#this wip is like months old but still cool | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wososcripts · 6 months ago

Text

Face to Face (Part 1)

Fridolina Rolfö x reader

Summary: After months of a toxic back and forth with Frido, things reach a breaking point.

Word Count: 2.2k

A/N: I know it's been forever but that's what being a full time uni student will do! I hope you all enjoy this fic as much as I do, its been a wip for a while now!

As usual this is all fiction and in good fun! Nothing is meant to represent reality. All italicized dialogue is in a language other than English, and I promise... things will get better in this fic eventually.

Warnings⚠️: unhealthy situationship lol, injury, light medical description

"Get out!" You screamed, repeating it over and over until you were alone in your bedroom.

You hated yelling. Absolutely hated it. You couldn't remember the last time before today that you had actually yelled in someone's face. Plenty of people in your sport lost their tempers and shouted on the pitch—whether at a ref or another player—but it wasn’t your style. You always managed to keep your cool. It was your sport, yes, but not your life.

You'd been yelled at too much as a child to think it had any productive effect on a situation, which may have been part of why you immediately felt horrible once Fridolina left the room. You pulled your comforter around your half-naked form, wishing you were less exposed.

This was the end. Whatever you and Fridolina had, it was over. Finally.

You'd been trying to build up the will to make this happen for weeks, and yet your heart felt like it was being strangled with every moment you sat here alone. The worst part was, you knew Fridolina didn't care. She was probably angry, sure, but she was not feeling the heartbreak you were.

You weren't sure how you were going to make it through the next few days. You had to fly to Germany tomorrow for national camp—and then on Friday you were playing Sweden in a friendly. It was hard to imagine that you had been excited to get the news about the friendly last month. It meant you got to be around Frido more, got to see a few of your old teammates from Chelsea like Magda and Zećira, and you genuinely enjoyed being around the German girls. It was still home to you, there, even if you hadn't played for a German league in nearly a decade.

Now you just wanted to stay in Barcelona while Frido left. You wanted to call Alexia, or Patri, and ask them to come over and comfort you. You wanted Patri’s jokes and Alexia’s solid presence, but you were afraid of the questions they might ask. Your eyes were red now, tears running down your face, and your room was a mess. Everything had a trace of Frido, and you hated it.

Ingrid and Mapí, who you would usually call if you wanted to get your mind off of things, weren’t an option either. Though you were fairly certain they wouldn’t ask any pressing questions, Ingrid was Frido’s best friend. And that made her off limits for now, for anything regarding this.

You just had to make it through the night, and the next morning. Then you could collapse into the familiar arms of your national teammates, your family, your language, and try to forget all about this.

—

Your mother knew something was off the second you appeared on her doorstep, Laura in tow.

She wrapped her arms firmly around you, holding you tight for a minute. It had been three months since you were home for Christmas, and you hadn’t seen each other since then. You melted into her, wanting nothing more than the comfort of her protective embrace after all that had been swimming around your head lately.

Your mother greeted Laura next, and you were instructed to bring your bags up to the guest room. You’d have to share, but it wasn’t all that big of an issue. You and Laura often shared rooms when you were at national camp anyway, so this wouldn’t be much different.

“Wie ist Barcelona? Gefällt es? ” Laura asked you quietly that night, rolling over in the bed to face you.

It was late, too late to still be up. Tomorrow you’d have to be at training bright and early.

“I love it there.”

Something about your voice must have been off, because Laura stayed silent. You knew she fretted over you. She was protective too, something you experienced first hand when people were rough with you on the field—Laura hated most of your exes too. You’d known each other since secondary school, when you were barely tall enough to reach the top of your lockers.

“I’ve always wondered if it’s difficult, fitting in with the Spanish girls…”

“And I’m shy, which doesn’t make it easier.”

Laura laughed lightly.

“Well I wasn’t going to say anything!”

You poked her side playfully, and smiled.

“They’re all very welcoming. It can be intimidating when you don’t speak Spanish at first, but I’m pretty good now so I don’t have many issues.”

Laura began playing with strands of your long hair, putting it in small braids.

“What is it, Lau?”

“I can tell something is bothering you. In your texts, the way you looked when I picked you up at the airport, something is off.”

You weren't sure what to say. Laura didn't know anything about you and Frido. Nobody did. You'd have to explain the whole thing, start to finish. You'd have to explain why you stayed even when she treated you like garbage. Why you made excuses for her, compromised things you told yourself you wouldn't.

"It's hard to explain…" you mumbled.

Laura continued to play with your hair, pushing a few wisps back from your forehead.

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

You needed an ally in this, you realized. Desperately.

"Just be prepared, it's kind of a long story."

And so you launched into how you and Frido had been attracted to each other immediately when she was playing at Bayern and you were at Frankfurt. How you had danced around each other when you were signed in Barcelona. How she kissed you one day after a game, before she was even out of her relationship, and then ignored you for weeks—a pattern you didn't realize was going to dominate your life for the next year.

By the end you were crying. You hadn't cried in so long it felt foreign. Everything had been building up for months and nobody had been there to help you carry the weight of it until that moment.

Laura pulled you into her arms, rubbing your back in soothing circles as you sobbed into her neck.

"It's okay, you're okay," she whispered.

"I feel like a fucking idiot."

"She's the idiot for treating you like that, not you. Not you at all." Laura looked at you sternly. "I'm sorry you had to deal with that all by yourself…"

You snuggled closer to her and kept quiet.

"If you need someone to accidentally slide tackle her on Monday let me know…" Laura teased.

You giggled into her hair, and she couldn't help but smile in return.

You were nervous. Typically friendlies didn't worry you much, but you didn't want to see Fridolina. You had been playing well in training sessions, but your teammates could tell something was on your mind.

"Hey—" Sara's voice broke you out of your thoughts. The two of you had played together at Frankfurt for a little while, and she was like an older sister to you. She placed both her hands on your cheeks and pressed her forehead to yours. "Whatever it is, put it out of your mind. Leave it here and just play. Just for a few hours."

You closed your eyes and listened to her, letting her voice ground you. You squeezed her hands and nodded. Just a few hours. Then you could avoid Frido for an entire week before you had to fly back to Barcelona.

You assumed your position on the pitch, the roar of the German fans filling your ears. That was the benefit of playing at home. You spotted a few of the Swedish girls you knew: Magda, Zećira, Stina, and Rebecca. All of whom gave you small smiles.

In the few seconds before the match began you closed your eyes, counting down from seven as you always did before a match. Then the whistle blew and you began.

It was a tough match between the two teams. Where the Germans were weak the Swedish girls pounced, and vice versa. You were constantly fighting for the ball, the defenders packed onto you. Stina was the first to score, slipping the ball into the box amidst a chaotic mess just the way she was good at.

From there on out you were determined to score. You were playing all out, more than necessary really. It was a throwaway game, but you just had to get a point on the board.

When your quick pass to Lena had the ball soaring into the back of the net you thought you might explode from joy. You jumped into her arms, letting her twirl you around, laughing. In your head you might as well have won the Olympics.

At halftime it was still 1-1. Your heart was pounding. Laura made you drink some of your water, massaging your shoulders in an effort to get you to calm down. Popp was side eyeing you, considering pulling you out. This behavior wasn't like you.

The second half was considerably more intense than the first. Both teams wanted to score, and the more physical players on both sides were pushing hard. It was a miracle nobody had been carded.

And then suddenly you had the ball at your feet. There was a golden opportunity in front of you. Eyes facing forward, you raced down the pitch, completely blindsided to the weight that slammed into from the side. Suddenly the world went sideways and you were slamming into the ground, not enough time to even think about trying to catch yourself. Your hip and shoulder took most of the initial impact, but something about how you'd been standing, or how you'd been hit, meant your head followed, hitting the ground with a resounding thud.

You came to a few seconds later. Someone was kneeling next to your head, and their hands were on your cheeks.

Fuck. Everything hurt. You kept your eyes closed, thinking maybe that would lessen the next wave of pain you knew was coming. At first you weren't sure what had happened.

"Are you okay?" You heard Zećira's voice in your ear.

"Zećira?" You mumbled. "What happened?"

"You went down and hit your head."

You had gone down near the goal, that was right. Things were a bit blurry. You figured it was a bad idea to move your neck, what with the severe headache you could feel blossoming, and opening your eyes seemed to run the 50/50 chance of you vomiting.

"Do you remember that now? Do you feel okay?"

So you gave her a weak thumbs up, hoping it was clear you needed the medics.

After a moment in which you gathered your resolve and swallowed your nausea, you opened your eyes. There was Zećira looking worriedly down at you. She glanced upwards, probably at the medical team that was surely coming.

"Fuck, fuck…" you heard another voice, those of your German teammates beginning to filter into your awareness. And further away, the sharp sound of yelling.

The medical team finally arrived, clearing the space around you. Your hand shot out, grabbing onto Zećira's you gave her a look that said it all. Fear and panic met in equal amounts as she squeezed your hand lightly.

"You're gonna be okay, älskling, everything is gonna be alright." If anything, her tone scared you even more. You knew Zećira, and she wasn't someone you would describe as warm and cuddly. For her to be using that tone with you meant something had gone wrong.

"Okay, we're gonna sit you up now." The medic warned you, and you felt two pairs of hands rest on your body, one on the back of your neck, slowly pull you upright.

Your nausea came back in full swing, and you fought to keep your breakfast in.

"Can you hear me?" You nodded.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" You nodded again, resisting the urge to roll your eyes.

"Can you squeeze my hand?" You squeezed his hand tightly.

"Okay, I'm gonna shine this light in your eyes for a moment, can you try and follow it for me?" You did your best, but it wasn't easy.

"Okay," he put the light away and you thanked whatever God in the universe for that. "We think it's likely you have a pretty bad concussion. We'll have to run a few more tests to be sure, but she definitely has to come off."

He must've been talking to your coach at that point, because the next thing you knew Zećira and the medic were helping you up to your feet, the man supporting you heavily with your arms draped across his shoulders.

"I'll visit you after the match, okay?" You heard Zećira assure you, to which you gave another thumbs up.

You cringed slightly at the sound of the crowd cheering you off.

#woso x reader #woso community #woso imagine #woso fanfics #woso #fridolina rolfö #fridolina rolfo x reader #fridolina rolfö x reader #barca femini x reader #my writing #fc barcelona x reader

482 notes · View notes

darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 5 months ago

Text

Someone New 6

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include angst, pining, romcom tropes, and some darker elements later in the series. Some triggers may not be specifically tagged. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This fic will contain explicit content. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You’ve had a crush on your best friend for years, but you’re slapped in the face with reality when he takes things to the next level with his girlfriend.

Characters: Steve Rogers, Thor

Note: Thanks as usual for reading.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Please do not just put ‘more’. I will block you.

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

Things don’t become comfortable, but familiar. You get into a routine, one which smears the days and nights into the other. The landscape helps with that. The sun is fleeting, even in July. The days are longer but it’s not anywhere as stifling or humid as New York. Like everything else, it’s different.

The man at the fish place, Frederik, knows your name. His wife, Inga too. When you walk in the door, they put your order to fry before you even get to the counter. They’re friendly and warm. It’s nice to have some smiling faces when you can hardly muster the same.

They like to ask you about New York; they’re finally planning a big trip to America after twenty-five years together. They remind you of Marigold and her bakery. You long for one of her eclairs and her chatty demeanour. Just another thing to miss.

As you sit down at a table near the window to eat in, your phone goes off. You answer as you read Sam’s name across the screen. He’s the only one you’ve talked to in the last month. Nearly two now. August is close.

“Yo, yo, girly pop,” he sings from the other end.

“Girly pop? Sam,” you chide as you hover a thick cut fry before your mouth.

“Chicky poo, nope. Girly pop, nope. I’ll get there,” he teases, “finally got a hold of you.”

“Uh, yeah, the site is far. No signal,” you shrug and take a bite.

“I know, I'm just needy,” he kids. “So, you hitting the spa? Summer’s going fast.”

“Not yet,” you swallow. “Sam, there’s a lot of work here and it’s just me. The only help I get is from a local student volunteer and they do three hours a week.”

“Oof, why does your work sound so boring?” He groans

“Hey!”

“Well, I mean, digging up dirt all day, tell me you’re not going mad. You making friends? No one to cool, I hope. I’m still your number one guy.”

“Not really. It’s tough. Long hours. I don’t know,” you stare out the window as you toy with the bamboo fork.

“If you were going to hide all day in a hovel, you could’ve stayed in New York,” he sighs.

“Sam, I’m trying. Really. It’s... It’s going to take some time.”

“Right,” he agrees grimly. “Time. A year is not that long.”

You hum and lean back in the chair. You’re not as hungry as you were. You close up the container and stand.

“I know, alright?” You sniff as you tidy the table and grab your food, “but this isn’t a vacation.”

“It’s also not a missionary trip,” he retorts. “I’m not tryna be a dick here, I’m helping. You need this.”

You push out into the street and cluck. Silence. You don’t know what to say. He’s right and just like ever day, the conversation is the same. Over and over. It’s going to drive you crazy.

“More sunlight this time of year, good for work--”

“No more work talk,” he interjects, “if you don’t got anything fun going on, I'll just have to make you jealous. Some good old fashioned FOMO. Hm, me and Bucky went to Jersey.”

“Jersey? Why?” You take the bait, happy for the distraction.

“Oh, yeah, I told him there was a vintage bike for sale there.”

“You told him that but...”

“There wasn’t. I just wanted to see him interact with the locals. The old ladies love him but the men... well, I think he might have a warrant out now.”

“No, Sam, what the hell?” You exclaim as you stroll along. “Are you trying to get him killed?”

“Hey, I got his back. Just like I got yours. It was just a prank.”

“Wait, Sam, where exactly did you take him in Jersey?”

“Some cribbage club, I don’t know. I saw a page for it online. Thought he’d fit in--”

“They were old?”

“They match his energy,” he snorts.

You can’t help but laugh. It feels good. Just that little bit of home. Your amusement is dampened as your heart sinks. You really were so stupid. You didn’t see what you had all around you; Bucky, Sam, more than just Steve. Now it’s all behind you and going back won’t be the same as before.

💟

There’s tension in the air. It’s going to rain. You suspect your day will be cut short by the gathering clouds but your persist. No use in running. Again.

The last time you left in fear of a storm, it waited until the next day. So you sit, boots set in the dirty, hunched over as you carefully trace out the strange lump. It’s more than sediment. Bone but not a skeleton. Likely animal and bent into some tool. You have to be delicate. It’s not like the movies, you can’t just dig your hand in and rip it out.

Your earbud drones as a retro R&B playlist keeps your mind at focus. You wipe your forehead with the back of your glove, feeling the flecks of dirt cling to your skin. You ignore it and press on. Just a little more, a little more.

It’s bigger than you expect. Just as you think it might come free, you find it goes further down. You can make out the jagged break and the hide wrapping at it’s base. A spear of some sort.

You roll your shoulders out and put your tools down on the open role. You peel of the gloves and reach for the tall insulated bottle of water. You gulp, your throat cooling nicely at the flow. You cap the bottle and clear your throat, listening to the silence of the mountain.

