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cryinginthebackseat · 4 years

Text

initials t.c.

Fandom: Open Heart

Pairing: Tobias Carrick x MC

Words: 7.299 (I’M SO SORRY)

Summary: Tobias Carrick makes Claire an offer she can’t refuse.

Warnings: 50% plot, 50% smut, swear-a-thon, blasphemy

Author’s Note: when the book first introduced us to tobias carrick, the first thing that hit my mind was “okay, but that dude is like the carbon copy of jesse williams and that’s hot” but then, once it reveals who he is and what’s his role in the book i went “interestinggggggg” cause you know, i’m a sucker for morally grey characters and all, and i’m not even ashamed to admit it. also, carrick is shaping up to be such an interesting character with each chapter and maybe one day- okay, maybe this sounds like a pipe dream- but one day, i hope he can be a li (let a girl dream plz) lmao

also if anyone’s interested, i made a PLAYLIST to accompany reading the fic.

the title is inspired by serge gainsbourg’s initials bb

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Cast down off heaven Cast down on my knees I’ve lain with the devil Cursed god above Forsaken heaven

To Bring You My Love - PJ Harvey

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Whenever Claire thinks about Tobias Carrick, admittedly, unfortunately, tragically, she always thinks about his eyes first before remembering what a colossal pain in the ass he is.

It always comes in that order. Like the number 3 always comes before 4, like the seawater dragging back from the shoreline before a tsunami occurs, like pouring milk before the cereal (she honestly didn’t get what the fuss is about until one day Elijah cried ‘oh, hell no you don’t, satan!‘ one morning and proceeded to give her bullet points why pouring the milk before the cereal is considered a sin and more of an abomination than Nephilims’ existence and that there’s a higher probability that she’s a psycho for being a ‘milk first’ kind of person). So apparently, Claire’s a psycho now which explains so many aspects- but she digresses and the point is, the reaction is uncontrollable and she high-key hates how she can’t control her goddamn mind most of the time.

The point is, she needs to stop thinking about him to begin with.

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Claire Castelnuovo was born in the summer, under the sign of Gemini. Marilyn Monroe once said that stands for intellect, being a Gemini, but she was too blissfully unaware of this guerdon that she devoted her adolescent years to being outdoors instead. Too many days she spent trampling along the cornfields with her cousins until the skies faded out with brilliant purple-tinged amber and she was carrying a piece of the sun in her skin and smelled like one, stuffing wildflowers inside her boots as she walked around the neighborhood with her dad’s old stethoscope, napping in a hammock with Oasis’ All Around the World on repeat. By the time she hit 15, her black strands had turned brown from repeated sun exposure. She loved it.

But it was a different time, a different place. Somewhere that only exists on the margins of her memories, lost and hidden.

Now, Claire prefers the night.

It’s 9:30 pm when she arrives at a hotel bar in downtown Boston. A newly christened establishment which has somehow become a regular spot for Hemingway’s enthusiasts once the Boston Globe wrote an article about their Hemingway Daiquiri and how, as they wrote it, ‘probably the only place that’s brave and crazy enough to adhere to the 1930s original recipe’ and bourgeois party birds at wee hours during the weekend.

Her eyes are gritty, dry and strange. Her mind’s much worse for the wear- she feels like shit, like in the middle of watching that scene from The Green Mile shit when all is hopeless and you feel like walking out of the theater, but you’ve spent your last savings just to buy the ticket, so you decide to stick through it.

Claire makes a beeline for the bar, tries to flag down the bartender. She orders an Old Fashioned, making sure to specify to double it because she’s not a regular here and he’s not Reggie and that’s how she’s been taking her drink for years.

She knows well deep in her bones that she should be somewhere else. Somewhere more familiar, somewhere where Tim Mcgraw often plays from the subpar speakers, and the rustic wooden bar countertop is gouging and discoloring from the cheap household cleaners and alcohol stains, and her friends are cramming together in the same booth in the back, reveling and laughing until they close the bar down and make a mess all over. Perhaps it’s a mistake coming here, where no one’s a familiar face and the drinks are a tad overpriced for her budget.

But then, perhaps this is exactly what she needs; the unfamiliarity, the visceral feeling knowing that she doesn’t belong here, where no one knows her name and the huge deal of weight she’s currently carrying on her shoulders. Perhaps, she can’t face her friends after what happened, after what Esme has done. Shit, how could any of this happen? Claire knows this all on Esme’s, but her guilt has grown hopelessly tangled with her anxiety. She’s her intern, for fuck’s sake, Claire’s supposed to prevent this from happening in the first place.

Man, where’s Declan Nash when she feels like punching someone in the face?

Claire makes the mistake of drinking her drink too quickly, because it hasn’t been ten minutes and she’s drained half of the content. Then she reaches for her phone in her bag, fiddles with it, absent-minded, equal parts bored before then settles on watching the band performing Art Pepper’s You Go To My Head and immediately thinks of that time she accidentally dropped her brother’s saxophone in a moment of her rather graceless, wine-soaked self with the whole family present.

Someone plops down on the empty stool next to her. Claire’s now scrolling through her phone- again, bored. Sienna commented on the post Elijah shared to the group chat with a few unnecessary-yet-totally-necessary emojis to the already convoluted series of texts and Claire only reads them in silence, not only because her friends’ texting behaviors are too chaotic for her to follow sometimes but she’s not really feeling like talking to anyone right now.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Famous last words.

Claire freezes in her seat. Her phone’s still glowing in her hand, alighting her features. She recognizes that voice- too well, that is and it’s enough to set off her flight-or-fight response.

She glances up from her phone, preparing for the worst.

Well, what’s presented before her is literally the worst.

“Of all the gin joints…” she says once her eyes find Tobias Carrick sitting next to her, still in his work shirt, sleeves rolled-up, a few buttons undone, reeking of smoke, soap and antiseptic with a shit-eating grin plastered over his face.

She should have gone to Donahue’s instead.

“Evening to you too, Castelnuovo. Drinking your dinner tonight, I see?”

“What, this? No, this is breakfast. 100% daily value of alcohol and pretty much nothing else. I mean, it’s not the weekend without a bad case of hangover and an aspirin snowglobe in the morning, am I right? You know, like a glass of aspirin? Not a literal snowglobe?” she blabbers, realizing just so by the time she hears him snort. Claire chokes down another sip to shut her mouth up. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m about to commit first-degree murder and burn this whole place to the ground,” he drawls, the ever goddamn sarcastic. “What do you think? I’m trying to get dru-”

“No, I mean what are you doing here, of all places? Can’t you get drunk somewhere else?” she interrupts, her midwest accent does funny things to the vowels and consonants- something that only happens whenever she’s in distress, or at least according to Jackie.

“Last time I heard, this joint’s still owned by the Hilton, not a certain junior member of the Diagnostics Team at Edenbrook hospital.”

“Dude, what do you think of the H in Claire H. Castelnuovo stands for?” Deadpan, trying to keep up with the rolling sarcasm, she retorts. He smirks.

“Horatio?”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she mutters, mid-eye-roll, mid-snickering.

He chuckles, his voice rich and smoky amidst the late-night swing and distant chatters. Carrick doesn’t leave, of course, typically him- if those anecdotes Ethan told her has taught her anything about his character, that is- defying everything, scheming his way to the top, the embodiment of ‘those devilish boys with their heavenly eyes’ type your mother warns you about.

Not that the latter is relevant.

“Or what?” His mouth twitches but there’s a hard, challenging light in his eyes that she knows too well by now.

