fuck.

They might be a little dazed, but the assassins are between Dio and Luna. He lunges at them, throws a fist. The man shifts to dodge out of the way, but gets clipped on the cheek. Not hard enough to break anything or knock him back on his ass, but probably enough to bruise. Not that it’s much consolation when he gets clubbed in the head with something heavy and sharp – whatever tool they’re planning to use against Luna, probably. The crack of it against his temple stuns him for a moment, but then – even when the pain and the heat and the wetness of blood streaming down the side of his face – his anger, desperation, pushes him forward into a frenzy.

The guy is smallish, but he’s a scrappy fucker and he doesn’t bother trying to dodge again, just ducks in close, takes the hits to his face and chest, and punches Dio right in the throat. The blow is strong, knocks Dio a few steps back into the wall, where he crumples into a heap, wheezing. For fuck’s sake, he growls at himself, but there are black spots flickering across his vision and each breath is a struggle.

“Dio…!”

There’s a loud crackle, and then sudden, chilling silence. The whole world stops, and a roaring fills Dio’s ears. He’s still blinking spots out of his eyes, so he can’t see what happened, but he can guess. Grabbing at the wall for purchase, he stumbles to his feet. Finally, past the blood and the dizziness, he can make out the scene. The two of them are bent over Luna.

Reaching down to grab her, to pick her up.

He should have been able to fight them off, but he wasn’t. Still. There’s one last thing he can do. Because the wall he’d hit is the one with a carefully hidden slide panel in it, one with a big red button underneath.

Dio slams a hand on the alarm button, and sirens begin to wail. Red bulbs flash overhead, casting the whole scene in bloody light.

“Shit!” hisses one of the assassins.

He snatches his partner by the sleeve and darts for the door.

“No!” she protests, dragging her heels. “The GAULEM!”

“Leave it!”

And then they’re gone, out the door. Dio hopes they’ll be caught, but if they made it this far into the compound without detection, they can probably slip back out too even with the alarm. It doesn’t matter. There’s something more important to worry about. Luna, collapsed on the floor, utterly still.

Blood still dripping down his face, Dio stumbles his way over to her, slumps down onto his knees to feel for a pulse. Luna doesn’t have a flesh and blood heart, but she does have a mechanical equivalent – something to pump the ABT fluid through her system. The pulse, usually stable and fixed, is thready and fast under Dio’s fingers.

“Shit!”

She doesn’t stir, even at the expletive. Whatever those Crash Key bastards did to her, it’s knocked her out cold. It’s several minutes’ struggle to get her into his arms – her body is heavy with steel and machinery – but he does it. Gets her laid out on the bed. But after that, he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know if there’s anything he can do.

The ten minutes until she wakes up are an eternity, but finally Luna opens her eyes. It’s not a relief, though, because she doesn’t look well. Something’s still wrong.

“What… What’d they do to you?” Dio asks, even though he isn’t sure he wants the answer.

“A virus,” she says weakly, pushing a strand of orange hair out of her eyes. “It’s… Powerful. Fast-moving. I-I… I think it’s designed to release the cybertreatment codes, o-onto the internet.”

Dio doesn’t give a shit about the codes. Like she’s a sick kid, he puts his hand to her forehead.

“But what about you? Once the codes are out there, once it’s done, it’ll go away?”

“… No. I don’t think so,” she tells him.

Though her skin tends to run cool, her forehead is hot beneath his hand and pale with ABT fluid. Her mechanical systems are overheating as they try to overpower the virus, to hold it at bay, the way a human’s immune system runs a fever to burn out sickness. He’s never seen Luna so humanly vulnerable, and it’s terrifying.

“You’re dying,” he realizes blankly, and his whole chest goes cold.

Luna smiles.

“I was never really alive, Dio. It’s ok.”

“The hell it is! How— how long do you have?”

Luna closes her eyes, hums a little the way she does when she’s processing something.

“Twenty-three hours, thirty-five minutes, six seconds,” she murmurs.

“Shit.” Dio sits back, takes a shuddering breath and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Shit. Ok. The maintenance team will be here soon. They can fix this. Just… Stay there.”

“Ok, Dio.”

He wants to stay by her side, but like fuck his freaking out is gonna help her any. He moves out to the parlor to wait for the maintenance team and tries to pace his frustration away.

When they arrive, the tightness in his chest eases for about all of the five minutes it takes them to decide on a course of action. A fucking unacceptable course of action – to transfer Luna’s database over to a new GAULEM and let the fucking virus run its course. Let it fucking kill her, like the stupid database is all that’s important about her.

“Why can’t you just fix her?” Dio demands.

Marcus shakes his head with an almost pitying look on his face, and Dio has never wanted to punch him more.

“Why should we bother? I understand that this was your assignment, Dio, but there are other GAULEMs, and they will serve Cradle Pharmaceutical’s needs equally as well as GTF-DM-L-016 has. They’re all the same, these machines.”

They’re not. There’s no way they are, because Luna has feelings and desires and memories that are hers alone. But Dio’s anger is so thick in his throat that it chokes him and all he can do is nod. It prompts Marcus to clap him on the shoulder, and then heads out the door with the rest of the maintenance team. The door closes with a quiet click, but to Dio it might as well have been slammed.

Digging his hands into his hair, he hisses an angry breath out through his teeth.

They’ll all be back in twenty minutes, once the new GAULEM has been removed from the vault and the machines are ready. The seconds itch under Dio’s skin as they pass. Luna, on the other hand, looks as serene as always. She has less than half an hour of existence left and she’s spending it sitting in a chair and waiting patiently to die. Dio’s hands begin to shake and he clenches them into fists.

No. No, fuck that.

Maybe she’s willing to die, or thinks she has to, but Dio knows better. Cradle Pharma is in it for themselves. And normally Dio had been fine with that, with the status quo. But it’s not just about him anymore, it’s about her. And letting Luna die doesn’t benefit anyone except Cradle. So fuck them. He’s doing what’s best for him instead.

“D-Dio…?”

Luna’s reaching out a hand, concerned, but though her fingertips are only a few inches from his arm she doesn’t close the gap between them.

“We’re leaving,” he snaps. “We’re getting you the hell out of here. If they just want to let you die, then fuck them.”

Luna sighs.

“Dio, it— it doesn’t matter. Even if we left, neither of us can stop the virus.”

They can’t. She’s right. But the bones of a plan are starting to coalesce in Dio’s mind and anything is better than just giving up.

“No,” he says, taking her hand in his, “but I know who can.”