Yet it isn’t quiet. You glance around at the subtle scratching, a strange tapping across the ground. It could be vermin. It’s not unusual to disturb a nest of one thing or another on a dig but they usually leave early on.

You put the bottle down and shove your hand back into a glove. A puffy breath comes over the scratching. Several breaths in quick succession, as if there’s something sniff. You keep your other glove in your grip and stand. Your legs are so cramped that your steps are stiff and stunted.

As you search for the source, there’s a yipe and a fuzzy shape catches your eye. You tilt your head, thoroughly confused at the barking beast. You’re not certain that chihuahuas are native to Norway. At least, you wouldn’t assume so.

The ashy blond dog has longer fur along its ears and chest and a white bolt down its chest. You can tell it isn’t wild despite its behaviour as it is finely groomed and wears a bright red collar. You approach the fence as it hops, stopping only to try to dig beneath with its dirtied paws.

“Hi, buddy,” you near the eager dog, “how’d you get up here?”

You stop just across from the dog and poke your fingers through the fence. It stops, you think a ‘he’, and sniffs your fingers. His cold nose tickles you and you wiggle until you can pet his head. The little thunderbolt emblem on hiss collar peeks through his mane. There might be some information there.

“Thunder!” The booming voice sounds like the very thing it decries, “Thunder, you pest, where’re you off too?”

There’s a crunching of soil and rock along the mountain pass as the dog growls and barks again, turning to face the skewing of a towering shadow. You watch in shock at the approach. You didn’t think there was life so far up. That or someone has chosen a rather treacherous hiking trail.

The dog, you assume ‘Thunder’, bounces back and forth in anticipation of his own, calling to him with his pitchy yaps. The man appears around the jagged rock and you feel the air knocked from your chest. You slowly reach to take out your earbud and tuck it in a pocket.

Wow. You blink to make sure it’s real. To be certain this isn’t some trick of the mind or this ancient land. Maybe the gods are real here.

He’s tall and broad and handsome. His canvas jacket does little to conceal his muscular build as his jeans are snug to his thick thighs. You think he’s even bigger than Steve. You wince at the reminder of the man but it quickly flits away. You can’t ignore the man before you with his golden tresses twisted back into a low bun, stray strands wisping forward to frame his stony jaw and stormy blue eyes.

You stand gaping through the fence as the man flinches in fright. His gaze meet yours and his cheeks tinge pink as he gives a crooked grin, “ah, Thunder, my darling, you’ve found a friend.”

He whistles and the dog lunges forward. He picks up the chihuahua, their size difference almost comical as he cradles him in one arm. You can’t think of a thing to say. You can barely think.

You snap your mouth shut and clear your throat. Work. That’s what you should be doing.

“Hello,” the man nears the other side of the fence before you can move away, “I’ve been wondering what this is all about. The signs...” he points with his thumb over his shoulder.

“Oh, uh,” you peer around as if lost. You sort of are. “A dig. Er. Grant,” you stammer out. You take a breath and still your mind, “I work with an archeological society in New York. We’ve been sponsored by your national board to exhume this site.”

“Ah, yes, makes sense,” he lowers his brows thoughtfully as the dog squirms in his hold, yiping and biting at his sleeve. “Forgive me, she is rather uncouth.” He raises the dog higher and she wiggles in his arm. You see it now, definitely a pampered girl. “This is Thunder. She lives up to her namesake, eh?”

“Uh, yeah,” you give a brittle smile, unsure.

“Thor,” he dips his chin down, “I live just up the pass.”

“You do?” You wonder curiously. “All the way up here?”

“Oh yes, if you saw the old haunt, you might just want to dig that up too,” he jokes. “We usually go up the pass, towards the river.”

“The river?”

“Yes, you mustn’t stray far from here,” he remarks as he raises a hand to lean on the fence, only to nearly tip the unanchored grating. “Oooh, apologies,” he rights himself with a laugh, “anyhow, it is nice to see a new face around here. Better to have a name for it.”

“Right, uh,” you offer your name and giggle nervously, “it’s just me on-site, guess I forget my manners.”

“Not to worry. As the resident mountain man, my etiquette does lack,” he winces as Thunder chomps on his thumb knuckle, “eh, you monster, alright.” He holds her up and she pokes her nose through the fence, “she loves new people. Not so keen on the old.”

“She's cute,” you scratch her nose and she licks your fingers. “Not exactly a native species.”

“Who knows where she came from? Found the little dragon in the woods. Suppose someone left her there. She was covered in mud, so small I though she was a bloody toad,” he muses as he brings her back against his chest and rocks her, “it was only her thunderous barks which told me otherwise, isn’t that right, darling?”

He makes a kissy noise at her and her fluffy tail wags wildly against him. You smile more genuinely. It is nice to have another living thing around after digging up the broken and dead for so long.

“So you’re from New York?” He asks abruptly, his blue eyes rolling over you like a tide.

“Yeah,” you utter breathily, “yes, New York.”

“You’ve been here a while?”

“Couple months,” you shift and twist your glove.

“Wonderful, and you’ve done much exploring? You must live in town.”

“About three hours,” you point towards the gravelly road, “haven’t had much time for sightseeing but I found a good fish shop.”

“A shop? That’s no good. We catch our own fish, fry ‘em up over the pit,” he says, “that’s the way we do it up here.”

You nod, “sounds fun. Well, er,” you turn halfway and look around, your eyes skimming up to the cloudy sky, “I should probably hustle. Looks like rain.”

“That it does but it won’t be ‘til midnight,” he assures.

“You think it’ll hold out?”

“I know so,” he affirms and lingers by the fence, trying to see past you, “what exactly are you uncovering over there?”

“Not much so far,” you pull on your loose glove.

“You must know what this place was. A raider’s camp.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm, yes, the raiders would camp upon the pass away from those who might come ashore, then go off themselves to find a coast to reap,” he explains.

“And how do you know all that?” You ask as you tramp back to your place in the dirt.

“Suppose some of my ancestors camped here with them,” he offers casually, “for so long as we’ve been up here. Once the viking scamps settled, they had to find a home somewhere. Some fellow named Agmundr or another built a stone house further up.”

“Admundr? Family?” You prompt.

“Distant,” he assures, “been some time and that stone house is now a foundation.”

You get down to your knees as you grab your brush and peek over at him, “thanks for the information. I’ll have to add it to the land report. Have them crosscheck in the archives.”

“Not at all. You won’t find it all on your paper, you know? We carry or history on our tongues here.”

“Sure,” you say as you bend over the spearhead and start again.

“You don’t mind if I watch? I always did love history and I’ve never seen a proper dig before.”

“Not much going on, I’m afraid,” you shrug, “but if you want.”

“Thunder will have a tantrum if I go,” he chuckles, “she likes you.”

“Hm,” you scoff, “she is very outspoken.”

You set your eyes on your task but can’t shake the awareness of your audience. It’s not too unusual. There were a few digs you did early on in the heart of the city and people loved to ogle you. This is different. Just the two of you. A stranger even. Friendly as he is, you’re happy for the fence, even if it is rather flimsy.

“Those bones aren’t for you,” he says to the dog as she wriggles in his grasp. “Let’s find a stick then, you little pest.”

#thor #steve rogers #grayish fic #angst fic #thor x reader #steve rogers x reader #fic #series #someone new #mcu #marvel #au #avengers #captain america

329 notes · View notes

suzukiblu · 1 year ago

Note

WIP guessing game: "Robin"

Superboy has existed for about six months at best (five months, two weeks, and six days, but who's creepily spying on their fellow heroes and vigilantes? not Tim, for sure) and was created in a lab full of extremely niche genetic experiments whose creators very rarely bothered making look human, which is probably why he has some weird ideas about certain social norms.

Tim assumes that's why the guy just decided to drop a very annoyed Catwoman on him out of nowhere, anyway.

"The fuck?" he says, though through his vocoder it comes out more like the incoherent screeching of the damned. That being, well, the whole purpose of the vocoder and all. Superboy grins down at him from the nighttime sky all bright and sunny and weirdly adorable, for being a lab-grown weapon and a guy who is technically capable of disassembling Tim down to his individual atoms with, like, a touch and about two seconds' worth of thought.

Not that Tim has been creepily spying on anyone or said anyone's Cadmus files, again.

Also Superboy might not even know he can do that yet, so it's really not a smart thing to mention right now.

"Hey, man!" Superboy greets cheerfully. "She was breaking into that big museum a couple blocks over, figured you'd care about that. As opposed to, like, breaking into some rich asshole with insurance's penthouse. Figured you would not have cared about that."

"The museum also has insurance, for the record," Selina informs him sourly as she makes an art of getting off her unceremoniously roof-dumped ass while looking like being on this roof was her idea to begin with. Because, like: Selina. "And has not properly sourced the artifacts in their new Bast exhibit."

I know, that's why I was on my way to the museum to keep an eye out for you, is what Tim does not say, since Robin is supposed to be a splintered aspect of a mysterious all-knowing city spirit given human form and not just, like, a really dedicated teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman.

What he does do is jerkily cock his head and say, "Preyyyyy?", and let his vocoder horribly mangle the word into a sound usually best described as "unholy avian screeching". Superboy beams, which is not a normal reaction to hearing Robin's voice. Selina just rolls her eyes, but Selina of course knows about the whole "really dedicated teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman" thing.

Like she's never summoned the Batman for anything, geez. Or "Bruce", as an eight year-old Dick Grayson had once upon a time decided to randomly dub him. Tim still can't call the eternal and unsleeping eldritch protector of their city that without feeling like he's going to spontaneously combust, but it is in fact a thing that the Batman will answer to.

Might as well call Pennyworth "Alfie", though.

Jason was even worse at names than Dick, Tim is pretty sure.

"Yeah!" Superboy says, sounding still more cheerful and floating down the rest of the way to the roof to land lightly in front of Tim. Selina eyes him in a way that would end very badly for anyone who was not functionally invulnerable. "I mean, she seems cool and all but I dunno, figured the Bat wasn't big on Cats in his territory. And also the criming. Definitely also the criming."

"How . . . find Robin?" Tim asks. Superboy doesn't have enhanced senses, as far as he knows, so . . .

"Oh, I've been stalking you," Superboy explains. Tim blinks behind his unblinking mask and feels several ways about that statement. "That's what you Bats all do when you're interested in somebody, right? So I figured you'd like it if I did it back."

. . . Tim feels several ways about that statement.

#timkon #tim drake #kon el #conner kent #dc robin #superboy #rinfic #chromatographic #wip: a fake cryptid and a real romantic

547 notes · View notes

slytherizz · 10 months ago

Text

Playing God - Auror!Sebastian x Dark!MC

Tags/Warnings: 18+ | Non-Con | explicit sexual content | Dark!MC | Polyjuice Sex

All tags can be found on Ao3

Word count: 6.4k

Summary: Decorated Auror, Sebastian Sallow had not anticipated how his life would diverge so sharply from the woman he once loved, the most wanted and notorious witch in Britain. Or how their paths would continue to cross - their fates still bound together.

A/N This fic has been living in my WIPs for about 6 months...I wanted to reverse the dynamic of my longer fic with Sebastian being the Auror this time and in doing such explore some darker themes. Short multi-chapter that will probably end up being three chapters at most.

She was pretty enough he supposed in a homely sort of way.

Petite, with neat shoulder-length hair that brushed against narrow shoulders and, a soft bow to her overly thin top lip. But her dress was old-fashioned, a severe high-neck buttoned almost to her chin, ruffled layers of her underskirts impractical and lumpy. Layers upon layers, of an unflattering shade of yellow washed out her otherwise pleasant features.

Compared to the other witches that would frequent such a seedy establishment with their low necklines and light skirts, she would be considered dowdy.

If it wasn't for her eyes. Keen and alert as if beneath the sheep-like exterior lurked something dangerous. He most likely would have overlooked her too.

To even the keenest observer it wouldn't look like Sebastian had any particular tastes when it came to women or men. Much to his displeasure, the qualities that drew him in were rarely mere aesthetic.

Barked laughter like an ill-tempered hound. The smell of mallowsweet. Aromatic and earthy. Teeth pressed lightly into a bottom lip like they held all the cards in a game no one else knew they were playing. Until they spread the winning hand. Smile so wide it unnerved, bore too many teeth.

Tonight, it was keen and dangerous eyes that reminded him of her.

They shared no other similarities and from what Sebastian could discern from her well-manicured nails, and unblemished skin, bar a pale line around her finger where he supposed an engagement ring would usually sit - this was no fighter.

This was a proper young lady - who had wandered onto the wrong side of town looking for a sensible amount of trouble as her wedding day, most likely to some equally wellbred suitor, loomed over her like a dark cloud.

As if Sebastian were screaming his thoughts at her across the crowded tavern, those sharp eyes flicked their attention to him. Raked over the thinning patches of his civilian cloak, the shadow across his jaw, the dark circles under his eyes he'd given up glamouring. After years they were as much a staple of his face as the freckles on his nose.

The marks of a man who hadn't enough time to shave let alone visit a tailor, a man who would scarcely have enough time to ask her too many intrusive questions.

She smiled. Jarring was the only way Sebastian could describe how her face seemed to split horizontally across its centre. Neither half quite belonged to the other. The demure and polite curl of her lips was offset by the razor-edged scrutiny of her darkened gaze. Predatory. Hungry. In a way that made his mouth go dry and cool sweat beads on the back of his neck.

Ice clinked against the side of his glass as Sebastian knocked back the remaining dregs of whiskey. Disguising the way his lip twitched at the corners under the weight of her eyes. Amber liquid burned his throat was nothing compared to the heat prickling across his skin.

Sebastian held up two fingers to indicate to the Barmaid over the raucous patrons of the pub. She placed a second glass on the bar filling them both with a more than generous pour.

"Cheers," Sebastian said, placing the coins into her hand, a little extra for her trouble as he always did. The barmaid smiled brightly, flushed and preening, over a few extra sickles as if he'd declared some great love for her. Though he supposed generosity was not a trait of many that frequented the Ogre's Arms. She leaned a little further over the bar than was strictly necessary, her fingers linger too long against his palm as he hands over his sickles.

Sebastian did not miss the way that the strangers' eyes tracked the interaction. As swift and deliberately as he had been trained to be with every motion, he slipped his hand from the barmaid's grasp deftly hooking his fingers into the rim of the grotesquely full tumblers as he spun on his heels.

Whatever the poor girl had been about to say faltered in her throat. Crackling out of life like a dying gramophone. He really should have felt some sympathy for the poor girl.

She'd made her fondness for him quite obvious over the years. Despite how Sebastian would sidle out the door with what must seem like any witch but her. Too worried about any kind of arrangement that would ask for more than he was willing, or able, to give. Nor did he wish to find a new hole to drown himself in.

And regretfully - her gentle honeyed voice and hopeful doe eyes that delivered longing glances had never stirred anything inside of Sebastian. As much as on some nights he wished they would.

Sebastian weaved through the sparse gathering around the bar of the more rambunctious patrons. Turning a blind eye, to the corner booth and the two witches poorly disguising their face under their dramatic hoods, exchanging money, a rather suspicious-looking sack at their feet which gave a periodic shudder and what looked like spines protruding from the burlap. It may be his job to investigate suspicious behaviour such as this but- he'd rather not have to explain to his sergeant exactly what he was doing in this pub in the first place.