“Or I’m leaving.“ She shoots him a glare. He’s testing her patience- again, like it’s his finesse. Some things never change, it seems.

“Come on, Castelnuovo, don’t be a sourpuss. The night is young and I can promise you, the last thing I am is a horrible drinking buddy.”

With a touch of irony, she replies: “I’m sure. I bet you asked your friends to fill out a questionnaire every time you went out with them, did you?”

Carrick hums.

“You’re funny.” But he says it in the same tone that someone might say Jesus fuck, you’re probably one of the most frustrating creatures I’ve ever laid eyes on. Also, because the next thing he says is: “A little rough around the edges, but funny nonetheless.”

“That makes one of us then.”

Carrick frowns, which is kind of a surprise because she’s half expected him to flash her that signature cheeky grin of his.

“Listen, I’m just trying to make a friendly conversation here. I know we haven’t really seen eye-to-eye with each othe-”

Claire snorts and crosses her arms over her chest. “That, doctor, is an understatement of the fucking century.”

“Okay so, we’re like Tom and Jerry but sans the background music and a naive little duckling running around calling one of us his momma, but I feel like now’s the time to call out a temporary truce between us.” A beat, then: “I heard about what happened with the intern.”

Something flashes across her face- and Carrick must have noticed it, because his face does this odd thing- it softens, even for a moment. She hates it. He’s not supposed to be looking at her like that, not supposed to see her at her weakest state or saved her ass- And Jesus, why does she have to be indebted to Tobias Carrick, of all people- But god forbid, the last thing she’ll ever do is crying in front of him.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mutters, barely audible, trying to temper her fluctuated emotions.

“Then don’t. We can talk about anything else or fall into some sort of endless, meaningless platitudes. Whichever will work.” As if sensing Claire’s lingering hesitation, he adds. “Tell you what, to sweeten the offer, your next drinks are on me.”

She assesses him for a long minute, eyes narrowing. She’s shaking her head, but her mouth, as if against her will, instead says: “Careful, Carrick, there’s a chance I’ll be abusing that offer and run you dry.”

"Hey, if you want to butcher your liver so bad, don’t stop on my account,” he says. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll make sure to save your ass again this time around. Pro bono.”

Claire looks as if she’s just swallowed a dead rat. “Thanks, but no thanks. Death seems more like an appealing choice.”

“Well, I stopped death from interfering then, I’ll stop it again.” Carrick winks, she pretends to gag again yet remains still in her seat, so Carrick waves at the bartender for their order- she orders for a refill and he, a martini and Claire is this close from asking 'shaken or stirred?’ but then remembers who he is and immediately washes the question down with her drink.

“You know, if anyone told me weeks ago that I’d be having a drink with you tonight, I probably would have socked them.“

Carrick is in the middle of lighting his cigarette, but laughs instead. “The Times They Are a-Changin’, as Bob Dylan said.” A puff of smoke escapes his mouth, curling around his fingers. Claire instinctively looks away. “Which reminds me of that one time your mentor sang Ballad of A Thin Man on the fucking subway when we were 20.”

She swivels her head to his direction, on the verge of choking on her drink. “Hold on, hold on, Ethan Jonah Ramsey sings?”

“Give him a dare he couldn’t refuse and a few shots of whiskey, and I promise you he’ll sing like Sinatra on crack.” He grins, his eyes are all crinkled and bright; she thinks that means he’s genuinely amused. “Ah, good times. We were like- wait, who was it he’d like to say we’re like again?”

A small smile pulls at her lips. “Bert and Ernie.”

“Jesus, he really fucking compares us to some Sesame Street characters, huh?” She laughs at that, loud and bright. He does the same. “Personally, I’d always say we were like Butch and Sundance back then- rebels with a cause, a band of misfits, trying to leave our marks on the world. You know those types. We were young, we wanted so much- I still do. I mean, let’s be real, whoever’s wanted to be defeated at their own game?”

A crease forms between her eyebrows, not quite a frown.

“Nobody,” Claire concurs, hating herself for it. “But was it worth it? Betraying the closest thing you had to a brother or a lover…” Carrick coughs on his smoke from the latter. “or whatever in the process just to get what you wanted?” Claire was obviously aiming for that brash, hard-hitting jab, but it lands gloriously too soft.

The bartender finally places their ordered drinks down on the bar. Carrick reaches for it, taking a careful swig, then sets his glass down. He takes a deep breath.

"It’s nothing personal. It never was. I never considered him as my rival.”

“Yeah, but by doing whatever you did, you’ve made an enemy out of him,” she counters. “Look, Carrick, I know we live in a dog-eat-dog world and I know being good sometimes doesn’t get the job done. Perhaps Machiavelli was right. Perhaps, when necessary, you have to be ruthless, dissembling and manoeuvring- what did he say again? ‘The end justifies the means’? But if any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, if everyone outright surrenders to their darker side, then what’s left of our humanity?”

For an interminable moment, there is only silence. He simply stares at her, as if she’s a walking, talking Rubik’s cube he can’t solve or a book that he has opened and now he’s got to know so much more and she feels pinned under those warm irises, uneasy.

Suddenly, his mouth begins to take shape; the corners hike up, stretch and then he does the unexpected.

The bastard fucking laughs.

“Excuse me?!” she spits, white-hot anger lacing each word. Carrick laughs harder- the audacity- despite Claire’s growing razor’s edge stare. “Did you just laugh at me? I was being fucking seriou-”

“Sorry, sorry.” Wiping an imaginary tear from his left eye. “I was just remembering Harper’s words. She’s right, you really are on the side of the angels, aren’t you?”

She points at him with her glass, snarling. “And you, mister, are the devil himself with a medical degree and an egg head- and I don’t mean the slang for a highly academic person.”

“Ouch,” Carrick says out loud, still kind of laughing, borderline frowning. “Okay, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“Damn straight. Though you have a lot to apologize for.”

He groans. “Don’t tell me you’re still pissed about that one patient I stole under your nose?”

“The North remembers, ser,” she says, mean-spirited.

“Then does the North remembers that I saved her life?”

“Oh, so you’re discrediting the efforts of the other doctors that helped you make the cure?”

“Alright, alright. You win.” Carrick holds up his hands, the universal gesture of defeat and takes one final drag of his cigarette. He stubs it out, all the while keeping his gaze on her.

“So, how exactly can I make it up to you?“

Claire blinks- once, twice, thrice, realizing his intent. His voice drops an octave and he’s leaning in, close enough for her to notice the constellations of freckles splaying across his face and the way his brown eyes glinted like two shots of whiskey under a stream of light, intense and all-consuming. She feels her mind races, her brains feel as if they underwent a short-circuit and get caught on fire, and the fact that her mind’s on the precipice of exploring the idea is not helping.

A burst of laughter erupts from her throat, not that it’s funny- there’s nothing funny about the situation, but someone ought to diffuse this shift of tension between them, or that was her aim, at least.

“What, you wanna pay me back?” she asks, trying to keep her voice from cracking but failing miserably. Fingers trembling against her glass as she chugs nearly a quarter of her drink in one go.

He notices that.

"A Lannister always pays his debts, does he? If you think that I owe you one, then I’ll gladly pay.” His eyes flick back to her face, searing into her. The air crackles between them. The band is playing a different song now, a sound that only exists on the margin of her attention. If they’re in, say a mid 2000s rom-com movie, someone would probably interrupt this moment and save her from this. But this isn’t a movie.

