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kookie-doughs · 4 years

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Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 11: Prepare For Trouble And Make It Double

In a way, it's nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some divine force really is trying to mess up your day. Which was actually what's happening. So there we were, Annabeth, Percy, Grover and I, walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses. Percy and I walked side by side with our hand still connected. Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror. "Three Kindly Ones. All three at once. I was pretty much in shock myself. The explosion of bus windows still rang in my ears. But Annabeth kept pulling us along, saying: "Come on! The farther away we get, the better. "All our money was back there," Percy reminded her. "Our food and clothes. Everything." "Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight—" "What did you want me to do? Let you guys get killed? I was not going to leave Y/N." "You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine." "Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine." "Shut up, goat boy," I said. Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans... a perfectly good bag of tin cans." We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry. After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line next to Percy. "Look, I..." Her voice faltered. "I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave." "We're a team, right?" She was silent for a few more steps. "It's just that if you died... aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world." The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. Do you want to see?

Yeah that would be nice.

It was as if it was morning, I could see everything clearly. I wandered my head to make sure I could see everything. This is cool. "You okay?" Percy asked. "Yeah," Not really a fan of the current silence I turned to Annabeth. "You haven't left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?" I asked her. "No... only short field trips. My dad—" "The history professor." "Yeah. It didn't work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home." She was rushing her words out now, as if she were afraid somebody might try to stop her. "At camp you train and train. And that's all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether you're any good or not." If I didn't know better, I could've sworn I heard doubt in her voice. "You're pretty good with that knife," I said. "You think so?" "Yeah maybe you can teach me some tricks. "Anybody who can piggyback-ride a Fury is okay by me." Percy smiled. I couldn't really see, but I thought she might've smiled. "You know," she said, "maybe I should tell you... Something funny back on the but..." Whatever she wanted to say was interrupted by a shrill toot-toot-toot, like the sound of an owl being tortured. "Hey, my reed pipes still work!" Grover cried. "If I could just remember a 'find path' song, we could get out of these woods!" He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff. Seeing a tree coming up I tried to pull Percy to avoid it but Percy immediately slammed into a tree and got a nice-size knot on his head. I suppressed my laugh by covering my mouth which made Percy glare at me. After tripping and cursing and generally feeling miserable for another mile or so, I started to see light up ahead: the colors of a neon sign. I could smell food. Fried, greasy, excellent food. I realized I hadn't eaten anything unhealthy since I'd arrived at Half-Blood Hill, where we lived on grapes, bread, cheese, and extra-lean-cut nymph-prepared barbecue. This kid needed a double cheeseburger. >We kept walking until I saw a deserted two-lane road through the trees. On the other side was a closed-down gas station, a tattered billboard for a 1990s movie, and one open business, which was the source of the neon light and the good smell. It wasn't a fast-food restaurant like I'd hoped. It was one of those weird roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingos and wooden Indians and cement grizzly bears and stuff like that. The main building was a long, low warehouse, surrounded by acres of statuary. The neon sign above the gate was impossible for me to read, because if there's anything worse for my dyslexia than regular English, it's red cursive neon English. To me, it looked like: ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROUIM. "What the heck does that say?" I asked. "I don't know," Annabeth said. She loved reading so much, I'd forgotten she was dyslexic, too. Grover translated: "Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium." Flanking the entrance, as advertised, were two cement garden gnomes, ugly bearded little runts, smiling and waving, as if they were about to get their picture taken. I crossed the street, following the smell of the hamburgers. "Hey..." Grover warned. "The lights are on inside," Annabeth said. "Maybe it's open." "Snack bar," I said wistfully. "Snack bar," Percy agreed. "Snack bar," Annabeth joined. "Are you three crazy?" Grover said. "This place is weird." We ignored him. The front lot was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children, even a cement satyr playing the pipes, which gave Grover the creeps. "Bla-ha-ha!" he bleated. "Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!" We stopped at the warehouse door. "Don't knock," Grover pleaded. "I smell monsters." I turned to look at my knife. It had a light glow emitting from it. Probably because it was sheathed. "I think there's monsters." I was now reluctant and sided with Grover. "Grover's nose is clogged up from the Furies," Annabeth told him. "All I smell is burgers. Aren't you hungry?" "Meat!" he said scornfully. "I'm a vegetarian." "You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminum cans," Percy reminded him.. "Those are vegetables. Come on. Let's leave. These statues are... looking at me."

"Percy, I don't think---"

"It'll be fine." Percy took my hand and went in. Be careful and don't look. Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman—at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out. Her coffee-colored hands looked old, but well-manicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady. >Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. She said, "Children, it is too late to be out all alone. Where are your parents?" "They're... um..." Annabeth started to say. "We're orphans," I said. "Orphans?" the woman said. The word sounded alien in her mouth. "But, my dears! Surely not!" "We got separated from our caravan," Percy said. "Our circus caravan. The ringmaster told us to meet him at the gas station if we got lost, but he may have forgotten, or maybe he meant a different gas station. Anyway, we're lost. Is that food I smell?" "Oh, my dears," the woman said. "You must come in, poor children. I am Aunty Em. Go straight through to the back of the warehouse, please. There is a dining area. We thanked her and went inside. Annabeth muttered to Percy, "Circus caravan?" "Always have a strategy, right?" "Your head is full of kelp." The warehouse was filled with more statues—people in all different poses, wearing all different outfits and with different expressions on their faces. I was thinking you'd have to have a pretty huge garden to fit even one of these statues, because they were all life-size. I was anxious so I tighten my grip on Percy. It's stupid for walking into a strange lady's shop like that just because we were hungry. For a child of Athena, Annabeth sure isn't making wise decisions. I mean yeah I agree, you've never smelled Aunty Em's burgers. The aroma was like laughing gas in the dentist's chair—it made everything else go away. But Grover's nervous whimpers, and the way the statues' eyes seemed to follow me, to add the fact that Aunty Em had locked the door behind us. Made me more cautious. Sure enough, there it was at the back of the warehouse, a fast-food counter with a grill, a soda fountain, a pretzel heater, and a nacho cheese dispenser. Everything you could want, plus a few steel picnic tables out front. "Please, sit down," Aunty Em said "Awesome," Percy said. "Um," Grover said reluctantly, "we don't have any money, ma'am." Aunty Em said, "No, no, children. No money. This is a special case, yes? It is my treat, for such nice orphans." "Thank you, ma'am," Annabeth said. Aunty Em stiffened, as if Annabeth had done something wrong, but then the old woman relaxed just as quickly, I had to turn to Annabeth to check if there was something wrong with her.. Quite all right, Annabeth," she said. "You have such beautiful gray eyes, child." I wonder how she knew Annabeth's name, even though we had never introduced ourselves. "Percy, I want to leave..." I whispered. "Just a few bites Y/N. Don't worry." He gave me a reassuring pat. Our hostess disappeared behind the snack counter and started cooking. Before we knew it, she'd brought us plastic trays heaped with double cheeseburgers, vanilla shakes, and XXL servings of French fries. I wasn't gulfing down my food like Percy was. Grover picked at the fries, and eyed the tray's waxed paper liner as if he might go for that, but he still looked too nervous to eat. Annabeth slurped her shake. "What's that hissing noise?" he asked. I listened, but didn't hear anything. Annabeth shook her head. "Hissing?" Aunty Em asked. "Perhaps you hear the deep-fryer oil. You have keen ears, Grover." "I take vitamins. For my ears." "That's admirable," she said. "But please, relax." I don't like it here. I'm scared. Be wary of all things. Aunty Em ate nothing. She hadn't taken off her headdress, even to cook, and now she sat forward and interlaced her fingers and watched us eat. It was a little unsettling, having someone stare at me when I couldn't see her face, and I figured the least I could do was try to make small talk with our hostess. "So, you sell gnomes," I said, trying to sound interested. "Oh, yes," Aunty Em said. "And animals. And people. Anything for the garden. Custom orders. Statuary is very popular, you know." "A lot of business on this road?" "Not so much, no. Since the highway was built... most cars, they do not go this way now. I must cherish every customer I get. My neck tingled, as if somebody else was looking at me. I turned, but it was just a statue of a young girl holding an Easter basket. The detail was incredible, much better than you see in most garden statues. But something was wrong with her face. It looked as if she were startled, or even terrified."Ah," Aunty Em said sadly. "You notice some of my creations do not turn out well. They are marred. They do not sell. The face is the hardest to get right. Always the face." "You make these statues yourself?" Percy asked. "Oh, yes. Once upon a time, I had two sisters to help me in the business, but they have passed on, and Aunty Em is alone. I have only my statues. This is why I make them, you see. They are my company." The sadness in her voice sounded so deep and so real that I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. Annabeth had stopped eating. She sat forward and said, "Two sisters?" "It's a terrible story," Aunty Em said. "Not one for children, really. You see, Annabeth, a bad woman was jealous of me, long ago, when I was young. I had a... a boyfriend, you know, and this bad woman was determined to break us apart. She caused a terrible accident. My sisters stayed by me. They shared my bad fortune as long as they could, but eventually they passed on. They faded away. I alone have survived, but at a price. Such a price." Annabeth gave me a look of worry. I knew she realized something. "Percy?" I shook him to get his attention. "Maybe we should go. I mean, the ringmaster will be waiting." Grover was eating the waxed paper off the tray now, but if Aunty Em found that strange, she didn't say anything. "Such beautiful gray eyes," Aunty Em told Annabeth again. "My, yes, it has been a long time since I've seen gray eyes like those." She reached out as if to stroke Annabeth's cheek, but Annabeth stood up abruptly. "We really should go." "Yes!" Grover swallowed his waxed paper and stood up. "The ringmaster is waiting! Right!" "Please, dears," Aunty Em pleaded. "I so rarely get to be with children. Before you go, won't you at least sit for a pose?" "A pose?" Annabeth asked warily. "A photograph. I will use it to model a new statue set. Children are so popular, you see. Everyone loves children." Annabeth shifted her weight from foot to foot. "I don't think we can, ma'am. Come on, Percy—" "Sure we can," Percy said. "It's just a photo, Annabeth. What's the harm?" "Percy, I don't want to..." "It's just a photo guys." "Indeed it is just a photo Y/N," the woman purred. "No harm." I could tell Annabeth didn't like it as well, but she allowed Aunty Em to lead us back out the front door, into the garden of statues. Aunty Em directed us to a park bench next to the stone satyr. "Now," she said, "I'll just position you correctly. The young girls in the middle, I think, and the two young gentlemen on either side." "Not much light for a photo," I remarked. But joke's on her I could see quite clearly. Don't look. "Oh, enough," Aunty Em said. "Enough for us to see each other, yes?" "Where's your camera?" Grover asked. Aunty Em stepped back, as if to admire the shot. "Now, the face is the most difficult. Can you smile for me please, everyone? A large smile?" Grover glanced at the cement satyr next to him, and mumbled, "That sure does look like Uncle Ferdinand." "Grover," Aunty Em chastised, "look this way, dear." She still had no camera in her hands. "Percy—" Annabeth said. "I will just be a moment," Aunty Em said. "You know, I can't see you very well in this cursed veil...." "Percy, something's wrong," I insisted. "Wrong?" Aunty Em said, reaching up to undo the wrap around her head. "Not at all, dear. I have such noble company tonight. What could be wrong?" "That is Uncle Ferdinand!" Grover gasped. DON'T LOOK. Annabeth turned to my direction, "Look away from her!" she then shouted. She whipped her Yankees cap onto her head and vanished. Her invisible hands pushed Grover and and I pulled Percy with me. We were on the ground, looking at Aunt Em's sandaled feet. I could hear Grover scrambling off in one direction, Annabeth in another. "Percy, we have to move!" I shook him. But he was too dazed to move. Then I heard a strange, rasping sound above me. My eyes rose to Aunty Em's hands, which had turned gnarled and warty, with sharp bronze talons for fingernails. Percy was about to look higher then her hands and I instinctively covered his eyes. "Don't look!" More rasping—the sound of tiny snakes, right above me, from... from about where Aunty Em's head would be. "Run!" Grover bleated. I heard him racing across the gravel, yelling, "Maia!" to kick-start his flying sneakers. "Percy we have to move please!" "Such a pity to destroy a handsome young face," she said soothingly. "Stay with me, Percy. All you have to do is look up." "Percy please!" Percy pushed my hand away and looked to one side. I turned to look as well and saw one of those glass spheres people put in gardens— a gazing ball. I could see Aunty Em's dark reflection in the orange glass; her headdress was gone, revealing her face as a shimmering pale circle. Her hair was moving, writhing like serpents. Aunty Em. Aunty "M." How did Medusa die in the myth? But I couldn't think. Something told me that in the myth Medusa had been asleep when she was attacked by my namesake, Perseus. She wasn't anywhere near asleep now. If she wanted, she could take those talons right now and rake open my face. "The Gray-Eyed One did this to me," Medusa said, and she didn't sound anything like a monster. Her voice invited me to look up, to sympathize with a poor old grandmother. "Annabeth's mother, the cursed Athena, turned me from a beautiful woman into this." "Don't listen to her!" Annabeth's voice shouted, somewhere in the statuary. "Y/N carry Percy!" "Silence!" Medusa snarled. Then her voice modulated back to a comforting purr. "You see why I must destroy the girl, Percy. She is my enemy's daughter. I shall crush her statue to dust. But you, dear Percy, you need not suffer. We won't even hurt, Y/N." I swung Percy's arm around my shoulder. But he was too heavy. "No," he muttered trying to make his legs move... "Do you really want to help the gods?" Medusa asked. "Do you understand what awaits you on this foolish quest? What will happen if you reach the Underworld? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a statue. Less pain. Less pain." "Y/N!" Behind me, I heard a buzzing sound, like a two-hundred-pound hummingbird in a nosedive. Grover yelled, "Duck!" I turned, and there he was in the night sky, flying in from twelve o'clock with his winged shoes fluttering, Grover, holding a tree branch the size of a baseball bat. His eyes were shut tight, his head twitched from side to side. He was navigating by ears and nose alone. "Duck!" he yelled again. "I'll get her!" I tackled Percy to the other side. Thwack! Then Medusa roared with rage. "You miserable satyr," she snarled. "I'll add you to my collection!" "That was for Uncle Ferdinand!" Grover yelled back. Pulling along an out of a dazed Percy we scrambled away and hid in the statuary while Grover swooped down for another pass. Ker-whack! "Arrgh!" Medusa yelled, her snake-hair hissing and spitting. Right next to me, Annabeth's voice said, "Y/N! Percy!" Percy jumped so high his feet nearly cleared a garden gnome. "Jeez! Don't do that!" Annabeth took off her Yankees cap and became visible. 'You have to cut her head off." "What? Are you crazy? Let's get out of here." "Medusa is a menace. She's evil. I'd kill her myself, but..." Annabeth swallowed, as if she were about to make a difficult admission. "But you've got the better weapon. Besides, I'd never get close to her. She'd slice me to bits because of my mother. You—you've got a chance." "What? I can't—" "Look, do you want her turning more innocent people into statues?" She pointed to a pair of statue lovers, a man and a woman with their arms around each other, turned to stone by the monster. Annabeth grabbed a green gazing ball from a nearby pedestal. "A polished shield would be better." She studied the sphere critically. "The convexity will cause some distortion. The reflection's size should be off by a factor of—" "Would you speak English?" "I am!" She tossed him the glass ball. "Just look at her in the glass. Never look at her directly." "Hey, guys!" Grover yelled somewhere above us. "I think she's unconscious!" "Roooaaarrr!" "Maybe not," Grover corrected. He went in for another pass with the tree branch. "Hurry," Annabeth told him. "Grover's got a great nose, but he'll eventually crash." Percy took out his pen and uncapped it. The bronze blade of Riptide showed. He turned to me and gave the glass then offered a hand. "Percy you can't be seriously bring her along!?" "I'll go with him." Taking his hand, we followed the hissing and spitting sounds of Medusa's hair. I raised the glass so I could guide us. I kept my eyes locked on the gazing ball so I would only glimpse Medusa's reflection, not the real thing. Then, in the green tinted glass, I saw her. Grover was coming in for another turn at bat, but this time he flew a little too low. Medusa grabbed the stick and pulled him off course. He tumbled through the air and crashed into the arms of a stone grizzly bear with a painful "Ummphh!" Medusa was about to lunge at him when I yelled, "Hey!" We advanced on her. I had let go of Percy's hand to bring out my knife. So if she charged, I could help Percy. But she let us approach—twenty feet, ten feet. I could see the reflection of her face now. Surely it wasn't really that ugly. The green swirls of the gazing ball must be distorting it, making it look worse. "You wouldn't harm an old woman, Percy," she crooned. "I know you wouldn't." I could tell he hesitated. From the cement grizzly, Grover moaned, "Percy, don't listen to her!" Medusa cackled. "Too late." She lunged at him with her talons. I ran and raised my knife to block her talons, Percy then swung his sword, then we heard a sickening shlock!, then a hiss like wind rushing out of a cavern—the sound of a monster disintegrating. Something fell to the ground next to my foot. It took all my willpower not to look. I could feel warm ooze soaking into my sock, little dying snake heads tugging at my shoelaces. "Oh, yuck," Percy said. His eyes were still tightly closed, but I guess he could hear the thing gurgling and steaming. "Mega-yuck." Annabeth came up next to us, her eyes fixed on the sky. She was holding Medusa's black veil. She said, "Don't move." >Very, very carefully, without looking down, she knelt and draped the monster's head in black cloth, then picked it up. It was still dripping green juice. "Are you okay?" Percy asked me, his voice trembling. "Yeah," I decided. "Why didn't... why didn't the head evaporate?" "Once you sever it, it becomes a spoil of war," she said. "Same as your minotaur horn. But don't unwrap the head. It can still petrify you." Grover moaned as he climbed down from the grizzly statue. He had a big welt on his forehead. His green rasta cap hung from one of his little goat horns, and his fake feet had been knocked off his hooves. The magic sneakers were flying aimlessly around his head. "The Red Baron," Percy said. "Good job, man." He managed a bashful grin. "That really was not fun, though. Well, the hitting-her-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear? Not fun." He snatched his shoes out of the air. "I didn't know Grover got Luke's shoes." Percy recapped his sword. "I can't fly." He shrugged. Together, the four of us stumbled back to the warehouse We found some old plastic grocery bags behind the snack counter and double-wrapped Medusa's head. We plopped it on the table where we'd eaten dinner and sat around it, too exhausted to speak. Finally Percy said, "So we have Athena to thank for this monster?" Annabeth flashed me an irritated look. "Your dad, actually. Don't you remember? Medusa was Poseidon's girlfriend. They decided to meet in my mother's temple. That's why Athena turned her into a monster. Medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. That's why Medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. She's still sweet on your dad. You probably reminded her of him." "Oh, so now it's my fault we met Medusa." Annabeth straightened. In a bad imitation of my voice, she said: "'It's just a photo, Annabeth. What's the harm?'" "Forget it," I said. "You're impossible." "You're insufferable." "You're—" "You're both loud and stupid." I growled. "Yeah!" Grover interrupted. "You two are giving me a migraine, and satyrs don't even get migraines. What are we going to do with the head?" I stared at the thing. One little snake was hanging out of a hole in the plastic. The words printed on the side of the bag said: WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS! I was angry, not just with Annabeth or her mom, but with all the gods for this whole quest, for getting us blown off the road and in two major fights the very first day out from camp. At this rate, we'd never make it to L.A. alive, much less before the summer solstice. What had Medusa said? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a statue. Percy and I shared a look. We got up. "I'll be back." "Percy, Y/N," Annabeth called after me. "What are you—" We searched the back of the warehouse until I found Medusa's office. Her account book showed her six most recent sales, all shipments to the Underworld to decorate Hades and Persephone's garden. According to one freight bill, the Underworld's billing address was DOA Recording Studios, West Hollywood, California. I folded up the bill and stuffed it in my pocket. In the cash register I found twenty dollars, a few golden drachmas, and some packing slips for Hermes Overnight Express, each with a little leather bag attached for coins. "Found one." Percy called. We went back to the picnic table, packed up Medusa's head, and filled out a delivery slip: The Gods >Mount Olympus 600th Floor, >Empire State Building New York, NY With best wishes, PERCY JACKSON <3 Y/N L/N "They're not going to like that," Grover warned. "They'll think you're impertinent." I poured some golden drachmas in the pouch. As soon as I closed it, there was a sound like a cash register. The package floated off the table and disappeared with a pop! "I am impertinent," Percy said. I looked at Annabeth, daring her to criticize. She didn't. She seemed resigned to the fact that we had a major talent for ticking off the gods. "Great, well Fred and George," she muttered. "We need a new plan."

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whywishesarehorses · 4 years

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Inside the Famous—and Deadly—Omak Stampede

This article was written by Allison Williams, published in the August 2017 issue of Seattle Met, and reformatted here for your enjoyment.

This one is text heavy and long, so it is hidden under a read more.

Thursday

Eighteen horses form an imperfect line on a hot August night, their 18 jockeys clad in jeans. Here on a sandy bluff in the small town of Omak, four hours east of Seattle and several worlds away, riders and spectators alike move with nervous energy, anxious for the race to start. One jockey wears a helmet topped with a pink mohawk, another with a GoPro camera. One horse, sponsored by a local marijuana dispensary, sports painted pot leaves on its rump. Wispy white eagle feathers hang from others, emblems of the Native American heritage the men share.

A summer carnival glows below, neon outlines of rides called the Orbiter and the Fireball, metal towers that came into town on tractor trailers. Farther into the Okanogan Highlands, a casino twinkles alone on Indian Reservation land. It’s August 11, 2016, and even an hour past sunset the air holds onto most of the heat from the 90-degree day.