Approaching her solitary table nestled in the corner, she inclined her chin up towards him. Smug. Sloped oak beams cast a thick shadow, and candlelight flickering against her cheekbones made her features waxy like an oil painting against a grimy canvas.

"May I?"

She tilted her head, as though she expected nothing else but was amused by his gesture nonetheless."Only because you brought a bribe."

Sebastian hooked the heel of his boot around the chair leg pulling out further. Placed the two glasses on the table as he sat, careful not to spill any against the oak surface. Not that it would be such a shame if it did. Cheap whiskey from a smudged glass was hardly a waste.

Sebastian tipped his glass to her in toast, she did not feign even the slightest interest in her glass or his hollow act of chivalry.

"I haven't seen you here before," Sebastian said.

Flexing her fingers, she admired those well-polished nails. "No. I don't suppose you would have."

West Country. Quaint. As out of place amongst the sea of London accents as her dress was from this decade. Confirming a very important fact for Sebastian she was certainly not from around here. For the best.

"This doesn't seem like the place for such a nice young lady such as yourself."

Chin resting on the back of her delicate hand. A feline grin spread across her face, as she lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Nor the place for well respected Ministry men."

Tension seized Sebastian's shoulders. Unnerved by her perception, his eyes darted across the sea of faces. He'd left the scarlet cloak with the gold badge adorning his lapels in his flat long before he'd made apparated to the bottom of Knockturn Alley. Places like these didn't take too kindly to rozzers scrambling their clientele. Nor would he want it to become common knowledge at the Ministry that he frequented grimy drinking holes on his off hours. He was certain she'd been alone but that prickle of unease had his hand reaching towards his wand.

She caught his arm swiftly, delicate fingers folded up the cuff of his cloak. Ministry insignia branded into the tan leather strap that secured his wand to his forearm.

Chuckling breathily to himself, Sebastian felt the tension ebb as, just as swiftly, she turned down the sleeve. "Half the people here carry their wand tucked up their sleeve. You have a keen eye, to have spotted that mark from halfway across the room, lass. Do you make it a habit of checking if every man who approaches you is an Auror?"

Sharp eyes glinted with mischief. "Only the ones that interest me."

"Must be my lucky day." He leaned in closer, bitter whiskey breath disturbed a loose curl around her ear as he whispered. "Unless there's a reason you have to be on such high alert for authority I should know about?"

"Do I look like the kind of woman who would have much trouble with the law?"

He cast his eyes down, at her unblemished hands. Free of callouses and scar tissue, the tight restrictiveness of her bodice ill-suited for battle, her polite disarming smile - even those eyes, so reminiscent but not quite right. Despising the remorseful pang in his chest. Nothing like her.

"Well if that's the case this," he gestured around the damp crooked hole masquerading as a tavern. "Certainly isn't the place for you."

"Nor you. Unless the requirements for holding such an esteemed post has gone severely downhill and they let swindlers and murderers into their ranks." He almost winced at the sting of the insult she unwittingly delivered.

"Perhaps lurking around in dingey bars with terrible whiskey isn't suited to either of us. Perhaps, upstanding members of society that we are, should go somewhere we can feel more…relaxed."

"And where exactly is there such a place for me?" Most women would have covered that glaring tan line on her finger, under gloved hands or glamour, but she seemed to flaunt it as she ghosted it across his knuckles; an invitation.

Sebastian's grin widened. "I have a few ideas."

"I don't have much time. So you better make every minute count."

***

Sebastian unlocked his front door with a snap of his fingers. Gestured her inside, his hand pressed into the small of her back. She inclined her head towards him, a smirk playing on her lips at the hollow politeness of his gesture. Knowing full well his intention of inviting her back to his flat was far from gentlemanly.

Exaggerated skirts shifted as she stepped inside. Soft lamp lights scattered around his living room sparked to life in welcome illuminating the small living area. Her formal attire looked out of place; more suited for high tea than the sparsely filled space Sebastian inhabited.

Files strewn across the long velvet settee, scattered teacups and candles burned down to the wick littered every available surface. He knew the larder would be just as barren save for some tea bags and a half-empty bottle of gin the department had cobbled together to purchase for his promotion. He didn't even like gin. The presence of female company always seemed to highlight just how every inch of his flat screamed bachelor.

Sebastian shrugged off his cloak, hooking it on the back of the door. Never once taking his eyes off her. Odd little creature that she was. Against the faint moonlight that trickled in from the arched window on the far wall, her face cloaked in darkness, she cast a dramatic silhouette.

Not quite her. No. But her dress despite its bulk could not disguise the dip of her waist, an alluring swell to her chest. With her face masked from view, he felt his drink-fogged mind teeter dangerously on an edge he would not let it wander past.

She'd bent down, and pinched the corner of a piece of parchment he'd discarded the previous night between her thumb and forefinger. Sebastian slipped his wand from the holster. With a flick, the paper pried itself free to rejoin the rest which were shuffling themselves back into their file before shooting across the room into the waiting drawer of his bureau. The gold lock clicked shut, locking them securely away with an audible snap.

Her head whipped around, her chin jutted out in irritation, and her eyes narrowed slightly into a glare. Sebastian shrugged, as he unbuckled the holster on his arm, placing it on the narrow kitchen island. "Classified information. I'm sure you understand."

Sebastian couldn't have nosy witches trawling through his case files. He'd seen plenty of Aurors sacked for lesser sins. And reporters from the Prophet certainly weren't above seduction tactics to get their stories. That knowledge did nothing however to stop the tingle that spread down his spine that the defiant look in her eye ignited in him.

"I suppose." She shrugged, a forced display of indifference. Before proceeding to further inspect his residence. Striding about like she owned the place and Sebastian was merely some troublesome tenant.

The cramped flat he'd started renting in London straight out of Hogwarts could hardly be considered a home. Sebastian never planned to make it one. Or stay for as long as he did. Merely a stepping stone, at the start of his career. Close to the Ministry, so he could collapse after a long day.

Eat. Sleep. Breath. Work.

That desperate desire to prove himself more than what he'd been. Never satisfied with his lot in life. By the grace of Merlin, he'd been given a second chance to make himself a man - his parents, his sister, that he could be proud of.

He had planned to settle down eventually. Fix the decaying bones of his parents' old house on the hill with her by his side. Both were now a faded, hopeless dream. Sebastian's life had rarely gone to plan.

Tracing a finger across the well-worn spines on his overstuffed bookshelf she pondered each title with interest. "Quite the collection you have. Some rather questionable titles you have here for a man of your profession."

"Special Ministry approval. They're charmed to be bound to my place of residence - before you get any ideas. Can never be too prepared in my line of work. Knowledge of magic of a more…delicate nature can be the difference between life and death."

Strictly speaking, this was not a lie. Any Auror worth his salt would have at least half the books in Sebastian's collection on curse-breaking, dark magic and deadly creatures. Admittedly, his robust library wasn't necessary for his career nor was all of it purely academic interest.

Eyewitness accounts of skinwalkers he'd picked up on a short trip to America, liaising with the MACUSA on their rising troll problem. Journals, written in the maddening scrawl of a witch who'd fancied herself a revolutionary scholar. Wanted to test the corruption dark magic had on the soul. Daft bugger used herself to test her theories. Now all that was left of her was crammed into a bachelor's bookcase.

Smallest in number and size, a thin collection of children's stories and a letter correspondence from crackpot conspiracists. He'd been too late to salvage anything that remained of Miriam Fig's research and this pitiful array was all that he'd discovered over the years with any reference to Ancient Magic. A small house fire could destroy what Sebastian could only assume was the largest collated materials on the subject.

It had been foolish to try to love her, but perhaps more still to hunt the vengeful wraith.

"Well read. Good career. Seems you are a rather eligible bachelor-"

Sebastian smiled moving closer towards her. "I'm not bad to look at either."

"Despite your proclivity for skulking around dingey bars. It's unusual to find a man such as yourself…unattached."

"What can I say - I'm married to my work. Not much time for anything else; not many witches would put up with the lifestyle long-term. Never been interested in marriage."

Liar.

She looked up at him through dark lashes, from how those sharp eyes stripped him back until he was raw and exposed - she scented his dishonesty. "Sounds like a lonely life."

"Depends on who you ask."

Sebastian leaned heavily on the shelf above her head, elbow brushing against well-loved spines. His calloused palm slipped around her waist, running up her side. Felt the curved bones of her corset under his thumb. Leaning in closer still, enough that his breath disturbed the loose curls around her temples. Her lips parted, tongue dancing along her bottom lip as she tilted her chin up towards him like a cat basking in a warm breeze.

She didn't waiver. Not a single flicker of hesitation in those sharp, piercing eyes. For a moment, Sebastian pitied the man who intended to marry her. But not enough to stop him from capturing her lips.

Tasting the tang of cheap whiskey in their mingled breath. Not a slither of remorse as her delicate hands found the nape of Sebastian's neck. Used chestnut curls to pull him closer to kiss him more deeply. Their breath was little more than stolen gasps for air and an opportunity for her tongue to seize and slip past parted lips.

Sebastian crowded her further against the bookshelf. Held tighter to the bunched fabric of her skirts, hands fumbling desperately to feel the shape it disguised. Frustrated by the garment, his lips left her mouth. Travelled down to her jaw, her breathing hitched, head tipped back to thunk against the shelf as Sebastian nipped and sucked at the column of her throat. A little too sharply. But she only pressed into him further. Blood and bruises bloomed wild across her skin as his teeth grazed along her heightened pulse.

He knew what it was like to try to ensnare creatures such as this. How they bit when cornered. Fool that he was, he desired to tame them, change their nature; almost as much as he craved to be bitten.

Maybe that was why he held her so firmly in his grasp. Petticoats balled in his fists, as he pressed himself awkwardly against her. Her dainty form didn't quite fit the stocky mould of his own.

Not that anyone witch or woman had since.

Not that she seemed to care. She pulled Sebastian in like he alone was hers to drink from. Like he belonged to her and she would bend and break him to fit her. Some part of him prayed she succeeded. He'd snap every bone in his body, boil down his sinew in the hope that when at last he healed - he would fit another.

Sebastian pressed his mouth into the crook of her shoulder and burrowed his face, inhaling deeply, as he mouthed at her skin. Soft and supple as an over-ripe peach. Desperately, pathetically trying and failing to make himself fit. But the bridge of his nose bumped harshly against her clavicle and his back ached from stooping.

He'd never melted into anyone since her. No matter how many times he tried with countless trysts with all the ways they reminded him of her in their laughs, smiles, and eyes - they were not her.

Pained groan against her shoulder. Cloth ripped as he tore past her outdated petticoats and the silk of her undergarments. Desperate hands kneaded at her bare flesh. Thigh. Hip. The curve of her arse. Every inch of her skin grew hot, flushed under his touch. If Sebastian had been in his right mind not addled, by drink and frustration he would have handed it to her; for such a wellbred lady, she did not startle easily or cringe from his working hands. With a strung-out whine, she simply displaced the torn fabric so Sebastian's knee pressed between her thighs could provide her with more friction.

Sebastian sank to his knees, hooking her thigh around his broad shoulder. Balanced precariously, her back pressed against the stacks and her leg suspended quivering. Heel dug between his shoulder blades as she sought stability. Her limbs were lean…soft. Delicate like a lamb. No coiled muscle battle worn and firm disguised under her skirts.

That did not stop Sebastian from groaning against the sparse hair as he nestled himself between her thighs. Her muscles clenched tighter. Not with apprehension. No. With blinding unhindered desire. Whining breathlessly, as she urged him to fulfil his role, drop any pretence to do what they came here for. This was no budding romance. And there was no time to pretend otherwise.

Sebastian's tongue darted out teasing the tip through her folds. Eagerly seeking out her bundle of nerves to curl his tongue under her hood. Satisfied, a mewl passed her lips to at last have Sebastian where she desired him most. Hips bucked and writhed with every broad stroke and teasing lick against her soaking entrance. Brown tresses tangled harshly in her grip, those neatly filed nails scratching encouragingly against his scalp.

Her taste was unfamiliar on Sebastian's tongue, but he only lapped at her more fervently. Desperate. As if he savoured enough of her desire for him - he could burn away the memories of sweeter nectars.

Bunching her skirt closer to her stomach, Sebastian's view of her was unobstructed. The collar pulled open where she'd made swift work of the buttons of her high neckline; they hung like loosely strung pearls cascading down her chest which heaved with every breath. Breasts dimpled against the restrictive tightly laced corset.

Sebastian's eyes flicked up to meet hers. Not the right shape or hue but that intensity to them. Storm raging across a riptide, Sebastian, vulnerable in their depth. He could drown in them and would do so gladly.

Blood rushed south, and Sebastian groaned low, pained. He sucked on her clit, coaxing more slick to coat his lips and chin. Hoping beyond hope that her eyes locked on his would flutter closed in pleasure. Her mouth was ajar, each drawn-out moan growing louder as she approached her peak. Clever calculating gaze fixed on Sebastian. He knew he was exactly where she wanted him. Prey to her predator. His cock strained and achingly hard because of it.

Her back arched against the stacks, toes curling against the centre of his back, legs shook with the strain to hold herself upright. Sebastian was relentless. He devoured the quivering nub, tongue teasing as he sucked. Her passionate cry was unrestrained, legs threatening to buckle bringing her down like a house of cards as she collapsed over the edge. Aftershock of pleasure rolled over her, he kept a firm grip on her hip as she rested more heavily against him. His desire for her is confusing and just as precarious.

Sebastian unhooked her leg from his shoulder, palms running along the backs of her calves. She was still propped up feebly holding herself against the bookcase. Pads of her fingers clutching pathetically at the shelves with the ball of her heel holding purchase on the floor.

Orgasm ebbing, softening her predatory edge. A smirk played at Sebastian's lips as he looked up at her once polished appearance now dishevelled. Rattling, with a lust-drunk gaze that defiant chin hanging slightly ajar as she greedily gulped down air.

She narrowed her eyes at his smug expression and gathered her composure before slipping her ruined dress from her shoulders letting it puddle at her feet. Nail digging under his chin as she beckoned Sebastian upwards, pulling him in.

It made Sebastian's heart beat wildly against his chest. A caged canary faced with a falcon.

Teeth grazed his bottom lip, tongue seeking his own. Sebastian's clothes fell away easily from his broad frame. His shirt was discarded, followed by breeches which tangled around his ankles as they fumbled towards the settee. Muffled grunts into her mouth every time her palm grazed his cock, hard and throbbing, through his undergarments. Sebastian moved to lie her swiftly across the settee. One hand pressed into the small of her back the other tangled in amongst the pins now falling loose from her hair.

Inexplicably, she moved faster than Sebastian thought she was capable of. Leg hooked around his ankle like a snake pulling him off balance. Backs of his knees connected with the settee as his legs buckled and Sebastian collapsed bodily onto cushions. Rarely with his extensive training did anyone get the jump on him.

Her lips curled as she observed the way his enlarged head twitched against his belly more eagerly. "Now, I think it's my turn." Laces from her corset pulled loose, she let the camisole shift to the floor with it. "-And you looked far too pretty beneath me."