Claire licks her lips, a candid reaction which encourages him to inch closer- or is it her? She can’t tell anymore. Tracing odd patterns on the palm of her hand with his finger and oh god, this is Carrick, the bane of her fucking existence, she’d shoot him first before she kisses him. But something about the prospect of fucking this bastard twists her insides deliciously into a confused mess.

“How? By fucking me?” she inquires, feigning scandalized- all that Catholic guilt bullshit.

He grins, all-teeth and wolfish and shrugs as if they’re talking about his life insurance policy or shit. “Well, that’s the idea.”

“But you don’t even like me.” It should come out as I don’t even like you, but even she knows that’ll be just another lie she tells.

“On the contrary, I enjoy our rivalry far more than I should, Castelnuovo,” he purrs and places a hand on her knee. Her throat bobs. She’s wearing a skirt, it didn’t seem important then, but now his hand feels warm against her skin, dangling on the edge of impropriety. Like gravity, all it takes is a little push for him to cross that line.

“I should be disliking the way you talk to me, challenging me and putting me on the back foot every goddamn time. I should be focusing on taking you down a peg, but the more I see you, the more I realize you have an attractive kind of power. And I’m just one man. And if there’s anything I learned, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

But then his movement suddenly ceases. Claire almost asks why.

"However…”

“What?” she stares up at him, eyes wide, breath hitching.

“However if you only accept alcohol as the currency for transactions, then I’ll tell the bartender to get us another round instead,“ he tells her, offering her one last chance to back out from this, from making this mistake with him.

Claire stares into her drink, actually mulling this over. Her mind tells her no, but the other part- the alcohol-infused part of her mind- whispers otherwise. She imagines if Ethan or any of her friends are here, they would probably grab her shoulder and shake the living hell out of her for even reconsidering his offer.

But then again, intelligence, alcohol and desperation have always had a bad history of getting along together.

“What about June?” Claire asks against her better judgement, after a long, considerable pause. Carrick raises a confused brow.

“What about her?”

“I thought you guys…” she trails off, makes a face, feeling all-kind of flustered and aroused and wow, she’s really doing this, huh? “I mean, I don’t know- I don’t wanna get in between you guys.”

“Nah. It was only a three time thing, but there’s never been anything between us.” He chuckles at Claire’s askance look. “If you don’t believe me, you can fact-check it with the woman herself,” Carrick adds, looking at her dead-on with his eyes like he wants to get the message across.

She regards him silently for a long second, and maybe she’s a touch drunk now, maybe the bartender put something in her drink, or maybe she just needs to blow off some steam after what’s been happening in these past few weeks and Carrick happens to be a decent warm body for the occasion, but Claire finds herself shifting closer.

"Then I want you to pay me back.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” she answers, more sure this time, more determined.

Her nose bumps his, his breath fanning across her face all the while Carrick’s slightly pushing her skirt up, letting his fingertips travel higher. His eyes keep darting back and forth from her eyes and lips, checking for her reaction. There is no inhibition here, not anymore. People might be watching- heck, they could be already watching and it terrifies her that she doesn’t give a damn about it.

“But if you tell anyone about this, I swear to god… ” she warns and a shadow of mirth passes across his eyes, making her almost regretting this. Almost.

“Claire, darling.” It’s the first time he’s ever said her name and her stomach does a tango. “Your secret is safe with me.“ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He gets them a room in the hotel, it’s on the twentieth floor. Carrick handles the accommodation- he can afford it, apparently, which is not really surprising and the nuisating check-in procedure while Claire only waits in the lobby like a beautiful, agitated china doll amidst the turbulent sea the whole time until he comes back, flashes the room key at her and beckons her to follow.

She goes ahead of him, but he catches up. His body heat sends her anxiety rocketing sky-high through the roof as they walk next to each other, hands briefly brushing against one another but she ignores that (or at least she tries).

They are silent in the elevator, they are silent even once they reach the designated floor and walk down the hall to their room where the dim and shadowed lights follow their steps like vultures.

Carrick holds open the door for her and she enters, taking in the windows and the striking view of Boston skyline peeking behind the curtains, the TV and the queen-sized bed. The latter does nothing to assuage the anticipation that’s bubbling in the pit of her stomach, by the way.

Claire hears him shut the door, locking both bolts. She peers at him over her shoulder, half-turned, one eye on him. Their eyes meet, neither speaks. He’s taking off his black peacoat, back against the door, he’s looking at her as if wanting her is his full-time occupation and the realizations comes in like a mule kick, how that tiny voice inside her head, the one that tells her that this is a bad idea and she’s better off leaving never comes.

The room is not considerably huge (with $110 per night, you would have expected you’d get a bigger room), he could easily have her in six large steps, yet he stands there. Sizing her up, smirking rather devilishly, handsomely as if challenging her to make the first move. It’s another fucking game with him. A display of power, waiting who would fall first.

Claire finally turns around to face him. With a renowned determination, she removes her coat, letting it fall unceremoniously onto the carpeted floor. Her blouse follows next and her skirt, which she tugs it oh so slowly down her legs.

Carrick’s eyes widen, if she doesn’t know better, she thinks he’s speechless. He takes a deep breath, his gaze religiously following every movement as she twirls around once more to unhook her bra. His jaw clenches and unclenches. He’s having a hard time keeping himself in check which she takes an immense pleasure in. Claire just wants to see the man squirm for a change, even if she has to shed every article of clothing she wears.

By the time she slips off of her underwear, she is breathing raggedly. He hasn’t yet approached her so she crawls onto the bed, lying on her back with one elbow props her up, legs crossed. She kicks off her heels, rolls down her stockings with a bit of that noir come-hither, Lauren Bacall-esque heavy bedroom eyes.

Finally, Carrick steps closer until he’s only a hair’s breadth away, like a target, filling her line of sight. The tension in the room is hot enough to send the thermometer reaching its maximum limit and she’s burning, burning, burning right through the core.

Claire cranes her head up to meet his gaze, noticing the way he’s drinking in her body like a pirate ogling a bottle of rum. High-strung, tense, Carrick lowers his head to her, his fingers carding through her long hair. Dimness consumes him raw, his silhouette is starting to find its place amongst the shadows except for his eyes. Never does the fire in his eyes falter, merely alight.

They are already nose-to-nose when Claire suddenly raises her hand over his lips. He withdraws from her, looking confused and hot and bothered.

“Take a seat over there, will you?” She motions to the settee near the bed, her tone leaving no room for argument.

He smirks, but she can see his bravado if faltering. “Ordering me around in the bed now, are we?”

“Didn’t you say tonight is about you making it up to me?”

“Touche, touche.” Carrick straightens his posture and makes his way to the settee across from her, shifting uncomfortably in his seat given the growing issue in his pants.

With eyes still trained to his, Claire cups her own breast, fingers pinching her pebbled nipple before the same hand travels lower down her stomach, her thighs. Carrick leans forward in his seat, obviously liking where this is going before Claire slowly and teasingly part her legs for him to see.

A surprised groan escapes him.

“Jesus, Claire,” Carrick hisses. “Fuck, I didn’t know you’re a goddamn tease.”

She doesn’t bother replying to him, but a winning grin finds its way across her face as she lays on her back, her shame and modesty are distant, knees pulled up so he can have a clear view of her. With two fingers, she runs them along her folds, dragging them slowly up to her clit. Claire imagines they are his fingers- which once upon a time would have horrified her, but tonight, as she repeats the motion over and over, knowing that he’s sitting there, watching her without being able to get his hands on her, she decides to submit to this newfound fantasy.