A “whoooop!” erupts from the gathered crowd as the animals sidestep and bob their heads behind the chalk starting line. His race number bright across his chest, 18-year-old Scott Abrahamson eyes the sandy dirt in front of the line, groomed like a golf course sand trap. His long bubblegum-pink sleeves mean he’s easy to spot even in the shadows where floodlights don’t reach, and his helmet blinks with battery-operated toy devil horns. He’s surrounded by both champions—Loren Marchand with seven titles, Tyler Peasley with three—and nervous high schoolers in their first race.

At the crack of a gun, the horses charge. Their riders lean forward as hooves pound the sandy flat, at least for the first hundred feet. The crowd cheers as soon as the pistol sounds, cries and hoots blossoming into the dark.

Then 18 horses go off a cliff.

The riders shift in their saddles as their mounts fly down an incline steeper than a ski jump. The best jockeys, the veterans, barely lean back coming off the hill, reins clasped in the left hand and riding crops in the right. Others grasp a bar they’ve rigged on the back of their saddles they call the “oh shit handle.”

The spectators’ cries reach full pitch when the pack is halfway to the waterway at the base of the hill, a thick ribbon of black that flows left to right. The horses plunge into the inky Okanogan River en masse, hooves hitting the shallow bottom, and all but one charge across to the opposite bank. The stadium on the far side is lit up like a Friday-night football game, floodlights bright atop red, white, and blue bleachers, and Scott and his hot-pink sleeves emerge first in the dirt oval, just 45 seconds into the race. As they cross the finish line, Peasley is right on his tail.

Fifteen horses follow, minus the one that tumbled in the river. A crew attends to the downed horse from the deck of a small drift boat; while the stadium roars, a veterinarian surveys the animal and notes that it’s already gone, likely drowned.

Back atop the hill, Colville tribal elders watch through binoculars before one spots something in the sandy dirt, an eagle feather dislodged by the chaos. They circle the downed quill, addressing the spirit it represents, the eagle that travels in both worlds, before one of the elders lifts the feather to return it to its owner.

This is the World Famous Suicide Race.

There will be four races total during Omak Stampede, always the second weekend in August. Each race awards five points to the first-place finisher, four to the second, and so on; the overall winner clinches the King of the Hill title on Sunday, and $40,000 in prize money is distributed. It’s the highlight of this Central Washington town’s year, a tradition that draws thousands of spectators—and animal-rights protesters.

Omak straddles the border of the Colville Reservation, home of almost every racer, horse owner, and trainer. The contest is a rite of passage, they say, a proving ground for men—and even a few women—coming of age more than a century after actual horseback warfare. Beyond the turgid flow of the Okanogan River through town, the reservation sprawls over 1.4 million acres of highlands, brittle with brown grass in late summer. There the Native American communities are plagued by poverty and unemployment.

If the Suicide Race was a small-town Friday-night football game, teenaged Scott Abrahamson would be its star quarterback. He’s an ace student, focused and polite, with technical internships and honor rolls to his name, but this weekend he’s a jockey with a King of the Hill title to defend. All eyes are on him.

Friday

He gets sick before every big race. “Everything hits me and my body,” Scott says. “I can barely walk.” His cousin calls it good luck; Scotty puking means they’re going to do well.

In the hours before Friday’s race, the second of four, Scott’s prepping in the triangular Owners and Jockey’s paddock in the middle of the fairgrounds. By 5pm, Omak veterinarian Jai Tuttle holds court at one end of the dusty enclosure, near standing fans that muster a little manufactured breeze. As they wait to parade their horses for Doc Tuttle, owners angle water hoses over the animals’ backs.

Everyone older than Scott calls him Scotty. This year’s printed program, in the roster of winners dating back to 1935, calls him that. After he won in 2015, he became small-town famous, no longer just the good kid who excelled at basketball and wrestling. People holler, “Go Scotty” at him all weekend.

His father was famous too. That’s what happens when you win the Suicide Race; Leroy Abrahamson took the title in 2002, but was best known for his prowess in the Indian Relay, a more widespread style of racing where one jockey hops from horse to horse. Leroy, Scott has heard, would flit from one mount to the next with only a single foot brushing the ground.

Scott doesn’t remember his first time in a saddle but assumes it was before he could walk, though he largely gave it up in elementary school, when his parents split. His father was the horse guy; his mother was all about school. So he became a standout student in Coulee Dam, a reservation town in the shadow of the 50-story hydroelectric giant. When his father died in 2009, he was drawn back to horses.

“I’m sorta doing all this for him,” Scott says, hesitant. His mother wasn’t wild about the racing, but he didn’t falter at school, scoring an engineering internship with the Bureau of Reclamation. Slight and muscular, his five-foot-nine stature is too tall for a throughbred jockey but about average for this race. His hair is short and straight, spiking around his head like a halo, and he likes to hide his eyes behind sunglasses.

The summer he was 16, after his sophomore year of high school, Scott entered his first Suicide Race. Atop a small gelding named Kinky, he fell as they crested the top of the hill on the Thursday race, flipping over the horse’s shoulder. On Friday the pair wrecked in the water.

“I flipped over and everybody ran me over,” he says. “Everyone says it happens so fast, but when I was in it, it was like slow motion.” Finally, on Saturday, they made it through the entire race, galloping past the finish line in the stadium. Then Sunday the pair wrecked again.

A new horse was in order. His trainer, George Marchand, is a giant within the Suicide Race world and holder of three titles. He’d lost his own father at 14 and rode against Leroy Abrahamson 15 years ago, so he guided Scott, this time to a nighttime ride on a quarter horse–thoroughbred mix named Eagle Boy. The butterscotch-colored gelding was only about five years younger than the rider.

“It was pitch black and dusty,” remembers Scott. The hills of the reservation are dotted with brush and ponderosa pine, but he could make out little from his saddle. They were on top of a hill, he knew that, and that George had taken off.

He gave Eagle Boy his head as they sped over the uneven terrain. “We were jumping trees and dodging trees,” recalls Scott, but they moved as a unit. “I was like dang—he trusts me.” Matching horse to rider is alchemy.

In 2015, in his second year racing and only 17 years old, Scott on Eagle Boy tied for first overall with six-time victor Loren Marchand, George’s nephew. With a wide grin stretched across his face, the rising high school senior played rock-paper-scissors with his cochamp for a King of the Hill prize bridle.

The name World Famous Suicide Race might be a bit of hyperbole, but the race is nothing if not infamous. It emerged in scrappy Omak where a Great Depression population boom—all the way to 2,500 souls—launched an annual rodeo in 1933. As publicity chairman, furniture store owner Claire Pentz proposed a dramatic steeplechase to draw spectators, inspired by mountain races across the reservation at Keller, where riders charged a dry channel in the Sanpoil River. He knew how to sell it: He gave his 1935 creation a catchy name.

The World Famous Suicide Race ran every summer, the marquee event at the four-day Omak Stampede rodeo. Dynasties were born when the inaugural race’s third-place finisher, Alex Dick, won regularly through 1965. There have been seven Marchand riders over the years, six Abrahamsons, nearly a dozen named Pakootas. The unofficial motto, one that appears on winners’ belt buckles, is “Wimps Need Not Apply.”

The 210-foot hill, most say, is a 62-degree slope. Or it’s 54.7 degrees, as measured by a race official in 1993. Others say it’s more like 30. Regardless, it’s terrifying. From the top, the hill feels as steep as a hard ski run; a black diamond, but not a double black. Scrambling up on foot, you might use your hands.

The stampede and race remain intertwined, but in 1999 the Colville Tribes boycotted to protest a change to their camping space on the fairgrounds. The Stampede lost attendance and revenue, and the following year a deal was struck: The tribes got more control over the race organization, and the encampment got its park space.

Family ties bind many of the owners, trainers, and jockeys, and while a few aren’t Native American at all, they’re the exception. This is the biggest sporting event in the region, the Super Bowl of north-central Washington. “This is the only time we get to play cowboys and Indians,” jokes one organizer, Ernie Williams.

Doc Tuttle is fairly new to the race gig, but between her ease with fidgety horses and no-nonsense demeanor, the veterinarian exudes authority. One by one she clears the horses for Friday’s race, directing owners to walk each thousand-pound animal in a figure eight as her eyes stay trained on forelegs and haunches, scrutinizing for swollen tendons or joints.

No one can pretend the Suicide Race isn’t controversial. As early as 1939, the protests started; Humane Society president Glen McLeod succeeded in canceling a mountain race in nearby Hunters, then traveled to Omak and Keller hoping to do the same. “Why, even the riders call it a ‘suicide race,’ ” McLeod told The Seattle Daily Times before a similar trip in 1941.

Animal rights groups started keeping a tally of dead horses in 1983, with one count now at 22. “The reality is that the race is viewed as part of the Omak Stampede rodeo, and rodeos are protected under state law,” says Seattle Humane Society spokesman Dan Paul, but points out that rapid shifts in public sentiment swiftly made SeaWorld orca shows and circus elephant acts extinct.

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has run letter-writing campaigns. In 1993, the Northwest’s PAWS, or Progressive Animal Welfare Society, tried a more robust tactic, filing a lawsuit that alleged organizers harm horses for profit, but a Superior Court judge threw out the case. In 1996, a PAWS member sued the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office and the rodeo for roughing him up when he videotaped a horse being euthanized; the suit settled for $64,500.

For the organizers, the response is simple: The race is merely an extension of their horse-infused culture. Every rider points out that they ride similar hills during wild-horse roundups and cattle work.

Horses have to pass three checks before they’re allowed entry into the race: the vet examination, a swim test, and what’s called a hill test, where horses must round the top of Suicide Hill without hesitation.

Tuttle isn’t from the reservation; she isn’t originally from Omak. But even as an outsider, the one who has to put horses down if they’re hurt, she doesn’t think it’s inhumane.

“These guys use horses that love it,” she says; the horses are bred to it and run steep hills regularly on the remote corners of the reservation. She rarely has to disqualify a horse because owners who spot lameness usually scratch. “It does hold a real special place in the Native culture. It does.” And that horse Thursday night that likely drowned? She considers it. “He was doing what he loved and he had a quick and honorable death.”

Friday night’s race is classic and clean; no bad wrecks. As always, the riders reach the starting line by crossing the river on the Highway 97 bridge, closed to traffic. Hooves clomp on the asphalt as the parade passes a road sign that reads, “Tribal Code Laws Apply.” There are no rules to apply in the Suicide Race once the gun is fired; riders can whip each other, pull each other’s reins. No helmets required. No wimps.

The results echo the previous night: Scott Abrahamson and Eagle Boy come in first, Tyler Peasley on Spade in second. When Scott wins, he raises his right hand above his head, palm out, fingers outstretched. His father’s gesture.

Scott was only four when Leroy won the Suicide Race. “Everyone said he was one of the greats,” he says. “It’s kinda hard to fill his shoes.” Instead he fills his horns. He wears Leroy’s blinking red devil headpiece, the kind of bauble most 18-year-olds would don at a Halloween party.

Scott’s idols were the riders who won in the late 2000s, including the 30-year-old three-time champion who came in second to him during this weekend’s first two races. As a kid he’d run down hills playing at Suicide Race, imaginary whip flying, yelling, “I’m Tyler Peasley!” After his 2015 win, Scott noticed something: “The kids run around saying they’re me.”

It’s after 10pm when the racehorses have completed their cooldown laps and have been loaded into trailers for the ride home. Scott accompanies George Marchand to Omak Lake, 15 miles out of town, to let Eagle Boy soak before bed.

Saturday

Saturday night’s Suicide Race is the biggest. The 7,700-seat arena is packed, and lines form at every fun house and stomach-destroying ride in the carnival outside. Booths hawk curly fries, cotton candy, and foot-longs, though the longest lines are reliably at a taco truck.

But that’s not the whole Omak Stampede. On the east side of the arena, a mirror festival, maybe even larger: the Indian Encampment. Rows of teepees surround a round pavilion for dancing and drum performances, with RVs and tents beyond that. Spectators bring their own camp chairs to supplement the few bleachers. Booths sell jewelry, T-shirts, and dream catchers, and while some of the food is the same—nothing is as universal as curly fries—more signs are handwritten, and many vend Indian tacos and huckleberry lemonade.

Before the rodeo begins, the arena’s industrial speakers blast pop country songs over every acre. The festivities begin with a series of anthems and processions, recognizing the neighboring nations of Canada and the Colville Tribes. During the ride-in, dozens of rodeo queens from around the West shoot into the center oval on horseback, one by one, decked in every shade of sparkle.

The announcer introduces each event, then banters with the rodeo clown when things get slow or a bull rider needs a moment to limp off the dirt. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association produces the classic rodeo events, ones with more white riders than Native: bull riding, steer wrestling, team roping, barrel racing. Specialty acts bridge the competitive sports: trick riders and one blonde woman who does a kind of partner dance with an unbridled palomino horse to the blaring sounds of a country song called “Free.” It ends with the horse placing its blond head in her lap.

The Suicide Race is the final blockbuster event. Spectators wade up to their knees into the Okanogan River just upstream of the race crossing, bare feet on slimy rocks. Signs still note that video recording is prohibited, but they’re roundly ignored in the age of cell phones.

Despite the shocking name, the only rider death since anyone’s kept close records was one who drowned on his way to the starting line—though there are plenty of close calls. In 2002, the year Leroy Abrahamson took home the title, racer Naomie Peasley took a tumble so bad she fractured her skull. She recovered, but not before flatlining twice in the medic helicopter.

In its anti–Suicide Race materials, PAWS airs a common criticism of the race: its authenticity. “Organizers currently contend that the Suicide Race has roots in Native American tradition but, in fact, an Anglo conceived the race as a publicity stunt,” reads its statement. Detractors hang on that detail, its origins with furniture salesman Claire Pentz.

To riders and trainers, though, Pentz is irrelevant, and they point to the deep roots of horse culture. For Scott, the point of the race is clear: “Showing that a young man is becoming a warrior, becoming a man.”

The race, the encampment—it’s the tribes’ biggest invitation into their world. “There’s more that people don’t see behind these walls, about Indian life...sweat lodges, medicine,” adds Aaron Carden, a retired racer who now teaches Native language on the reservation. Of the borders around that world, he says, “It’s not our fence to keep people out. It’s the fence white men built to keep us out of the area they took.”

The race wasn’t the only thing “created” by a white man; the very invention of a Colville Tribes unit is recent. Long before that, before statehood, before Manifest Destiny, before Lewis and Clark white-privileged their way across the American West, the Okanogan Highlands tribes lived nomadic lives, picking berries and drawing salmon from the massive Columbia River. And racing horses.

First came the incorporation of Washington Territory, then a series of executive orders begun by president Ulysses S. Grant that roped several tribes into three million acres between the Methow Valley and the Columbia River. Others were elbowed into the reservation, linking bands that once stretched from the dusty plains of Washington to the mountains of British Columbia. One chief invited a famous Indian leader, Chief Joseph, and his Nez Perce followers in 1885. With his band, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation—a patchwork assembly that had no single language or traditional commonality—reached their current 12-tribe size.

Over 125 years the tribes faced what so many other American Indians did—children forced into boarding schools, languages squashed. The federal government forced a cheap buyback of 1.5 million acres, lands still lamented as the lost “North Half.” The Grand Coulee Dam, erected in 1942, blocked spawning salmon with its 550-foot concrete walls; Colville tribal members mourned the loss of Kettle Falls, a historic fishing spot, with a Ceremony of Tears before it was submerged by the dam’s backup.

In the 1960s, the tribes toyed with termination, dissolving the reservation altogether and splitting the lands among its 5,000 members. Reservations had been terminated by the government before, but the Colvilles were the only ones to dare seriously consider it themselves, an unprecedented move of self-governance. Congressional hearings were held but the measure never passed, so the Colville Reservation endured.

The Suicide Race is a separate world from suicide itself, a public health crisis for the Colvilles. Whether spurred by pervasive poverty—reservation unemployment topped 50 percent in 2010—or rampant substance abuse, the suicide rate ballooned to 20 times the national average in 2006. “After that we were in a panic on what we need to do and could do,” says tribal staffer Olivia Wynecoop. Tribal leadership declared a state of emergency, and Wynecoop helped secure grants for education and designating “natural helpers” to be on call for suicide emergencies.

Scott positions Eagle Boy at the western end of the starting line for the Saturday-night race. This isn’t like the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby; horses pace and turn, and the antsy palomino next to him does a sideways prance before the starter pistol goes off. Scott is angry, though later he says he can’t remember why. Trash talk and psych-outs are regular along the starting line, older jockeys trying to ruffle the young ones still gathering their courage.

But three years and one win into the Suicide Race, Scott can ignore the chatter. He and Eagle Boy are still until the gun sounds, then fast to the crest of the hill. Aaron Carden still remembers the feeling 25 years after his first win: “You’re actually flying in the sky. Nobody can take that away from you.”

There’s a commotion, a cloud of dust to Scott’s left, but he’s well in front of the pack as they hit the water. Two strides into the dark water, Eagle Boy stumbles, flinging Scott into the river. His blinking red devil horns disappear under the white churn created by horses on either side. They’re both okay but don’t log a finish.

What Scott couldn’t see was what happened on the top of the hill, to the very first rider off the break. Tyler Peasley, whom Scott idolized as a kid, and who’d placed at Scott’s heels the past two nights, darted off the top of the hill like a raptor after its prey. Peasley’s a little taller than Scott, broader shouldered, and he rides to win. His mount, Spade, got so much air he tucked his back legs underneath him and simply sailed for the first 30 feet of the downward slope.

They were serene in that moment, flying, until Spade’s hooves finally hit the tilted ground again; Peasley pitched over Spade’s front left shoulder before the horse executed a tight somersault. The jockey disappeared under the hooves of the horses behind him and the crowd made a collective, guttural gasp. Peasley’s body didn’t come to a stop until he reached the bottom of the hill.

Sunday

The final race is also the only daytime race of the weekend; for the first time since the trials and runoff races held before the stampede, they’ll be rushing the hill in full daylight.

The mood in the O&J paddock is subdued, but word is going around that Peasley is stable at a nearby hospital. News will later spread that his injuries included a broken pelvis, hip, and ribs, and the racing community fundraises to support his care and gas money for his family to visit him.

Remarkably, Tyler’s horse, Spade, is unhurt from the tumble, ready to race again. His owner lights a bundle of sage and says a few words over the horse before a new jockey takes the saddle.

For the final time in 2016, Scott follows the parade to the top of Suicide Hill. His jeans have a gaping hole in the knee—real wear from hard riding, not a fashion statement—and his wraparound sunglasses are ’80s big. No devil horns for the daytime race, but, as ever, his name is the one most shouted by the crowds: “Come on Scotty,” over and over.

With 10 points already earned, Scott only needs to place to secure the title. Owner and trainer Marchand tells him not to go all out, and when the gun fires, he doesn’t. He holds back his whip, lets Eagle Boy run the race without extra urging. It’s the smart move, the calculated move, no doubt informed by the disastrous night before. But Scott comes to regret holding back.

Not because it doesn’t work. Scott and Eagle Boy place second, netting four more points and easily clinching his first solo all-around title. But for Scott, the kind of driven athlete who hates to give a single inch, playing it safe feels wrong. Now with two titles to his name, only three years in, he says he’ll ride “until I get broken down and can’t do it no more.”

Three days later, Scott will depart his Coulee Dam home and drive five hours to start his freshman year at Washington State University. As an engineering student he will pull a 3.8 GPA his first semester and a 3.9 the second; he’s lined up two years of scholarships so far and hopes he’ll be able to extend to the full undergrad four.

Scott won’t brag about his Suicide win at college, but he’ll drive home every fall weekend for Indian Relay races, another sport that mixes horsemanship with a touch of anarchy. Around the reservation, he doesn’t have to brag about being King of the Hill; everyone already knows. “He’s the Steph Curry of the Suicide Race,” one tribal member says. “Loren and Tyler are the Lebrons.”

The second weekend of August 2017 is already on everyone’s calendar. Scott will be back on Eagle Boy, who he now half owns with George Marchand—a 49 percent share. He now has a streak to defend. By early June, high winter snows have melted to fill the Okanogan River, and ecologists are warning of water flows two or three times normal. Scott guesses that, with the river this high, it’ll be too deep for the horses to simply wade across during the Suicide Race; they’ll have to swim for the first time since, he believes, 2002. The year his father won it all.

But on Sunday night in August 2016, after the King of the Hill awards and the pictures, he’s just a high school kid again. He wanders the Indian Encampment with friends, waits in line for fry bread.

Under the pavilion, dancers spin and step, decked in elaborate feathered headdresses and beaded robes. Some have numbers pinned to their costumes, like marathon runners, to compete. In a drum tent, the songs are a steady thrum of chants and cries, indecipherable to the visitors who stand awkwardly outside the rows of seated tribal members who are at once both audience and participant.

Picture this: a quiet mountain lake, bordered by rocky hills dotted with ponderosa pine. In daytime Omak Lake is seven miles of brilliant turquoise, but now, at night, it’s a black mirror. Two men drive a horse trailer to its shore, unloading an unsaddled Eagle Boy.

It’s one of George Marchand’s secrets to success; the lake minerals soothe the bumps and scrapes along the horse’s legs. In the midst of the annual Perseid meteor shower, the uncloudy Okanogan skies are perfect for spotting streaks of celestial light, but the men don’t look up as they dissect the day’s race.

Scott holds Eagle Boy’s halter from a dock while the horse wades into the water, breaking the lake’s calm. The water hasn’t yet cooled from baking under another 90-plus degree day, and the hills that round the lake keep the night air still. They’ve survived another madcap contest together, earned another W. They’re back on the reservation, back home. In the silence the only sound is the lapping of the lake water against a horse.

