#ty so much for this prompt saskia!

[shadowglens]

86 for noa/kaidan? 🥺

86. "I love waking up next to you." || ~1000 words || READ ON AO3

Their bedroom smelt of petrichor and baby powder when Noa woke at 2am.

The bed shifted under her as she twisted towards the sound of Asher stirring, the static of rain against the roof thundering through the room. A soft blue glow washed over the bassinet shoved beside the bed and Noa smiled with a huff, despite the late hour and chill wind sweeping through the open window in the corner, at the writhing form of Asher in his swaddle.

She hadn’t been asleep anyway, had been lying staring at the ceiling while absently picking at an old, silvered scar that ran along the inside of her forearm. Kaidan was spread beside her, three quarters of their blankets draped over him after he’d tugged them from her during the night – a bona fide thief if she’d ever seen one. A crack of lightening had illuminated their little yard through the darkness, and Asher had woken, whether in spite of or with the storm she wasn’t sure.

“Come here, little man,” Noa whispered, gently lifting him into her arms. The angle was awkward enough that she once would have winced at the way her ribs caught but the injury was far enough in the past that it didn’t bother her anymore. Asher barely cracked open his eyes, instead scrunching his face in a way that looked almost painful as he squirmed in his swaddle again.

Shifting to sit back against their headboard with Asher cradled between her arms and knees was almost second nature at this point. He took to the bottle with little resistance, only a few gurgled cries echoing through the room before he realised what the object held before his face was. The little sharks on his swaddle glowed silver like her forearm every time lightning struck outside. The storm didn’t seem to bother Asher as much as it did his mother.

This routine, of waking and feeding and waking, was both foreign and familiar to Noa. The lack of sleep was an old friend to her, insomniac that she was, but the love and affection that soaked every moment of her existence that she shared with the bundle of wrinkles and gurgles and shark-printed pyjamas was an entirely new beast for her to tackle.

Never had she held anything as breakable and innocent as Asher. Her hands were meant for bearing weapons of mass destruction, for cradling the galaxy despite the way it burned – she worried, even now, that she would taint his pure skin with the blood stains and scorch marks on her palms. His tanned skin was so untouched by the world, his fingers so pure where they clutched at the bottle.

She could stare at him and his innocence forever. Her son. Her son. What a strange, wonderful concept.

“All good?”

Noa turned, careful not to jostle Asher from his ever-important task of eating, to see Kaidan staring up at her from his pillow. His hair fell haphazardly across his forehead, curls indignant against the humidity of the storm raging outside. The squint of his eyes was a near mirror of the face Asher had made mere moments before and Noa’s heart ached at the sight.

She just nodded at Kaidan, indulging in her still-warm heart by freeing a hand and brushing some curls from his face. “Morning.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, a lopsided smile stretching his jaw as he stared at her and Asher in turn. “Did the rain wake him?”

“I think his stomach did.”

Kaidan rolled onto his back, blankets tangling around his waist and legs as soft laughter bubbled up his throat. Noa smiled as he dragged a hand over his face, tousling the curls she’d just brushed aside. “Can’t blame him for that, I guess.”

Noa wiped at Asher’s lips with a cloth as he spat up excess formula. Even with his hands securely tucked against his small chest, she could feel him trying to settle back into a comfortable position against her thighs. In the twenty minutes it had taken for him to drink his fill, the cybernetic connection at her hip had begun to ache a little. She reminded herself to find a better position tomorrow night.

“There we go,” she muttered as she burped him, even if the process took longer because of his sleep-addled state. “Good job, little man.”

Asher was well and truly asleep by the time she leant over to place him back in his bassinet. His skin was so soft when she ran her thumb along his forehead, the inklings of dark hair starting to grow from his scalp. More lightening cracked, painting them in silver and blue. She could feel as Kaidan snaked a hand out to rub at the exposed scarring along her bare torso.

“Come here,” he mumbled, as sleep addled as their son.

Noa let him pull her back towards him on the bed, smiling through the gloom. “Kaidan . . .”

“Don’t Kaidan me. You are not getting out of this bed until the sun has risen.”

His threat was dampened by the way he couldn’t keep his eyes open. “That trick doesn’t work anymore, old man.”

“Yeah well, can’t blame me for trying.”

Noa shifted to lay on her back again, this time with Kaidan pressed against her side. He stared at her through half lidded eyes from his pillow. The rain continued to rattle against the roof, the sound of water splashing in Bruno’s likely-overflowing water bowl echoing in from the yard. Despite the early hour and miserable weather, Noa could already hear the tell-tale song of birds in the air.

A yawn cracked open Kaidan’s jaw. “Just try, for me? I like waking up to the sunrise and you.”

“No promises.”

Kaidan stretched to plant a kiss on her shoulder, apparently deciding he’d won. Her skin tingled with ozone and love. Asher gurgled in his sleep beside the bed, by far the loudest sleeper of the three of them, which was saying something considering the soft snores that had already started to slip from Kaidan. Noa tugged back a few sheets that he’d stolen earlier, stared at the ceiling, and resolved herself to at least try and get some more sleep before the sun started inching through the curtains or Asher stirred again.