A rustle pulls her back to reality. He’s undoing his own pants, palming his cock, runs his fingers over the leaking head.

A low moan catches in her throat at that, her gaze snapping up from his erection to his face where his irises have darkened and pupils dilated. He wants to show her, that’s he’s as depraved as her when it comes to wanting, that he fucking wants her and in spades and she fails to think like a normal human being anymore.

Claire uses that image to work on herself harder, faster, feeling the intense pressure beginning to build beneath her fingers. She’s so wet now, despite him being able to see that, she wants him to hear it as well as she uses her idle hand to tap against herself. Carrick growls, his pace matching the rhythm she’s setting.

She slips her fingers inside her, drops her head back against the mattress and bites a loud moan that threatens to escape her lips. Flushing scarlet all over her abdomen, her breasts and up to her neck. Her blood thumping louder than bombs in her ears, her breaths begin to come in gasps.

Another fast and hard thrust from fingers, and Claire finds herself sighing his name.

“Tobias…”

And every last bit of his self-restraint snaps.

In just a blink of an eye, Carrick is already on his feet, grabs her waist, harshly, and tugs her down onto the edge of the bed where he’s now kneeling before her. He doesn’t bother with the teasings or soft kisses or caresses, and even before Claire has the time to register what’s happening, he crushes his face between her parted legs and eats her out.

She gasps, high and fleeting, twisting the bed sheet between her fists while his tongue flicks over her, moving back up, back down, lapping along her folds in the same motions she showed him with her hand, how she likes it. Claire forgets how to breathe. It just occurs to her just how arousing the sight of him on his knees like this, sending her mind hitchhiking into outer space.

“Oh, fuck.” She breathes, back arching on the bed with a drawn-out moan. “Fuck, Tobias!” Her hips gyrate over his mouth and she presses her heels against his shoulder blades. She’s so close. All she needs is a little push to send her careening into oblivion and it seems that Carrick can sense it because he brings two digits to her entrance and slides easily inside her, setting a ruthless pace.

With her hands reaching out to the back of his head, Claire cries out his name and trembles violently. Encouraged, Carrick curves his fingers inside her, hitting that exact spot that finally undoes her as she comes, long and hard, around his mouth and fingers- the kind of orgasm that you can feel deep in your bones- and watches as fireworks dance behind her lids.

When she finally comes down from her high, everything is hazy. It’s like waking up from a deep slumber after a decadent soak in a scented bath and she loses all orientation, until she feels him nipping the inside of her thighs. She hisses, glances down, heavy-lidded eyes finding Carrick is leaving bruises after bruises all over her skin like some kind of a lewd memento of his work, like he wants her to remember this the next time she wakes up in her own bed and he’s not there.

"Are you trying to turn me into a Na'vi, doctor?” She asks, still kinda breathless, feeling surprisingly conversational despite having just experienced, if not, one of the best orgasms in her life. He smiles against her thigh and withdraws from her, only after her thighs are sufficiently bruised enough, licks his fingers clean and stands up at the end of the bed.

“Maybe. You’d make a cute blue extraterrestrial creature, though,” he replies cheekily, then undoes the button of his shirt, showcasing his naked torso.

Claire feels her cheeks heating up again, but forces herself to stare; eyes following his pectoral muscles, down to the toned lines of his abdomen while he slides off of his pants. The man is one fine specimen, alright, and he knows- smug bastard- and she thinks it’s such a shame that Carrick is… well, Carrick. If the man learns how to shut up for one minute or avoid trying to sabotage everyone’s career at Edenbrook altogether, maybe, just maybe, she’d consider him.

“But honestly, I just wanted to hear you say my name again,” Carrick continues, crawling his way up to her, pulling her out of her musings. He settles between her thighs. His lips finding her ear and nibbling at the lobe while his fingers pinching and pulling at her nipple. Claire shivers. Nails scraping along his skin, raising angry marks that would certainly be there tomorrow.

When they kiss, it’s so good that she can’t help but curl her toes. He kisses her like he’s trying to steal her breath or her name. She can taste herself in his mouth, which sparks so many feelings inside her. Her mind’s foggy, sweat pooling on her forehead. Carrick is but shoves his tongue into her mouth, lapping at her, biting, sucking and she leans hard into the kiss, retaliates by scraping her teeth against his bottom lip. It spurs him on. Making his cock twitch against her thigh and Claire decides she can’t wait anymore.

Claire rolls her hips at him. He takes the hint and rolls over to grab a condom from his pants. Then he’s back on top of her, his weight and heat crushing her most deliciously and brings her body further up the bed with him; she drapes her legs around his hips, hands gripping his arms. Her lust and anticipation collaborate to the point of near madness.

Carrick nips the taut line of her jaw and drives himself into her.

They both groan in unison.

“Oh, fuck.” Carrick mumbles between shaky breaths, his face pressed against her throat. “Fucking hell, Claire, you feel so warm.”

Claire, on the other hand, goes rigid under him. Her mouth hangs open and her world narrows down to the feeling of his cock inside her and the pleasure that builds up again in her abdomen.

This is happening, she thinks, he’s inside her and it feels so amazing. She might as well be crazy for agreeing to do this with him in the first place, but the promise of the thrill beats the doubts.

He starts slow, just the smallest fraction of hips, gently thrusting back and forth in shallow motions. She whines, frustrated and impatient, raising her own hips to meet his, but Carrick’s weight pins her onto the mattress and she can’t fucking move.

“F-faster,” Claire stammers, her molars grinding like toothache.

The bastard smirks, like he’s been anticipating the word coming out of her mouth.

“Beg for it.” His words are punctuated with every unhurried stroke he’s giving her, teasing her and if she’s not in the middle of being fucked right now, she would have kicked him in the balls.

Growling, she swallows her plea by pulling Carrick down for another kiss. This time, she’s the one who does the biting and the sucking, making sure he’s distracted enough and then just like with all the things she does in her life, she takes the matter into her own hands.

With all her strength, she scrambles up, pushes him off of her and knocks him onto his back flat on the bed. When she swings her legs to straddle him, his eyes pop.

“Holy shit, you are feisty.”

“Only cause I’m angry and horny,” she bites off. Angling herself above him and with one hand, guides his shaft back to her opening. “And you- you weren’t doing a proper job fucking me.”

He smirks. “I was trying to wind you up.”

“Fuck you.”

She lowers herself and sinks back onto his cock, relishing in his moans and growls.

“Baby, you’re doing it.” His hands curling around her waist, his head falls back onto the bed, exposing his throat and Claire is so hard-pressed not to bite him there.

Claire ignores his smartassness, naturally, and lifts herself, drops back down. Slamming her hips into his until she’s bouncing on him. Nails clawing at his chest. Finally be able to set a pace she desperately craves for, finally wiping that smirk off of his face.

Under her, Carrick is biting his lip in an effort to not to lose control. His hands are everywhere now; her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her cheeks. Leaving fire on its wake. She might still hate him after this is strange, little arrangement is over but at this juncture, he’s exactly the remedy she needs after everything.

Then Carrick wraps his arms around her and picks up the pace, thrusting into her hard and fast. Claire shakes. She can’t catch her breath, her forehead pressed on his shoulder, her teeth latching onto his skin. Breathing a string of 'fuckfuckfuck’ while he squeezes her ass and continues to fuck her with careless abandon.

"Tobias.” Her moans amplify. She’s close to climaxing again, her legs quivering. Eyes wide shut. “Please, please.” So much for not begging.