#horse racing #rodeo #native american #indian #horseblr #horse news #mine #omak stampede #the world famous suicide race

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years

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chapter twenty-one: misery loves company

"another fan's appreciation, a do-be, don't-be situation. drag me down into your hatred." -"misery loves company", anthrax

“Thank you again, Marla.”

Sam, Zelda, Alex, and Chuck had landed in Syracuse at around nine thirty at night. And, once they had landed and after a swift phone call to the apartment in Hell's Kitchen, Marla drove up for a ride over to Joey's place. For all Sam knew, he had barricaded himself into his place and thus she asked Marla to bring some more things along with her all the while: her old journal stayed put in that red courier bag over her shoulder. If Joey would at the very least let them in, she knew that the work of her pens and her pencils would perhaps help him.

Once Marla bounded into the airport parking lot, and she pulled up to the curb of which the four of them congregated at in anticipation of her, Sam was quick to catch her there at the driver's seat first: she kept her hair that bright neon green except this time around she ridded of the black stripe so she had a solid helmet of rich ferocious green hair that they saw from clear across the parking lot.

“You got those books?” Sam asked her once the three of them had piled into the back of her car.

“Right in the back seat!” Marla announced with a quick gesture behind her.

“Yeah, there's a li'l stack of books here—right here on the floor,” Chuck told her; once she put her courier bag in the trunk, Sam rounded the front of the car back to the passenger seat.

“Those are the books I got from the house in Elsinore,” she told him. “Next to my art, they were the only things that kept me sane. I have no doubt those books will help him recover and keep him company in this hard time for him.”

She strapped in and Marla lifted the parking brake, and they proceeded away from the curb and into the rest of the lot. Despite the glow from North Syracuse, the darkness met them there at the driveway and all the way into the woods outside there. The memory of her and Joey having driven up to North Syracuse felt so fresh in mind: it wasn't that long ago he took her to the edge of the lake and then he showed her some hockey moves, complete with a round on the ice.

She kept her hand up on the “oh, shit” handle over her head all the way out from that city's edge.

“I'm also glad you two guys and Zelda came with her,” Marla said at one point, and with a glimpse into the rear view mirror.

“Well, as Alex said—Joey's going to need all the support he can get,” Chuck told her.

“I was coming back East anyway,” Zelda added, “back to Providence once all is said and done here.”

“Tour's cancelled, I assume?” Marla asked her with another glimpse into the mirror.

“Yeah, pretty much. My hope is that we can pick up where we left off again soon enough. The four of us are fine and good to go—like we'll tour with David Bowie or with Springsteen, as long as it gets us going again.” Zelda paused for a moment. “We were doing great, too!”

“New album,” Sam said in a soft voice.

“Marla can't know the full truth about it as of yet,” Zelda pointed out; she had leaned forward to the back of the seat to better say that to her.

“Oh, right, right, right.”

“I didn't even hear you anyways,” Marla said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Anyways, but yeah! We were just killing it lately. More so than when we toured with them and these two birds on either side of me here. I have no clue what's gonna happen to Anthrax now.”

“They're gonna need a new singer, for one thing,” Chuck told her. “Who that's gonna be is another question all together.”

“Somebody who isn't Joey,” Sam declared.

“Yeah, it's not gonna be the same without him,” Alex agreed with her. “He gave them that dissonance that makes them stand out. His high voice held in junction to their hard and fast music.”

“He also gives them their heart, too,” she continued, “like when they were just a quartet and he was playing guitar, they had a lot more heart than when Scott was with them the first time around.”

“Yeah, they did,” Marla said with a glimpse over to her. “They really genuinely did. Like they had a certain warmth to them. Like a kindness of sorts.”

They fell back into silence and Marla took the next exit off to that familiar neighborhood, the street with the right turn across from the art shop, buttoned up for the night. The apartment complex stood dark and lifeless against the inky black sky overhead.

Sam reached his front door first and knocked on the panel.

“Joey?” she called through the wood as Chuck stood behind her.

Silence on the other side. The kitchen light was on, as well as the living room light. But it felt as though nobody was home.

“Try the knob,” Chuck advised her, and she turned it to the side. The door swung open.

There on the living floor, stretched out flat on his back, was Joey. His jet black curls had spread over part of his face while his arms were stretched out on either side of him. He looked as though he had fainted: through his curls, Sam made out the sight of his eyes pinched shut. His otherwise brown skin had washed out to the point it was more pale than the four walls that surrounded them.

To think that she held him in her arms only a month before. To think that she had come so close to him before that point. To think that he confessed his love to her and kicked that other woman away from him.

Sam lunged for him.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion from that point onward. She was about to clasp her hands to the sides of his face when something stopped her.

Or someone.

“Sam, look!” Chuck pointed out.

She glanced down at Joey's outstretched right arm. The syringe on the floor, filled with something gray and liquid, and for all she knew fatal.

“Joey!” Zelda shouted from behind them.

“JOEY!” Sam never yelled so loud in her life as she crouched down on the other side of him.

“Oh, god,” Zelda groaned. “Oh, god. Oh, god, oh god oh god oh god oh shit—oh hell no.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” Chuck said as she ran his fingers through his hair. “Sweet Jesus don't let it be true.”

Marla and Alex skidded into the apartment.

Joey groaned in his throat and Sam and Chuck gasped.

“Joey?” she whispered to him. Chuck crouched down next to her. Marla and Alex loomed right behind them.

“What's—what's all the yelling?” Joey grunted out through gritted teeth.

“Oh, thank god,” Alex declared in a broken voice.

“What's going on?” Joey rolled his head over so his hair streamed off of his face. Sam looked over to the couch to find an empty beer right bottle next to the base.

Using a tissue, Zelda picked up the syringe from the carpet and she tossed it into the garbage can in the kitchen; Sam and Marla took another look at his arm to find that he had not made a single puncture.

The point of the needle had missed the vein by about a hair's breadth. Had he not been drunk, he would've made the lethal injection. Being drunk literally saved him.

Marla and Zelda lifted him off of the floor and propped him into an upright position, with his back right up against the front of the couch. He bowed his head and his jet black curls tousled around his shoulders and his chest. Tearful, Sam lunged forward and lifted his head for a better look into his eyes: those soft brown irises had given way to bloodshot terror. The beautiful sun kissed Indian boy she had fallen in love with had the angel of darkness looming over him right at that very moment.

“Joey,” she pled into his face, “Joey, can you hear me?”

“I do,” he said as he closed his eyes. His dark lips, once smooth like chocolate, never looked so dry and chapped from the lack of liquids.

“Dude, why do you have to do this to yourself?” Alex demanded, mortified.

“I just feel like I have to,” Joey confessed in a broken voice: all the while, he barely moved his lips.

“We enjoy a couple of beers once in a while, but it's once in a while, though,” Chuck pointed out.

“Joey, I could've lost you!” Sam declared as she could feel the tears coming on.

“I've only had one drink,” he told them; indeed, he didn't smell alcohol at all, but rather like he had been asleep for hours on end. “I just—don't want to be awake anymore. I want to sleep. I can't sleep. I want to sleep.”

A single tear fell down Sam's cheek at the sound of that.

“Joey, listen to me,” she begged him. “You and I were getting so close to each other in my bed—in my bed! Back at my mom's house! Make no mistake, I was about to go all the way with you. I'll go with you all the way right now if you want.”

“Sam, please,” he said as his eyes drooped shut, “I'm not in the mood right now.”

“Joey—please—listen to me. You don't need to pollute your body like this—you have to heal—you have a beautiful body and you mustn't do this sort of thing to it.”

“I deserved it, though,” he breathed out; she could hear tears in his voice.

“No! No you didn't! You didn't deserve any part of it, Joey!”

She began crying right there, right in front of him. She pushed the hair out of his bloodshot eyes once again.

“I want to heal you—I want to make art of your beautiful body and show the world of what I see in you. All the love I feel, away from the horrors of which you do to yourself.”

She brought her lips to his, to that dry and cracked skin and she could feel the pains in his heart all the while. She held her hands on either side of his face to better feel his skin.

“I love you, Joey,” she begged right into his gaping mouth. “I love you—I love you, Cliff—”

“What?” he asked her.

“I love you, Joey,” she repeated in a near whisper.

“I thought that's what you said,” he breathed back to her.

“What else would it be?” she asked him and she could feel her eyes burning with tears. She ran her fingers through his inky black hair for a better look into his face, so sick and pale; and she took a glance down at his body, so thin and emeciated.

“When's the last time you ate?” Chuck asked him in a gentle voice, to which Joey shrugged and he closed his eyes again. Chuck turned back to Zelda, Marla, and Alex right behind them.

“One of you go into the kitchen and get him something—he's probably famished to high heaven right now.”

“No,” Joey begged them.

“No?” Sam demanded as she brushed a tear from her eye.

“You look like you're about ready to pass out,” Alex chimed in.

“Why the hell is he here,” Joey sputtered, and his speech slurred a bit.

“Alex came along because he wanted to help you!” Sam exclaimed. “Chuck and Zelda did, too!”

“I don't need help,” he croaked. “I don't need an Eskimo again.”

“Yes, you do! Yes, you do, Joey! You got fired and now look at you! You're in dire straits! I let one boyfriend die, I'm not going through that again.”

“I can get it myself...” His voice was to a near whisper at that point, further accentuated by the lack of liquids within him.

“I need to help you, Joey—I need to get you away from that. I need to protect you.”

“Sam—don't—with him,” Marla advised her as she set a hand on her shoulder. “He'll figure it out himself.”

“But I need to help him! He needs help—” Her voice broke as the words left her lips. Marla tugged her up from the floor and she turned her around to better face her.

“Literally the best and sexiest thing you can do for him is to let him figure it out for himself,” Marla continued in a gentle tone. Sam could see in her eyes that she too was crying. But she had to let him go, even if it meant another series of deep breaks within her heart. She bowed her head and wept right in front of Marla; she lowered her head and all but collapsed right into her chest. Marla cradled her in her arms and held her within her chest.

Chuck joined in right next to them.

Sam couldn't think about anything any further than that. All she recalled from that point onward was her climbing back into Marla's car and then nothing else after the fact. Everything was a blur, such that the mysterious man finally returned to her, even while she was wide awake. She pictured him right next to her, with his eyes deeper than the bottom of the ocean and his face right up close to her own. She wished to ask him on what to do next, but he never said anything to her.

Instead, he shook his head to her and then he looked back towards the trunk. She couldn't hardly think of anything else, but she knew that he meant business, and he always did when she reached a dead end. Behind every dead end was the road less travelled and his presence within her showed it to her. Marla saw him, too, and thus she knew that they were all in it together. It was all she could think about on the way away from Joey's apartment.

One of them led her into some place there in Camillus and the next thing she knew, she sat right next to Alex in a booth somewhere around there. She brushed away more tears and she peered over at Alex and the thoughtful look on his face. He had already ordered himself a cup of coffee despite it being almost eleven o'clock at night.

“Where's Marla, Chuck, and Zelda?” she asked him in a broken voice; she picked up a napkin so as to dry her eyes.

“Chuck and Zelda went next door for something,” he replied in a gentle tone, “Marla's right there.” He pointed to the right of her, where Marla finally picked up the receiver after she had apparently been waiting in line for a time. She put in the coins and slowly dialed the number.

Alex picked up his mug and took a sip of coffee.

“Hello, Charlie,” she started in a loud enough voice for the both of them to hear. “This is Marla. I know it's late, but meet up with me, Sam, Zelda, Chuck, and Alex as soon as you get this. We're at the coffee shop up in Camillus, like it's the coffee shop right at the center of town. It's highly important that you do. Like, this is dire. This is a potentially life or death situation here.”

Sam turned her attention to Alex right next to her in the booth, and his hand rested upon the table top before him, right next to his cup of coffee.

“So you said your parents hail from New York, right?” she asked him in a broken voice.

“Yeah, Sheep's Head. A neighborhood down in Brooklyn—my dad's from there, especially.”

She looked down at his cup of coffee right before him. Having coffee so late at night felt so strange to her, but at the same time, there was something so precious about it. She thought back to when she and Joey first met Alex, and he sat on the front porch of the coffee house with Cliff. The only thing they missed was a bit of rain on their backs otherwise the mood would surround them and fit like a glove. She had bought him some ginger snaps all the while.

“You know what, Alex?” she started. “You're always giving me stuff. I wanna give you something, too.”

“Nonsense, you always give me stuff,” he pointed out with a straight face. “You feed me and you cuddled up next to me—both in my car and in my bed. You took me to your old home, too, the place you go to when no one's looking. That's far more than what it's worth, Samantha.”

“And you took me home...” Her voice trailed off as she glanced up at Marla who had dialed another number on the pay phone right next to them.

“So we're always giving each other stuff,” she told him. “How 'bout—we give each other our silence?”

“Our silence,” he echoed that.

“Yeah, if we don't stifle one another with gifts to each other, surely we'd have to give each other our silence.”

Alex lowered his gaze to the floor before them and then he nodded his head in realization of what she meant by that.

“I don't know if I've told you this,” she started again, “but one thing I've always wanted to do with Joey was make a glass piece based off of him.”

“Glass—like stained glass?” He was stunned by that.

“Yeah. When I was in school, Belinda taught both me and Marla some tricks on how to work with the glass tools—you know the cutter and how to make things go with the grain of the glass. It was something I've always wanted to do when I was in school.”

“And you never did?” He knitted his eyebrows together, to which she shook her head.

“Never could get into it,” she confessed. “And I have no clue where to start with where Bel works over in Albany, either.”

“Do you think—” He raised his gaze to the ceiling overhead: the light over them shone down on his prominent brow and it in turn made his eyes appear deeper than they actually were. “Do you think maybe they can get you something there?” He returned his gaze to her.

“Maybe,” she said with a shrug and a sniffle: all the crying had loosened her up. “But then again, that would mean that I would have to come back here to New York. I'm already just barely settled into my mom's house. And I'm still just getting to know you guys, too.”

“Traveling can be hard, too. I mean, look no further than when we were in Germany last summer.”

“Oh, yeah, on the flight home, you were out like a light,” she recalled.

“And I was out like a light after I got back to the hotel from the border, too!” he added with a chuckle. And then he turned serious once more. “Well—Samantha—”

She turned her attention to him, right into those bright steely deep eyes with a quick glimpse to the little tuft of gray over his brow, which had returned to full bright fruition. He nibbled on his bottom lip.

“Whatever you want to do—” he began, but he stopped from something right next to them, and Sam turned her attention to Zelda who had just walked in through the front doors right then. Marla hung up the phone but then Zelda lunged for it herself.

“Sam?” Marla said once she turned back around towards them.

“What's up?” she asked her.

“You guys aren't gonna believe this.”

Alex raised those dark eyebrows at her.

“Apparently Bill hasn't nulled the marriage,” she told her. “You're still legally his wife.”

Alex closed his eyes and bowed his head.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sam groaned as she leaned her back against the vinyl seat right behind her. “But wait, I kissed Joey, though! That's a breach of contract, isn't it?”

“For it to be as such, you have to be caught,” Marla pointed out. “You have to actually show proof of it in the state of California.”

“Caught,” she echoed. Alex raised his head right then.

“Caught,” he muttered, and then Sam raised her eyebrows at him.

“Marla, do you have your camera on hand?” he asked her.

“No, it's back home in Hell's Kitchen.”

“Damn.”

“Why?” Marla frowned at him. Sam lowered her gaze to those spidery guitar player fingers right next to his coffee cup, and right next to her own hand. Thin and sparse, perfect for running along the neck of that little red guitar back at his parents' house.

“Well,” he started again with a bit of caution, “'cause if you did, I'd ask Sam here to hold my hand with me and you to take a picture for us. If he needs proof that his legal wife's sneaking around behind his back, then let's give it to him right now.”

“I think you're gonna need to do way more than to hold hands with her, Alex,” Marla pointed out. “Even when she said that she and Louie screwed around, he didn't buy into it once. At least as far as I could tell anyway.”

She sat back down next to Sam while Zelda called up someone, probably one of the girls back in Rhode Island. The three of them sat there in silence, when Marla turned her attention back to them.

“I have an idea,” she said in a low voice, “but it doesn't involve him, though.” She nodded at Alex.

“What're you thinking?” Sam asked her as she drummed her fingers on the top of the table.

“We go back to Hell's Kitchen—you know, it's four hour drive, so it's going to be real late by the time we get there but it'll be more than worth it, though. Like we get in the car and—and—” Marla closed her eyes.

“Yeah?”

“We go back there and—seeing as Chuck is with us, another Native American man—I do a little—” She ran her tongue over the edge of her top row of teeth.

“A little what?”

Marla nibbled on her bottom lip and then she made the shape of a woman's body with her index fingers and then she made a camera gesture thereafter.

“Marla,” Sam scoffed, albeit in a hushed voice.

“Well, what the hell else are we supposed to do, though, Sam? Especially since we're here right now, within range of Hell's Kitchen and my camera—” She flashed Alex a dirty look.

“Hey, sometimes the way is through, you know,” he pointed out as he took a sip of coffee.

“And be the other woman with Chuck and Tiffany?” Sam was horrified. “I don't think so.”

“Well, unless Joey wakes up any time soon, there's no way to do something straight up without crossing some lines and then showing it off to Bill to verify it. As far as he knows, you're a citizen of California now and therefore his official wife. He won, Sam. Unless you go to bed with Chuck and I catch you on camera all the while, that Bible thumping mother fucker won and you go back to Elsinore and undo everything Bel and I did to get you out of there.”

She sighed through her nose and she pulled in her fingers so she had her fist upon the table top.

“Time to put on your acting skills, Sam,” Marla told her with a wink. “C'mon—it's a four hour drive. The longer we stick around here, the later it'll be by the time we get home.”

Alex polished off the rest of his coffee and then, as Marla left a tip for the waitress, the three of them headed out of there right as Zelda hung up the phone.

“Rose is coming to get me,” she told them.

“Okay!” Marla replied. “So—good night for now.”

They exchanged embraces and then Marla led Sam and Alex back outside, where Chuck met up with them, out of breath and with a sheen of sweat on one side of his face.

“Where've you been?” Sam asked him.

“Looking for another phone,” he told her as he ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Not another one for at least a couple of blocks and the damned thing wasn't working.”

“Well, we're going back to Hell's Kitchen,” Marla announced to him, “I have an idea because Sam's still caught up in a little pickle with her insane counselor.”

“Oh, really?”

Sam herself then turned to Alex.

“By the way,” she started, “what were you going to tell me a little bit ago?”

“On what?” he asked her.

“You know when we were talking about glass and coming back here to New York, and how traveling is hard and whatnot,” she recalled. “You were going to say something to me. Whatever I wanted to do and then you got cut off. Ring any bells?”

He paused and then his face lit up.

“Oh, yeah! I was gonna tell you that whatever you wanna do—I'm behind you on it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Even in the afterglow from the cafe behind them and the streetlights before them, she could see the thoughtful look on his face. She sniffled again and she flashed back to when he rescued her from the side of the road.

“Aw.”

“Besides,” he continued with a shrug of his shoulders and a shift of his weight, “after what happened with Joey earlier, you're going to kinda need that, too. That type of support. I'm sure Marla and Belinda would give it to you, too. But—you know. The more, the merrier.”

“Thank you, Alex, that—that means a lot to me.” She showed him a little smile and she could feel the tears coming on once more.

“Hey, it's just like when I picked you up from the side of the road a couple of months ago. I'm just doing what I can.”

“Hey, kids!” Chuck called out to them. “Think the snow's coming, I feel it!”

“Oh, shit! Yeah, let's get a move on...” Alex and Sam ran to the car together, and he stayed right behind her in the back seat on the four hour ride back to New York City. Even if the snows came in right then, Sam knew that she could rely on friends now.

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illeee-girl · 3 years

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La La(chimolala) Land Chapter Thirteen: The Confession from Your Lips

jimin x reader genre: fluff (but it gets pretty dang meaningful here, sorry not sorry) word count: 2.25k warnings: none

[Inspired by La La Land]

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You’d hung up your apron at the coffee shop that Monday morning for the last time.

Production on Red Writer began almost immediately. The independent film studio who'd bought it was new, but had plenty of resources, and wanted to get the film out within the next year. Casting went by smoothly—you found the perfect Marianne, and the perfect Sam—and filming began just two months after your pitch. You’d perfected the screenplay with a table of the studio’s on-hand writers, and nothing had been so exhilarating. Those days of revising and reworking scene after scene . . . they’d been the stuff of dreams. The first installment for the screenplay came in sooner than you’d hoped, and you moved up to Burbank to be closer to the set. Sad as you were to leave Jess, Rachel, and Diana for a tiny studio apartment of your own, they constantly came to visit, so it felt like you’d never stopped being roommates.

You and Jimin hadn’t stopped talking, per say, since your late-night, poolside, deep conversation. (For the record, you would never let go of anyone who would have a late-night, poolside, deep conversation with you.) But you’d been busy—busier than you’d ever been—and he’d left for Seoul to a round of promotional interviews and TV spots for the band’s latest album. After that, he’d be in Tokyo for a few weeks to do the same. Those sweet six months he’d promised to you that day on the pier had gone by in the blink of an eye. More and more, it began to seem like your schedule wasn’t the only wrench in Jimin’s dream of domestic bliss. BTS was only getting bigger—and there was no way he could leave.

October came. You were caught in the pressure-filled realm of wrapping up filming, and Jimin was still in Asia. FaceTimes turned into phone calls, phone calls into texts. “Good morning” and “Good night” turned into “How has the past week been?” It’s just the time difference, you told yourself. That, and he’s so impossibly busy. You’d message the boys whenever you thought of them, and they’d message back. “How’s Jimi?” You’d ask. “He’s doing fine,” they'd respond. “Just exhausted. In love with you as much as ever, I promise.”

But doubts crept in, deadlines piled up, and before you knew it, you were about ready to give up.