As she straddled his lap, Sebastian spluttered on his groan and the intoxicating sensation of her wet centre against his shaft. Her palms were flat, braced against his chest, nails scratching at the coarse hairs that grew there. Every inch of her soft, naked flesh pressed against him. His hands settled on the curve of her hips, sliding along her flushed skin with hands that seemed too large.

She really was quite pretty. Sebastian just wished the parts that didn't remind him of her made his heart race as much as the ones that did.

She caught his lips, fingers cupped against his jaw, her mouth moving against his. Teeth and tongue. Hot breath came out in short dulcet pants as she greedily tasted the remnants of her arousal on his lips.

Her hand snaked down between them, taking Sebastian's throbbing length in her hand. He hissed, as her thumb smoothed over the leaking slit, aligning him with her entrance. Eyelashes fluttered a satisfied sigh, as she sank down, taking him inside of her. Dainty as she may appear, she appeared to relish the stretch to accommodate his size, almost as much as he did. So tight she gripped his cock, it almost sent him hurtling over the edge.

Barely giving herself time to adjust before she canted her hips. Weight shifting so she could slide up his shaft until only the head of his cock remained before sinking back down onto Sebastian's girth more demandingly. Needy grunts reverberated in Sebastian's chest as he matched her frantic desperate pace. Forehead braced on her chest as he bucked his hips into her tight core. Pebbled nipple caught between his lips, her head thrown back in a wanton moan as Sebastian ever so gently grazed the peak with his teeth.

Sebastian closed his eyes. Whiskey fog coupled with the godly feel of her clenched around him, he relaxed into her eager pace. Inhibitions lowered, his mind straying to the well-worn path he rarely let himself tread.

Face striking contorted in ecstasy; a savage beauty like lightning striking the ocean. Mallowsweet scent; that soothed like a botanist's herbal balm. How perfectly her body wrapped around his own as if by design. Sebastian's teeth pressed hard against his tongue as her name danced upon it. With his eyes closed, hands held back - that shameful part of him could pretend it was her.

"Sebastian," the witch moaned. He didn't remember giving her his name. Nor asking hers. The voice he heard was not that polite West Country lilt but one conjured from Hades - his divine pleasure and punishment.

Can't let it be her.

Sebastian forced his eyes open, to look at the woman from the bar. Her neat hair, narrow shoulders and thin top lip. Only to find the lines separating fantasy from reality blurred and contorted. His stomach lurched.

Maybe he'd had more to drink than he thought.

Whiskey had crowded and garbled his senses as well as his inhibitions. Sebastian's vision was merely blurred. She looked like her. Not just in her eyes but the sloping curve of her neck, the arch of her nose, her hair longer and tangling against the neat pins that had once held it back.

It's all the whiskey.

If he could bring himself to look away from her face for even one moment he would see the room spinning. But he couldn't look away.

Those keen eyes bore into him, locked with his own and he swore they changed colour. The fire that had been smouldering within sparked, roaring, melting her irises into that familiar hue.

He didn't just have to squeeze his eyes shut to see her and pretend it was her impossibly tight walls clenching around him with every thrust.

There she was.

"You," Sebastian spluttered, disbelief tight in his chest. "No. No- It can't be you. This can't be happening." Who cares if he sounded mad? His mind was spiralled and scrambled, desperate to bring back the visage of the woman from the bar and right himself. This face; her face didn't waver. She rolled her hips once more, bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she cast her gaze down. Over her breasts and the faded scar that curled under the left from the crucio, he'd administered. Firm muscles of her legs earned from years of battle. Calloused hands of someone who knew little of comfort. All were once again her own.

Sebastian's world was spiralling, tipping on its axis. Tension in every muscle in his body. Still as beautiful as she was in his nightmares, even the ones where she tore out his heart. She clicked her tongue, amused then smiled. So wide, it bore too many teeth.

Fucking exquisite. Sebastian despised the way his heart faltered in his chest.

"Pity. I guess the kneazle's out of the bag," she purred, teeth raking sharp across his earlobe. So sharp it shocked his spiral back into sickening clarity like ice in his veins.

Like a shot, Sebastian wrapped his hand hard around her throat forcing her face away from him. Thumb pressed harshly into the corner of her jaw with his iron grip on her windpipe. Any sane woman would tremble to have his large hand like a vice around her throat in anger. Cower, under the venom in his eyes.

But she was far from sane; perhaps never had been. She gasped involuntarily choking around where his fingers so deeply pressed into her flesh, but the smile on her lips never faltered despite how he could feel the hammer of her blood against his fingertips.

"You should know I don't share," she wheezed. It wasn't the polite West Country drawl she'd adopted at the bar - but that feminine purr he knew far too well. Velvety, like a caress that sent shivers down his spine; and if it were possible simultaneously made his blood run cold and his cock impossibly stiffer where it was sheathed deep within her. She whimpered approvingly, hot breath ghosting his freckled cheeks.

"Fuck- how did you-" Choking on his groan as she expertly rolled her hips, grinding on his cock. Evil, manipulative witch. She knew exactly how to turn practically every rational thought in Sebastian's brain to smoke.

"Polyjuice. She was pretty don't you think? You seemed to like fucking her while it lasted. Maybe not as much as that curvy redhead from a few months ago...I had bruises on my thighs for weeks."

Somewhere deep in his psyche, Sebastian knew he should push her off. Bind her. Gag her. Put as much distance between himself and her and the mixed-up way she made him feel. Preferably in a cell in the deepest part of Azkaban the Ministry had long ago allocated for her when they signed the warrant for her arrest. At that moment, over the cacophony screaming through his head the only coherent thought was how to keep her desperately bouncing on his cock.

"I thought it was my turn to have some unsanctioned fun."

No - rose, bubbled and died in his throat. Caught somewhere amongst the shameful rasping groan as she began to rhythmically rock her hips. Never quite releasing her entirely, but Sebastian's grip on her throat loosened as his muscles slackened in shameful pleasure.

Using every bit of her newfound leash, she leaned forward to kiss him. Sin, like ambrosia on his tongue. Lips slotted against him, they moved in perfect harmony to a melody he wished had never been composed on his bones.

She wrapped around him as if the wild thing that she had always been had sprouted from the earth, and curled her tendrils around him. Or rather, like a constant wave beating against him she'd worn his surface. It was a marvel he hadn't crumbled into her sooner.

"You're mine you know," she cooed, her breath hot against his ear.

"I am not," Sebastian spat. But try as he might to deny it, curse her until his final breath - his words rang hollow. And he loathes himself all the more for it. She was not his any longer, but something else. Twisted by cruelty and power that simply wore the face of the woman he once loved.

Shame stirred in his gut; desire coursed through his blood.

"Denying it doesn't make it any less true. You know me blind. When my face is not my own. Fate has bound us, Sebastian. Just as I would know you in any life."

Sebastian gritted his teeth, cheek pressed against her sternum. Fingers digging into her shoulder blades, as he pounded his cock up into her harder, faster. If he was stronger, he would not be prey to her illicit designs for him - but he was not. She keened, greedy to take all he could give her. Consume him entirely if she could. Sebastian closed his eyes and cursed himself for being weak.

Vision narrowing, Sebastian groaned, low and pitiful into the curve of her neck. Ashamed of what he knew was coming. "I hate you," he cursed. Repeated it like a mantra, his lips against her sweat-salted skin as if he could transcribe the words onto her flesh.

Deep plunges into her warmth growing erratic as Sebastian's coil tightens. Her body clenched, tightening around him, with every thrust teased against her sweet spot coaxing more slick onto his cock. His punishing words merely rolled off her curves like water off a duck's back.

"S-Sebastian," her hoarse cry pierced through his resolve. Sebastian bit into her neck trying and failing to hold back from the precipice of the inevitable. Unwilling to surrender any more of himself to her. It only served to send her hurtling over the cliff. His cock buried deep inside of her, her head thrown back, cunt quivering as her climax broke. Orgasm, wracked through her in waves. Engulfing Sebastian's every sense.

Fire and Brimstone. Gentle breezes and mallowsweet.

Beauty. Terror.

Rhythm faltering, Sebastian's hips spluttered as that mounting coil finally snapped. Her name on his lips, her scent on his skin. Everything that remained of Sebastian Sallow was consumed entirely by her. He came hard - with a broken pathetic whine that forced itself from his body as he spilt inside of her.

It was no little death - it was all-consuming. A part of him would never come back from. Another piece of his soul surrendered along with what was left of his dignity.

Sebastian fought for breath. Unforgiving waters filled his chest, ice seized his joints, heart thundered as dark edges clouded his vision, threatening to drown out the light and sound. Choking on his saliva he wheezed, shoulders heaved forward violently. Fresh tears pricked in his eyes.

She shushed his soothingly, thumb tracing idle patterns on his skin with a sickening gentleness that curdled his stomach. He whined pathetically against her chest but she only gripped him harder. Fingers carded through his hair as she hummed a sweet tune peppering kisses to the crown of his chestnut hair.

Perhaps, in another life, he had the strength to overcome the guilt and sickness now seizing his bones. In another, perhaps there was no deception to be ashamed of.

He wasn't sure how long they sat entwined, soft cock still inside her, his spend leaking onto his thighs matting in the hair. When at last Sebastian's violent sobbing eased he felt the enchantment stretch across his body, taunt ropes strapped his arms to his sides, and bound his ankles. A chaste kiss against his temple as she slid from his lap.

Sebastian watched her and tried to pretend for a second, that he was not bound, she was not mad and hips swaying hypnotically as she pranced naked around their flat as she did every Sunday evening. Not his. Theirs. Another life, unstained by dark magic where she was still his.

Fussing with her dress, eyebrows pinched together, frowning as she examined the shredded yellow gown. She sighed, holding the unlaced corset over her breasts, gathering up the remnants to haul them to the kitchen island. She found his wand, with its emerald and onyx handle, the one that had belonged to his paternal great-grandfather. Back and forth she toyed with it in her hands.

"Put that down." A feeble attempt at a threat from a man bound, naked, cheeks streaked with stale tears. Tight from salt they felt stretched like a drum.

"You ruined my dress," she pouted. "The least you can do is help me fix it."

Traitorously, Sebastian's wand didn't so much as shudder in retaliation. It obeyed her easily, stitching up the splintered seams, her corset tightened, cinching at her waist. Her hairpins reorganised themselves. She looked almost like her old self, the girl she'd been at school, with a spark of fire in her eyes that mirrored his own.

"Before you go running off to the next little witch who bats her eyelashes at you, Bash. Try to remember - I don't share." She placed his wand back on the counter and slipped a canteen from her purse. She drank deeply. Gagging, hand smacking into her chest to keep down whatever foul liquid it contained.

If Sebastian had still been drunk the way her face bubbled like stew on a boil would have turned his stomach. Her lips thinned, her hair shrunk back into her scalp, her scars paled and her muscles softened. The woman from the Pub returned, exactly as he'd met her. It did nothing to quell the sickness churning in his gut.

"Au revoir mon amour." She was gone as quickly as she came, but her presence lingered like a gaping, festering wound.

Sebastian sat in the dark. Hatred for her that he cultivated in public and the private yearning he tended to as it grew like persistent weeds in his garden he tended had given way to emptiness. A void that for a time he was content to let swallow him whole as he stared at the cracks in his floor. Mourning the woman he'd loved. But most he mourned for himself, for all she took from him.

Shadows inched across the floor as dawn eventually broke. Long after the bindings had dissolved. Sebastian hadn't slept or moved for hours and his joints stiff, groaned as he got to his feet. He trudged to his bathroom and ran the water until it was scalding. Intent on scrubbing his skin raw. As if she could un-touch him.

#Please mind the tags #dark fic #sebastian sallow #hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow x mc #sebastian sallow x f!mc #hogwarts legacy fanfic #hogwarts legacy fanfiction #sebastian sallow fanfiction #sebastian sallow smut #sebastian x mc #sebastian sallow fanfic #non con

199 notes · View notes

stargazing15 · 2 years ago

Text

Little rascal

A little fluffy dad Rooster drabble

A/N: yes I have a lot of wips, no this was not one of them. Hehe woops

Enjoy!

"Babe, seriously, is that the only thing coming out of his mouth?" Bradley sighed in frustration at the sight of his son. Oh, it was that type of day.

Yup, little Nick learned that you reacted when he said "mama" and has been saying it ever since, to everything and everyone. And when home you got an extended concert of "mama mama mama mamaaaaa". For you it was funny, but Bradley's pride got hurt Nick still wasn't saying any form of 'daddy'. And just like that mister grumpy chicken was back and sulking around the house.

"Earth to Bradley! The man is 14 months old, you know he even calls Mav 'mama'. And Penny, oh and even the lady from the bakery. So for the moment you're 'mama' too."

Bradley made himself smaller to be at eye level with Nick. "My sweet little boy, daddy's sorry, but you would make daddy's day a lot better if you would say 'daddy' for me, or 'dada', I could live with that too, please?"

"Honey, I seriously doubt your cute puppy eyes will work with Nick. You know his are cuter." Even Nick agreed with a "Hehe" and continued babbling in his own language.

"It was worth to try," Bradley smiled softly, "if you don't mind I'm going to the grocery store, can you help me with the list babe?"

"Of course, here you go. And can you bring my Bradley back?" This time it was you showing off your puppy eyes, in hope to make a little smile appear on your husband's face and it worked.

"Thank you for understanding, I'll try to find him." He said before giving you a small kiss.

"Well, actually thank you, now I don't have to go to the grocery store tomorrow, extra play time with Nick. Take your time, I know it helps to cool down after a heavy day."

"See you later babe and you, be nice to mommy, okay?" But Nick was still strolling around with his walker like a little madman guarding the house.

You had this feeling, so you took your phone and put the camera on. Mostly your gut feeling was right and Nick was about to do something funny. You had just touched the button to start filming when it happened.

"Dada? Dadaaaaa! Dada. Dadaaaaa?" Nick was saying while pointing to the door. Oh yes he did, and you were filming. The moment you stopped filming you made a little squeal, startling your son.

"I'm so proud of you little big man, and dada too, I will text dada immediately."

You: right after you left <attached video>

You heard Bradley's car arrive 30 minutes later and he was humming, Bradley was back, he left mister grumpy chicken behind.

"Hi babe, I'm back," he gave you a quick kiss on the forehead before putting the groceries on the counter top, "and hello to you too little man. You made dada's very good." And ruffled through Nick's hair, making him babble something at the action.

"Mama mama, waaaaaah." Nick babbled to his father.

"You little rascal, you're lucky I love you."

As soon as Bradley was around the corner to put the last things away Nick did it again. "Dada." Resulting in you and Bradley laughing at the little goofball. Bradley came crawling from around the corner going straight to Nick to start tickling him.

"This time I heard it!" Bradley laughed with Nick. You joined them on the ground to help let Nick win the little tickling contest.

Taglist: @mrsjaderogers @bradleybeachbabe @iamdannyday @rhirhikingston @mavrellover91

#bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster #bradley bradshaw #dad!bradley bradshaw #dad rooster #dad bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw imagine #rooster imagine #rooster x reader #rooster x you #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw x you #bradley bradshaw fic #rooster fic #top gun fanfic #top gun: maverick #rooster fanfic #bradley bradshaw fanfic

1K notes · View notes

kazimo · 4 months ago

Text

Sharing some songs that make me think of quanyin for the quanyin bingo!!