She had a fair idea which would happen first.

Noa couldn’t find it in her battered, stitched-back-together heart to mind.

[shadowglens]

a kiss stemmed from jealously for alma/charles 👀

prompt list | ~2.1k words | READ ON AO3

Alma didn’t like this town.

They’d been camping in the woods a few miles away for the past two days, and it was two days too long in Alma’s opinion. The saloon was one of the largest they’d stumbled upon in a while, although the innkeeper had informed her that all rooms were occupied with so much poorly feigned regretfulness that even an infant would have been able to spot the lie. All the store owners were equally quick to throw her to the kerb with half-arsed apologises or excuses, one even going as far as to say that he had run out of stock when the shelves were clearly full around her.

Whether it was the mud caked on every inch of her, or Charles’ presence at her back, she wasn’t sure. Alma wanted to beat the third shopkeeper’s teeth in either way. Bigoted inbreds.

“Now, there’s no need for threats,” the butcher that she had been arguing with for five minutes urged, wind whistling through what was left of his teeth. “I’d help ya, but I ain’t taking on hides at the moment.”

Alma fought the urge to slam her fist on his bloodied counter. “Is that so? Explains the racks of them hidden behind that shelf.”

“I told ya, I’m all full up right now,” he spluttered, shifting to put his significant bulk between her and the racks in question.

“You’ll be all full up with my –”

“There a problem here, miss?”

If it wasn’t for the deer hides bundled in her arms, Alma would have pulled her revolver. Even then, it was a close thing.

The man was broad and tanned, a smattering of freckles painted over the bridge of his nose and lining the green of his eyes. Born of money, she was sure, or at least close enough to it that he had inherited the air of arrogance money bought. The black of his leather coat shone in the afternoon sun so much she wondered if he glossed it with oil. Alma shrugged his hand away, and when he breathed out a charming laugh, she smelt tobacco.

“Now, what is a pretty thing like you doing antagonising this poor man?” he sighed, hand shifting from her shoulder to trace along the curve of her arm. “Didn’t your mama teach you some manners?”

Alma took a step back, cursing the hides in her arms. “She taught me how to spot a snake.”

The man laughed proper at that. His free hand hooked in his grey jeans and the action made his crotch jut out towards her. “Oh, but there is fire in this one, isn’t there, sir?”

In the corner of her eye, she saw the butcher nod mutely. The man’s eyes landed on what was visible of her breasts through the gap in her coat and Alma wished her hands weren’t so full.

“In any case,” her continued, closing the gap and reaching to place a hand on her shoulder again, “I am positive that we could strike a deal for those wonderful hides you have there, miss. Why not come into my private room at the saloon and let us negotiate? My wife has been desperate for a new duvet.”

Alma spat at the polished tips of his boots. “If you’re wife’s so cold, maybe you should go warm her bed instead of trying to get into mine.”

She was used to men being cruel; she’d dealt with it all her life. Most men were too numbed by the sight of a woman with a spine to possibly fight back, and those that weren’t had ended up on the receiving end of her shotgun or hunting knife. The rancher’s son that had ruined any prospects Alma had of living an honest, respectable life flashed in her periphery and she hated that the stench of his corpse in the mud still lingered long after his body had decayed and turned to a pile of bones.

Her years with the gang had made her forget. Almost. Dutch thought he was the one to shift her from silk to metal, but Alma had been educated on the violence of men long before the great Dutch Van der Linde took her under his wing, and he too had only added to the education in the end.

The glint in their eye. The shift of their body, so that their fist was angled at your face instead of their groin. The delicate line of their mouth turning sharp at the edges.

Alma was about to drop her hides in favour of shooting the man’s balls off when Charles appeared.

“Back off,” he snapped, voice slick with venom. The basket of supplies he’d managed to swindle from the general store lay forgotten in the mud.

The man shoved against the hand Charles had planted against his chest. “No one asked for your opinion, red skin.”

Alma bristled at the insult on Charles’ behalf, but he softly pushed her back with his foot when he felt her try to barge around him. The butcher had disappeared, no doubt for the sheriff’s office. A gang of young drunkards stumbling out of the nearby saloon had been attracted to the commotion as if they could scent the promise of bloodshed in the air.

Charles, apparently also fed up with the sorry excuse for a backwater town and not caring of the consequences, muttered back with the bite of a territorial animal, “And no one asked for you to throw your dick around, and yet it’s happening anyway.”

There was a moment of calm where Alma allowed herself to smirk over Charles’ shoulder. Then, all hell broke loose.

Charles dodged the first and second fists, retorting with a knee to the dick in question. The man crumpled immediately, a groan erupting from the pile he’d become in the mud in the same moment that shouting started echoing from the drunks nearby. Charles hadn’t even had to clench his fist.

Alma kicked the man once in the stomach for good measure. Twice because she felt like it.

“Come on,” Charles sighed fondly, arms already reaching for the hides bundled in her arms. “Unless you want to fight the whole town?”