_________________________

“Hey, it’s me,” you leave a message on his phone one evening. “I’m walking through Little Tokyo. We just finished one of the last scenes on our list. It’s all going really well. But I’m exhausted. At least I have a car now, so I don’t have to take the metro. But now I have to sit in LA traffic all the time. I don’t know which is worse. I’ve heard the traffic in Seoul is pretty bad too . . . I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I miss you. Call me when you get this. If you even bother to listen to it. At this point, I’m not sure I care anymore.”

You climb in your Prius, sit in traffic on the 101, and spend the entire drive wishing that you could have the past summer back. Those days with warm breezes and frozen treats . . . holding his hand, listening to his voice . . .

But now, you assure yourself, I’m more successful. I have some money. I have a much better job—the one I’d been dreaming about for ages. My movie is finally being made. Something I wrote is going to make it on screen. People are going to see it. Some are going to like it. A few are going to love it. When I go home for Thanksgiving this year, I won’t have more disappointing news for Mom and Dad. Not anymore.

So why do I yearn for the past?

After a quick shower and some leftover Thai takeout for dinner, you sit down to watch your next episode of Crash Landing on You.

“There’s an old Indian proverb,” says Son Ye-jin, in the form of character Yoon Se-ri, “that says, ‘Sometimes, the wrong train takes you to the right station.’”

I’ve got to jot that down. That’s good stuff. You grab your notebook from your side table. It’s already littered with quotes and notes and ideas. You find a clean page and write down the k-drama heroine’s words—but not before you flip through your notes from that day in the hills. The day you’d gone up to watch BTS film that music video for “research.” The first day you’d heard Jimin sing.

I can’t imagine a sound clearer, a voice more beautiful, you’d written. It’s a voice with the power to caress you gently, to bring you to tears, to take you to places unexplored. The pure emotion he puts into it is unparalleled.

Your fingers dig into the fibers of your couch. You have to pause the TV—tears are starting to gather in the bottoms of your eyes, and you can’t read the subtitles.

You miss hearing him sing. He was always singing, always dancing, no matter where you went. You lean back into the couch, and a memory appears behind your eyelids. Jimin taking you to Urban Light, humming “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady while weaving between the lampposts. “Come ‘ere, my Eliza,” he’d begged, goofy as ever. “Dance with me.” “We both know very well that I’m the Henry Higgins in this relationship,” you’d said, but you’d spun into his arms anyway. “I could have danced all night,” he’d begun singing, “I could have danced all night, and still have begged for more.” “Shh, Jimin, we’re out in public. Someone might recognize your voice.” “I could have spread my wings, and done a thousand things, I’ve never done before.” He’d continued, unabashed, light of every variety gathering in his dark eyes.

You’d fussed at him then. You’d tried to get him to shut up. Getting caught dancing with a girl—well, the fans would’ve been talking about it for months on end. But now, sitting alone in your little apartment . . .

“I’ll never know what made it so exciting,” you begin, your voice raspy, vocal chords raw from the tears you’d shed, “Why all at once my heart took flight.” The words come out slowly, painfully. “I only know when he began to dance with me . . .”

“I could have danced, danced, danced, all night.”

It takes you a few moments to realize that you did not sing that last line alone.

You stand up.

You wipe your eyes.

You look around.

You cross over to your front door.

Behind it stands a tear-stained face (complete with puffy lips and eyelids), a messy head full of hair, and, as ever, an impeccably dressed body.

“Jagi, I’m so sorry—” he begins to weep.

But his apology isn’t able to come to fruition. You stop it with a kiss: deeper and firmer and stronger than ever before. You grab the fibers of his sweater and breathe him in. It’s like coming up for air after spending months underwater.

“Shh, shhh,” you soothe him, smoothing his unkempt hair. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re here now.”

“But I just can’t—”

You kiss him again, right there in the hallway, refusing to listen to him berate himself.

“So I take it you missed me.”

“I take it you haven’t lost your cheekiness.”

“Never.”

You pull him inside, and when the door closes behind you, he slaps his hand against it in full kabedon style, trapping you against it. You expect a kiss, but he just says:

“This is so stupid.”

You begin to worry. “What is?”

“This. Us. Our lives keeping us apart,” he laments, hanging his head. “I mean, I’m grateful that the band grew to be so successful. I will always be grateful for that. I wouldn’t trade my hyungs, or our fans, for the world.” Now, he brings his forehead to rest on yours. “But I want to be with you,” he murmurs, big tears beginning to roll down his round cheeks.

You wipe them away as they fall. “I want to be with you, too,” you say. “Things are just . . . complicated right now. For both of us.”

“I don’t want you to feel guilty for pursuing your dream, Jagiya,” he holds your hand in his. “You’re not the one who left LA. You’re not the one who grew to be so bad at communicating. That’s all on me.” More tears fall. “It’s all on me.”

“It absolutely isn’t. I knew you’d have to leave sometime.”

“And I knew that, too.” He rubs his eyes. “It just frustrates me to no end.”

“I know, baby.”

“Hmm,” he hums. “You’ve never called me that before.”

You shrug. “I thought I’d add it to the already extensive list of your nicknames.”

He hugs you tight. “I’ve missed you so much.” He lets you go after a few minutes and starts pacing the room, a look of intensity painted on his face. “Jagi.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“You’ve seen La La Land, right?”

“We’ve watched it together eight times, Jiminie. It’s kind of our thing.”

“Right. Well, you know when Mia walks in to the apartment and Sebastian’s there and he’s cooking her dinner and she’s so glad to see him but then they sit down and realize everything’s falling apart because their dreams are pulling them apart and long distance is just too hard and so even though they both get what they wanted they don’t get what they wanted?”

He’s rambling—which means he’s nervous. But I am, too. “You mean, they prioritize their dreams over each other, so they end up apart?” You respond as calmly as you can.

“Yes. Gosh, you’re so much better with words than I am.”

“And you’re so much better at singing than I am, as evinced by our impromptu duet a minute ago—which I loved, by the way.”

He smiles. “Don’t distract me with compliments. Don’t get all cute on me now. I’m on the cusp of something good.” His mind is clearly hard at work.

Yours is too. “Something that’ll fix our problem?”

“Yes. I think so. Anyway, so you know how they both get what they want in the end but they don’t get each other even though they really wanted each other?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I’ve always thought that was so stupid. I mean, good writing, to be sure. It’s realistic—I’m sure it happens to people all the time. It’s a common thing: having to choose between the person you love and the thing you love to do. But I refuse to choose between you and the band.”

A million thoughts race through your head. “Do you . . .” it’s as if the kitchen lights begin to dim around him—as if he is the only thing illuminated in your vision. “Do you love me, Jimin?” You ask, wringing your hands nervously.

Finally, he stops pacing. “Isn’t it obvious?”

The vignette around him intensifies as you respond, “Well, it’s just, you’ve never said it in so many words.”

“Neither have you, and you’re actually good at words.”

You laugh. “Fair. But I’m usually not too good at them when it comes to this.”

Silence ensues for a few moments.

Then he speaks: “Wait, do you . . . do you not love me? Because if you don’t, then the plan I’ve been forming in my head all falls apart.”

You giggle, burying your face in your oversized t-shirt.

“What is it?" A look of worry attaches to his face. “What’s so funny?”

“I just . . .” more laughter comes out. Why are you like this? Stop giggling so much! “I love that you’re creating a plan in your head right now. And I love that you flew all the way here to see me. I love that, instead of simply knocking on my door, you heard me singing and decided to join in for the last line. I love that you’ve treated me like a queen, even though we both know I’m—as Henry Higgins would say—a ‘guttersnipe,’ compared to you. I love that you get concerned over every little thing, and that nothing—not even all this time we’ve spent apart—has killed your feelings for me. I love you, Jiminie. I love, love, love you. As Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing would say, ‘I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.’”

He crosses the room with the eagerness and speed of a famished fire eager to expand. His lips are on yours before you can take a breath to prepare yourself, and the kiss only leaves you more bewitched than you were before. His hands hold your head as if it were the most valuable diamond in all the world; his enchanting softness and brazen attention make you feel priceless. The ground beneath your feet seems to melt, but he catches you.

This kiss says, genuinely and shamelessly: I love you, Y/N. There can be no doubt of that. You are worth the world to me, success or no success. Your productivity, your popularity—your being loved by others—does nothing to impact your value in my eyes. And there is nothing in this world that can ever change my love for you. It’s everlasting.

You break away suddenly.

“What?” He asks. “Is something wrong?”

“That’s good stuff,” you say, crossing over to the couch and fumbling around for your notebook. “I’m sorry, Jiminie. I’ve just got to write that down.”

“Write what down? I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, yes you did. You most certainly did.” You finish scribbling down your thoughts. “Now get over here and talk to me some more.”

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts jimin #bts park jimin #park jimin #park jimin x reader #park jimin fanfiction #park jimin fanfic #park jimin fic #jimin x reader #jimin fanfiction #jimin fanfic #jimin fic #jimin fluff #inspired by La La Land #La La(chimolala) Land

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hollanderfangirl · 4 years

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Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice |Harry Holland X Indian! Reader|

A/N: I've wanted to write an Indian!Reader fic for so long and it's here!!! Also I wrote this at like 1am in the morning today???? You never know when inspiration might kick in. Tell me what you think!

Warnings: none lol, just a teeny weeny really small dislike towards Harry and Indian parents just being Indian parents.

You and Harry had been dating for over two years and you hadn’t even told your parents about it for the first six months. And when you finally managed to bring the nerve to tell them, they were so shocked, because they didn't expect you to date a British. But they grew out of it soon and were looking forward to meet him. It was the first time Harry was visiting India and you after three years. He seemed so nervous about meeting your parents but also excited about seeing the place you grew up, meeting all your friends and learning more about you. During the flight you kept telling him stories about your childhood and the places you were going to take him to see. You had decided that you would take him to some monuments or historical places in your city because they were your favourite to visit and also they were really good picturesque spots for Harry to click pictures. And of course you were going to take him to your school/ college where you had so many memories and all the spots where you and your friends used to hang out.

As the plane was about to land, you could see the city lights from below, it looked so beautiful and you realised how much you had missed home.

When you both get outside the airport, you see your parents were waiting for you.

“y/n!” your mom shouts.

You run towards her and pull her into a hug, it had been so long since you had seen her. Your dad then hugs you and kisses your forehead.

They start asking you about how the flight was and if you had eaten anything. You shrug it off and point towards Harry, who had been standing behind you, watching everything and smiling.

“Ma this is Harry!”

“Umm namaste,” he says. He wanted to make a good first impression, he had told you.

You parents smile and he shakes his hand with your dad.

On the car ride home, you point towards the buildings and tell Harry more about your city.

Your mom slowly whispers in your ear,"ye sar pe jhaad kyu uga rakha hai?" (Why has he grown this fro on his head?)

"Mom!" You whisper-shout. You loved Harry's curls, running your hand through it when cuddling and tugging on it during sexy times, how they felt on your neck when he hugged you. But apparently your mom wasn't a fan of it.

You reach home and rush towards your room, it was just like you had left, but cleaner. All the photos of boybands on the wall, all the inspiration quotes, the wall hangings, everything was exactly the same. You feel a wave of nostalgia as you sit down on the bed.

"We've missed you," Your mom says as she sits beside you.

"I've missed you too, ma," You start crying, just a few happy tears and your mom brushes them off from your cheeks.

"Now now, take a bath and relax, then we'll have lunch, okay? I've made your favourite food"

"Oh thank you mom"

"Harry will sleep in the guest room right?" Your mom asks you.

"Of course mom, where else would he sleep?" You say trying to hide your sneaky smile.

You had a plan in mind, which was going to get you killed if you got caught. But how could you deny that deep sexy voice? Those gorgeous curls? You were going to sneak into the guest room late at night, after everyone had fallen asleep and maybe..just maybe do some stuff, though you weren't sure, as Harry was so damn loud, he could probably be heard all the way from across the street.

You change into a salwar kurta, as you had missed wearing ethnic. You put on a pair of earrings which someone had gifted you, with a small bindi which matched the colour of your kurta.

Harry was in awe when he saw you, and you blushed a little as you didn't expect him to react that way.

"Wow- you… you look really beautiful"

"Well you don't look so bad yourself" You get closer to him, intertwining your hands with his. He leans in to kiss you, but you put a finger on his lips and softly push him away. You had told him not to PDA in front of your family but it was just a habit now, to kiss just like that, anytime, not even thinking about it before.

"Uh uh no baby not now," You eye towards the living room, where your dad was going through all the gifts you had bought for everyone."Tonight, okay?"

"Can't wait," He smirks.

Your mom had made enough food to last a week. But you hadn't had homemade food for so long, you didn't mind. After you left India, what you missed the most was the food, your family following closely after. You missed eating all the spicy food, snacks and sweets. Sure, there were good Indian restaurants in London but they were nothing close to the food made by your mom. You were so overwhelmed being able to taste her food again.

You talked all about how you met Harry and about his family. Your parents told you how things had been for them and a few updates on your relatives and cousins.

"Oh did I tell you your aunt's brother's son got into a university in the US?" Your mom says.

"No mom you didn't and what does that have to do with me-" You started to speak when you hear Harry cough. "Wha- what happened?"

"Spice- it's... too.... spicy... it's... it's burning," He says, puffing his cheeks, with a few tears in his eyes.

You immediately stand up and go to him, rubbing his back.

"Mom I told you not to make it spicy!"

"But- but I didn't put any chillis!" Your mom protests.

"It must be the masala (spices)," Your dad calls out.

"Whatever it is, just give him some water," Your mom reaches for a water bottle on the table.

"No it's going to burn even more!" You grab a mithai (sweet) from the plate and put it in Harry's mouth. A trick that you had learnt, not to drink water when spicy food gets to you, as it'll only make it worse. Instead always have something sweet, which cools down the tongue. "Better?"

"Mmmm yeah"

"Don't they eat spicy food?" Your mom asks.

"They do.. they do, mom. He's just not used to it and I did tell you to be careful in putting the spices"

When night fell, you go to the balcony and see Harry looking at the night sky.

"Hey"

"Hi"

"So my spicy nugget can't handle a little spicy food?"

He laughs. "Let me just say it was really spicy, okay how do you even eat it?"

"I'm used to it, I've been eating it since like forever and God, I've missed it so much"

"I know, babe and I'm so happy to see you happy"

"Aww come here," You pull him closer and put your lips on his, not caring who was watching. Both of your lips sliding over each other’s and his hands tracing your back, your eyes closed, savouring the taste of him. He moves his hands a little lower and playfully grabs your ass. You laugh into the kiss and tug on his hair. Your heartbeat becomes faster and you hold on to his neck. His mouth moves to your neck, slowly kissing and biting, you let out a small moan, feeling his hot breath on your skin.He lifts his head up and meets your lips again, deeply kissing you with his tongue teasing your mouth and-

"Y/NN!! " You hear a shocked voice call out from behind you, startling you both.

One look from your mom and you knew you were dead.

Taglist-

@tombob2005 @fallinfortom @spidey-reids-2003 @halfblood-princess-505 @notsosmexy @icyhollands @soft-petey @ladykxxx08 @purpleskiesstorm @theamazingtomholland @im-salt-but-not-salty @musicalkeys @call-me-baby-gir1 @whatthefuckimbisexual @theliterarymess @bishhhh @tenebrous-lacuna

#harry holland X indian! reader #harry holland fic #harry Holland #harry holland imagine #harry holland blurb #harry holland fluff #harry+holland+x+y/n #harry holland x you #harry holland x reader

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msmarvelouswinchester · 4 years

Text

Lost In Translation - 2

Summary - Jensen comes to India and falls in love with a fan who accidentally sees him while he's lost and saves him cause she knows Hindi.

Pairing - Jensen Ackles x Indian!Reader

Warning - Fluff, fluff and fluff.

Word Count - 2.4k+

Square filled - Date Night ( @spndeanbingo )

A/N 1 - I finally decided to add a second part to this fic! I had fun writing in Hindi and English in Indian dialect and I am incredibly happy at how the fic turned out.

Spn divider by the talented @talesmaniac89

A/N 2- For all the non-Indian readers, a little info on some of the food names used in the story -

Rosogolla - It is also called Rasgulla. It's a famous sweet of India which is a speciality of Kolkata (West Bengal). It's a spongy, white, ball shaped dumplings made from chhena (An Indian cottage cheese)

Pulao - It is a famous one pot rice dish made by cooking fragrant basmati rice with aromatic spices, herbs and sometimes stocks.

Butter Chicken - It is an Indian dish made by marinating a chicken overnight in a yoghurt and spice mixture. The chicken is then roasted or baked. A sauce is made from butter, tomatoes, almonds and various spices, usually including the famous tandoori masala spice mix, and sometimes cream.

Vada Pav - Vada pav, alternatively spelt vada pao is a vegetarian fast food dish native to the state of Maharashtra. The dish consists of a deep fried potato dumpling placed inside a bread bun (pav) sliced almost in half through the middle.

Part 1

“Y/N! Listen to me, beta!” your mom exclaimed over the phone.(child)

“What is it, Ma? You know I can't cancel the date with him,” you told your mother, as you gave your makeup some final touches.

“Aise kaise tu us ladke ke saath ja rahi hai? Acche se pehchanta hai usko? How come you are going on a date with an absolute stranger?” your mother asked. (How are you going out with that boy? Do you even know him properly?)

“Ma, he is a really good man. Stop worrying about me now,” you tried to assure her.

“Lekin tere baba ko kaun samjhayega? It doesn't feel safe. What if he is a-” (Who will convince your father?)

“Ma! You know what, I will call you later! I am getting late and I don't want to keep Jensen waiting,” you said and went to your room to get your purse.

“Just call me when you get home. Call me if anything suspicious happens. Call me-”

“Ma!” You let out a defeated sigh, “Bye!” You said and disconnected the call. You shook your head at your mother's outburst even though you knew she would behave like that but you weren't going to cancel on Jensen just because your Mom didn't agree. You weren't a little girl anymore who needed her mother's permission for every single matter.

You groaned when you felt your phone buzzing again in your hands, interrupting your train of thoughts. You didn't want to talk to your mother again but you looked at your phone only to see Jensen calling you.

“Hey sweetheart,” your heart fluttered in your chest as soon as you heard his voice.

“Hey,” you greeted, “I am waiting for my Uber and-”

“No uhm..I'll pick you up,” he said.

“You don't know my address.”

“Uh-yeah,” he chuckled, “you can text me your address and Clif will drive over and I can pick you up.”

“It's okay, Jensen. I know my way-”

“No, just text me the damn address, y/n,” he said and you heard a muffled voice over the phone.

“Okay, if you insist,” you said, making him chuckle.

“I insist, sweetheart,” he chuckled, “see you in a little while.”

You disconnected the call. Texting him your address, you hoped that he doesn't get lost.

You spent the next hour checking your makeup and dress, trying to look perfect and occasionally going through your phone. You smiled as you saw the pictures from the con, as you scrolled through the gallery of your phone. You thought back to the day before the con, when out of pure luck Jensen had bumped into you, looking like a lost puppy. Your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of your doorbell. You walked towards the door and opened it.

“I thought you got lost,” you giggled, “again.”

“That was one time,” Jensen groaned, making you laugh.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” he said, flashing you his signature smile.

“Thanks. You don't look bad yourself,” you blushed.

“Ready to go?” He asked.

“Haan, one minute,” you said. (Yes, one minute) You went back inside and retrieved your purse and phone and approached the front door again. You stepped out of the door and felt Jensen hands snaking across your waist. Biting your lower lip, you locked the door to your house.

“After you,” he whispered and guided you to his car. He opened the door to his car and you slipped inside it, Jensen climbing into the seat beside you.

“Where to, Miss-” Clif asked, trailing off at the end.

“Call me Y/N,” you said and told him the name of the restaurant as he set the GPS.

You looked to your side and saw Jensen watching you with a soft smile on his face. Your breathing hitched as he entangled his fingers with you. The car ride was filled with a comfortable silence only to be broken by Clif’s voice as he pulled the car to the side, announcing that you had arrived.

Jensen climbed out of the car, and waited as you got out of the car. He took your hands into his and started walking towards the restaurant.

“Table for two,” you said and the waiter guided you both over to a table.

“About that sudden change in plans,” Jensen said, as you both took a seat at the table, “Jared insisted that I take Clif with me because he was worried that I-”

“You would get lost again?” You giggled.

“....not really.” He cast his eyes down, as he spoke softly.

“What is it?” You asked.

“Jared-he is….uhm-he's a little wary about you, it's nothing, he is just looking out for me….you know,” the actor hesitated.

“I-I totally understand,” you said, making him look up to you, “I do. He doesn't know me, you are in an unknown country. I would feel the same too but I won't kidnap you.”

“I was hoping you would,” Jensen tsked, a smile slowly spreading on his face.

“I can but who will finish the show then?” you smirked.

“Now I think you only agreed to go on a date with me because of the show,” He feigned hurt.

“What can I say? I need to know what happens to a certain hunter.”

“A certain hunter, huh?” He smirked, as a waiter approached your table handing you guys a couple of menus.

“Yeah.” You saw his smile getting bigger, “those luscious locks of hair of Jared are really captivating and his hazel eyes.” You saw as his smile dropped and you couldn't help yourself as you laughed but he quickly recovered.

“Well I can't really blame you, I also tend to get lost in those eyes,” he joked, making you laugh harder.

“If I'm not wrong, this is your first time in India. Are you enjoying yourself?” You asked.

“Not gonna lie, I'm slowly starting to fall in love with India,” he replied.

“She is beautiful,” you remarked, and looked down to see the menu in front of you.

“Beautiful indeed,” Jensen said, only for you to look up to see him staring at you with fondness in his eyes. Your cheeks turned pink under his gaze and you gave him a soft smile. He dropped his gaze and started to skim through the menu.