Longer post below the cut!

First I’d like to recommend this fanvideo/fansong! It’s 5 years old at this point so many of you might have seen it already, but I saw it for the first time earlier this month and I thought it’s pretty cool

youtube

Second, I’m gonna share my personal quanyin playlist 😁 I still consider it a wip at this point, but I think it’s good enough to share ☺️ Songs follow the progress of their relationship (well, kinda lol I tried)

If you’re short on time, here’s two cute songs from the playlist, one from each pov:

🌙 YY pov:

☀️ QYZ pov:

#tgcf #heaven official's blessing #quanyin #yin yu #quan yizhen #fanart #art by kazimo #playlist #for the quanyin bingo!#lets all make up amvs in our heads together #tgcf posts

84 notes · View notes

couldsewyouastitchandsavenine · 5 months ago

Text

Tonight [Javi Peña]

a/n: this has been sitting in my wip for months...

pairing: javi peña x fem!reader

wordcount: 1.2K

warnings: language, implied smut

The unmistakable soundtrack of the neighbours’ morning activities kicks off like clockwork—the signature blend of thumps, squeaks, and moans making it clear the walls in this place are way too thin for comfort.

Next to him, you shift, restless movements of limbs under the thin sheets before your eyes crack open, unfocused and irritated.

Javier can't help but feel a twinge of annoyance. Knowing the walls are paper-thin is one thing; getting a front-row seat to the neighbours'...enthusiasm...right at daybreak is another story entirely. Javier grimaces as he drags a hand down his face, trying to scrub away the sleep and the disbelief as he sits up.

"What the hell is that noise?" Your voice is hoarse, still tangled up in the tail end of a dream.

Javier, attempting a lighthearted jab, runs a hand through his hair once more and looks away from the water-stain on his ceiling. "Was hoping it was just your heart skipping a beat for me."

You can't help but snort, your amusement mixed with a heavy dose of sarcasm. "Keep dreaming, Peña."

Thrown together by fate or sheer luck, the two of you are an odd pair. Have been for a long time. Bound by inside jokes, old secrets, an oddball friendship that by all rights shouldn't work but somehow does. And mornings like these, with the neighbours providing an unwanted audio to their primal needs, you both find yet another common ground in mutual disdain.

Sitting up, you pull at the edges of an old Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, one that’s seen better days, some relic tied to an ex, not him. Stretching your arms above your head, a yawn breaks free that turns into a soft, kittenish mewl. Javier averts his eyes, trying to grant you a sliver of privacy, to ignore the complicated heat that curls low in his belly at the sweet, sleepy sounds you make.

Then, just as the room settles into a brief silence, the unmistakable chant of "Ay papi!" floats through the walls, followed by an uptick in the neighbours' activities.

You clench your jaw. "Guess they're really going for gold, huh?"

"I'd give 'em a 5.7 on technical merit."

"Tough critic." The corner of your mouth twitches. "Points for stamina?"

Shrugging with an air of mock seriousness, Javier flashes a grin as he reaches for his pack of cigarettes. "Let's give ‘em half an hour. Coffee?"

"Got bread?"

You’re halfway into a pants dance, trying to shimmy into your jeans without losing your balance, while Javier slides into his with an ease that's borderline annoying. He doesn’t even bother buttoning them before he stakes out his territory by the kitchen counter. Lighting up a cigarette, he shoots you a look that says he’s not in the mood for chatter—not yet, anyway.

But the silence that hangs between you isn't uncomfortable; it's the kind you’ve both grown into, filled with a mutual understanding that the morning spent at Javier’s doesn't start until the coffee's been poured and the first slice of toast has been demolished.

With a grunt that seems to officially start the day, Javier manages to get the toast onto plates just as you’re finishing up pouring the dark liquid into his mismatched mugs. Your hands brush briefly in the exchange—toast for coffee. A fair trade.

Then, it’s all about the quiet: the sound of cooling air meeting the hot surface of coffee, the paper end of Javier’s cigarette burning down, and a quiet crunch of bread as you bite into it.

After a stretch of silence long enough to let your thoughts gather, you venture out a question.

"Ever think this is how it feels for them when you bring your ladies over?”

He huffs, a sound that's half-defensive, half-entertained. "Please. I'm pitch-perfect every time. And anyway, they're too blown away to make a peep."

"Sure, in your dreams," you can't help but laugh, the sound warm in the cool morning air.

Javier smirks around his cigarette. "Could prove it. Might be nice to keep you quiet for once."

With a roll of your eyes, you shift. “Can’t you, I don’t know, go over there and flash your badge or something? Arrest them for public disturbance?"

Javier turns to you, an incredulous look etching his face. “I’m DEA,” he says, as if those three letters explained everything and nothing at all.

You shrug, shameless. “A badge is a badge.”

"How very Texas of you," he drawls, flicking ash in the sink.

"Whatever."

You cram the last of the toast in your mouth, chipmunk-cheeked and utterly unconcerned with table manners.

“Real sexy,” he comments, an amused smirk playing on his lips as you try to manage the ambitious mouthful.

“It’s turning you on, isn’t it?” you manage to say, your words muffled by bread and bravado.

“You have no idea,” he replies with a theatrical huff, pushing off from the counter to head back to his room to get dressed for work. "Need a ride?" he calls over his shoulder.

You finally swallow, swiping at your mouth with the back of her hand. "Yeah, thanks!" you shout towards the direction of his bedroom, now fishing through his almost bare fridge for something—anything—to take for lunch. "And hey, can I make a sandwich? I'm gonna starve by lunch otherwise."

"Knock yourself out. Pretty sure the only thing left in there is mustard and regret, but have at it."

By the time he reappears, buttoning up a beige, long-sleeved shirt and shrugging into his corduroy jacket, you’ve already laid claim to what’s left in his kitchen and are holding an old, greasy bag Javier’s pretty sure had been sitting on his counter for the past three days.

As you both weave through the living room, a tightrope walk between yesterday’s debris and the start of today, Javier snatches his keys and slots his service weapon in place. He then clicks the door shut, just as the unmistakable soundtrack of his neighbours' activities fires up once again.

Only this time, it’s more high-pitched, filled with curses that make you want to cross yourself and then jump in a basin of holy water for good measure—"Ay papi, así!" echoing obscenely in the stairwell.

You cut your eyes at Javi as you fall into step beside him. "Still think they've got the endurance to beat you?"

He smirks, holding the outer door open with a flourish. "Not even close, cariño."

"Pretty sure of yourself there, Peña."

"Don't believe me?" His tease is evident as he holds the door open for you, a gesture that's part gallantry, part performance. As you slide into the passenger seat, he slams the Jeep's door with enough force to send a shudder through the frame.

"It'll take some convincing," you retort, meeting his gaze with a smirk and an eyebrow raised in silent dare.

"Just say when," he says as he hops into the driver's seat, cranking the window down to let in the morning air.

You hold his gaze, the moment stretching taut. Then slowly, deliberately, you drag your teeth over your bottom lip. "Guess we've got plans tonight, then."

Your voice is a purr, whisky-rough and daring.

Javier pauses, his eyes locking onto yours, searching, as if trying to decode an underlying message. For a moment, he seems at a loss, then a sly grin spreads across his face.

"Tonight," he confirms, the engine roaring to life under his hand. "It's about damn time I shut you up."

#javi peña x reader #javi peña #javier peña #javi peña x you #javi peña x f!reader #javi peña fanfiction #narcos fanfiction #pedro pascal

106 notes · View notes

tgmsunmontue · 3 months ago

Text

Season to Taste - 13/? WIP

Explicit Hangster - Celebrity Chef Bradley and Naval Aviator Jake Seresin who have a relationship spanning the globe before they realize how tightly bound they are to one another. Heading into this little world.

PROLOGUE/ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE

TEN ELEVEN TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Hey Ice.”

“Hi Bradley. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“How are you?”

“Good. How are you?”

“Can’t complain. Alive and kicking.”

Bradley feels a little awkward talking to him now, his one remaining link to his old life. He wonders if it would be different if he was talking with Mav, or if they had something more in common than his dead father from over twenty years ago. All that though and he still makes the calls, Leandro and Silvia both giving him the stink-eye if he doesn’t and he knows at least that he doesn’t want to disappoint them. Short weekly calls when he’s at home in Italy mean they don’t expect him to spend a long time on the phone. He hasn’t called in a couple of months, not a fact he will be sharing with either Leandro or Silvia.

“What have you been up to?”

“Ah. Went to Spain for a couple of months. Worked in a kitchen there. Helped harvest grapes and make wine. Just… the usual.”

“Usual for you maybe. Sounds quite idyllic.”

“Well, butchering and curing meat isn’t idyllic at all, quite bloody and messy. So… the scenery was nice though. And I went to Barcelona for a couple of days, that was pretty cool.”

… … …

He hadn’t intended to just blurt out an invitation to somehow define what they’re doing. Not to jump from casual sex to… Dating? To trying out a long-distance relationship? After only knowing each other for five days? It’s crazy. But sometimes crazy just works and god he hopes this is one of those times. So many things simply feel right about Jake and crazy has worked for him several times before.

“I think you’re a little drunk.”

“I’m not. Trust me, it takes more than a bottle of wine for me to get drunk.”

“Yeah? You know that do you?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

Jake laughs and pulls into the grocery store parking lot, and Bradley’s hand is already on the seatbelt clasp, ready to go in. He’s shifted from thinking about convincing Jake to making a mental list of things he needs to get if he’s going to make the flourless chocolate cake for Maria, and some more food for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Then he notices that Jake is also putting food in the cart and he purses his lips.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I might not have a fancy cookbook to my name, but I can feed us. Just burgers, but we won’t starve. Come on. You’ve been cooking non-stop, you deserve a break.”

Bradley doesn’t even bother trying to hold back, simply moves around the cart and brackets his arms on either side of Jake and kisses him, starting soft but it quickly turns harder before he hears someone cough and he pulls away, knows his cheeks will be flaming red and Jake is looking smug, one eyebrow arched.

“I ain’t even cooked you anything yet…”

Bradley just shakes his head, looks away and then studies the flecks in the linoleum floor. It’s not the food, it’s the thought behind the gesture and Jake doesn’t even seem to be trying to be charming, is just naturally thoughtful and sweet as well as being a bit of a spoiled brat and cocky asshole. All things he’s finding more and more endearing and attractive the better he gets to know him.

Crazy indeed. God he wants.

… … …

Everything to gain.

The words turn around in his head every few minutes, like they’re going past of a merry-go-round. The fact Leo had meant it seriously means Jake is taking it seriously, wonders how he’d make it work exactly when his leave is so limited, the fact that he wants to see his family when he’s on leave. He might like Leo, a lot, but he loves his family. And it’s not like any of them can just pop up to New York and visit. If that’s what Leo is even suggesting. Leo did say he travels a lot, and if he’s willing to travel to where Jake is, then maybe it could work? Hell, he hasn’t mentioned certain things, not really wanting to bring it up with just a guy he was going to have a two-week long fling with.

Except it’s potentially not a fling anymore. He studies Leo, who is reading and frowning at the backs of several different packets of chocolate. Jake wonders what he’s planning on making, considering just how much food he’s put into the cart already. He pulls out his phone and finally lets himself check the messages that Maria no doubt sent while he was walking to his truck. As he expected, a couple of messages from Maria;

>I like him and I think you two could be really good together. Don’t be an idiot.

>If you do decide to be an idiot I’m going to be his friend anyway.

Okay then. Pretty clear exactly what Maria thinks of Leo, and to be honest she’s one of the harder nuts to crack when it comes to his sisters. Not that he was intending to introduce a potential… anything, but maybe that had been a little naïve. God, she’s never going to let him live this down if he and Leo somehow… end up something. Lord, was this ever just sex? Leo decisively dumps three blocks of one particular brand into the cart and gives Jake a grin and Jake has to bring it up.

“So, I gotta ask. How do you envision us having a relationship exactly?”

“Well… long distance mostly,” Leo says and Jake rolls his eyes, hip checks him and Leo just laughs, hip checks him back.

“Yeah, no shit. And if it doesn’t work out?”

“Then it doesn’t work out. As I said, got to at least try right? But we both have to at least want to try.”

Jake wants to try.

“Grocery store is a pretty odd place for such a serious conversation…”

Leo shrugs.

“Well, it’s neutral and it’s bit of a… transitionary space. Like having conversations in the car when you don’t have to look at the person.”

“So you mean like we did on the drive here?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. I guess we’re… trying this whole dating for an intense two-week period and then going long distance. Give it a shot right?”

Leo looks lit up from inside and Jake has to remind himself that they’re in the grocery store, but he can get them back to Leo’s place in about fifteen if they hustle.

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Jake says, pushing the cart toward the checkouts. “Although, can I just say, if I’d had any idea that this was on the cards I wouldn’t have introduced you to Maria so early. For the record, I wouldn’t ask any guy I was dating to meet my sisters this early. Wouldn’t want to scare him off.”

“Well, that horse has bolted don’t you think? Also, I don’t scare easy.”

“Lucky for me…”

“Plus, you’ve met Vi, she is by far the scariest member of my… oh. Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just… remembered something I should probably do. Sorry.”

“Okay…?” Jake asks, because Leo is looking a little frustrated.

“I’ll tell you later maybe. If it becomes a thing.”

“Okay. Come on. I want to take the guy I’m apparently now dating to bed…”

“Wow. Romance is gone already…”

“Was there ever romance?” Jake asks jokingly, but also a little worried because he’s not romantic. His sisters tell him so constantly and he hasn’t tried with Leo because… it was just sex. Oh god. He’s failing at this before he even starts.

“Enough for me…” Leo says, and he’s biting his lip and looking fucking adorable and something inside him untwists and he wishes the checkout operator would go a little faster. Then Leo insists on paying for the food and Jake scowls, tells him he’s getting the next shop and Leo just grins, eyes mischievous and he says we’ll see, gives him a quick kiss before taking off at a run with the cart, leaving Jake to run after him.

… … …

Jake’s hands don’t seem to leave his body, which makes putting the groceries away that much more challenging, but he’s also not complaining, turning in the circle of his arms and raising an eyebrow expectantly.

“Thought you were going to cook me dinner?”

“I am. I will… just… dinner can wait…” Jake says against his neck and Bradley lets his head fall back, breathes in the scent of Jake, his sweat and the dust from working outside, savors the warmth of his skin. He rolls his hips, has been low-level aroused since their kiss in the grocery store, and Jake responds obligingly by grinding right back, slotting a thigh between Bradley’s legs.

“Won’t take long.”

“Yeah? Good. We can take our time again later,” Jake mutters, his teeth nipping and he lets out a groan. Maybe it’s a good thing they’ll have time apart, give Bradley time to recover, although he wonders if they’ll always be like this when they’re together, because it will always be a novelty, time together snatched and fiercely held onto, where they both make the most of it. He lets Jake shift him, bodily moving him towards the bedroom and it quickly become a bit more frantic, hands scrambling to touch bare skin beneath clothes and he just lets himself fall.