“You know I wouldn’t mind –”

Charles lightly shoved her towards the horses across the road. “I was joking.”

Alma let herself laugh for the both of them, stumbling to pick up the supplies Charles had dropped as they ran for Gaia and Taima. The rabble were trying to close the distance but were caught in the mud of the street and their own drunken stupidity; by the time Alma and Charles had hoisted themselves into their respective saddles and torn out of town the crowd had barely reached the still-unresponsive asshole in the mud. The sheriff glared at them on their way past but only sighed and returned to his office as they raced by, leaving the butcher standing redfaced on the front steps.

Alma flipped him off for good measure.

*

They rode for the rest of the day before settling down to camp just after sunset. Alma reassured herself that the hides would keep for another few days, until the next town over at least. The supplies Charles had scavenged would suffice for weeks beyond that if they were vigilant, even if Alma had to use some of the medicinal balm immediately to sooth a nasty, poorly-healing scrape on Gaia’s stomach. The mustang stomped roughly as Alma gently rubbed the cream in but let out a content snort into Alma’s hair once she was finished.

Charles had been quiet since they’d left town.

He had busied himself with erecting their tents and stoking a fire, had disappeared for close to an hour collecting firewood despite the plentiful amount of kindling that Alma could spy within a few metres of camp. It wasn’t until the two of them were sat in front of the fire waiting for the venison to cook that she saw his jaw work, the promise of a conversation brewing.

“I’m sorry,” her muttered, eyes chancing a look at Alma beside him. “For earlier. In town.”

Alma sighed, eyes trained on her shotgun where it lay in her lap. “It’s okay. I appreciate you standing up for me.”

The steaks crackled over the fire. Behind them, Alma heard Gaia move to snicker softly at Taima.

She felt Charles shift without having to look up. “No. I’m sorry about that man.”

Alma abandoned her gun, the rag she’d been using clutched white-knuckled in one hand as she turned to look at Charles properly. His brow was furrowed, deep crevasses lining his forehead and eyes turned down at the edges. The corner of his mouth was twisted, as if he had just sucked on a lemon.

“The way he looked at you, touched you . . .”

She folded her rag haphazardly, throwing it back into her satchel, before leaning across to clutch at Charles’ hand where he had it fisted in the grass. She smeared oil on his knuckles. “It’s not your fault. Some men are just vermin.”

“That’s no excuse. He – I wanted to – ” Charles swallowed thickly, as if working a stone down his throat. His free hand reached out to gently brush against her shoulder where the man had grabbed earlier, and with her coat shed, she could feel the callouses of Charles’ fingers where they clutched at her. The scratch of them through her thin shirt made her lean into the touch. “I wanted to . . .”

Charles shook his head, stone swallowed and clogged somewhere deeper in his throat. Alma rested her free hand against his wrist where it was still pressed to her shoulder, content to let him think through his words a moment as the smell of cooking meat and herbs filled the air. The firelight danced along the scars on his cheek, bathing them in gold; Alma had never asked how he got them. She hoped it wasn’t too sad of a memory.

“I wanted to kill him,” Charles eventually ground out, like the admission physically pained him.

Then, he was kissing her.

Kissing Charles wasn’t like kissing other men, who were often sloppy and too focused on what came next. Kissing Charles was slow and deliberate, as if the mere action of kissing her was the holiest thing he had ever done. Alma knew he wasn’t a particularly devout man, and she wasn’t too educated about God either, but kissing Charles made her think that this was what the preacher’s meant when they talked about being worshipped.

His hand shifted from her shoulder to cup her jaw gently, his lips needy against her own as he leaned heavily into her space. Alma groaned softly and he swallowed the sound, tongue slipping between her teeth in retaliation. He burned against and inside her, his fingers tugging her closer while he angled his face to bury himself deeper in her mouth. She wrapped an arm around his neck to secure him in place, as if he was going anywhere. He tasted of whiskey and smoke.

“I love you,” Charles panted between breaths. Plunged back in only for Alma to nip at his lip. “I love you so much, Alma.”

Alma hummed against him. One of her hands snaked out to tug at his braid and he jerked in her arms, a moan slipping free. She pulled back to gasp out a breath and was distracted by the smell of burning meat.

“Love you too, Charles, but I might change my mind if you burn our dinner.”

Charles kept his lips on hers a moment longer, stubborn only in his affection for her, before rocking back on his heels with a deflated sigh. His lips were swollen and glistened in the firelight.

“The things I do for you,” he mumbled with a soft smirk, but he did eventually turn to pull the venison off the fire before they were both subjected to eating charcoal for dinner.

Alma swatted him half-heartedly on the shoulder, leaning over to peck him on the jaw indulgently. A small laugh rumbled through Charles’ chest and through her lips. She left her head resting against him while he tried to salvage the venison, the scratch of his shirt a comfort against her blush-warm cheek. The events in town were a fading memory, even if the small, rage-raw part of her wished that man had been left to suffer worse than a bruised ego and groin.

She let the anger fade away in the light evening breeze. The taste of Charles on her lips was a much more pleasant sensation to linger on.