“Considering this is my first time here, what Indian cuisine is a must have for me?” He asked.

“I like it that you are willing to try an Indian cuisine,” you smirked.

“When in India, do as the Indians do,” the actor said.

“Okay but do you think you can handle the spice?” You smirked.

“Are you challenging me sweetheart?”

“I'm not but I don't think you can handle our spicy dishes,” you said, raising an eyebrow.

“Bring it on. How spicy can it be?”

“Oh you have no idea but I'll go easy on this one with you and I would suggest you order Pulao which is a rice dish and Chicken Tikka Masala,” you said as he nodded.

“Have you ever been to the US?”

“Nope.” You shook your head, “But I want to. I really want to see the Grand Canyon.”

“That's a good choice,” he said.

“And maybe catch a show on Broadway-” your words were cut off as a waiter approached the table and you had to give him your food orders.

“I would gladly be your tour guide when you come to the US with a special tour around Texas,” he winked, making you smile.

“Maybe I'll call you up when I visit the US."

“I do want to ask you one thing. A lot of fans here recommended me something….a sweet, maybe-uh….something called Ros-roso-”

“Rosogolla. It's a sweet which is a specialty of my state. You have to try it. Tell me something, did you try the Vada Pav, considering you had a con in Mumbai?”

“Vada-what?”

“Vada Pav. You didn't try that? Really? Not even Jared?”

“No because we were always on the go go go and finally tonight we got some time off since Kolkata is our last pit stop before I have to fly back to Texas,” Jensen replied.

The night went on as you two got to know each other better. Your cheeks had started to hurt by how much you were smiling at his words. You were quite surprised at how well Jensen handled the food at first but you completely lost when he reached for the glass of water as soon as he had taken one bite of the chicken dish.

“Son of a bitch, why is this so damn spicy?” He jad exclaimed, making you burst out in laughter.

The rest of the night was filled with conversations about casual subjects about friends, family and work life. You didn't even realise how the time flew by and the time with him came to an end. As you two were leaving the restaurant, Jensen took your hand into his, entangling your fingers with his.

The car ride was filled with silence except the occasional small talk between you and Jensen. After sometime, the car came to a halt in front of your house.

“I am flying back tomorrow morning,” he whispered as you approached your house.

“I enjoyed a lot tonight Jensen. Thank you.”

“No thank you. You made this weekend a really special one,” he smiled, making you blush and look down to the ground. He put a finger under your chin, prompting you to look up at him.

“Can I?” He asked and you nodded.

He cupped your face with his hands and tilted his head, slowly leaning into you. He pressed his lips onto yours. The kiss was slow and passionate and he took his sweet time to explore your mouth. You gripped onto his biceps to keep yourself steady. You closed your eyes, feeling yourself get lost in the kiss. Growing up in an Indian household meant you had strict parents and a nonexistent dating life. You always used to dream about that perfect man in your life, the perfect date, the perfect kiss - would it it be like the scene from your favourite Bollywood movie “Jab We Met” when Geet realises her love for Aditya and runs after him to profess her love or would it be like the last scene from “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” where Simran gets the happy ending with Raj?

But that moment, at your doorstep, when your lips met with Jensen's, all those thoughts had left your mind because now you knew everything - the perfect man, the perfect date and the perfect kiss.

“Hi,” you said as he finally let go of your lips. Caressing your cheek with his thumb, he placed a kiss to your forehead.

“I want to make this work, Y/N/N,” Jensen spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

“But you will be in Texas and Vancouver, I will be in India. How- ”

“Long distance sucks but….come to the US with me,” he said.

“W-what?” You asked, slightly surprised at his wish, “I have my whole life here, Jay. I can't move to the US just like that. It's not a change between two cities. It's literally a change between two countries.”

“Yeah, yeah I get it. I-I shouldn't have made such a stupid suggestion.”

“No. It's not stupid. I just need some time before I move to America. I can't move there immediately.” You said.

“Till then we will try to make this long distance thing work. I am willing to try if you are, sweetheart,” he said.

“I am,” you said and gave him a chaste kiss on his cheek.

“Come to the airport with me tomorrow. I wanna see you again before I fly back,” he said, “I'll pick you up on the way to the airport.”

“Okay but-”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I was gonna say what will happen if you get lost on the way to your airport?” You asked with a straight face.

“I am never gonna live that one down, am I?” Jensen grumbled before laughing loudly.

“Nope,” you giggled.

“I am kinda glad I got lost. I found you,” he said, dipping his head to kiss you again.

“I think you should go now. You have an early flight. I don't want you to miss it,” you mumbled.

“What if I want to miss it?” The actor asked.

“Jay,” you frowned.

“Fine. I just don't want to let go of….this moment.”

“Hey you said it yourself. We'll work through this,” you tried to assure even though your own heart was breaking at the thought of him flying back to Texas. He gave you a quick kiss before making his way back to the car, leaving you standing at your doorstep. You stood there till you couldn't see the car anymore. You felt your phone buzz in your hand and you saw a text from Jensen about when he would pick you up the next day and a good night.

You felt yourself getting teared up. Being in a long distance relationship sucks. It was going to be a tough thing for both of you but you were both willing to work through it and maybe it wouldn't prove to be so hard.

“We'll make it work,” you whispered to yourself while standing at the doorstep like a mantra just like you whispered to Jensen the next day at the airport, as he kissed you one last time.

“I think I'm falling for you,” he whispered back, bumping his nose with yours.

“I am falling for you too, Jay,” you said, your hand fondling his shirt collar.

“Ackles!” The said man looked up and saw his best friend, Jared beckoning to him.

“Call me when you reach Texas,” you said.

“I will,” he said, “Goodbye, sweetheart.”

“Goodbye, Jay,” you said, your voice strained as you tried to keep your tears at bay. You watched as he walked with the other actors, glancing back at you one last time. You smiled at him and waved him a goodbye.

“I think I love you,” you whispered, sighing aloud as he turned around the corner and disappeared. You knew the con weekend would be the best experience in your life but you could have never guessed that it would change your life entirely. Life surely is unpredictable, isn't it?

Let me know how you liked this fic!

Feedback is appreciated!

#supernatural #jensen ackles #dean winchester #jared padalecki #sam winchester #spn #supernatural fanfic #jensen ackles x reader #jensen x reader #jensen x y/n #jensen ackles x y/n #jensen x you #jensen ackles x you #rpf #jensen ackles x indian reader #jensen x indian reader #spn fic #actor fic #spn fanfic

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calm-and-wine · 4 years

Text

(I’ll give you) the best years

part IV (masterlist, taglist)

Hello and happy monday! I hope everyone is having a lovely day, as you all deserve. I’d like to take this moment to say one more thank you to everyone who voted for my little story for the awards. We got runner up for best sequel (like whaaaaat), that is crazy and I love every single one of you. Here is part IV, hopefully it’ll bring you a little escape. (it’s 9.5k which I think is the longest thing I’ve ever written, but apparently I couldn’t help myself with this one)

PART IV

March 2025

Lucy was familiar with Niall in his recording mode. When he was in the studio day and night, having one idea after the other. But Niall working on music for One Direction was a different story. She has never seen him so excited, he was bouncing off the walls, gushing about studio sessions and laughs he shared with the boys, constantly playing her bits and snippets of what they had been working on. But working as a team with three other guys made it much harder to make the couple’s schedules line up. However, they still made it work, as much as possible. Niall made sure to keep his schedule free for all the Grand Slams and he even managed to be with her for some other tournaments on her last tour as well.

She was more than impressed that the band managed to keep their reunion a secret, mostly working in Louis’ little home studio. Even though they definitely weren’t as watched by the public as a few years before, knowing how big of a deal the band was, Lucy was pretty sure that as soon as people would get a whiff of them possibly coming back, they would go crazy for those guys once again. It was just the magic of them, something no one could explain, least of all the men involved.

Her and Niall managed to meet up in Los Angeles for a little over a week. Harry was there doing promo for his upcoming movie, which he filmed early last year, so he could still work on some songs with Niall, while Lucy was supposed to do two magazine photoshoots and interviews, as well as a talk show appearance, before going to play in Indian Wells. She had done a few things like that before, been a guest on a few tv shows back in England after winning her first Grand Slam, then in America after the US Open triumph, there were some magazine things as well. But since January, after she announced this would be her last season as a professional player, quite a few offers came in. Apparently she was the new sports star in demand. She wasn’t the biggest fan of those kinds of things, they always made her nervous, the only place she liked being the center of attention was on court. But her manager and the rest of her team convinced her to do a few of those, assuring her that publicity like that would be good for whatever she wants to do in the future.

When Lucy finally crossed the threshold of Niall’s LA house (which he insisted was theirs, since they were married and all), all she wanted to do was slide her back down the door and curl into a ball on the floor. She was exhausted. The photoshoot ran longer than she expected, and after that she was interviewed whilst having dinner. The reporter was a middle aged man, not necessarily rude, but a lot of his questions were more like assumptions that rubbed her the wrong way.

She just took off her shoes, when her husband appeared in the hallway, looking all soft in athletic shorts and a long-sleeve shirt, his hair growing longer than usual lately, which Lucy kinda loved. He wasted no time in stepping closer to her and enveloping her in his famous hug, even though she often thought he reserved special tight ones just for her.

“Long day?” he asked, still holding her, her arms wrapped around his waist just as tightly.

She nodded, before admitting, “I actually kinda hated it.” Her words muffled, as she nuzzled her face into Niall’s neck.

He hummed, rubbing her back in order to relax her. “Are you hungry?” He asked, but she shook her head, still making no move to let him go. “How about a bath?”

At last, Lucy pulled away slightly to look at him, her eyes big and appreciative. “Yes, please.”

He planted a sweet kiss on her forehead, squeezed her one last time before letting her go, but not completely, intertwining their fingers and leading her upstairs.

He didn’t ask questions, sensing her mood, mostly her tiredness, and simply falling into step with her actions. She went to the sink to remove her makeup, hating not being able to do that right after the last photo was taken, finding the professional make up to be way too much for her. Niall started filling up the tub, adding her favourite salt and scented oil. He truly knew the way to her heart.

“Do you want some tea? Wine?” he asked, turning towards her, their eyes meeting in the mirror, the bathroom filled with the sound of the running water.

“That apple and cinnamon tea?”

Niall nodded at her request. “Coming right up.”

He made a move to leave, but she grabbed his forearm, keeping him in place.

“Stay for a minute, please? It’ll get cold before I’m done with this mess,” she said motioning to her face and hair, which was pinned up, mentally cringing at just the thought of the amount of hairspray that went into it.

To be honest, the main reason behind her plea was just the need for his company, which she thought he must have sensed, because he linked his arms around her waist from behind and planted a kiss on her neck, before stepping back and perching on the edge of the tub.

“Was today awful, then?” he asked, giving her his full attention and concern.

“Well..” Lucy hesitated for a second. “No, not really awful, just…” she sighed, trying to explain it the best she could without complaining too much or sounding ungrateful at the opportunities she had. “The photoshoot was fine, I don’t love those stuff, but the clothes were amazing and everyone was super nice, just quite tiring though. But the interview…” She trailed off, rubbing particularly hard at her eye to remove the fake lashes.

“What happened?” Niall asked, biting his lip nervously. Lucy got her bad days, everyone did sometimes, but she was usually cool and collected, burying herself under a blanket and putting on a feel-good movie or a tv show, preferably cuddling into Niall’s body as well. She didn’t like getting her frustration out, she did that only while working out or playing.

“I’m just so irritated, baby,” she let out an exasperated sigh, giving up on washing her face for a minute and turning towards Niall. “I knew there has always been a lot of unfairness in treatment of men and women in sports, you know, and I’m not even talking about money, just all those headlines, with us it’s always the most unflattering picture on the front page, we’re always criticised about our looks and outfits first, don’t even get me started on the Serena’s catsuit debacle, banning that was just so wrong. Men don’t get that. When a tournament starts people wonder how they’ll perform, not what they’ll wear.” She shook her head, trying to not raise her voice, even though she felt like annoyance and anger were seeping out of her body. “Do you know what’s the question I’ve been asked the most since January?” Lucy asked, but didn’t really wait for Niall’s response, even though he gave her a small shrug. “Whether I’m pregnant. Because apparently that is the only plausible explanation for retiring. Like… How would that even work?” she asked, throwing her arms out in exasperation. “I’m playing my last tournament in September, do they expect me to play heavily pregnant then? Or with a baby on my hand and a racket in the other? What the fuck even is this bullshit?” She was talking fast, all her questions rhetorical, although Niall wouldn’t even dare to interrupt her when she was on a roll like that. “Men don’t have to endure any of it, everyone just automatically assumes it’s a health thing or whatever. With us it’s just constant speculation about our love and family life. And just… Fuck that, I’m honestly so done with this.” She turned towards the sink once more, going back to washing her face, like she was truly done with the topic. She didn’t even expect any reassuring words or anything from Niall, just needed to let her feelings out and vent to someone.

Niall was quiet for a moment, all he could do while she was speaking was look at her with wide eyes and a pull in his heart. She was agitated, angry and annoyed, but there was also so much passion in her words. So much care, not even for her, but for the number of women that had to endure it all as well. He always knew she was superhuman, but in that moment he was even more aware of that. He truly felt for her, just as much as he was in awe of her brain, her compassion and her strength.

He kept his head down for a second, thinking about her words, contemplating how he could possibly help, whether it was even possible. It was usually Niall who got riled up and went on a rant, not Lucy, so it was a new situation, one he wasn’t completely sure how to navigate, but he couldn't say he liked it. Seeing her this annoyed and agitated made his heart give a painful squeeze inside his chest, having this instant need to protect her and make it all better. It wasn’t a very familiar feeling for him, knowing how strong and independent his wife was, sometimes pointing those kinds of injustice, like when she saw a picture of a fellow female player to go with the article, but it was purposely chosen to be a photo with her skirt flying up, or when she saw comments online how “disgusting” it is when women scream on court after a good (or bad) point, but when the men do that they’re just “passionate”. She shared her thoughts about that with Niall, but never let it truly bother her. But this time, it seemed like she had had enough. And he couldn’t really blame her.

He stood up and pulled her into a hug once again, knowing he was in no position to fix the world, but hoping to at least make his wife feel better.

“I’m sorry. Men are dicks,” he said, which made Lucy laugh. It was a real laugh, the sound coming straight from her belly and making Niall smile instantly, just getting that reaction out of her, which was exactly what he was hoping to achieve.

“They really are sometimes,” she agreed, her face all lit up now, finally free of any make up, her eyes regaining their usual spark.

This was his wife, Niall thought, the most beautiful woman in the world, just like that, with her face slightly red after the wash, her hair still in a perfect up-do and her eyes telling him all of her secrets. In moments like that, he could not believe just how lucky he was.

Lucy pulled him in for a kiss, before patting his shoulder and letting him know he can go get her that tea now. There was no need for more words, she knew she had his support, he wasn’t merely a listener, if she asked him, he would do whatever she wanted. But it wasn’t that kind of situation. The patriarchy could not be changed by him, nor her, so she just tried to let it go, already feeling lighter by sharing those burdening thoughts. Tea and a bath in the company of her husband ended up being her safe haven, and that was all she needed.

July 2025

As Lucy fell down, her back hitting the grass, she could not believe what had just happened. There was no way it was real. Apparently, she just won Wimbledon. Fucking Wimbledon. The most prestigious tennis tournament that ever existed. The one in her home country. The one she always wanted to win, but didn’t think she’d actually manage to. It was a dream she let go already. And now it was a reality.

The whole stadium was so loud, she could barely hear her own thoughts. She sat up and saw her opponent coming towards her with a smile. Naomi was the closest person she had to a friend out of other players and she was very appreciative that they could compete at such monumental occasions, there was something special about sharing those moments with someone you not only had respect for, but also genuinely liked.

“That was fantastic, congratulations,” Naomi said earnestly as they hugged.

“It was a great game, you gave me hell,” Lucy said, at which they both laughed.

She spent a minute taking a bow and thanking the crowd, before she went closer to the stand to get to her people. She started up the stairs until she got to her player’s box, where there was a small door on the side, it was installed a few years back, after multiple players went jumping up and climbing the box, now it was much easier. It was only a moment before she was engulfed in a hug by her dad who sat the closest, her mum putting her arms around them a second later, turning it into a three way hug. Lucy could not keep the tears at bay any longer, she could hear her parents saying kind and loving words into her ears, but she was so emotional, still in a state of absolut shock, she wasn’t able to really process them. They let her go after a minute and all she had to do was take one step to be wrapped in her husband’s arms and crying on his shoulder.

“You mad, mad woman,” Niall whispered with a laugh, followed by a few kisses on her cheek, right by her ear, rubbing a calming hand over her back.

She stayed in his arms for probably way too long, seeing as there were thousands of people watching them and even more in front of the telly, the whole thing being broadcasted all around the world. But she didn’t care, she needed Niall, his presence always calming, his amazing hug and the smell of his cologne mixed with a bit of sweat from sitting in the sun feeling like home.

When she pulled away slightly, his eyes were shining. It always amazed her with how much love and pride he could look at her. Even though she usually looked at him the exact same way. She planted a simple peck on his lips before squeezing his arms with a smile and moving along to hug her coach, Mia and Natalia, Niall’s mum who, for three years now, has been coming to London for the two weeks during which the tournament took place to watch her play, then Lucy high fived the rest of the people in her box, including her manager, Niall’s cousin and best mate and their friends, Laura and Iain.

She could stay up there forever, sharing smiles and hugs with the people she cared about, but she had a trophy to pick up, after all. She actually probably took a bit too long already, because as soon as she was back down on court, she was hurried to the side to give a little speech before they presented her with a trophy. But they could wait for her, after all, she was the champion.

“Shit, Niall!” Lucy called out, which prompted her husband to come out of the bathroom running a towel through his wet hair, while the other was wrapped around his waist. “I just won Wimbledon. Do you know what that means?”

He looked at her with an arched brow, like she was mental. “Um.. A lot, I guess? I don’t know what you’re on about, love,” he chuckled.

She threw her head in laughter, looking absolutely beautiful lying on the bed, in a shirt of his, her skin slightly tanned against the white sheets, her body tired, but her eyes bright with glee.

“Well, yeah, but first of all, that means I’m going to be a member of The All England Club, which is super cool and basically I’ll be able to go there to train or just play or hang out and I’ll probably be invited to matches at Wimby in the future.” Her eyes, despite tiredness, were shining.

“You’ll get a plus one ticket, right?” he asked, draping his hair towel over the chair and stepping closer to where she was. “Does being your husband make me like an honorary member or something?”

“Mmm I don’t think so, babe. You might have to win the tournament for that,” she giggled, when he grabbed her calf and made a move to tickle her, but didn’t actually go through with it. “But I will probably get two tickets, so you’re lucky I like you. But the second super fun part is that there’s the Champions’ Dinner going on tomorrow night. And seeing as I’m a fricking champion,” she said with a huge grin, the words still sounding unreal, “we’re invited.” Her face momentarily changed into one of horror. “Oh fuck, Niall!” she exclaimed, completely horrified. “I don’t have anything to wear! What the hell, how am I supposed to get a dress in less than a day?”

Niall’s shoulders shook with silent laughter at how terrified she looked. “Well, you’ve got quite a few dresses you could wear.”

“Niall!” Lucy reached for the pillow to hit him with, but he was too quick, grabbing it before it made contact and throwing it on the other side of the bed, still laughing. “It’s The Champions’ Dinner! It’s a big thing. I can’t just wear any old dress,” she explained, her eyes narrowed.

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” he leaned towards her to peck her lips, before going back into the bathroom. He came back a minute later wearing a fresh pair of pants and shutting off the light after himself. “Oh wait,” he stopped in his tracks, looking at her with furrowed brows, “what about the dress you got for The Brits?”

“Ohhh that’s a good idea!” she exclaimed, grinning automatically. She did more smiling today than any other time, her cheeks actually started to ache earlier. “Do you think it’ll be alright?”

“It’s a gown, right?” he asked, shrugging. “And from what I remember it’s really pretty.”

“Yeah, you’re a bit of a genius,” she admitted, looking at him appreciatively. “I knew there was a reason why I married you.”

“Yeah, cheers,” he sniggered with fake offence, sitting at his side of the bed, with his back to his wife and reaching for his phone.

Lucy watched him fumble with it for a bit, probably responding to some messages, before she got up to her knees and crawled over to him, putting her arms around his torso from behind.

“You okay? Seemed pretty quiet during dinner,” she said quietly, putting her chin on his shoulder and looking at the side of his face. After she was done with a press conference and one or two more interviews after her win, they went for a celebratory dinner with their families, friends and her team, where surprisingly, Niall wasn’t his usual charming self, talking only when asked, even spacing out a few times.

Niall furrowed his brows slightly and reached to put his phone back on the bedside table. He hummed before speaking. “Yeah, just tired. I also have a bit of a headache, from sitting in the sun, I think.” He looked at her and when she didn’t seem entirely convinced, he planted a sweet kiss on her lips. “Aren’t you tired? Or are you still buzzing with adrenaline? Will you be able to sleep?”

She rested her forehead on his shoulder, not wanting to put distance between them yet. “Still buzzing a bit, but I think once my head hits the pillow, I’ll be out, cause I am genuinely wiped out. I think I’m getting old.”

Niall snickered at that, maneuvering their bodies so they faced each other. “You are most definitely not getting old,” he said, putting both his hands on her cheeks. “Don’t forget that I’m older than you and I am definitely not anywhere near being old.” He gave her another kiss and for a second Lucy felt like he wanted to convey something with it, something he didn’t want to say out loud, but she had no idea what and she didn’t want to push him with questions. So she just kissed him back, trying to somehow transfer all the love she had for him.