… … …

He has never wanted to order takeout more, but he also said he’d cook Leo dinner and he’s a man of his word. But lying there, roughly wiped clean, catching their breath, Leo’s fingers lazily trailing up and down his back, soft smile on his face, Jake can’t help but feel pleased with himself. He likes that look on his face. Likes the feeling of everything from the last few days and fuck it’s going to suck saying goodbye. But the idea he might get to have this again? That’s something that will keep him going. Leo’s stomach rumbles then, and Jake shifts and blows a raspberry, making Leo squirm and shift away.

“What are you doing?”

“Communing with your stomach. Speaking its language.”

Leo laughs again and Jake shifts away to standing, hunting around for underwear and jeans, pulls a clean t-shirt from his bag before deciding he might as well have a quick shower. He tugs Leo out of bed, ignores his grumbles about the promise of food and turns the water on, busies himself with kissing Leo while they wait for the water to warm up. It’s a nice way to pass the time before they’re both stepping into the shower and actually rinsing themselves off and it feels alarmingly and wonderfully domestic.

“So… I’ve been thinking.”

Jake turns and raises an eyebrow; he’s almost finished but apparently Leo has decided to wash his hair. So much for a quick shower.

“Yeah? When? Hopefully not while I was trying my best to make you come…”

“No,” Leo says. “Just before, lying in bed… and I haven’t looked into it, haven’t had time obviously, but depending on where and when you have shore leave, I could potentially meet you there.”

Jake’s hands still with the quick rub-down wash he was giving himself.

“You’d travel to see me for thirty-six hours?”

“You might get forty-eight.”

“You’d travel though?”

“Well, as I said. I haven’t looked into it, but if I could get a work gig either side of your leave, then… yeah. I would.”

“Holy shit.”

“I mean, no promises. But I’ve got pretty good incentive huh?”

“My dick’s that good huh?”

“You’re a dick…” Leo mutters, but his half-hidden smile makes the insult completely pointless.

“Your dick,” Jake replies with a grin, and the smile Leo gives him is beautiful.

FORTEEN

#Season to taste #Hangster #Sereshaw #Top Gun Maverick fanfiction #AU

37 notes · View notes

donteattheappleshook · 10 months ago

Text

(not so) young, drunk and alone 1/1

“Swan, it’s me. ‘M so sorry I ‘avnent called for… September, October, Nov… three months. Shit that’s too many months. ‘M sorry but I need your help. The sherrffeff won’t let me leave. He says you have to pick me up - well not you but ‘ynow someone. I don’t know anyone else. Oh! It’s Killian by the way. Killian Jones. I don’t know how many Killians you know but I’m that one. The dickhead who ghosted you. ‘Nway, if you could call me back that would be just - awesome. Yur prolly not gonna call me back. I wouldn’t call me back. ‘Nway… yeah. It’s Killian. Thanks.”

(We'll give this a light M)

Oh hey, it's me, neglecting all the WIPs for something new.

This fic is a little birthday present to myself. It's completely ferral and I had very little control over it but I listened to Dial Drunk on repeat for 3 days and then this happened. This fic is unbetaed but thank you @the-darkdragonfly for answering all my texts and rambling calls while I was writing it!

A Silver hook story because apparently everything I write is now...

Read it on Ao3 (where my italics work)

******

(not so) young, drunk and alone

She shouldn’t be allowed to look at him like that. Not with a smirk caught between her teeth in a way that makes his throat dry and his pulse race. Not with the barely restrained promise of a laugh he’s sure would come out in different company that makes his face burn and and his eyes unable to meet hers. He can’t look at her when she looks like that, and she’s looking at him like that, and he looks - he assumes not great.

So he focuses on the floor instead. The floor is safe. The floor doesn’t stir up conflicting and confusing feelings he’s managed to ignore for the better part of a year. The floor doesn’t make him question every terrible decision he’s made in his life that led him to this exact moment. The floor is… moving. It’s not supposed to do that. Although that’s likely the booze, he rationalizes. But the floor isn’t interested in being rational so Killian lets his forehead fall against the bars he’s already holding onto in an attempt to stay upright. The bars are nice, they’re cool and solid and it slows the spinning in his head a fraction.

“Big night?”

He takes a full ten seconds, counted slowly, and a few deep breaths before raising his head again and facing that smirk. It doesn’t help. The absolute delight in her eyes delivers the same gut-punch it always does - even if it’s at his expense - and the soft blonde curls that have fallen from her probably hastily pulled up bun make him ache to reach out and brush them away from her face just so he can feel the strands between his fingers.

He shouldn’t have called her. He knew it was a mistake when he did it. He should have just let the sheriff keep him in this bloody cell. It’s not as if he hadn’t slept it off a night or two in another cell in another town throughout his youth. But he’s not so youthful now and the sight of the cold, hard bench, the thought of his aching back and the copious amounts of rum still coursing through his blood had been enough to send him over the edge into madness apparently. So he’d pressed the blurry little “absolutely not” in his contacts and called the only person he knew in this whole bloody city.

“Swaann.” He attempts a smile but it turns into a wince as he manages to slur the single word. When he works up to meeting her eyes again - so green, like the sea glass he used to collect on the beach when he was a boy and that takes his breath away every time - there’s a bit of pity mixed in with the amusement.

He feels pretty pitiful. Forty-five and so stumbling drunk that he’d been tossed out of the pub and into a police car, only to be forced to face the one person he’d hoped the rum would chase from his mind. He’s too old to be acting like this. Even with his wits sloshing around in the drink he’d tried to drown them with he knows he’s too old to be acting like this. When you’re young, it’s funny, an anecdote for another time - spending the night in the drunk tank. When you’re his age, it’s just pathetic.

“Alright, let’s get you out of here.” Her voice is sweet, with a laugh still hiding somewhere behind it, and it’s the first sound since he was brought here that hasn’t made his head feel like it was being scratched at from the inside.

“You shouldn’t’ve come here. S’the middle of the night,” he tells her. She doesn’t belong in this sad little room in this sad little jail with the lightbulb that keeps flickering in and out. Still, he can’t stop the stupid smile that finds residence on his face whenever she’s near - because she is here. She came to get him.

Emma raises a brow in a way he thinks she may have picked up from him. “You called me three times.”

He blinks. Fuck. He doesn’t remember that. He looks at the sheriff waiting a little ways back who nods in confirmation, giving Killian his own pitying wince like he tried to stop him. Killian sighs. “‘Mm usually much more charming.”

She rolls her eyes but smirks again as the sheriff slides a key into the ancient looking lock. “Yeah, I know. Come on, Graham’s going to let you off with a warning -”

He nearly falls flat on his face when the door he’d been leaning against swings open.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay with him, Em?”

Oh great, they know each other. He’d be more annoyed at her cozy relationship with the unreasonably attractive sheriff if he wasn’t a little bit grateful to the man who caught him and is still holding him up now. If he can just get his legs to go back under him where they belong…

“I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

Killian feels himself being passed from the man who smells strikingly of the forest, to the woman with the irreplicable scent of honey and drugstore soap that overwhelms him with the memory of every time he’s had his mouth or his hand on her skin. The fingers of his one remaining hand burn with the urge to feel her under them again so he balls them into a fist as she drapes his arm over her shoulders. “What about you?” It takes him a moment to realize that he’s who the question is directed at. “You going to be okay to walk out of here?”

Sheer determination not to make an even greater fool of himself than he already has in front of Emma Swan is the only thing he can attribute to both not falling right over with the nod of his head, and the steadiness of his first step as she leads him out the door.

He stumbles three times between the building and her car. She catches him every time with a hand on his chest, her head turning so that her hair brushes his cheek and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t do it on purpose after the first time - though he can’t really trust his own thoughts at this point since they have to be yelled at him through an ocean of rum.

“It’s your bug!” he beams at the old, yellow car. “I love your bug.”

“You hate my bug.”

Oh, right. He does hate the car that broke down every other time they drove to his hotel in the middle of the night, the one that had broken down the night they met. ‘I swear I’m not trying to stand you up. It’s just my car is literally on the side of the road right now and the tow won’t come for another hour at least and there’s… smoke.’

It had been an interesting night, getting an Uber in a strange city to go pick up a stranded woman from a dating app who'd been on her way to his hotel for anonymous sex - a woman he found out had lied about her age when she pointed out that the 1993 beetle was older than she was. ‘I didn’t think you’d swipe right if you knew there was a whole high school senior between us.’ ‘Anything else I should know about?’ he’d teased when they were back at his hotel room where she’d managed to get him out of his shirt with impressive speed. ‘Is Anna even your real name?’ ‘Uhhh, about that…’

She leans him up against the aggressive yellow of the door as she fishes in her pockets for her key. Her cheeks have gone red from the cold and it reminds him of the flush that would sometimes come over her skin if he found the right words or the right touch.

“You’re so lovely.” His thumb is tracing over her cheek though he doesn’t remember raising his hand or reaching for her.

She snorts. “Yeah, okay, Jones. So not gonna happen tonight, but nice try.” This time her smirk is wicked and if he had any real control over his body or his brain he would kiss it right off her smug mouth.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything!” he swears, prosthetic on his heart as she unlocks the passenger side door. “I’m just grateful you came all the way out here to rescue me. My knight in awful yellow armour.” He gasps. She rescued him from a dungeon. “Bloody hell, Swan -” He speaks slowly, managing to get almost every word out coherently. “I’m the princess.”

He’s waiting for her to come to the same mind-blowing realization as he has, but she just shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Get in the car, your highness.”

It takes an impressive amount of self-control for him to sit still and keep his hand to himself despite his racing heart and thoughts as she leans over to help him secure his seatbelt. Because he’s not supposed to have those thoughts. And his idiot heart can keep its cruel reminders to itself. He shouldn’t have called her. He hasn’t called her - not in months. Not since he realized his mistake and knew this thing between them had to come to an end.

He’s missed her so bloody much.

“Killian.” She’s beside him now in the driver’s seat and saying his name like it’s not the first time she’s asked him this question. “Where are you staying?”

“Oh, I…” Shit. He knows this. He’s got this. Think. There was a hotel. A big hotel with really good room service. Maybe they could go there and he could buy her room service. She always liked that. ‘Listen, I know I came over here for sex and that was great and everything, but there’s a freaking lobster grilled cheese on this menu so do you think I could be here for sex and room service tonight?’ She’d looked at him with that same wicked, eager smile and he was already reaching across her for the phone. ‘I feel like I should be concerned that you seem more turned on by this sandwich than you did by anything else tonight.’ ‘Well, it’ll probably take them a little while to deliver it if you want another go at out-seducing bread and cheese.’

“A hotel,” he tells her finally.

“Yeah, I kind of figured. Which one?”

“Which what?”

“Which hotel, Killian? Which hotel am I driving you to?”

“Oh.” He knows this one! “Mine.”

She sighs, forehead falling against the steering wheel for a long moment. He waits, not sure what he did wrong but positive that he did something. “Okay,” she says, sitting up and starting the car. “It’s late. You can sleep it off on my couch for tonight and I’ll drive you back in the morning when you’re less… wasted.”

She sounds frustrated and he thinks it might be his fault. He looks at her carefully as she turns out of the parking lot, really looks at her for the first time since she walked back into his life a moment ago. Holding his breath against the eyes and hair and skin that always try to steal it away, he takes note of her messy hair, the lack of any makeup, the grey sweats he knows she likes to sleep in. He looks at the clock next, the late - or rather early - hour shining angry, bright and orange. He can figure this out.

“I’m sorry.” He’s an idiot. She glances at him before turning back to the dark highway ahead of them.” “I shouldn’t have called you.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not.” He hangs his head, hoping he looks sincere and not just as pathetically pissed as he is. “I woke you up.”

“Really, Killian, it’s fine. I was just going to bed.” He looks at the clock again and he envies her youth not for the first time since meeting her. He supposes he’s up this late as well, but that wasn’t by choice. That was the rum’s decision. The rum always makes bad decisions.

“But it’s cold.” She must be cold. She’s always cold and he made her go outside. She hates outside. She probably hates him now. ‘Listen, I’m all for this whole hooking up when you’re in town no strings thing.’ She waved a hand in his general direction. ‘Big fan of everything you’ve got going on here. But it’s cold as balls outside, so from now on you can come to mine and I can stay inside where it’s warm, or I’ll see you in the spring.’

The smirking curl of her mouth tugs at her cheek but he doesn’t reach for it again. “Yeah, it’s November.”

November. The last time he saw her it had been the dead of summer, both of them hot and sticky and barely dressed, stretched out in front of the single standing fan by the bed in her little apartment with no bloody air conditioning.

He misses that apartment. Misses being there with her and letting her make him boxed mac and cheese while he complained about her eating habits. Misses the ridiculous sheets with little Millennium Falcons on them that she’d found when he was running late to meet her that one time. He’d made her wash them before putting them on her bed - ‘fine, mom’ - and then listened to her make Star Wars puns from between her thighs until they tightened so hard against his ears he couldn’t hear anything at all.

And he misses the way she would smile at him when she opened the door, just before she dragged him inside, asking about his flight between heated kisses and frustrated hands. ‘I hate your stupid ties’.

He’s a bloody idiot and he should have never stopped calling. Or he should have stopped calling a long time ago, before there was anything to miss. They had a good thing going, an understanding, no strings. He’d reach out when he was in town for work and they would meet for one or however many nights he was staying. No expectations or dates or sleepovers, none of the complicated stuff. And he’d screwed it up.

His feet slip dangerously against the icy ground - at least he’s pretty sure there’s ice, or the ground isn’t staying still again - as Emma practically hoists him out of the car. “You remember the stairs right?” she asks, ducking under his arm again to steady him. She fits well there with her arm wrapped around his waist.

He hadn’t remembered the stairs. Though he should have, he’d complained about them enough times. ‘What’s so wrong with an apartment with an elevator?’ ‘Aw, can your old knees not handle it?’ He’d caught her as she bolted up the last few flights at his glare, laughing the whole way, and he’d spent enough time on his ‘old knees’ to make her take it back. This time, he’s not so sure he can handle it as he looks up at the rotating stairs that seem unable to settle on a height.

“It’s either that or you’re sleeping in the lobby, Jones.”

He considers it. “Is that David guy still your landlord?” The one who was particularly hostile to the man in his forties coming over at random hours of the night to visit his twenty-eight year old tenant. ‘Give him a break, he still thinks I’m the sixteen year old kid he illegally rented to when I first moved here.’

In fairness, Killian would probably judge himself too if he were in the landlord's shoes. He has judged himself many times for becoming a stereotype of Dicaprio-sized proportions. But the alternative would have been resisting Emma Swan, something he’s incapable of doing - or at least had been until that morning he ruined everything.

“Okay.” The stairs are still moving.

“Hold on.” She takes out her phones - there’s definitely two of them - and holds them in front of his face. “I just want to get you on camera saying that I’m not liable if you fall down these stairs and break your neck.”

“Is that really necessary?” He got that whole sentence out in one try.

“I know you have a lawyer.” ‘You have a what? Wow, I knew you were older but I didn’t know you were like, old old.’ ‘I don’t think it counts if you’ve stolen from parent’s liquor cabinet.’