He pulls her to him so their foreheads meet. Their lips brush against each other, but they aren’t kissing, merely trading breaths. A hand touches her cheek and her lids flutter open, finding his eyes- those depthless, amber eyes that pretty much lead her to this point, are watching her, pulling her in.

“Say it again,” he encourages darkly, face twists in pleasure. “My name. Say it again.”

She does it again, it comes out as a groaned whisper, repeating it over and over again like a sacred mantra.

Her second orgasm sweeps through her, making her spine arches, it tears a winded moan from her throat and it’s more than enough to trigger Carrick’s own release; fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips, groaning gutturally.

Panting, sore but sated, Claire collapses on top of his chest, his arm still drapes around her. The rise and fall of his breath lull her to sleep. Before she knows it, he gently rolls her to his side, pulling the covers for them and kisses her on the shoulder, which comes out as… odd for her.

The bed moves and she feels him leaving.

He’s leaving.

She doesn’t know why it stings, but it does. But also Claire opts not to pay no mind to it and forces her mind to surrender to sleep that once again tries to take hold.

Claire wishes she doesn’t dream of him that night, but she does.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It’s way past midnight when she wakes up. The room is dark. The curtains are closed. She’s still naked and sore under the covers, mind reeling in from what has just transpired.

One might ask in which universe does Claire Castelnuovo agree to sleep with Tobias Carrick? Well, apparently they did it in this one and oddly still, she doesn’t regret it. Though she’s still low-key sad that he left her straight after sex, but hey, what can she do about it? This arrangement itself is nothing but a means to an end, anyway, a perverse alternative for him to pay back what he allegedly owes her, she shouldn’t be surprised if he left after the ‘debt’ is paid.

Feeling her mood somehow takes an unexpected dip, she gets us from the bed and gathers her clothes on the floor.

She’s in the middle of zipping up her skirt when the bedside lamp flickers and comes on.

Claire turns around. Carrick, rousing from sleep, looks at her, rubbing his eyes and stifles a yawn. His lips still tinged from her kisses and bites.

“Leaving so soon?” he asks, voice still raspy from sleep and Claire thinks her mouth is hanging open, standing rooted to the spot like a spider on an icicle; frozen in time.

For a moment, she does nothing but stares at him, being rendered speechless. For many times, Tobias Carrick never fails to surprise her. Just when she thinks she has him all figured out, he comes sneaking in through her windows like a thief in the night and it just strikes her, how he really is an uncharted territory for her. Despite her having him pinned under her, exploring the hard planes of his body under the touches just a few hours ago.

The man is like a fucking myth, at this point. She knows him only from stories and her limited time around him, but who is exactly Tobias Carrick? Is he the competitive doctor at Mass Kenmore, the Machiavellian asshole that severed his friendship/relationship with Ethan for the sake of his greed and ambition? Or is he, Tobias Carrick, the man who saves her life, makes her laugh and kisses her shoulder in the afterglow?

She’ll probably never know.

“Yeah, my roommates will probably deploy a search party if I don’t come home tonight,” she replies, distracted, finally finding her own voice back. He nods, feigning disappointment- or is he not? She clears her throat and continues putting on her clothes. “I thought you left.”

He chuckles at the absurdity of her deduction. “And without saying goodbye?” Carrick rolls off of the bed and rises to his feet. He’s already wearing his pants- thank fuck for that- and approaches her. “I may be an asshole, Castelnuovo, but just so you know, my mother raised me better than that.”

So they’re back to their usual last name basis perimeter. That’s good, right? After all of this, she thinks a little familiarity would be nice for her sanity.

“Good to know, then.”

Silence encompasses the room. It’s awkward and overwhelming and it throws her a little off-balance. At the bar, they seemed to know exactly what to say to each other- especially him; but now, even she can sense the hesitation in his gait, at the way he’s looking at her and a faint alarm is trilling her head. Because if he’s making this awkward, she can do a whole lot of worse.

"Oh, before you ask, that makes up for pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, it’s alright.” You fucking dumbass, she thinks to herself, averting his gaze while a smile blooms on his face.

“Good to know, then.” He parrots her words and she huffs a laugh, freely and sweetly, like she’s currently not knee-deep in her problems or she’s just fucked the most incorrigible man that ever exists. He does too, but his gaze lands on her mouth before going back to her eyes.

Another silence passes. It’s time to go.

“I have to go now.”

He nods mutely and moves away so Claire can step past him.

She wears her coat. In the mirror, she still looks thoroughly fucked; her hair’s dishevelled, she smells like him now, but she really needs to go. She promises herself that this will be a one time thing because, Jesus fuck, she’s supposed to be smarter than this. She’s not fifteen anymore, and this is not the summer where she can watch the sunset from the cornfields with her cousins even though his eyes possess the same color.

Yet she walks toward the door in a daze, like she’s forgetting something but can’t pinpoint what it is.

“Can I-”

“Hey, do you-”

She stops, mid-turning, and closes her mouth. She doesn’t realize she’s interrupting him.

“Oh, sorry,” Claire says, embarrassed. “You go first, it’s alright.”

“Can I have your number?” he asks, uncharacteristically hesitant.

She thinks he’s joking or maybe he’s just feigning interest, but one look at his eyes and she can tell that this isn’t smoke and mirrors.

The eyes, chico. They never lie. It’s dumb, but that line from Scarface is the first thing that comes to her mind. That’s why when she hands him her phone, her hand is shaking slightly. She has to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning like a maniac.

Claire takes a cursory glance at her phone once he returns it. He saved his number solely as t.c. with the water drop, the syringe, the ghost, the eggplant, the firework emoji and she chuckles endearingly, questioning the universe how he can easily get both a rise and a laugh out of her.

“I’ll text you?” Carrick asks again and she nods a little too enthusiastically at it, but what the hell?

“Sure.”

“Alright.” He takes one look at her, steps closer and for a moment, she thinks he might be going to kiss her.

“Goodnight, Claire,” Carrick says instead and she nods, admitting the fact that he’s not going to do it.

“Goodnight to you too, Tobias.” Then pauses at the doorway, feeling surprisingly bold. “I gotta give it to you, though, for someone who’s become the bane of my existence for months, you’re a damn good lay.”

He barks out a laugh, obviously, that Claire can hear all the way down the hall. And she thinks she can get used to the sound.

fin.

Tag list: @villain-fuckarooni @beckaroo @arfeiniel @this-person-is-busy @colossalpainintheass @drethanramslay @hatescapsicum @theeccentricbibliophile

#playchoices #open heart #tobias carrick #tobias carrick x mc #open heart mc #oh mc #pixelberry #choices stories you play

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girlofmanyfandoms · 4 years

Text

Forbidden Spicy Gatorade Chronicles Chapter One

A/n: Ok, so the cult is getting stronger by the minute so if you haven’t been introduced yet, don’t be offended! I’ll try to go through everyone and introduce you in the next chapter. Erica (@the-never-ending-void) has asked not to be included in this fic.

Key:

Tater - @a-lonely-tatertot

Lynn - @lesbilynnette

Gray - @silver-snow

Lilah - @tribblemakingalicorn

Cadence - me

Ivy - @imaramennoodle

Molly - @molly-sencen

Farris - @everyonehasthoughts

Speens - @an-absolute-travesty

Holes - @holesinmyfalseconfidence

Connor - @linhammon-roll-bromance101

Panda - @worldwidepandamonium

Meg - @ultralazycreatorfan

Word count: 2,382

Warnings: If you’re reading this, you already know what’s about to pop off

Lilah poked Cadence’s shoulder who promptly rolled over. Lilah poked her several more times, a bit more aggressively. Grumbling Cadence sat up quickly and smacked her head on the top of the bunk bed. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. Her eyes slowly adjusted to her surroundings, taking in the strangely black, purple, and gold aesthetic room.