The last two days, since Lucy’s Saturday triumph, were crazy. The Champions’ Dinner was the best party she had ever been to, even though she was stressing about the tradition that was Champions’ dance, during which the male and female winners were supposed to dance together, but seeing that the men’s champion was Alexander, her worry almost disappeared, as he was someone she’s known for years, him being a year younger than her, they’ve seen each other around since playing as juniors, he had always been a laugh. It was actually incredibly nice to share that night with him, as they were both first time Wimbledon champions. Other than that, she had quite a few interviews and tv appearances as the champion.

So in the evening, they were sitting on the sofa, eating takeaway, because when they finally got home, none of them felt like cooking.

“Niall, since when do we not talk to each other?” Lucy said putting her plate down, done with the silence, but it was about more than just this moment.

“Hm?” he finally snapped his head up and looked at his wife. He barely said a word since they left the filming studio. He wanted to tag along today, it was his idea, but truth be told, he had been kind of distant since they came back after Wimbledon final. It was like he had been swallowed by his thoughts, engrossed in his own mind.

“You’ve been by my side for the past two days, but it’s like you’re lost inside your own head. And you keep giving me this weird look, last night at dinner and all through today…” Lucy noticed those things right away, having learned his body language and all the different cues after years together. But now, she was tired of waiting for him to speak up and say what is going on in his mind. “And I don’t know what it is, but you’ve never looked at me like that before. And I don’t like it,” she admitted, although she never thought she wouldn’t like the way Niall looked at her, but it was very far from his usual soft gaze. “It’s like you’re thinking something over or having regrets or.. I don’t know,” she shrugged, feeling a bit hopeless. “I don’t want to push you, but I’m worried and I’d just want to know what’s going on. We’re supposed to be open and honest, always. So please, just tell me what’s worrying you, baby.”

Niall hung down his head once again. He knew she’d pick up on his behaviour, the same way he could always tell when her head was spinning with thoughts. And it wasn’t like he had been trying to keep something from her, he just didn’t know what to say, how to breach the topic. However, he wasn’t aware she had been worrying about him like that.

“It’s just…” he started, but paused right away, licking his lips, putting his plate down on the table, eyes focused on his lap, where he started fidgeting with his fingers. “I think that maybe you should reconsider your retirement,” he said after a beat, lifting his head but still not exactly looking at her.

“What? Why?” she said truly confused and shocked. He had her full attention even before, but now she was looking at him with furrowed brows, trying to inspect everything about him, looking for any clues he might give.

“Well, do you not want to play longer?” he asked, eventually meeting her gaze, rubbing his palms over his jeans, because they began to feel clammy. “You know you could, the past two weeks just proved that.”

She was silent for a minute, trying to collect her thoughts, think of a reason why he would want her to keep competing. His eyes were darting around, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to watch her or avoid her gaze.

“Are you having doubts about us?” she asked eventually, starting to mindlessly twist the wedding band on her finger.

“What?” Now he was the one completely thrown off, his brows creasing and nose scrunching, which was an expression he had when he was concentrating, and one of her favourites, but not in this situation. At least the question made him truly look her in the eyes, focus on her.

“Now that we could actually settle down, spend most of the time together and not be constantly scattered around the world, does it scare you?” Lucy elaborated, trying to explain her worry.

“No, fuck, Lulu, why would you think that?” he exclaimed right away, almost offended by her question.

“Well, what am I supposed to think, Niall?” She slightly raised her voice as well. “I thought we were both excited for this, to build more of a home together, to not have to miss each other all the time and say goodbye every other week or month. And now you’re basically saying that maybe I should keep going around the globe playing tennis, being away from you, so what should I think?” She started gesticulating, throwing her hands around a bit, shrugging with that last question.

“It’s not that at all, Jesus,” he huffed, his hand going up to rake through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe you should know I love you, huh? I mean, we are married and all that...” His voice wasn’t particularly loud, none of them were screaming, but they were both clearly agitated, their voices rough, almost piercing.

“Yeah, but that’s all we know. Me travelling 10 months a year, you going back and forth between LA and London, or New York, or touring the globe,” she pointed out. “Trying to have little moments here and there, but not being together all year round. Probably not even half of it. And maybe that’s not what you want, maybe you didn’t think about it, when you asked me to marry you. I don’t know,” her voice was becoming more and more thick with emotions, but now that she had all those horrible, scary thoughts in her head, she couldn’t stop it.

“Stop!” he blurted, not even loudly, but sternly, which made Lucy snap out of her spinning state. “Okay? Just stop saying those things,” his face was contorted, almost like he couldn’t listen to the things she had been saying, like he was in pain because of her words. “What about the months when your knee was fucked up? Didn’t we spend every day together then? Was I running away scared? Did I not love having you home? How can you even… Fuck!” Both his hands were in his hair, tagging frustratingly. He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath, before speaking again, this time much more calmly. “Let’s not even go there, okay? Cause it’s not about that, at all. I’d love nothing more than to have you with me as much as possible. You’ve got to know that, Lulu.” That last sentence was let out as a plea, which made Lucy’s heart squeeze painfully inside her chest.

She did know that, of course she did. And yet, she didn’t know how else she could explain his earlier statement.

“Well, then what is it? Why do you think I should reconsider?” she asked, not wanting to guess again, her first theory leading them into a fight.

“Because you just won fucking Wimbledon, Lulu!” Niall shouted, his hands flying up. He wasn’t necessarily angry, but his voice was a humourless laugh.

“Yeah, I know, I was there,” she said with a smile, not really bothered by his outburst. “It was pretty great, but I still don’t see your point, baby.”

He just screamed at her, but right now she was nothing but calm and level headed. He calmed her worst fears that came with his question, so she wasn’t stressed anymore. But he was exasperated, so it was her turn to get rid of any worries he clearly had.

He took another deep breath, Lucy scooted closer to him on the couch, reaching for his hand and tracing figures on his palm in support and reassurance.

“It was your biggest dream, you always said so. And now you’ve done it and you’re just gonna quit playing two months later?” Niall finally asked in disbelief, looking closely at her, as if searching for something, any trace of hesitation. “Don’t you think of other things you could still achieve? What about French Open? Don’t you want to have all the Slams?”

“Niall,” she said so tenderly, all his previous anger just evaporated hearing her voice like that. She put a hand on his cheek to make sure he will hear her every word and see her true intentions and feelings. “Yeah, I won Wimbledon. It was amazing and I never thought it would actually happen. Do I think I could have another big win? Yeah, maybe,” she admitted with a shrug, at which Niall opened his mouth to speak, but she simply put slightly more pressure on his cheek and continued. “But there’s also no guarantee it will happen. And I don’t want to spend another year or two or three or however long, chasing something that I don’t need. I haven’t managed to win French in the ten years I’ve been playing, so what’s to say I’ll win it now? I’m not the best on clay and that’s okay. Sure, it would have been incredible to win all four Slams. But I want to appreciate the success I had, not think of something I maybe could have had. I achieved way more than I ever dreamt of. So that’s more than enough for me.”

Her words were as earnest as possible, her eyes not leaving his, the corner of her lips gently tugged upwords. She really meant every word and a part of Niall already knew that, but his mind still wasn’t put at ease, he felt like his head had been spinning with too many thoughts since Saturday. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy about her winning, if there was anyone rooting for Lucy, it was always Niall, he took more pleasure from her successes than his own. But this one came with a lot of doubts.

“I just…,” Niall pulled away slightly, feeling the need to put a bit of distance between them for his next words. He kept his one hand inside hers, but the other tugged at his hair frustratedly. “I don’t want you to wake up someday and regret it. And resent me or our life together or our kids for not playing longer, for not going for more. Cause it would break my heart, Lulu, I don’t think I could live with that thought,” he finally said his biggest worry out loud, his eyes beginning to cloud.

Lucy gasped at his confession. The fact that Niall may have that worry didn’t even cross her mind. She was baffled, instantly feeling sick knowing that he’s been turning it over in his head for two days, when her stomach turned upside down just at the thought.

She squeezed his hand to bring his attention back to her, her own eyes filling up with tears. “Hey, come on, I could never ever resent you. Or our potential future children. I love you, baby,” her voice almost broke at the end and Niall didn’t even wait a second before enveloping her into a hug. She instantly climbed into his lap, hiding her face in his chest, breathing in his scent, before pulling away slightly to continue talking. “And even after winning, the thought to keep playing hasn't even crossed my mind. Which just means I’m ready to go.”

He looked at her, in his arms, both of them keeping eye contact, as if trying to look into each other’s souls or send an unspoken message.

Niall sighed after a minute, unwinding one of his hands from around her waist to run it over his face and rub his eyes.

“I just kept watching you being so happy these past days, and you’ve been asked about it in every interview and just…” he shook his head lightly, trying to take comfort in a hand she was rubbing over his arm and not get riled up again. “I’d never want to hold you back, I hope you know that.”

Lucy bit her lip, her heart soaring and aching at the same time. She was overwhelmed by the amount of love he had for her. There wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that he would sacrifice everything for her own happiness. If only she wanted him to. It was bewildering to know that someone loved you this much. So much it was almost incomprehensible.

She licked her lips, thinking over her answer. She knew Niall had nothing to worry about, that his doubts weren’t even a possibility to her, but she didn’t want to make him feel silly, as it was a genuine concern that he was entitled to. Just because she knew there was absolutely no way that what he was worried about would ever happen, didn’t mean he was wrong for worrying about it. But now it was her job to make those doubts go away.

She grabbed his neck and spoke with a voice so confident that it’d hopefully get rid of all his doubts. “Yeah, they kept asking about it, but what did I say to that, hm? Every time they asked me about it, what did I say?” she looked at him expectantly until he sighed with defeat.

“That you’re incredibly excited for your life outside the court,” he said, pulling her closer, no space left between their bodies now.

“And?” she asked, a smile forming on her lips.

“And that you look forward to spending time with your husband,” he answered, his face finally mirroring hers, the furrow in his brows disappearing, his lips turning upwards.

“And I meant that,” she said earnestly, sealing her words with a kiss on his lips. “Cause I do want to focus on other things. I want to go on tour with you, watch you pour your heart out in front of thousands of people every night and wait for a sweaty hug right off the stage, like you do whenever you watch me play.” At that his smile grew wider, his nose crinkling cutely. “And I want to start working outside the court, maybe even have my hand in training another British Wimbledon champion, who knows,” she laughed at that prospect, because it barely seemed real, but Niall squeezed her waist as if to let her know it doesn’t have to be a joke. “I want to have a somewhat normal house life and yeah, have some children with you,” she shrugged, both of them looking at each other with admiration. “That’s what I’m most excited about right now. Besides, you know my knee’s been starting to act up and I don’t want to risk it getting worse. And I’d hate to have to quit because of an injury, I want to go on my own terms.”

Niall didn’t want to dwell on it any longer, so he focused on the latter part of her speech. “Do you think our child could be a Wimbledon champion? Could you actually imagine it?” he asked with a grin, probably already imagining little blond haired versions of themselves running around with tennis rackets in their hands.

Lucy laughed. “Well, I’d say our child could be anyone they’d want. Even Wimbledon champion.” She leaned in for a much needed kiss, but all he gave her was a peck, his head apparently filled with thoughts he just had to share now.

“That would be quite sick, actually.” His eyes were shining while looking at her, not even really focused, like he was picturing their future. “Mummy and daughter. Or son. Maybe you could even present the trophy!” He got so excited, Lucy could do nothing but laugh. How did they go from nearly fighting to making their potential child a champion, she didn’t know, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. “No, but seriously, would you be okay with our child playing? Professional? Would you like to be a coach?” He turned serious, focusing on her once more to gauge her reaction.

“If they wanted to play, of course I’d be fine with it. I’d worry and warn them about things, but I wouldn’t stop or discourage them. But I would not train them. I mean, I might be like a co-coach. Or an advisor.” How he coaxed her into actually discussing it, she did not know, but it was a power of his, making her want to do anything that got him this happy and excited. “But I wouldn’t be able to draw a line between being a mum and a coach. I’ve seen a lot of this on tour, and it’s not always bad, but not everyone is right for that. I know I’m not,” she admitted, shrugging. “But I would never push our children to play tennis. Okay, I might teach them how to play, but like for fun, not as a career.”

To Niall it didn’t seem possible that there was something his wife wouldn’t be able to do. She was a super human.

“I think once they see how awesome you were on court, they might want to be just like mummy,” he said with a grin, pinching her waist playfully.

“Well, let’s hope they won’t aspire to be like daddy,” she chuckled.

“Heeeeeey,” Niall whined with mock offense.

“Get bras and knickers thrown at them on stage.”

“Hahahaha, it’s not actually the best feeling,” he admitted.

“Okay, let’s stop this talk about children, before you get any actual ideas, because I do still have a few tournaments to play and whatnot.” She patted his chest and made a move to climb off his lap, but he only tightened his hold on her, not letting her go anywhere.

“But you do want to have some, right? Like, sooner than, let’s say, ten years from now?” He asked, genuinely curious as they never discussed it properly. Children had been mentioned here and there, but nothing more deliberate.

“Yeah, I do.” She nodded, a gentle smile gracing her lips.

“Okay. ‘Cause I want that too.” He leaned down to kiss her, properly this time, releasing all the earlier insecurities and frustrations into the kiss.

When their lips parted, Lucy combed her fingers through his hair, before speaking again, the subject of children bringing another thing to the front of her mind. “But first, I was actually thinking of buying a new house,” she admitted. “We talked about it when we got engaged and I think I’d actually want one now. I love this one, but I don’t know, I’d kinda like to get a new one, start a proper home once I’m done.”

She loved the home they were in now, it was the place where most of the important moments happened in their relationship, with Niall having it since before they even started dating. It was here where he said he loved her for the first time. He asked her to marry him here. They came back home to each other time and time again here. But it also wasn’t exactly ideal. The problem was never the fact that it was theoretically his house, not theirs. It just wasn’t a house she wanted to grow old in. She loved it, but it wasn’t theirs, not in the sense of ownership, but in a scene of making it personal. She also wanted a space that would truly be theirs, from the beginning, where none of them ever lived alone.