“Fine. Don’t sue Emma if I die. She’s very nice and doesn’t have any money anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“It’ll never hold up in court.”

“That would be way more convincing if you could pronounce all your consonants.”

The climb takes twice as long as it should and he’s forced to stop once when he makes the mistake of looking down and his stomach rolls violently. ‘I swear to god if you puke in my hallway I’ll leave you here to sleep in it.’

“I don’t remember there being this many floors.”

“It’s four floors. You’ve done two.”

He might die.

He doesn’t die, but just barely, and when Emma leads him through the door and into the studio, she practically drops him onto the old couch. It’s not her fault; he’d made himself very droppable in the last few minutes. At least he landed on the couch and not the collection of wooden crates she’s glued together next to it. ‘That’s not a coffee table, Swan.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, is that or is that not your coffee cup on it right now?’

He doesn’t see her for a few minutes, his head too heavy to lift, but he can hear her moving around the apartment and he can picture her, walking through the kitchen on her toes. ‘It’s not weird, shut up.’ ‘I just thought you’d like to know that most people use their whole foot.’

When she finally comes back, he forces his eyes open, unsure who exactly glued them shut or how they did it without him noticing. Fuck she’s beautiful. Even through the boozy marinade he’s made of his head he can see that, and he wants to tell her. He could. He could blame it on the rum. But that would be a bad idea. Complicating things between them would be a bad idea. They’d already gotten complicated enough. God, he’s such a fuck up. Things were good, they could have stayed good. He just had to go and ruin a good thing with his stupid, greedy heart.

“Here.” Two little pills and a frighteningly large bottle of water are set down in front of him. He’s not sure what the pills are but he’s also pretty sure she wouldn’t try to poison him even if he is an asshole who called her in the middle of the night after ghosting her for months. Pretty sure. The water sounds like a good idea.

“Have you eaten anything or did you have rum for dinner?”

“There were peanuts at the bar,” he tells her after guzzling down enough water to drown himself with. She shakes her head and walks out of his line of sight again. This time she comes back with a bag of crisps and he thinks maybe she doesn’t hate him as much as he thought because they’re the kind he likes most.

“Eat that, drink that, and take those,” she orders, pointing to each with a stern look. “And then lie down on your side so I know you won’t choke to death in the night, and get some sleep.”

“Yes ‘mam,” he salutes.

“Don’t get cute with me.” He wasn’t trying to be cute. But it makes him unreasonably happy that she thinks he is. She rolls her eyes at his probably once again dumb smile and repeats, “eat,” before disappearing where he can’t see her again.

When she comes back this time her hair is down, falling over the shoulders of her oversized Jonas Brothers t-shirt she’s apparently had since she was twelve, and he wants to whine or cry at how desperately he wishes he could reach for her and what an idiot he is for being the reason he can’t. She’s carrying an empty garbage can, a blanket draped over one arm.

“Do not puke on my rug. It’s the only new thing in this whole apartment and I love it more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life.”

Killian leans over from where he’s stretched out on the couch that’s too small for him, running his fingers over the blue and white pattern and nods. “It’s lovely, very soft.”

She’s silent for long enough that he looks up again, only to find her with her lips pressed so hard together against a laugh that he can see her chest lurch with the force of containing it. He frowns, looking from her to the rug and back again before realizing that he’s been stroking the rug with his prosthetic hand.

“Emma… I might be drunker than I thought.”

The laugh that bursts out of her is loud and horrible and obnoxious and it’s the best sound he’s heard in a long time. He’s missed that sound, the one that had shocked him so completely the first time he heard it that they’d both ended up on the floor, stomachs hurting and eyes tearing, neither able to remember what had set her off in the first place and unable to stop giggling like teenagers.

“Aw, babe,” Emma crouches down in front of him with a pitying look before beginning to work the straps of his false hand loose. Her hand settles soft against his cheek once it’s free, smirk still lingering on the corner of her lips. “I don’t think anyone’s ever been as drunk as you are right now.”

Her face is so close to his that his heart forgets how it’s meant to work, stopping and racing of its own accord. He wishes she would close the distance, that he could feel her mouth against his for the first time in months, or that she’d simply stay here with him for the rest of the night because the distance and the silence between them has been more than he can take. He doesn't know how he ever convinced himself that staying away would eventually make the ache for her fade.

She smiles at him again, giving his cheek an affectionate pat before draping the blanket over him, the soft one he knows had been her prized possession before the rug. “Get some sleep, Killian. I don’t think anyone’s ever been as hungover as you’re going to be tomorrow either.”

He’s not sure whether or not the way his fingers close around hers before she can pull away was his idea or the rum’s, but she’s looking at him, waiting for him to say something and he doesn’t know what he was going to say or what he was thinking. He just knows that he missed her and he screwed it up - and then he screwed it up again, possibly beyond repair the second time.

Being in this city that he managed to avoid for months in the hopes that he could forget about her has been one of the worst decisions he’s ever made. To think he really believed that he could live here, that he could take the job that was offered and not be haunted by her every waking moment, not dread and hope to see her around every corner.

Being naive enough to think he could ignore the draw of her is how he ended up in that bar tonight. He’d tried to figure out how many shots of rum it would take to make him forget that he loves Emma Swan, but it seems there isn’t enough rum in the world for that - or at least not enough in that bar.

She’s still looking at him and he wishes she wasn’t watching him with a hesitation and a carefulness that hadn’t been there before. It had always been so easy between them; he’d never felt less self-conscious with another person in his life and now it’s all consuming. She’s lost the carefree warmth he used to see in her eyes, like he took it with him when he left that morning and didn’t come back.

“I’m sorry.”

He can’t tell if it’s relief or disappointment in her sigh. “I already told you, it’s fine.”

He shakes his head. “Not for calling you tonight. For not calling you. Every other night. I’ve been an ass and I’ve been a coward. You didn’t deserve that.” By the grace of whatever gods might be listening to his poor apology, he doesn’t slur a single word.

Her pause is long enough that he worries he said the wrong thing, and he can’t read her expression through the haze of booze and exhaustion swimming around in his head. He should let go of her hand, but he’s painfully aware that this could be the last time he gets to touch her and she’s not pulling away.

She sighs again. “Why don’t we talk about this when you’re feeling better?”

He lets go. “Aye, Swan, whatever you want.”

She walks away. Beyond repair then.

***

Killian jumps, heart pounding. He feels like he’s woken from a coma, body so heavy with sleep that parts of it aren't responding to him and never having been more confused than he is in these first few moments. It’s daytime, but it’s not morning, the light is too dim, and he’s asleep but not in his bed or in his hotel room, on a couch he recognizes but can’t really place. He has a vague recollection of things that may or may not have happened while he lay here; the sound of someone moving around the room, someone saying his name, a door shutting, an angry car somewhere far off and the bark of a dog somewhere close, the sound of keys and the strange sensation someone poking him in the face - hard.

All of it feels like a fever dream now as he looks towards the tinny sound of the belligerent man’s voice coming from the phone in her hand.Oh no. Oh god what the hell had he done last night? He recognizes the room, the soft blanket he’s under, the long legs clad in grey sweatpants perched on the table in front of him. He doesn’t think he can bring himself to look at her.

“Oh! It’s Killian by the way. Killian Jones. I don’t know how many Killians you know but I’m that one. The dickhead who ghosted you. ‘Nway, if you could call me back that would be just - awesome. Yur prolly not gonna call me back. I wouldn’t call me back. ‘Nway… yeah. It’s Killian. Thanks.”

If you’d like to save this message, press - there's a loud beep before another message begins to play. Bloody hell. He remembers the pub, and the cop - sort of - and he remembers that little line on his phone screen. ‘Absolutely not’. From the looks of it, he absolutely did.

“Heey, isme again. I don’t think I told you where I am. Is’not great, Swan. They put me in the jail.”

He winces, sitting up carefully, head still light and disoriented. “Did I…”

“Mhm.”

Another wince. “Are they all-”

“Oh yeah.”

“‘M not even that drunk. The sherfs just got a commpelex or something.”

“Swan, we really don’t have to -”

“Shh, this is my favourite part.”

Killian hangs his head. “I - Oy, I’m on the phone, sherirff! Don’ they teach you manners at cop school? The cops in your city are rude, Swan. Hey! No - iss my phone. I can call whoever I want.” There’s a shuffling sound that stirs up a faint memory of trying to back deeper into the cell, then a small shout and he remembers why his ass hurts and that he’s probably got a bruise on his hip the size of the one on his ego. Emma has her lip caught between her teeth again, flashing him the same look she had when she arrived at the station.

“Hello? Swan? Oh, right. Yur prolly asleep. You should be asleep, that’s good. I jus’ called ‘cus I…” For a blissful minute he thinks he might have had the sense to hang up, the silence on the other end dragging on and he almost breathes a sigh of relief. But then the message rings out again. “I can't remember why I called you. I think somethin’ made me think of you.” His voice gets softer and so does her expression for just a moment.

“That happens a lot. I been thinking ‘bout you a lot, all the time, really. And not just in a sexy way and not just yer face.” Killian hangs his head. “Even though I’m a fan of your face. And all your other parts too.”

He wishes he could just perish right here and now, wishes the dull ache in his head would become an aneurysm and take him out without a fuss.

“I been thinking about those ridic’lus tiktoks you used to send me and when I was in meetings ‘n I jus’ wanted to be with you. I don’t know anything about Taylor Swift anymore, Swan - I don’t know how to find those myself.” There’s another pause but he knows better than to hope this is over, much of this coming back to him now in mortifying waves.

“I’ve too many shirts in my closet now - It’s so many shirts. I always brought extra ‘cause I knew you’d steal ‘em an’ then you’d walk ‘round your kitchen in ‘em with no pants like yur a sexy Winnie the Pooh or somethn’ and I had to watch you climb yur counters while I had a heartattack ‘cuz you wouldn’ jus’ let me get things off the top shelf for you. Bloody stubborn.” There’s a sigh over the machine. “I don’t want this many shirts, Swan…

‘Anyway I - What? Who does? Sorry, Swan the sherf is being rude again. He wants to know if yur picking me up. Are you picking me up?” There’s so much hope in his past self’s voice that he almost feels bad for him. But he also knows what a bloody idiot that man is and it’s hard to feel anything but the overwhelming urge to disappear into this couch and not have to listen to any more of his drunken rambling. “That would be nice. But it’s okay if you don’t want to. I’d understand. Gnight, love.”

To delete this message press - She hits a button. Message saved.

Killian braces himself for the next one. Gods, how many of them are there? But this time it’s not his voice that comes out over the speakerphone, it’s another man, Irish and vaguely familiar through the sleep and the unfortunately returning memories.

“Hey, Emma, it’s Graham.” Killian’s heart drops into his stomach at the sound of another man calling her in the middle of the night. Of course she wouldn’t have sat around pining like he did, not for a man who treated her as carelessly as he had. Of course - “Listen, I don’t know who this guy is but he says he knows you. I thought maybe he was one of your clients but when I asked him how he knows you he just asked me if I’ve ever been in love...”

The brow Emma raises at him is equal parts question, challenge and amusement and he feels the blood rush from his face. Fuck. He wonders whether four floors would be high enough for him to end this misery if he just went out the window.

“Anyway, just let me know if this is another Walsh situation and I’ll make sure he stays in here, alright? Goodnight, love.” Killian can’t even begrudge the man or the endearment he adds to the end of his message when he’s only looking out for her. Probably a good thing she has someone to keep old, drunk dickheads away from her.

He hears another beep of her mailbox and braces himself for whatever’s coming next. “Hi, love, ‘m sorry for calling so much. I know I made too many ms’takes to be ‘loud to say this, but… I miss you, Swan… And I’d jus’ really like to see you again.”

End of messages. To -

Emma shuts the phone off, setting it down next to her on the coffee table. She tilts her head to see his face which he’s currently trying to bury in his hands. “Sounds like you had quite the night.”

“I thought I’d be more hungover.” His head hurts and he’s tired and his mouth is dry but he expected to be near death after the way he threw them back last night.

“It’s four in the afternoon.” Oh. He does the math of how long she’d let him sleep in her apartment after everything he’s done - after she picked him up.

“At one point I had to make sure you were alive. But I figured if you were able to leave such eloquent voicemails last night that you probably weren’t in danger of alcohol poisoning.”

“Swan, I…” He’s fully aware that he deserves her mocking but he’s too humiliated to even begin to try and explain his behaviour last night. How can he without explaining everything right down to that morning in July where he messed up the best thing in his life.

She takes pity on him, giving a small shrug. “Forget about it. Everyone says stupid stuff when they’re hammered. Everyone calls people they know they shouldn’t.”

“No, Emma -” He finally lifts his head to look at her. “That wasn’t…” He needs her to know that wasn’t what this was, she wasn’t just some drunk dial in the middle of the night. He thinks of how many times in the last three three months he’s looked at that contact in his phone, her name replaced with a reminder that he should not and absolutely could not go there. She mistakes his hesitation.

“You okay?”

“No.” He needs to talk to her, to apologize and beg her forgiveness. But he can’t find the words in his tired, muddled head to tell her without telling her everything. “I’m a bloody idiot.”

Emma smirks. “Yeah, we established that last night - a bunch of times.”

“I mean it. It wasn’t -” He rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep and avoid looking at her. “I didn’t just call you because I was drunk. I’ve wanted to call you. For months. Last night just gave me an excuse.”

“You needed an excuse to call me?”

He sighs. “I was coward enough to convince myself I did.”

When he finally forces himself to face her, he finds her watching her phone, fingers wrung in her lap and lips pressed together tightly the way they always are before she asks something that’s answer matters to her.

“How much of last night do you actually remember?”

“Most of it, I think.” It’s been coming back to him in increasingly horrifying details since she played that first voicemail.

“You said a lot of stupid stuff.”

“I know.”

“How much of all of that was true?”

“All of it.”

She raises a brow. ��All of it?”

“Aye.”

“Sexy Winnie the Pooh?”

A smirk tugs at his mouth. “I stand by what I said.”

He wonders which parts of what he said she’s focusing on as her silence stretches between them, heartbroken when he sees a little wall go up. This is why he stopped calling. He knew this would happen.

“It’s fine. It’s not like you owed me anything. We weren’t -”

“Don’t do that.” His hand reaches out for her, fingers playing carefully with the fabric of her too-big sweatpants. “We may not have been in a relationship but we weren’t nothing.” He won’t let her excuse his behaviour, not after they spent over a year in each others’ lives only for him to disappear from hers. “I shouldn’t have acted like we were.”

“So then why did you stop calling?” It’s the most vulnerable he’s ever heard her sound even though she hides it well and he can’t bring himself to look at her. “I liked what we had going. I liked spending time with you.”

“Aye, so did I.” Too much.

“I guess I thought - I guess I thought we were friends at least.”

“We were.” His fingers dance along her calf through the fabric he can’t stop fiddling with and he feels the muscle tense but she doesn’t pull away from him.

“So then what gives?” The anger in her voice makes his gaze snap up to hers. Finally. He’s been waiting for her to be angry with him, she deserves to be angry and he deserves it too. It gives him that small flicker of hope he’d been unable to find until now, a hope that if she’s angry, it’s because she cared enough to be hurt. “Why did you just…” She gestures vaguely with her hands. Disappear.