“Why’d you wake me up?”

“You got a notification,” Lilah said, eyes wide open, handing her the phone, slowly walking out of their shared room.

Cadence furrowed her brows, unlocking the phone before calling out to her roommate. “Wait, how long have you been up?”

“OREOS!” she called back. “Where are the keys?”

“On the kitchen counter,” Cadence replied, checking her emails. 1 unread message from Gray, the AI developer who she made small talk with during lunch breaks.

Dear Cadence,

Good evening! There’s a new play coming out on Mainstreet, called The Facade, and I was approached by the team to create a promotional piece. I was hoping you could help, and we would split the rewards 50/50. The play is about a murder crime, which is plotted out in a series of intricate riddles. The plot twist: the lead detective was the murderer, and had been delaying her trial while she was pretending to gather evidence, and stealing from a suspect to gain enough money to flee. And her second in command was funding the plots without knowing that her boss was the mastermind behind it all.

Ok, now that my boss has read above the cut we can talk freely. The offer is real, and I WOULD like to split it 50/50, I just can’t stand talking all formal, y’know? Anyway, since you said you do animations and stuff as a side gig, I thought maybe you could make the animations, and I’ll edit and do the social networking? Idk, I’m just spitballing here, let me know what you think.

Also, Lilah directed me towards this email, she’s really good at tracking people down.

Sorry if I made any spelling mistakes, I haven’t slept in weeks,

Gray

“Huh,” Cadence huffed, glancing at the clock. 3 AM. She had time. So, grabbing her IPad, she opened Procreate and got to work. The Facade. Sounds interesting enough. But what to draw? A lock perhaps? A silhouette of the main character? Before she could decide, her phone buzzed again, a voice recording this time, from Lilah.

“Hey, so I just ran into two of the actresses from The Facade and they said they want to talk to you about it so you can create a better promotional vid, meet me at the local library, k bye.”

Cadence wished on a shooting star that at least an hour had passed by so the buses would be running. But how wrong she was. It was 3 AM. It was raining. And the library was at least a mile away.

“This should be fun,” she mumbled, grabbing her set of keys, her IPad, and a raincoat before jogging the mile it took to get to the library.

_______

By the time Cadence arrived her hair was drenched and she was so out of breath and tired she thought she was going to pass out. She looked for any sign of her roommate, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, she saw three people sitting at a table chatting freely and crying laughing. The librarian wasn’t fazed in the slightest. On the contrary, they seemed to be enjoying it, leaning over the library’s registry system, talking with them. Quickly Googling “The Facade,” Cadence confirmed that the two ladies were the actresses from the play. The other one offered occasional comments, mostly just watching the occurrences that went on. Social anxiety kicked in and told her to run in the other direction, but she really needed the money. She forced herself to approach them.

“Hey, I’m Cadence,” I introduce myself nervously. “Lilah said you wanted to speak to me about promoting your play?”

“Cadence! Lilah mentioned your animations, and we thought it’d be a new, eye-catching way to get our work out there,” the first one chirped. “I’m Molly, by the way. I play the detective’s second in command.”

“And I’m Ivy,” the other one greeted. “I play the lead.”

Cadence expected the third person to introduce themself next, but the librarian took the initiative. “Hello, fellow human, you may address me as SPEENS, I accept liver sacrifices.”

“They do that all the time,” the third person assured her. “Tater, by the way. I’m not in the play, I’m just working on a novel with Molly. We met up here to talk to good ‘ol Speens when these bit-”

“Language,” Molly warned.

“When these lovely individuals,” Tater corrected, “decided to make this a research sesh for the book. As if we needed more work. I’m free to fly wherever the wind takes me.”

“Amen to that, sibling,” Speens responded solemnly, pulling five wine glasses and vodka out from under the desk like a bartender. Cadence looked confused, but not against it. “Say, where’s the rest of the crew? Lynn, Gray, Farris, and the lot of them?”

“Farris doesn’t work on the set,” Ivy reminded her. “They’re an archaeologist. Holes makes the sets for us.”

Speens wrinkled their nose, seemingly in disgust. “And the others?”

“Well, if you can take a break, we can meet up with them at the theatre. Even Farris, since I heard their last trip was a bust,” Molly offered.

Without a second thought, Speens put up a sign that read “The Librarian is Out.”

“Do they-”

“All the time,” Ivy nodded. “It’s kinda their thing.”

“But, yeah, Farris and Connor tend to hang around the set,” Molly explained. “They don’t bother anyone, no one bothers them. They’re a bit older, kinda like the authority figures of the group.”

“If authority figures would let you make a dumba-”

“Tater,” Ivy nudged.

Tater changed their wording. “-unwise move in order to see what would happen.”

“They’re responsible for us without being responsible for us, if that makes sense,” Ivy commented. “Let’s get going though, before someone blows something up.” She shot a sideways glance at Speens, who put a hand up in surrender.

________

Ivy swung open the doors to the theatre and immediately had to duck for cover. “What the HELL, Connor?”

They were holding onto some theatre seats, zooming back and forth the row on rollerblades, occasionally losing balance and having to sit down. After a particularly messy turn-around, they decided to crawl over to the red carpeted steps and laid there for a moment. Farris was perched in a seat a row down, calming watching as Connor seemed to be having an existential crisis. Upon seeing Tater and Cadence, Farris got up, carefully stepping around Connor. “New kids?”

“Farris, this is Tater, and that’s Cadence,” Ivy helped. “They’re helping us promote the play.”

“Congratulations, you’re adopted,” they vowed, though Tater looked confused. “What? I don’t make the rules. Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be the responsible one…. Ok, so I make the rules, but they can be bent if the alternative’s interesting enough. Right, Connor?”

“Uh huh,” he called from the floor tiredly. If he hadn’t spoken, he would have been deemed dead.

“Lynn and the rest of the gang are in the back,” Farris informed them, pulling a skateboard from under their seat and helping Connor stand. Connor’s rollerblades flailed a bit as he struggled to get up, but his arm was slung around Farris’s shoulder, supporting him.

“DO A KICKFLIP,” Connor prompted, his words slurred.

“Are you kidding, I haven’t skateboarded since I was six, I need an actual skate park to practice that,” Farris recounted. “And how drunk are you?”

“Yes,” he responded, giggling in a hiccupy way. “Does anyone have more vodka?”

“I got you fam,” Speens said, pulling out a suitcase of alcohol from thin air.

“Anyways,” Ivy interjected, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I’ll go get the others, wait here.”

Ivy returned with Gray, Lynn, Holes, Panda, and Meg, and introduced them accordingly. “Gray works on the special effects, Lynn designed everyone’s costumes, Holes makes the set, Panda is a theatre critic, and Meg is our concept artist.”

“So, other than animation, is there anything else you bring to the table?” Molly asked.

“Well, I do glass art,” Cadence supplied. “It’s probably not relevant, but when it’s still really hot and glowy, which is when you can shape it, it looks like it would make a good snack. Hell, it almost looks like Gatorade. I can show a picture if you’d like.”

Cadence took her phone out and everyone crowded around to see.

“More like Powerade, Gatorade doesn’t come in that kind of blue,” Speens added.

“F O R B I D D E N S P I C Y G A T O R A D E,” Connor yelled, startling Farris.