But it seemed like she didn’t have to even try to explain it to him, his face lighting up with a soft smile, planting a kiss on her cheek before speaking. “Yeah. I actually love that idea.”

~~~~~~

Lucy was able to stay home in London for over two weeks, before she had to travel to Montreal. It made her more than happy because it meant she was with Niall for One Direction's fifteenth anniversary, which was also the day the news about the band’s comeback were being released, with their new single coming out two days later. The announcement was planned to go out at 8pm UK time, but they all decided to have dinner and spend that evening together, meeting at Louis and Eleanor’s house. When they arrived, Liam and his wife, Maya were already there, Harry and Ines, his girlfriend of three years, arriving only a few minutes later. They’ve met like that before quite a few times, sometimes with Louis’ and Liam’s kids running around, so Lucy was more than acquainted with everyone, feeling completely at ease.

Even though the meal was delicious, they were all so excited and nervous, they couldn’t even sit still. Lucy noticed Niall’s knee bouncing two minutes after they sat at the table, putting her hand on his tight to at least try and calm him down.

“Fuck, I don’t think I can do this, can we tell the world now?” Louis whined, throwing his head back exasperatedly.

“I am honestly so stressed right now,” Harry joined in.

There was no missing of the group’s anxiety, everyone looking around, checking the time every few minutes.

“The food is delicious, but I think I might actually throw up,” Liam said, his body slacking against the chair.

“How about some stronger drinks to calm down? Or shots?” Eleanor proposed, all of them drinking beer or wine with dinner.

There was an instant chorus of agreement, Louis getting up to fix the drinks. They all moved from the table to lounge on the couches, none of them able to stomach any more food, no sounds in the room other than the soft music playing in the background and a quiet murmur of a few words shared between them.

“Okay, let’s do it!” Louis exclaimed, coming back with a tray full of shots.

“Cheers!” The boys said in unison once everyone grabbed a glass. The alcohol burned Lucy’s throat, her eyes screwing shut for a minute.

“Another one?” Niall proposed, not even a second later.

Lucy shook her head, watching her alcohol intake, as always when she was in the middle of the season, Maya also refused, but everyone else downed another glass, leaving two full ones meant for the girls. Liam and Niall looked at each other, before shrugging their shoulders at exactly the same time and grabbing another glass.

“How much longer?” Ines asked, looking around in search of some clock.

“Twenty eight minutes,” Niall replied after checking his watch.

“Oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot, congrats on Wimbledon once again, Lucy, that was absolutely amazing,” Maya said with a smile.

Everyone in the room either texted or called her or Niall on the day she won, but that acknowledgement face to face was nice.

“Thank you, it was crazy,” she gave a grateful smile, after everyone added their congrats, Niall throwing an arm around her shoulders to bring her closer. She caught the proud look he was giving her and put a hand on his knee in an appreciative manner.

“Do you think we could come watch you play in the US Open?” Harry asked, redirecting his attention to Niall right after. “We’re free then, right?”

“Yeah, I made sure of that,” he confirmed proudly.

“Umm…” Lucy hesitated for a second, trying to explain how it works. “Yeah, I can get you tickets, no problem, it’s just hard to plan it a little bit, because I don’t know how deep I’ll go.” She didn’t want them to be bored at the first round match, but she also couldn’t predict when her last match would be. It still felt surreal, that she would play her last game in less than two months.

“How incredible would it be if you won that one too?” Liam asked with a grin.

“Mental,” Louis agreed.

“I reckon she could do it,” said Eleanor, looking at Lucy with confidence.

Because their bodies were touching, Lucy could easily feel Niall’s body tensing in reaction to the conversation, the memory of their recent fight still fresh in both of their minds. She didn’t turn her head to get a better look at him, but squeezed his knee as a reminder that it wouldn’t change anything for her.

“Don’t bet any money on me, though”, she laughed, before changing the subject. “Are you walking any fashion weeks this year, Maya?”

While she listened to the answer, Niall reached for her hand splayed on his knee, slotting their fingers together in a silent thank you. That’s how they spent the next couple of minutes, trying to keep conversation going, Louis making sure everyone had a drink in their hand. There was a nervous tension in the room, even though they knew what would happen, all the posts queued up, the reaction they would get was a question mark. They could only hope, basing their expectations on previous love they always got from their fans. But it had been years and things changed, yet it was impossible to prepare for disappointment.

“Oh shit, just one more minute,” Louis said, looking at the time on his phone.

“Let’s count it down!” Ines proposed.

So they did, the last ten seconds, just like on New Year’s Eve. To think of it, there were some similarities, looking forward to something new, things changing, entering a new era almost. When they came to zero, you could almost hear a pin drop. It only took a second for all of the guys’ phones to go off, indicating one notification after the other. They were all stood in a circle, their respective better halves right next to them. Lucy had her arm around Niall’s waist, looking through his shoulder to read some of the comments, the whole world starting to freak out. There wasn’t one person in the room who didn’t have a huge grin on their faces. The women look proudly at their men, knowing how hard they worked, how much love and passion they put into the band. It seemed like all the guys looked up at each other at the same moment, taking deep breaths and stepping closer to wrap one another in their famous four way hug. Eleanor wrapped her arm around Lucy’s shoulder, who looked at the other woman happily, noticing tears pulling in her eyes. She reached her other hand for Ines, who also grabbed Maya and they just stood like that for a minute. The band squeezing each other and whispering excitedly among themselves, while their lovers embraced as well, forming their own little group, looking at their loved ones with so much awe, their eyes glistening with emotion.

After a minute, Harry pulled slightly away, looking behind him at the women. “Come on, get in here, girls,” he said, beckoning them over.

So they joined them, each one next to their man, Lucy squeezed between Niall and Ines. They were all holding each other tightly, a one of a kind bond. There was no comparing it to what those four guys had, but they all felt like family. They were all connected and none of them would have it any other way, forming genuine friendships they all cherished.

Niall twisted his head to the side to kiss Lucy on the crown of her head, before she turned her head as well to meet him in a proper kiss. They were both so happy, they couldn’t stop smiling, their teeth clicking against each other. But they were just so ecstatic. There were no words to describe the feeling. And Niall’s happiness was through the roof, because he was so appreciative to share that moment with Lucy. Nothing could beat having her with him, being able to share it, because it felt like a once in a lifetime thing. Having her to support him and calm him down when needed, and now to share that joy with her. He truly felt like, if she wasn’t there beside him, he wouldn’t be as happy as he was. And maybe that was wrong, maybe he shouldn’t feel like that, but he did. Because his wife made everything better. It was that simple. Seeing her proud and smiling, made the whole situation better. Sharing anything with the people you love makes it better. Whether it’s sadness, problems, successes or happiness. And there was no better thing to share than love.

September 2025

It was impossible to prepare for a moment like this, Lucy thought finally walking back into the hotel room in New York. It was after 3am. She finished playing, her last professional match ever, about an hour and a half ago. Even after the little goodbye ceremony after her loss and a press conference, it still didn’t feel completely real. She had quite a few of those farewell moments, almost at every tournament she played this year. She knew what was coming, after all she made that decision in December. Maybe it was because she didn’t know which match would be her last, didn’t know how far she'd go, just happy with every win she got.

She felt such a mixture of emotions, it was hard to wrap her head around it all. The goodbye she got was amazing, the organizers playing a little video of all the years she competed, including her triumph on Flashing Meadows, and messages from fellow players. She felt a bit sad, but she always did when she lost. A bit proud, because she didn’t go without a fight, the match an over two hour, three sets battle. Excited because a part of her was waiting for that moment, when she’ll be able to truly think about the future and focus on upcoming projects. But most of all, she was simply appreciative. That she had such a good season, that she was able to play every tournament she wanted, that she gave it her all and was able to keep playing on a good level, that after finishing this last game, she was able to look out into the crowd (who was giving her a standing ovation) and not only see Niall, but also her parents, Mia, Harry, Liam and Maya.

Once the door to their hotel room closed, Lucy was exhausted. She had a quick shower right after the match, so technically she could go straight to bed, but her mind was buzzing.

“Lulu,” Niall said, leaving his shoes by the door and walking up to her, his hands going to her waist immediately, to bring her close to him, “how are you feeling?”

Lucy rested her head on his chest, quiet for a moment, trying to make sense of her mumbled thoughts. “I… I’m feeling good?” she said, but it sounded more like a question. “It’s… surreal, still. Maybe ask me tomorrow?”

“Of course.” He cemented his words with a caring kiss to the crown of her head.

“But I’m okay, really,” she assured him. “Kinda sad, kinda happy. Relieved?” Her answer was more like a question again, like she was looking for a right answer, but wasn’t sure if it was one. “I don’t know, it doesn’t really seem like it’s the end yet, you know, that I won’t play like this again.”

He hummed, thinking for a quick second before asking another question, “are you going to miss it?”

“Yeah, probably,” she shrugged. “It’s going to be weird, not having to train, no tournaments to prepare for or look forward to. But it’ll be fun to see what’s ahead, you know? Slow down a bit, maybe, explore other things in life. And spend time with you, obviously. Watch you and the band. It’s gonna be good, baby.”

“Will you miss your team?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. But I hope we’ll keep in touch. Maybe work together again, you know, if I open that training centre or if we get someone to manage… Who knows.”

He nodded, “I’m really proud of you, you know? I’m in awe of your decision, to do things your way.”

“Thank you. It was the right call, I can tell. The next few months will be weird, I’m sure, but it’ll be worth it. I’m actually really excited to see what’s to come.”

Tennis was all she knew. In a way, it became her routine. Sure, there were some tournaments changes, but it was also pretty much the same for years upon years, ten months of traveling, playing here and there, hard court, clay, grass, then hard court again. A quick vacation after that before going back to training full force to prepare for the next season. Over and over again. And now, thinking about the future might have been scary, but it was also nice to do something new. Have a fresh mind. Have an option of doing something else, an opportunity to just travel by Niall’s side for a bit. To focus on something other than tennis. To explore what else she might be good at.

“Oh, could you maybe ask Harry and Liam to join us for dinner on Thursday? With the girls, of course. Louis is still in California, right?” She was pretty sure she mentioned something about it when they talked after the match, but her tiredness and emotions made it hard to focus. She also asked her manager to actually organise it, make a reservation at the restaurant and all, so she didn’t know any specifics yet.

“Of course, don’t worry, they know it’s happening, I’ll send them the details in the morning. And yes, Tommo is still there, he’s meeting us in LA.”

They had a few more days off, the guys had to be in Los Angeles on Monday to do some promo for their reunion and second single, Niall made sure to book time off for all two weeks of the US Open, but because she had lost in the quarterfinals, it was just Tuesday, well, very early hours of Wednesday, giving them some time to relax.

“Let’s go to bed, yeah?” he proposed, planting another kiss on her head, her arms still tight around his waist, her cheek pressed to his body, so close she could feel his heartbeat underneath it.

She shook her head slightly, pulling away to look at him. “I can’t, my mind is spinning. I need it to stop first.” She put one of her hands up to tread through his hair, before cradling his cheek. She then raised up onto her tiptoes to join their lips, the kiss starting slow, but growing more passionate with every lick into his mouth. Her hand travelling under his shirt and the other going back to his hair to tug at it slightly, let him know exactly what she meant. “Are you too tired?” she asked parting for a second to catch her breath, before moving to work on the delicious skin of his neck.

Seeing his wife like that always did things to Niall. It wasn’t even about her having very clear intentions, but how he knew she wanted him to take care of her. How she needed him. Lucy was an absolute beast on court, Niall’s favourite text to send her before a match was “go get them, tiger”. But after the game was finished, especially after a tough battle, she was nothing but gentle. In desperate need of hugs, kisses and someone to take care of her. It wasn’t the first time they had sex in a situation like that, her needing to quiet her thoughts, but also to give up control, after having been so focused and alone on court.

And right now was no different, she wanted to get lost in Niall, needing the quiet only he could bring her.

“Never too tired to help you,” he assured, grabbing her neck gently to pull her lips back to his. To Niall, there was no bigger compliment than this, this incredible woman not only counting on him, but giving herself to him completely, body and soul.

And as he grabbed her thighs to pick her up and carry her to the bed, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind, that he would take care of her. In the best possible way.

taglist: @stylishmuser @verorax @georgiahoranxx @exoticniall

#1dff #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan oneshot #one direction fanfiction #niall horan fan fiction #niall horan one shot #one direction fan fiction #one direction one shot #dtl #down the line

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archanasingh18 · 3 years

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10 Must Watch Bollywood Movies Before You Die

Best movies that you must watch before you die:

When it comes to the best content movies, no one can beat Bollywood. So here is the list of movies that you must watch bollywood movies before You die. It has hit the Bollywood and world’s largest film industry Hollywood in terms of output and each. There are billions of diehard fans worldwide who love to watch Indian movies based on different genres. We have a great collection of outstanding performance-based movies from historical drama, true stories, inspiring stories, and many more. I am going to share some must watch Bollywood movies that can change your life. Let’s start

You must watch Bollywood Movies from different genres:

Badla

Badla film was adorned with Taapsee Pannu and Amitabh Bachan. Taapsee played the role of a murderer who murdered her lover, but she claims that she did not do it. The story exposes the murder mystery and Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan), a lawyer by Naina Sethi (Tapsee Pannu), trying to guess the real killer and their motive.

Badla types of movies are the turning point that has changed the concept of conventional Bollywood movies because women are the heroes of this film. The main motive of this movie is to show a ruthless successful businesswoman and give a poignant statement. However, it is one of the tremendous must watch Bollywood movies that successfully grabbed audiences’ attention.

Kahaani

Vidya Balan starrer Kahaani is a captivating thriller from start to end, and Vidya proved her ability yet again by single-handedly carrying the film forward on her firm shoulders. Most of all think that Bollywood movies revolve around male characters, and males have been prominent in almost all movies.

The film shows an attack of poisonous gas in the Kolkata metro and leaves thousands of dead. Vidya Bagchi (Vidya Balan), who played the role of pregnant software engineer, travels to India from London searching for her missing husband, Arnab Bagchi.

See the list of 10 most underrated Hindi Movies

It shows the struggle of a pregnant woman who exposes the involvement of the intelligence department in the matter, and the entire story is even more complicated and dense. In this story, the murder of every person who tried to help Vidya created a sense of fear in her, but she fought bravely for her unborn child and a missing husband.

A Wednesday

In this movie, Naseeruddin Shah played the role of “The Common Man and Anupam Kher play the role of “Prakash Rathod, Commissioner of Mumbai Police. One dialog that audiences cannot forget was, “I don’t want you to associate any religion to what I am doing.” Are you curious to know how it is different from the rest of other Bollywood movies?

It shows the power of a “common man” who doesn’t succumb to the system. No movie showed a “common man” power before; that’s why it is counted as one of the best movies yet. In the pipeline of must watch bollywood movies, I will give space it also.

Rang De Basanti

Rang de Basanti is one of the must watch bollywood movies before you die that is something every youth related to them. Have you noticed what has changed in our country? We can say one thing that changes is the government.

The film was successful showed the hurt and anger that the youth of the nation feels to see corruption snatching their lives. We can learn one thing from this movie that we can’t solve all matters through violence.

Pink

If you still have not watched the movie ‘ Pink,’ it is the right time to enjoy the film with your entire family, giving a profound message to society. Whenever a rape incident happens in the city, people talk about the victim’s relationship with the attacker, the time of the day, and the victim’s dress.

The timid middle class immediately heaves a sigh of relief that they know the girl was drunk and skimpily dressed. They think about why she needs to go outside late at night. This nonsense ideology strips the rapist of all blame. Our middle class feels that rapes are common for those women whose dresses are seductive or drunk. The movie challenges the deepest remnants of feudal ideology. You must watch bollywood movie to help us have a world with a better relationship based on mutual respect and love.

Tumbbad

Maybe you are one of them who want to know the best horror movie ever made in India that is the perfect combination of wonders and horrible components. One such movie is the horror-thrilled Tumbbad that keeps you up all night. Instead of showing strike fear of the monster, Tumbbad makes you aware of the devil inside us humans. The ending of every horror movie should be pleasant, and Tumbbad was successful about it.

3 Idiots

Movies like 3 Idiots have exposed the structure of education, which shows how things are imposed on the youth and what they want to do is ignored. Aamir Khan is portrayed throughout the film as a magical boy who does not panic in any situation and finds a quick solution to it.

The story keeps you hooked in every part and gives the message to do what your heart tells you; you can succeed in that. It is a perfect combination of emotions and comedy from commence to end. It is one of the must watch Bollywood movies in Indian cinema history.

Shahid

Rajkumar Rao starrer Shahid is a Hindi-language biographical drama film directed by Hansal Mehta. If you are tired of watching classic Hindi movies, I think Shahid is for you. The movie shows a lawyer character who was arrested on allegations of conspiring against the state in 1994.

Shahid helps those people who are accused of terrorism. In his short tenure, he got 17 acquittals for his clients. The Supreme Court has acquitted Fahim Ansari from the allegation of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai after Shahid’s death, and Shahid proved in a lower court that there is not sufficient evidence against Ansari. The film shows how innocent people are sent to jail while they did not commit that crime.

Taare Zameen Par

It is one of the movies that not only entertain but also aware you. The purpose of this film is to reflect the attitude of parents towards their children, the expectations they have and the shortcomings in the attitude shown by this film. The film is adorned with actors like Aamir Khan and Darsheel Safari.

In this film, Aamir portrays the role of a teacher who not only forces his children to study out of fear of being hit with a stick, but also teaches a great deal to the children in sports. I think every parent must watch this movie.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

Director Zoya Akhtar has portrayed the place of friends in life, their importance, and their need. The story of the film is exciting and straightforward as well. Through the movie ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,’ the stars have tried to bring the fun of life and the real fund of living in front of everyone. Masala films have dominated Bollywood for a long time; in such a situation, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ makes the audiences think. However, these are must watch bollywood movies that can change your life.

#must watch Bollywood Movies

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webrokethe4thwall · 4 years

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Venus in the City

A request from @rottmntrulesall for their Little Sister Venus AU. I highly recommend you check their blog out!

After begging and pleading with Splinter, the Turtles and April had finally convinced him to let them take Venus for a ride in the Turtle Tank. Venus fussed only a little as Donnie strapped her into a car seat that he had made especially for her before squealing in delight as the tank roared into life. Her older siblings smiled fondly at the happy noises she made.

“You like that, Venus?” Raph asked, carefully driving through traffic. “You like riding in the Turtle Tank?”

“Yeah!” April cheered in a high pitched voice, waving both of Venus’s arms in the air and pulling a giggle out of the Indian Tent turtle.

Venus’s eyes shone happily. The buildings were moving so fast, and her chair would bump and rattle in the most fun way! This was great!

“Wait, was that—” Donnie started as he squinted out the window.

Suddenly, the Turtle tank swerved as the Foot Lieutenant, Foot Brute, and Foot Recruit landed on the hood.

“Turtles!” Foot Lieutenant rasped. “Prepare for defeat!”

“Oh, come on!” Leo groaned. “Can’t we go for one drive without some bozos ruining everything? How’re we gonna deal with these guys with Venus here?!”

“Like this!” Donnie flipped a switch, and Venus was pulled into the back of the tank and encased by a clear dome. “That bubble is made of a highly damage-resistant material that will keep Venus safe while we deal with these jerks.”

“Don’t worry, Venus,” Mikey comforted the confused baby as their siblings rushed out of the tank. “We’ll be back soon. Just sit tight!”

And like that, Venus was alone in a bubble in the Turtle Tank as the teenagers battled the Foot Clan just out of her sight. The baby chewed on her teal ribbon tail for a little while before growing bored. Venus didn’t want to be in her chair anymore. She wanted out!

A moment later, Venus felt herself slipping free of her car seat, out of the bubble, and through the Turtle Tank’s floor. Her brothers and sister were still in heavy combat though, and the baby didn’t like how loud they were being. Closing her eyes and crawling forward, Venus slipped through dimensions to get to someplace quieter until her siblings were done fighting.

“That didn’t take very long at all,” April said as she and the Turtles climbed back into the Turtle Tank.

“I guess they didn’t restock their paper from the last time we fought them,” Raph gloated, hefting himself back into the driver’s chair.

“Let me put Venus back in her spot, then we can get rolling again,” Donnie said. Flipping another switch, the protective bubble pulled away, and the car seat returned to its original position. “Ready to go, Ve-ven-oooh, boy.”

When they all saw the empty car seat, their stress levels skyrocketed, but it could’ve just been Venus messing with them. April swiped her hand through the air just to be sure. They all shared a look and started freaking out.

“Where did Venus go?!” Mikey screamed. “She’s just a baby! What’s going to happen to our sister?!”

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“Where’d yous come from?” Venus blinked her eyes open to find Repo-Mantis staring down at her. She had traveled all the way to the junkyard. “You lost or somethin’, kid? I’m not a fan of turtles runnin’ around my junkyard.”

“Baah! Puh!” Venus babbled, crawling between Repo’s legs and disappearing further into the junkyard.

“Where d’ya think your off’ta?” Repo asked, ducking to follow the baby turtle’s travel. But she was gone. She had literally disappeared. “Wha?”

Not wanting a baby mutant wandering around his place of business, Repo went to look for her. He soon found her in his electromagnet. She managed to swing the heavy machine to hang over the school bus plugging Mrs. Nubbins’ den.

“Wait, no, no, no, no!” Repo shouted, rushing towards Venus. “Not that scrapheap, kid! Stop!” Too late. The bus pulled free, and the cat-mantis was unleashed. Repo immediately about-faced and ran away from his beloved pet.

Growing bored of the purple bugman and the machinery, Venus slipped out of the electromagnet and crawled out of the junkyard. She quickly caught wind of something that smelled delicious! A yellow van topped with a T-bone steak was parked across the street. What was over there that smelled so good?

“My, my, what have we here?” Venus was lifted up by metal hands that brought her face-to-face with a smug Meat Sweats. “You’re just the ingredient I needed for my latest recipe! How fortuitous for me.”

He plopped the baby turtle into the broth heating up on the stovetop, scrapped in some chopped up veggies, and sorted out the seasonings that would “unleash the flavor” within Venus. The Indian tent turtle gurgled delightedly in what she thought was tasty-smelling bathwater. She munched on a carrot piece, splashing in the broth, when pepper suddenly dusted her snout.

“That should do it,” Meat Sweats said. As he cleared away his spices, he noticed Venus scrunching up her face. “What’s that look for? My seasoning is perfectly balanced.”

He drew closer to the pot just as Venus unleashed a powerful sneeze. The sneeze was followed by spikes shooting out of her shell, flying all over the food truck’s kitchen. Meat Sweats squealed in horror. He knocked the pan off the stovetop and out of his truck, baby turtle and all, as the spikes pinned him by his apron to the cabinets.

“Oh, rubbish,” Meat Sweats grumbled.

Venus continued to chew on the veggies remained in the pot with her after the tumble when the she was lifted up once again. This time it was orange crab pinchers that carried her into an alleyway. So many new people in one night!

“Hey, Carl, check it out! It’s one of those turtle mutants that we hate, but littler!” The crabman without pinched Venus’s cheeks. She whined in displeasure and swatted his pincher away. “This one would be way easier to eat, and she’s already in some soup!”

The crabman with hair poked Venus’s cheek and felt his heart melt like butter when she sucked on his claw. “Pass, Ben. That’d be messed up. Maybe if she was bigger.”

“Bah?” Venus questioned, releasing the claw from her jaws. Bigger? What did that “bigger” mean? Steadily, the pot she was sitting in started getting tighter. Venus’s line of sight climbed, higher than when she sat on Raph’s head! The crabmen seemed to begin to panic. The baby turtle giggled and clapped her hands as the crabmen did a silly dance in front of her.

“This is not what I meant!” Carl shouted, swinging his arms wildly as the baby turtle quickly grew to double his and his brother’s size. Ben and Carl ran in wild circles for a moment before crashing into each other hard. The shock from the impact and panic from the giant infant knocked the duo unconscious.

Venus stared at the still crabmen before shrinking down to her normal size. They weren’t doing much more than breathe at this point, and the Indian tent turtle wanted something more entertaining than that. She crawled away and soon heard the laughter of children at a playground. All those colors and kids looked fun! Venus was all set to join them when something flopped onto her head and over her eyes.

“Turtle! Prepare to taste defeat at the hands of your greatest foe, Warren Stone!” The long pink thing in a purple jacket rolled into a dramatic offensive pose before the Indian tent turtle. “I won’t hold back just because you’re a ba-argh!”

Venus gripped the worm mutant by his throat and pulled his stretchy body as far as she could. This was a great toy! She whipped Warren around like a lasso and laughed brightly at the way he yelled. He made really funny noises, too! A white dove then flew into Venus’s line of sight and made her think of the cartoons she and Mikey would watch where birds would flock around the worm and beat them up. Attention drawn away, the baby mutant dropped the mutant in her hands and followed the dove.