“Because I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Do what? Hook up? Jesus, Killian, I’m a big girl. You didn’t have to run away because you were over the benefits part of this friendship.”

“I wasn’t. I left because I broke our rules.”

“What rules?”

The ones they’d so carefully established when they decided to continue this arrangement beyond the first and second time he saw her. The ones that were meant to keep either of them from getting hurt like they both were now.

“The last time I was here, we fell asleep and woke up in the morning still in your bed and I…”

“That’s why you freaked out? Because you accidentally slept over? That’s a bit dramatic don’t you think?” He can hear the disbelief in her voice and also the relief but he’s not done. “It wasn’t like a hard and fast rule -”

His fingers curl around the back of her knee, squeezing as he draws her attention. “That’s not why.” He traces his thumb over the fabric covering her shin and he knows he has to tell her because he can’t do this anymore without telling her and he can’t go back to how things were.

And he thinks that just maybe, she’ll want to hear it. Because as small and insignificant as it may seem, those aren’t her sweatpants, they’re his, lent - stolen - after a rather frantic afternoon in his hotel room six months ago where he may have torn her skirt in his haste to get it off. ‘You need better quality clothes, love.’ ‘Is this you finally offering to be my sugar daddy?’ They have his bloody initials on them - a strange gift from his lawyer friend. And she hasn’t gotten rid of them, didn’t toss them away when he did the same to her. She still sleeps in them.

“I freaked out because I liked waking up with you, and I started thinking that I’d like to wake up with you every morning.” He’d been hot and sweaty and sore from sleeping on her old mattress but he’d looked down at the woman wrapped around him despite the stifling heat, her cheek pressed to his chest and her hair in his mouth and he knew that he wanted this, wanted her, maybe forever. He hears her small intake of breath, his thumb still stroking her skin though the fabric as though it’ll give him the strength he needs. “And I hadn’t felt that way about anyone since…” He can’t finish and so she does for him.

“Milah?”

“Aye.” His reason for never wanting anything more, love lost in the same instant that cost him a piece of himself. He’d told Emma about her, one night when they’d lingered a little too long entangled in the aftermath. He didn’t know the details of her reason, only that she’d been far too young and that he’d hurt her deeply enough to make her wary of anyone who claimed love or devotion.

“I hoped that if I stayed away for a little while that it would fade away and that we could go back to how things were because I knew that if I told you I would lose you. But the longer I stayed away, the more I missed you and the more I wanted you and I realized it wasn’t going to go away - because I loved you.”

Killian watches her for a reaction as he tells her the truth he’d been hiding from her for months and from himself for far longer, but she remains unreadable, fingers still wringing nervously in her lap, breathing a little shaky. But there’s no abject terror in her gaze as she waits for him to finish.

“And by then I’d avoided you for too long and it was too late to tell you or try to go back to how things were and I lost you anyway. Then I managed to convince myself that it was for the best because this wasn’t what you wanted and you deserved better anyway.” Better than an old widower with a used up heart who’d run the moment things became real. “But I thought you had the right to know that I didn’t leave because I didn’t care about you. I left because I cared too much.”

Fabric slips from his hand as she stands, circling the coffee table and leaving him feeling untethered without her and with a barrier set between them. He focuses on the rug, her reaction expected but no less painful, as she paces the length of her glued together crates a few times.

“Okay two things.” Her tone snaps his gaze up to where she moves anxiously and restlessly in the small space. “First of all, that’s the last time you make a decision for me.” He hadn’t expected this reaction. “I don’t need anyone to decide what I do or don’t deserve or what I can or can’t handle. If you want to know what I want, you ask me. You talk to me like the grownup you keep pretending that you are.” That one hurts but he nods. It’s all rightly earned.

“You’re right.”

“Good.” She stops, shoulders squared as she faces him from across the table. “Second.” He waits, the anger from before no longer sustaining her as he sees the wall she hides behind slip just a little. “You said you loved me.”

He’s not sure what answer she wants, but he gives her the truth. “I love you, Swan.” Try as hard as he did not to, he knows it’s not going away. And he’s not willing to attempt another eight shots of rum a second time to make sure.

She nods. He waits, or she waits, he’s not sure who’s supposed to speak here only that he needs to know how she feels and he’ll wait as long as he needs to.

“Well? Are you going to ask me what I want?”

“What do you want?” He’d give her whatever she asked for at this point as he watches her bite her lip and definitely doesn’t wish he was the one biting it.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Fair enough.

“Look, I get running away from feelings - I’m very familiar with the concept. But the way you did it was really shitty and -” Her voice goes quiet, arms wrapping around herself in a move so full of self-preservation that it breaks his heart a little. “It hurt, okay?”

Her words, thick with betrayal and rejection, pierce sharp through his chest, painful and deserved as she avoids his gaze as determinantly as he’d avoided hers. God, he’s an ass. He’d pieced together enough about her past from the small glimpses she’d given him late on those nights where they were still tangled naked in her sheets and the dark lent them the boldness to be vulnerable to know that she’d been left before.

He joins her on her side of the table, reaching to touch the soft, golden waves that he’s spent months wishing he could tangle his fingers in again. “I’m sorry.” He pushes them behind her ear, thumb stroking over her cheek like her skin could break beneath his touch.

When she looks up at him her eyes are red and wet he pulls her to him without thinking. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, Emma feeling fragile in his arms for the first time since he met her. She’s a force, his Swan, a tempest that could devour a thousand ships and it hurts to see her storms wane.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter, pressing a kiss to her temple as he brings a hand to stroke the hair at the base of her neck, feels her lean into him. “I’m sorry,” he speaks against her brow. “I’m so sorry, love.” His lips brush over the crown of her head and he feels her arms slip around his waist, holding tight to the back of his shirt. He holds her just as tightly, nose settling in the crook of her neck where he presses another kiss and whispers a thousand more apologies. “I’m an ass.”

“Yeah, you are.” Her voice comes muffled from where her face is pressed against his collarbone and he laughs in relief to hear her tease him. He pulls back enough that she can lift her head to face him, eyes still red as he wipes at the dampness left on her cheeks. All he wants is to kiss her and spend the night and the next day and every day after that making this up to her, but he knows better than to push her.

Her hands slide from his back to his chest as she meets his gaze and takes a steadying breath. “I still don’t know what I want. You’re not the only one who’s bad at dealing with feelings and you just put some pretty big ones out there.”

“I know.” He doesn’t expect to hear the words back, not after three months of silence. But if she gives him the chance to stay and try to win her heart then he’ll spend forever earning back her trust.

“But maybe, if you’re still in town for a bit, you could stay for dinner.”

It takes everything he has to contain the ecstatic smile that wells up from his chest, afraid he’ll scare her off. “I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me.” He’s not leaving her again. Not unless she sends him away.

***

“When do you go back?” she asks when they’re sat at the kitchen island. ‘What, exactly, do you have against real furniture? Especially tables. They seem particularly discriminated against.’ ‘Do you see any room in here for a twelve-piece dining set?’ He swallows the bite of the boxed mac and cheese she’d made him cook ‘Because I’m still pissed at you and I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer through this.’ ‘Sadist. Can I at least add -’ ‘No.’

Killian looks at his watch. “My flight was an hour ago.”

“What? You should have said -”

“And miss all the delicacies that Maine has to offer?” he asks, lifting his mismatched bowl. “It’s fine, Swan,” he adds when she looks genuinely concerned. “I’d rather be here.” He can get another flight at the last minute before he’s due back in New York on Monday. Getting his things back from the hotel, however, may be a tad more difficult.

“That’s sweet and all but I think you’d also rather be employed.”

“Aye, well, I may not be employed there much longer anyhow.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh god, don’t tell me you left them voicemails too.”

Killian snorts. “No, I’ve just… had another offer.”

His heart pounds frantically as she asks, “where?” terrified that he’ll scare her off.

“Here.”

“Here?”

He nods. “I wasn’t going to take it, not after realizing how much I’d miss you if I was here. But, well, that was before I drank a full bar. And this town does have its benefits.”

She gapes at him and he can see the thoughts racing behind her eyes. “You’re not moving for me, right? You want the job? Because I told you I don’t know what I want or if I can even do… whatever this maybe is and I -”

He reaches for her hand, calming the rambling that had started. “I do want the job, but of course I’m moving for you, Swan. And I know you’re not ready to decide anything, and I’m not asking you to. But whether you do or don’t decide that what you want is me, I’m going to be right here while you figure it out. I’m not going to leave you twice, Emma. I don’t want to miss you like that again.”

Emma just stares at him, mouth opening and then shutting with questions that don’t find voice and he sits, stewing in the worry that he said too much, asked for too much. He swallows as she jumps out of her seat, his turn to ramble now as she rounds the island.

“I mean, I will have to go home and get my things and resign but I -”

“Shut up,” she tells him, hands sliding into his hair and mouth colliding with his.

He’s more than happy to do exactly that, wasting no time in gathering her up in his arms and pulling her close, returning the kiss he’d missed so damn much all these months, missed the feel of her soft and warm against him like this, for the little sound she makes when his own hand tangles in her hair just hard enough that he can keep he there a little longer.

“Wait,” he breathes and her hands pause where they’d been working the buttons of his shirt free. “Maybe we should slow down.” There’s a part of him screaming at his stupid mouth right now for the words falling out of it. “You said you don’t know if this is what you want. So maybe we shouldn’t rush things.”

She barks out a small laugh. “You’re moving to another city for a ‘maybe’ and you don’t want to rush things?” He doesn’t really have an answer for that.

Her brow and mouth quirk up in one devastatingly attractive motion that has him ready to go back on everything he just said. “This was never our problem,” she reminds him, fingers tugging the buckle of his belt loose. “We’re good at this part. Everything else is where we get messy.” She works the button of his jeans open next. “So just try not to make any more big confessions while you’re inside me…” She runs her teeth over the skin below his ear as she slides her hand into his jeans and he nearly chokes. “And we should be fine.”

“Bloody hell.” His rational self may judge him later, but his current self has Emma Swan with her hand around his cock trying to get him out of his clothes and he’s already established that he’s not a very smart man. “I promise.”

***

It’s a strange feeling to be laying here, wrapped up in an old duvet and Star Wars sheets with Emma’s head on his shoulder and her fingers drawing patterns over his chest. They’ve never done this part, never lingered beyond the time it took them both to catch their breaths before untangling themselves from one another and going about their day - or tangling themselves again. He likes it, but it’s strange, new, something he hasn’t done in a long time. Not with anyone.

“This is kind of weird right?” she asks, breath warm against his neck.

Killian laughs. Bloody mind reader.

“Aye, a bit. I think I’m out of practice.”

“I never practised in the first place.”

He presses a kiss to her hair. “But, it’s not bad, right?” She can probably hear his stupid heart racing as he waits for her answer.

“No,” she shakes her head, sliding her arm around his waist and fitting herself more snugly against his side. “It’s not bad.” He can feel her smile against his skin, glad she can’t see the absolutely ridiculous one stretched across his own. They lay there a little longer, the room darkening with the earlier and earlier nights as he begins to dread the fast approaching hour where he’ll have to leave, until Emma shifts. “My neck hurts.”

“My arm’s asleep.”

She sits up and his arm is flooded with the sudden relief of no longer being squished, but he misses the warmth and the closeness of her immediately. He has two arms. Who really needs both? He’s done fine with one hand. “Where are you going?” he asks when she rises from the bed, reaching for his shirt that she tossed on the floor and he made himself leave there. ‘Do not fold your clothes while we’re in the middle of having sex or I swear I’ll put mine back on you fucking weirdo.’

“Thirsty,” she says as she finishes buttoning it. “You?”

“Aye, thanks.”

“Water? Or would you prefer rum?”

“Hilarious.” His stomach rolls, not finding her so funny. She certainly seems to think she is, smirking as she fetches two water bottles from the fridge. “You know you’re going to have to give me my shirt back this time. It’s the only one I’ve got.” At least until he finds out if the hotel hung onto his suitcase when he missed his checkout. “Unless you have the others squirrelled away here somewhere.”

“I thought you had ‘too many shirts, Swan,’” she reminds him in a poor imitation of his accent and he rolls his eyes. She hops back onto the bed, climbing into his lap to sit astride his hips. His hand and wrist settle on her waist, the shirt in question riding up and making him groan at the feel of her pressed against him.

“Aye well I’ve only got the one to wear out of here tonight and while you look infinitely better in it than I do -”

“Like a sexy Winnie the Pooh, would you say?”

He sighs. “I’m never living that one down am I?”

“You want to show me your hundred acre wood?” Killian lets his head fall back against the headboard as she laughs herself silly. “I have another solution,” she tells him, hands wringing nervously in the sleeves of his shirt. “I was thinking, maybe, since you’ve already missed your flight, and you probably don’t have a hotel room anymore, that you could stay here tonight. And maybe we could give that whole waking up together thing a shot.”

Her cheeks are flushed, freckles bright against the soft pink as she looks up from her hands to catch his eye. He kisses her hard enough that she’d have fallen right off his lap were it not for his arms holding her steady and close to him.

“That a yes?” she asks, mouth curling against his and he catches that smirking bottom lip between his teeth like he’s wanted to since she showed up at the station.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

She nods and it’s him smiling against her mouth now. “For tonight at least. But I think there’s still a lot of grovelling in your future before it becomes a regular thing.”

He kisses her again, rolls her onto her back beneath him. “Then I’d better get started right away,” he says, lips finding the length of her neck as he begins to work free the buttons of his stolen shirt.

“Well, you did promise you would write poetry about my boobs.”

“I what?” He looks up only to see her wearing the same confused frown as himself before her eyes widen with laughter and she covers her mouth with her hands.

“Oh my god. You haven’t seen your texts have you?”

Fuck.

*******

Tagging the usual people but let me know if you want to be removed or added!

@kmomof4 @elizabeethan @the-darkdragonfly @undercaffinatednightmare @jennjenn615 @dramioneswan @gingerchangeling @gingerpolyglot @kazoo5480 @lfh1226-linda @csalltheway @xsajx @xarandomdreamx @onceratheart18 @ownedbycaptainswan @teamhook @pirateprincessofpizza @lostintheskyfaraway @zaharadessert @thejollyroger-writer @ultraluckycatnd @justanother-unluckysoul @spartanguard @jonesfandomfanatic @deckerstarblanche @jrob64 @klynn-stormz @wefoundloveunderthelight @sailtoafarawayland @tiganasummertree @winterbaby89 @hollyethecurious @stahlop @superchocovian @snowbellewells @xellewoods @sals86 @karlyfr13s @ouatpost @skairipakomtrikru @lonelyspectator12 @anmylica @alexa-fangirl-forever @inspiredbystardust @marcella2727 @paradiselady19 @koryandr @killiansprincss @goforlaunchcee @motherkatereloyshipper

#captain swan #cs fanfic #captain swan fanfic #cs ff #cs angst #but also just a lot of funny drunk Killian #killian jones #captain hook #emma swan #this thing is ferral guys #I don't even know what this is but I hope you like it #silver hook #silver killian

78 notes · View notes