“NO,” Holes countered, clearly distressed. “Do NOT drink molten glass. You’d die!”

“You call it death, I call it adventure,” Molly smirked. “I’m here for it. C’mon Holes, live a little.”

“Sis, how have you made it to adulthood thinking like that?” Lynn questioned, looking a bit scared.

“And I know how to live, I’m living right now!” Holes countered.

“Sure you are, nerd.” Molly rolled her eyes. “And how many near death experiences have you had, huh?”

“Near death- okay, first of all, I am not a nerd-”

“You kinda are,” Tater mumbled. Holes gasped, putting a hand over her heart as if they were betrayed. “What? You are. You make a living off of reading books.”

“Used to, friend,” Holes clarified. “I’m a freelance artist now. I picked up this gig because of these fools. And good thing too, because now you’re about to poison yourselves! Second of all, um, none?! How many have you had?”

Molly clicked her tongue in disappointment. “Five. Blended corn, acorns, eating soap, eating paper, and an intense game of dodgeball. I haven’t even peaked with these experiences yet.”

“Immortal until proven mortal,” Connor finished for her.

Meg stood next to Molly and held her shoulders. “This girl, she’s going places.”

“Meg, not you, too, I swear to god-”

“sLuRp,” Ivy joined in, grinning from ear to ear.

Holes was getting hysterical. “What the actual hell is going on? Lynn, help me out here.”

“The Gatorade is Forbidden for a reason, kids,” Lynn tried to reason.

Gray stood up with a mischievous glint in their eyes. “Where can we get it?”

“From the crunchy forbidden chocolate powder, of course,” Connor chimed in. Panda gave him a high-five while Holes became paler and paler from the cult forming in front of their eyes.

“This one speaks the truth,” Panda shrugged.

“Ok, what even is crunchy forbidden chocolate powder?”

“Sand, duh,” Connor said matter of factly. “Add some vodka, a martini, and some olives, and you got one heck of a slushie.”

“So that means there must be Forbidden Chewy Lettuce and Flavoured Forbidden Chewy Lettuce,” Tater went on. “Grass and flower petals. Cursed, but not wrong.”

“Ooh, and crackle air can be limestones and sodium carbonate, pies are dirt, bread is wood, and hard candy is metal,” Panda proclaimed.

“Fidget spinners are Forbidden Bagels, too,” Connor helped. “I should know, I tried the other day and cut my lip.”

Farris ignored the last part of Connor’s rant. “The variety pack, I like the sound of that.”

“Farris you’re supposed to look after us and you’re condoning this?!” Holes shouted.

Farris mounted his skateboard. “I’m not condoning anything. I’m enabling and hyping them up without joining in. That’s some big brain stuff.”

“This is why they control the brain cell,” Ivy nodded. “WAIT, ARE MY CHICKEN NUGGETS BURNING?!”

“Ives, you literally set a timer on the microwave backstage, you’re fine,” Tater reassured Ivy, holding her from running to check on her meal.

“Oh, like you know anything about microwaves,” Ivy argued. “You microwave ice cream.”

“It takes too long to soften, and I’m impatient,” Tater defended, turning to address Holes. “And it is eaten with a spoon.”

“Do not start this debate again- you know what, Panda, get ice cream from the mini-fridge, we’re settling this here and now,” Holes demanded.

“I think the real question is why is ice cream so hard,” Speens mentioned as Panda brought a tub of Haagen Daz ice cream. Holes used a fork to attempt to chisel out part of the snack. It wasn’t very successful.

“I think that’s just how Haagen Daz works,” Cadence observed.

Holes saw this as an opportunity to gain some momentum in the argument. “Not just this brand! All ice cream works like that!!!”

“No,” Panda objected. “Not Breyer’s. That stuff is always just right when you need it. Hashtag not sponsored.”

“Did you just break the fourth wall?” Lynn asked. “You know what, I don’t wanna know, just for the love of all that is good in this world please don’t drink the Forbidden Spicy Gatorade.”

“Too late,” Cadence said. “It’s easily accessible. Also, I’m calling E so we can recruit her.”

“Holes, I know you’re hiding it from us,” Molly speculated.

“What are you talking-”

“You’re keeping the Forbidden Spicy Gatorade all to yourself because you know of its power and you want it all to yourself.”

“I don’t HAVE the Gatorade, and I’m explicitly telling you it’s going to kill you if you drink it!”

As the bickering went on, Lynn slipped off to the vacant staff lounge to pull out her phone. There had to be a supplier somewhere who would give them this. She searched for a few minutes, and, after a few dead ends, she finally found an investor. “Cha-ching. Forbidden Incorporated is in business,” Lynn smiled to herself.

“Forbidden Incorporated, eh?” Farris asked from the doorway. Lynn froze and cursed herself for forgetting to lock the door. Now Farris knew of her plans. “Tell you what, I’ll keep your secret under one condition: We split the money 50/50, and get equal control over the decisions. So, deal?”

Lynn hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could trust Farris, but seeing as this was the only way to stop Holes from knowing just yet, she had no other choice. “Deal.”

_______

A/n: So that was fun and took entirely too long to write. I hope you enjoyed it and if you’re in the cult and I didn’t include you, reblog this and I’ll make a list. The next chapter might focus on a smaller group bc there are like thirteen characters here and I’m tired. Peace out!

#forbidden spicy gatorade

42 notes · View notes

yeats-infection · 4 years

Text

@sqvalors tagged me in a lil writing meme... if you’d like to participate please do and tag me!

ao3 name: fluorescentgrey but i also post some things as drglass (dr. glass is the second song on the fluorescent grey EP by deerhunter, so if i make another pseud it will be likenew, then washoff, etc.)

fandoms: about two thirds of my fics are harry potter or star wars but there are a lot of random little goodies. currently i have shifted into the terror (2018) mode.

number of fics: 59 right now... i will throw a party when i get to 69...

fic i spent the most time on: this is funny because some of these technically took me like six months or more of working on them extremely intermittently... namely, bone machine. the series in the garden has taken me the most time generally... and in that, minuet did take me several months of working really hard while i had a schedule / commute that was not conducive to having a creative practice...

fic i spent the least amount of time on: hilariously, literally my most popular fic by ninety miles, the witcher PWP that i wrote out of spite in two or three hours.

longest fic: the source codes series... particularly heelstone which is 102k. i wrote these two stories in a single summer like a crazy person and i hate talking about them because i find them WAY too gooey. honestly, that’s why they are so long. it’s all the gooeyness!!!!!!

shortest fic: yes, the answer is the witcher porn again (this silly thing is going to be the answer for many other questions in this little meme but i’m just going to stop talking about it while i’m ahead). the west end is just about 50 words longer and is much better and is a much better and more interesting story.

most hits: we’re just going to pretend it’s sex and dying in high society, which has the second most hits. this is certainly due to the fact that @wolfstarwarehouse hypes this story a lot for which i am endlessly grateful!

most kudos: recovery position has the second most kudos so let’s go with that one! i have been very touched by the response to this story, though i do personally like the sequel beachcoma a little more... i understand why not everyone wants to read it because it is a little more bittersweet. but it also comes from my soul.

most comment threads: the two stories in the source codes series are leading here, because i only posted two chapters at a time so that i would get maximal validation, lol.

most bookmarks: in order to talk about a story i haven’t talked about yet, the rosary has the fourth-most. i think this fic is truly my r/s swan song... i said everything i wanted to say and did everything i wanted to do. it’s a really good mystery/noir story that i didn’t think i could pull off until i did! and i love the OCs in it who have sort of manifested these secret headcanons for me that i may expostulate upon someday. thank you to @piovascosimo for the inspiration to write it.

total word count: 1,000,478. lol!

favorite fic i wrote: cannot possibly choose but probably the top five in order of date posted are: desperado, a handful of dust, doom town, beachcoma, jump into the fire

fic i’d rewrite / expand on: i already said all of source codes because it’s way too gooey, i also could make hard time killing floor blues a lot tighter, and a memoir of the flesh deserves a way better ending because i was rushing to make the yuletide deadline...

share a bit of a WIP: i was trying for a while to write a band of brothers AU where they are vietnam vets who start growing cannabis... based on the steve earle song “copperhead road.” this could have been SO good but the plot was too huge and unwieldy so i gave up. my roommate is obsessed with this idea and keeps asking me how it’s going so i may yet finish. but there’s a bit below the cut.