“Where are you going?!” Warren shouted after her. “I’m not done with you yet!” He was then surrounded by a flock of large pigeons that had materialized out of thin air. “Or maybe I am.” The flock proceeded to attack the worm mutant. “Aaagh!”

Venus followed the dove for a few blocks, watching it land on the broad purple shoulder of Hypno-Potamus.

“There you are! Back in the hat you go,” Hypno said. He placed the dove back in his magic hat, poofing the accessory away, and caught sight of the baby turtle. She clapped at the sight of the hat disappearing, eyes wide with wonder. “You like that trick, little lady? Wait a tic, where is your family?” He glanced up and down the empty street then shrugged. “How about a little magic show until they come along?”

At the baby’s impartial gurgling, Hypno started performing tricks for Venus. She was delighted by the multicolor hanky rope the magic hippo pulled out of nowhere. Hypno clapped his hands together, and the hanky rope had transformed into a rainbow of cards floating between his palms as he drew them apart. Hypno flinched back at how high-pitched Venus’s surprised shriek was.

Where’d the rope go?! How’d the cards fly in the air like that? Was he magic like Leo and his portals? Was she magic? She looked at her own hands, clapped them together, and opened them herself. Cards floated between her palms, just like Hypno! She was magic!

“How’d you do that?” Hypno asked, just as surprised as Venus. He smirked and snapped his cards away. “Let’s see you copy this then!” He conjured up his top hat once more, and doves rocketed out from its depths.

Venus unleashed amazed laughter. Her cards disappeared as she waved her hands towards the birds flying up into the air. However, her happiness turned to fear once the flock of doves changed directions and flew straight at the baby turtle. Scared and confused, Venus screamed at the doves and the unfortunate magic hippo behind them as well.

“Argh!” Hypno cried out. He pressed his hands onto his ears, but the baby turtle’s scream was too strong. He squeezed his eyes shut against the birds that swarmed past him, missing Venus scramble away. All he was left with was ringing ears and a sense of confusion.

Venus blinked around tearfully at the fancy hotel she somehow entered. She crawled around the front desk and sat down. She liked birds, but those had gotten way too close way too fast.

“Hey, who’s kid is this?” A bellhop asked as he rounded the desk. “She doesn’t have a cloaking broach.”

“Take her to the yokai floors,” another bellhop said. He sniffed the air around her. “And see that she gets cleaned up. She must’ve gotten into the kitchen and lost her broach somewhere along the way if her scent is anything to go by.”

“All right, little one, let’s go.”

Venus let the bellhop carry her into the elevator and was happy to get a bath for once. The broth from earlier was starting to make her scales itch. She also liked the gentle attention the funny creatures in the red suits gave her. They were almost as good as her big brothers and big sister!

“Oh, she’s so pretty in that shade of teal!” The octopus yokai who had given her a bath said, carefully bouncing her in front of the other bellhops.

“Is she one of our guests?” A fox yokai bellhop asked, letting Venus fiddle with his hand. “I don’t recall any turtle yokai staying with us. And that mask kinda reminds me of those other turtles who keep breaking in.”

“What seems to be the piddly-problem here?” A sickeningly sweet asked from behind employees.

“Big Mama!” The octopus yokai spun to face the powerful spider yokai. “We seem to have a lost guest in our midst!”

Big Mama bent down to get a better look at Venus. She was stare was intense and unwavering. The yokai holding the baby and the bellhop were starting to sweat from how long Big Mama was locking eyes with the Indian tent turtle. Then, the disguised spider yokai squealed in delight, sweeping Venus into her arms and cuddling the baby close.

“Oh, what a splendiferously precious, teedly tiny turtlely-boo!” Big Mama cooed, rubbing her cheek against Venus’s. Venus laughed as Big Mama’s hair tickled her neck. “Such sprinkly-sparkly eyes! A fantampulous giggle as lovely as her ribbon!” She pulled back and considered the child in her arms once more. “Come! Big Mama will take care of you.”

Venus burbled contentedly in the purple lady’s arms. She reminded the baby of her daddy with how she talked.

“But Big Mama, what about her family?” the bellhop asked. “Won’t they be worried about her?”

Big Mama gave the bellhop a scathing look. “If her family truly loved her, she wouldn’t be lost and causing such a fizzywinkle among my on-the-clock employees! I shall deal with this doodlie-bug’s family if they ever show up.”

Venus chewed at the end of Big Mama’s cravat, watching the other yokai shrink away from the pretty purple lady. She must’ve been tough like April and Donnie for everyone to be so scared of her. Venus loved how much attention this “Big Mama” was giving her, but she was starting to want her brothers, sister, and father the longer the lady held her. Maybe everyone was done being loud by now? She should go back to her car seat. Venus started fussing and struggling to get to the floor.

“Oh, what’s wrong, cutie-doodle?” Big Mama asked. “Don’t fuss.”

When Big Mama lifted her higher and started walking away from the other yokai, Venus began to struggle in earnest. She didn’t want to be in this fancy building anymore! She wanted her family! Put her down! She slipped, quite literally, through Big Mama’s fingers and crawled as fast as she could towards the elevator.

“What?!” Big Mama shrieked. “Catch her!”

Suddenly, bellhops galore blocked Venus’s path. The baby didn’t stop for a second before she was crawling up the walls and onto the ceiling. All of the bellhops stared up in shock at her. However, the owl bellhop shook off his surprise, leapt up, and pulled the baby mutant into his arms. The unfortunate bellhop soon found his hands full of many Venus’s piling one on top of the other until he toppled over. Each bellhop and even Big Mama caught a duplicate before she hit the ground.

“Well,” Big Mama said, obviously ruffled. “That was unexpected. Are you quite done, turtle-boo?”

That’s when the acid vomit started shooting out of every Venus’s mouth.

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“Why doesn’t she have a tracker on her?” Leo yelled at Donnie. “You put a tracker on everything.”

“I wanted to!” Donnie yelled back. “But you all thought it was too extreme to put a tracker on a five-month-old!”

“Since when did you listen to us about where to put your trackers?!” Raph yelled.

This fighting was getting them nowhere. The Turtle Tank tore through the streets as the worried siblings searched for their missing little sister. They had chased of the Foot after five minutes max of combat. They had locked the tank door. Where could Venus have gone? Who could’ve been able to take her?! If it hadn’t been for sporadic dust clouds shooting up from Repo-Mantis’s Junkyard, they wouldn’t have had a clue where to start.

“Return our sister, you fiend!” Mikey demanded.

His family jumped out of the tank, armed and ready, only to see Repo dodging and running away from Mrs. Nubbins. Well… they weren’t expecting that. Repo was pretty good at keeping his beloved murder cat contained.

“Do we help him?” Leo asked slowly.

“No,” Donnie said. “This is a waste of time!”

“He might know something about Venus, though,” April countered.

“Alright, Mad Dogs,” Raph said. “Get that cat-mantis!”

One determined sibling fight later, Repo found himself on the business end of Leo’s odachi.

“Hey, bug-man,” Leo greeted. “You see a baby turtle mutant pass by?”

“That little thing was with yous guys?!” Repo yelled.

“And don’t even think about lyin—what?” Donnie asked. “You’ve seen our baby sister?!”

“Yeah,” Repo said, head lulled back. He may as well tell the kids what they wanted; they had saved his life after all. “She must’ve crawled off after letting Mrs. Nubbins out a minute ago. Came outta nowhere, that kid. Left outta nowhere, too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” April demanded.

Muffled shouting from across the street drew the teenagers’ attention away from Repo, who took this opportunity to slip away. With their initial target gone, they went to investigate where the shouts had come from. April was the first to see the familiar food truck parked across the street. Something pointy stuck out at several spots on the outside of the truck.

“Meat Sweats!” she yelled, throwing the ajar backdoor open wide.

“Not you lot!” Meat Sweats groaned from where he hung on the wall. “One turtle disaster was enough!”

“Give us our sister!” Raph said, pulling the pig mutant free and dangling him in the air.

“That little terror is your sister?!” Meat Sweats roared. “Does the big one here shoot spikes, too?!”

“What? No,” Raph denied, lifting Meat Sweats higher. “Where’s our sister?”

“I threw her out, pot and all, when the spikes came flying at me,” Meat Sweats explained.

“We’re coming, Venus!” Leo yelled, tearing out of the food truck with his other siblings as Raph continued to hold Meat Sweats.

“Stop. Trying. To eat. My. Family!” Raph snarled in the pig mutants face before going to join the others.

Leo and Donnie were on the rooftops, looking in every direction for a hint of teal of their bubbly baby sister; Mikey and April scourged the alleys and streets for signs of Venus; and Raph patrolled in the Turtle Tank. A few moments later, the three groups converged where scraps of metal and two mutant crabmen lay uselessly in an alleyway.

Donnie prodded the mutants with his tech bo, saying, “What happened to you guys? Wait. Let me guess—you found a little turtle and she beat you up?”

The crabman with hair opened one eyestalk, saw the frustrated and near-feral teenagers looming over him and his brother, and shook his head.

“No, she got big, and my bro and I freaked out so much we knocked each other out. I thought she was gonna eat us.”

“Okay.” Donnie crouched down to look the crabman in the eyes. “First of all, she’s just a baby. Worst thing she can do to you right now is bite your exoskeletons. Second, where is she?” The crabman without hair raised a claw and wordlessly pointed towards the park across the street. “Thank you, gentlemen. You will not be eviscerated today.”

The Sando brothers cowered away from the determined children and slunk into the sewers as they crossed the street. The park was empty at the moment, so April wasn’t worried about anyone seeing the giant mutant turtles wadding through the bushes.

“Venus!” April and the others called in intervals, tearing the park upside down for their baby. “C’mon sis, where are you?”

“You guys looking for a baby turtle?” Warren Stone asked. He was chilling on a park bench, sipping a smoothie.

“Warren Stone!” April squealed. She ran up to her news anchor idol. “Do you know where our sister is? She’s got a teal mask and a pretty defined shell.”

“Yeah, she crawled that a-ways about ten minutes ago,” Warren said waving in the general direction. “Chasing a bird or something. No respect for the laws of mortal foe combat.”

“Thanks Warren! Stone-head for life!” April ran off to get her brothers. “I got a lead! Venus isn’t here anymore, but I know where she went!”

“Lead on, April!” Leo said.

April led them in the direction Warren Stone had waved in, and they soon came across Hypno. He was shouting and swinging a top hat at a flock of doves swarming over his head.

“Hypno!” Mikey shouted, wrapping the chain of his kusari-fundo around the hippo mutant. “Where’s our sister?”

“What?” Hypno shouted. “I don’t know anything about a ‘blister.’”

“I said sis-ter,” Mikey yelled. “Baby turtle mutant. Teal mask. Where?”

“Never met one,” Hypno shouted. “Why would a lady turban merchant need a flask? Speak up! I can’t really hear at the moment.”

The teenagers groaned. This was getting them nowhere!

“Did you lot happen to lose a baby turtle?” Hypno asked. “One passed by a minute ago. I gave her a magic show, but the doves scared her off.”

“Where’d our baby sister go?” Mikey yelled as clearly as he could. Hope shined in the box turtle’s eyes.

Hypno seemed to wilt from the question. “I don’t know. She let out a killer scream that took out my doves and my hearing. I didn’t see where she went.”

“That would explain the screaming-match,” Leo grumbled. “Mikey, let him go. Venus isn’t here.” But she has been causing some top-tier mischief.

Raph brought the Turtle Tank around for everyone to pile in and regroup. Now what? Hypno was their last lead to finding Venus, and he didn’t know where she crawled off to. How did her screaming make the hippo mutant go that hard of hearing anyway? Sure, the baby had a loud voice but not loud enough to make someone go near-deaf. Right?

“Now what, team?” Raph asked. “Where do we look next?”

“Well,” Donnie started. Then explosions erupted from the Nexus Hotel in the distance.

“FOLLOW THE CHAOS!!!” April shouted.

Moments later, the Turtle fam burst into Big Mama’s hotel, weapons drawn and ready to take on the spider yokai. The sight that greeted them was not what they expected from the usually put-together criminal boss. Small fires lit up parts of the lobby and stairs, yokai and humans alike were either flopped over broken furniture unconscious or shaking in absolute terror. A yokai ran from one end of the room to the other screaming his head off.

“What happened here?” Leo asked, lowering his sword.

“I don’t know,” Donnie said, looking at his wrist scanner and typing on it. “I’ll hack into the security feeds; you guys keep an eye open for—”

Big Mama chose that moment to leave the elevator in giant yokai spider form. The first thing the Turtle fam did was pull into a tighter circle, defending Donnie as he reviewed the hacked feeds. They noted how she looked, well, battered, bruised, and burned. Big Mama looked at the teenagers with six tired eyes, down at her thick arms, then back at the teenagers. She slowly walked towards them.

“Does this belong to you?” she asked, voice wavering from exhaustion.

Extending her arms, Venus dangled from her hands.

“Venus!” They all cried.

Raph carefully took Venus into his arms and backed his entire family as far away from Big Mama as he could. His siblings launched themselves onto his arms, kissing and cooing at the baby turtle warbling happily back at them. Before they could interrogate the spider yokai about how she got her claws on their precious baby sister, Big Mama passed out less than gracefully in her lobby.

Raph quickly carried his family back to the Turtle Tank where they continued to fawn over their baby sister, relieved to have her back and taking turns holding her close. Donnie held Venus very carefully. She had somehow gotten out of one of his inventions specially designed to protect her, and he took it personally. How had it happened?

“Let’s see how you got into Big Mama’s hands, shall we?” Donnie said, passing Venus off to April and hooking up his gauntlet to the tank’s display screen.

As the security feed played out, the Turtle fam watched with increasing shock as their baby sister all but destroyed the Nexus Hotel. From the very moment that she went intangible in Big Mama’s arms, to crawling up onto the ceiling, duplicating, and puking up acid, the teens couldn’t look away. Then things really got weird.

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Venus screamed in the arms of every bellhop that held her, causing them to drop the duplicates to cover their ears. Big Mama wasn’t so lucky. She held the original baby turtle. Big Mama had to transform into her yokai form in order to cover her ears and not drop the baby.

“Hush, cutie-doodle!” Big Mama tried to soothe the child.

No! Venus didn’t want the spider lady anymore. Maybe if they couldn’t see her, they’d leave her alone. Leo played peekaboo with her all the time. Maybe the same rules applied? Venus covered her eyes and held as still as possible. She heard a gasp of surprise and suddenly felt her bottom hit the ground.

“Where’d she go?” a bellhop asked.

“I don’t know,” Big Mama replied. “She was right here! Find her!”

Venus crawled away as the bellhops and Big Mama waved the air around the ground searching for her. She made it to the elevator right as it was closing before becoming visible again.

“There she is! How’d she get in the elevator?!” a yokai yelled out.

The crowd tried to get to the baby turtle, but the doors had already closed. Venus blinked. She looked around the box-like room she was in. How did these things work again? She spotted the shiny panel of buttons and made grabby hands at them. They were too high up! The Indian tent turtle’s line of sight was soon above the panel of buttons. She could totally reach them now! Venus slapped the panel happily. The room felt like it was moving.

When the doors opened again, there were bellhops waiting. They, unfortunately, were not expecting the little baby to have grown to be bigger than their employer. Venus mowed them down as she crawled into the hallway. She found a stairwell and wandered her way down a few flights before shrinking down again.

The door was too heavy for her small body to open. However, she didn’t hesitate to crawl right through the wall to the other side, which just so happened to be a fish tank. Venus loved swimming! She followed the exotic fish in the tank for a minute or two, completely missing the looks of horror guests and employees alike gave her for how long she was in there. What? It wasn’t like she was gonna run out of air. She did this all the time at home.

“There you are!” Big Mama cheered, scooping the baby turtle out of the water tank. “Oh, now you’re all sobbled! Come, dear, let Big Mama dry you off.”

Oh, not this lady again! Venus huffed and puffed, struggling to get out of the gentle but firm grip. Then, she felt something shoot out of her shell. Screaming rang out around her, and Big Mama gasped. Venus looked around and saw several spikes impaling pillars and pining people to the walls. The baby clapped, clearly enjoying the silly poses the yokai had struck to avoid the spikes.

“That’s quite enough of that,” Big Mama admonished. Neither yokai nor baby noticed the pillar behind them starting to fall over. “I’ve had enough fizzywinkles in my hotel today, thank you.”

The pillar groaned and slammed on top of the two females. The bellhops rushed to lift the pillar from Big Mama, who was banged and bruised from its weight, but Venus was perfectly fine. Her scales had formed into a silver armor, leaving a baby turtle shaped hole in the raised column.

Then, a fire started from one of the spikes slicing through an electrical outlet. Everyone started screaming and running. Venus started crawling away again. And—

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Donnie shut of the video feed. He, Raph, Leo, Mikey, and April stared at Venus in shock. Raph quickly drove them home. After the teens all gathered in the living room, they collapsed into a heap of exhaustion, stress, and disbelief. Splinter walked in to see Venus sucking her thumb on top of Donnie’s chest as the soft-shell gently patted her head.

“Ah, there’s my precious little girl!” Splinter smiled. “Come to Daddy, Venus.” He lifted Venus to his hip and rubbed his nose to her beak. “So, how was her first ride in the Turtle Tank?”

Splinter raised an eyebrow in confusion at the way the teens groaned and sunk even further into their sibling pile.

Mikey shot up from the pile and shouted, “VENUS HAS POWERS,” then sunk back to his place between his brothers and April.

What a chaotically long day.

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lookoolah · 4 years

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love in every sip (1.9k) read on ao3 for the “coffee” square on my @tonystarkbingo flash card

Tony startled himself awake when he made a move to get into a more comfortable position on the tiny couch that was clearly not meant for sleeping on, which he certainly had a difficult time learning over the course of the years that the tiny couch had found its way to Tony’s workshop (with some help from Pepper, probably). He wasn’t sure whether he woke up in the millisecond that he was hovering in the air between the ridiculous couch and the ground or when he facepalmed into the floor, but awake he definitely was.

“Ow, shit.” He groaned, looking up vengefully at the stupid sofa. “J, as soon as you can, place an order for the biggest, comfiest couch you can find on the internet, thanks!” He gritted out through his teeth, hoping that the tiny couch felt insecure and unlovable.

“Right away, Sir.”

He looked up at the StarkPad displaying the time that he had perched on top of his coffee-table as a make-shift digital clock (whoever said he wasn’t one for interior design?). It was 9am, anyway, so he might as well be getting up now. That is if he was pretending to be a healthy functioning human being that didn’t spend the last 72 hours in his workshop and fell asleep 3 hours ago on this stupid, unlovable couch.

He made his way to the main kitchen, waving sleepily at the team that was lively bickering in the breakfast nook. Oh right, that’s what they looked like, other people. He thought it would be a good idea to brush his teeth before any silverware made contact with the inside of his mouth lest it immediately corroding.

After spending way too long sitting on the toilet because his body seemed to enjoy falling asleep in the most uncomfortable of places, he finally made his way back to the now-empty kitchen, where on the counter he found a steaming coffee in the Iron Man mug from the Avengers mugs set that Clint thought was the perfect $15 Christmas gift for the people that literally risked their lives by his side on day-by-day bases. Tony frowned, walking over to the island, unsure whether he blanked out and made coffee in the short interval of semi-wakefulness between sleeping in odd places. He spotted a napkin next to the mug, where a neat cursive looked back at him.

“Good morning, Tony. Please stop pulling all-nighters for three days straight,” it said.

Huh? Tony really only had the energy to ponder about when, by whom, and why the note was written and the coffee made for a total of ten seconds before his sleep and caffeine-deprived mind short-circuited and he gave in to the inviting aroma of the drink. And, well, whoever his barista in shining armor was unquestionably knew just how strong and sweet Tony liked his coffee (that being, real strong and real sweet).

☕.

He really didn’t expect it to become an ongoing thing. He didn’t expect that the next morning, upon walking into the kitchen (from his bedroom this time, thank fuck ) he would be met with the same Iron Man mug on the counter with another napkin neatly placed next to it, its edge tucked under the mug as if to make sure that the soft blow of air from the air conditioning wouldn’t blow it away, care written all over the scene.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. Glad you actually got some shuteye tonight, finally. Hope you have a good day.”

Tony read the note over a few times, twice in his head, and once under his breath, with a small smile that he didn’t notice was there until Steve, who was apparently in the pantry, called attention to it.

“Cheery this morning, huh?”

“Oh, uh,” Tony looked up from the napkin in his hand, trying to hold back the smile, “You tripped and fell in my dream, still laughing at it.” He lied, protectively wrapping his hands around the warm Iron Man mug.

Steve chuckled in response, putting down the box of Lucky Charms and reaching above the sink to grab himself a bowl.

“You want some cereal?” He asked, putting down a bowl in front of Tony without waiting for a response.

“So courteous of you, Cap,” Tony started filling his bowl with milk while Steve was pouring cereal into his, “And they say chivalry is dead.”

Steve made a face at him, probably about to give a schpiel about why would you pour the milk first, Tony?

“Why would you pour the milk first, Tony?” He said, handing Tony the Lucky Charms and taking the milk from his hands.

“Because I’m a certified genius, that’s why.” Tony winked, taking a sip from his coffee. Shit, so perfect again. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to see who made this coffee, would you?” He asked tentatively, filling his bowl with cereal.

“Didn’t you make it?” Steve canted his head in confusion and brought the spoon to his lips.

“No, actually, I didn’t,” Tony took another sip of his coffee, “I wonder who did, though.” This time, as he looked down at the dyed marshmallows in his milk, he failed to notice both the involuntary smile he pressed into the rim of his Iron Man mug and the one Steve stifled around a mouthful of his cereal.

☕️.

The random coffee offerings in a particular Iron Man mug and a neat cursive turned regular from then on, and it was starting to become clear that his barista in shining armor was really more of a secret admirer expressing their affections through coffee beans.

The mugs waited for him at the counter almost every morning, the team off at a mission, the team just sitting down for breakfast, the team finishing up breakfast. The mugs were on a coaster on his desk when he fell asleep at it while working on a new design, while fixing an old design, while ignoring emails from some super important government officials. The mugs, for fucks sake, were sat on an old paperback next to the tiny couch that Tony continued to fall asleep on, even after the biggest, comfiest couch on the internet arrived.

“Good morning, hope you slept well. You look adorable with bedhead.”

“Heard you walking around late last night, I wish I could drive off all your nightmares with a broom.”

“Stop falling asleep at your desk, idiot, your neck will get stuck like that.”

“That couch looks like it’s not meant for sleeping on.”

Tony found himself growing more and more fond at every note, every word, every sip. He didn’t think that it was possible for him to look forward to his daily dose of caffeine more than he already did, but this new routine indisputably made him jittery with excitement every morning.

He started to watch the team closely, in an attempt to figure out their tells. Who saw me this morning with my bedhead? Who likes to broom? Who doesn’t like tiny uncomfortable couches?

But, alas, none of the notes had been specific enough to pinpoint someone or even narrow down the list, and Jarvis was refusing to give him any information on the grounds of some “No Stalking Protocol, Sir” bullshit.

That was, of course, until the afternoon that Nick Fury, somehow Tony’s saving grace in this mystery, called him up to his office. Tony plopped down on the chair in front of the desk, crossing his leg and taking a sip of his smoothie.

“You should really try this place from down the block someday, I hear they grow all their shit themselves.” He took another sip, the little to no remnants on the bottom of the cup loudly coming up the straw. “Ugh, to die for!”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Nick rolled his eye, and Tony wondered whether The Nick Fury Eyeroll pre tragic eye loss accident was more or less puissant. “I need you to look over this report that Rogers submitted and discuss with the team whether or not every update that you insist on installing in their suits has really been necessary.” Nick handed him a transparent folder and Tony cringed at both the utmost ludicrous implication that advancement is not always necessary and at the prospect of paperwork. “It seems to me like on this particular mission they were more of a disruption rather than advantage.”

Tony flipped open the file and looked up at Nick through his eyelashes, taking one final loud sip of his Blueberry Mist smoothie.

“I’m sorry, did you just allude to that progress is not an essential part of human existence? My goodness, I did not know you to be such a conservative, Nick!” He clapped a hand over his heart, prompting another eyeroll. The eye patch, Tony thought, definitely made it more effective.

“Stop bullshitting me and just look over the report, Stark.” Tony chuckled and looked down at the paper, a neat cursive looking back at him.

“Uh,” He cleared his throat, flipping through the pages and staring at the way the letters braided into each other, just like on the napkins Tony read sweet nothings form every morning. He looked up at the top of the paper, where next to the printed “Name” it read in pretty, oh-so-pretty cursive, “Captain Steven Rogers.”

☕.

Steve woke up from a dull migraine that he had been nursing for the past week or so. He sighed, taking a large sip of the lukewarm water from the bottle he had discarded in his room a few days ago. Everyone was always talking about how important drinking water is nowadays, but Steve was never really a fan of health schticks anyway. As he made his way to the kitchen, he asked his own brain not for the first time this week why it wasn’t healed by the oh-so-magical properties of the oh-so-magical serum. A look at the digital clock in the elevator told him it was 7am on a Sunday, and he tried to remember what time it was last night when Tony excused himself to his bedroom from movie night, claiming that he was too exhausted for thrillers that evening.

Stepping into the kitchen, however, he was met with a sleepy Tony in an oversized gray Led Zepellin hoodie and plaid pajama pants, sitting Indian Style in the breakfast nook with an Iron Man mug in his hands, taking small sips from it and the smell of coffee traveling from the coffeemaker on the kitchen counter to Steve.

Oh. He felt the pang of disappointment in his chest at the realization that Tony woke up earlier than him. This week really didn’t like Steve much, did it?

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Tony broke the silence and Steve felt some of the disappointment dissipating at the raspy sleep-deprived timbre of Tony’s voice, “I made coffee,” he nodded over to the island that Steve was standing in front of, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Why would I ―” Steve cut himself off when his eyes landed on the Captain America mug from the Avengers mugs set that Clint thought was the perfect $15 Christmas gift for the people that literally risked their lives by his side on day-by-day bases. Steve felt his heart skip a beat and he held his breath as he reached out and pulled the mug towards him. Under it, of course, there was a napkin with a blocky print scribbled over it.

“You’re not as slick as you think you are, Mr. Rogers.

Busy tonight?”

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