The knock at the door in the night was a sharp shock, bright as lightning, that sent them both back to Khe Sanh and before. Nix ducked. Dick went behind the doorframe. They kept low into the kitchen, where Nix took his old officer’s pistol out from where he kept it hidden behind the fridge. Then they went to the door, keeping to the edges of the hallways.

On the porch was Liebgott. He could have made his own way in likely right onto the couch without either of them noticing, so it was something that he had knocked on the goddamn door. It was particularly something given that none of the boys from Easy should have known about the grow operation, or even about Dick’s farm, being as Dick’s address on file at the V.A. was a post office box in town and Nix’s was still in Jersey. These considerations were nil to somebody who had spent the better part of five years in the bush of Vietnam. He took a last draw from his cigarette and put it out against the rubber sole of his boot, then he put the butt in his pocket. As far as Nix knew, he hadn’t said a word since January 1970.

“Joe,” said Dick diplomatically. He put his hand out and Liebgott took it. Then he took Nix’s. He had handsome dark eyes, but they were full of a wall. You could tell he saw you, but it was like nothing followed the necessary channels to the brain to spur emotional response. It had been like this even while he was still talking, and after a while you got used to it.

“You comin' in,” said Nix, knowing he probably would even if he wasn’t invited.

Inside, they all three sat at the kitchen table in silence nobody was about to break. Finally Dick got up and went to the drawer where they kept the rollies and their share of the product. He passed a sheaf of papers and a film canister full of bud to Liebgott across the table. Nix understood as well as Dick apparently did that there would be no getting anything over on this kid, who had eyes in the back and sides of his head. He’d probably had a nice tour of the property before coming inside. “You hungry, son,” Dick said.

Liebgott shook his head. He extracted one of the buds from the canister and inspected it. They did look mighty good if Nix said so himself. They looked artful in Liebgott’s hand. There were black scabs across his knuckles and a dark rime of filth under those fingernails which still existed. He seemed satisfied enough with what he saw to take a paper out of the sheaf and start shredding the flower into it.

“Captain Nixon calls it Easy Diesel,” said Dick, like he was trying to pretend it wasn’t the funniest thing in the world.

Liebgott looked up and a smile flashed across his face like the savage golden light of a flare falling over the far hills. His smile was sort of brutal, like the edge of a knife in a barfight, or like a seething animal. Luckily it went away as quickly as it had come. He rolled the joint with a quick grace and lit the business end with his old silver Zippo Nixon hadn’t seen since the war. There was a skull engraved on one side and on the other it read IF YOU ARE RECOVERING MY BODY, FUCK YOU.

“I don’t know how you found us, Joe,” Dick said thoughtfully. “You don’t have to… tell us. But we ain’t exactly keen to have just anybody here.” He paused and looked quickly to Nix, who tried to make it abundantly clear by means of eyebrows that he wasn’t sure they ought to go down this road, wherever it was leading. Dick ignored him. Liebgott was watching them, fully understanding their attempted clandestine exchange. “We ain’t exactly keen to have the DEA here,” Dick said at last.

The cherry at the end of the joint atomized with a crackling hiss. Liebgott looked between Dick and Nix with extreme seriousness sullied only by his exhaling a dignified white cloud out his nose. Then he nodded, once, curtly, demonstrating he understood his orders as they had been relayed.

Nix flashed Dick what he thought was a what have you done type look. But Dick looked totally unbothered. He should have gone into this business years ago for how violently unflappable he was. He said to Liebgott, “I’ll get some blankets and you can make up the couch.”

Liebgott shook his head to say no need. He got up, careful not to scrape the chair against the floor, shook each of their hands again, and in less than a minute’s time he was back out the door with nothing more than what he’d come in with except the joint.

Nix and Dick, on the porch, listening to the crickets, watched him disappear into the darkness.

“Are we hallucinating,” said Nix eventually.

“I sure as hell hope not,” Dick replied. “We’ve got to ship all that product or we’ll starve.”

In the morning Nix was in the field, inspecting the plants. Liebgott was standing there at his quarter for god knew how long before he cleared his throat and Nix jumped about six feet in the air. There was a smirk shifting across Liebgott’s face that he would have been better about hiding when Nix had been his commanding officer. He looked like he hadn't slept. Back over there he had looked like that a lot, but it had been different, because of all the uppers they were taking. He cocked his head back over toward the long driveway and then he was off across the dew-wet grass which had already soaked through the hems of his canvas pants and his destroyed shoes.

Nix followed, like a duckling behind a hen. Liebgott still walked as though there were eyes in all sides of his head quickly processing information as he moved. Nix doubted you ever lost that kind of skill, even if in the real world it made you look like a mental patient. He caught up so they could walk side by side through the dew-wet grass. “What did you think,” he asked Liebgott.

Liebgott passed Nix the universal sign of furrowed brow that meant please clarify.

Nix gestured with pinched fingers to his own mouth as though Liebgott were also deaf. “The grass.”

He shaped his hand into an a-ok sign.

“You get any sleep?”

He nodded an infinitesimal nod, like the answer was a secret just for Nix to know.

“Well if you think it could be better just tell me how.”

Nix had had a high school friend whose sister was deaf from scarlet fever and whom he had watched on occasion communicate with her by means of sign language. Early on, back over there, he had sent off to command for a book, but by the time it came he understood it wasn’t that Liebgott couldn’t speak, he just didn’t want to. It was something like how people’s hair supposedly turned white if they witnessed some evil thing, or how people became ascetics in the name of god. If you were really fucked up on drugs or fear or otherwise, or if the natural magical thinking from childhood hadn’t been fully beaten out of you, you might have seen it as the sacrifice he had given to the forest for letting him out without a scratch so many goddamn times. It had been a bit of a trial to explain this to Spiers, who was practical almost to a fault, sometimes.

Liebgott showed another a-ok sign. Then he did a thumbs up which Nix knew meant it was good.

All in all it was smart. If he was still talking, Nix might have asked him, what have you been up to? You been sleeping on the street? You been to the V.A.? What did they tell you? And the answer would’ve been nothing good. Instead they just walked in the cool grass together in the sunshine and the morning was beautiful, and the air was sweet. It was all lovely until Liebgott had to physically stop him, laughing, somehow silently but also hysterically, from stepping right onto the razor-thin tripwire stretched invisibly across the dark gravel.

In the kitchen, Dick was doing the numbers. He took his glasses off when Nix came in and put the coffee on. “He learned a thing or two from Charlie,” Nix said, leaning against the counters.

“Who, Joe?”

“Our driveway is thoroughly ratfucked.”

“Hmm,” said Dick. He put the glasses back on and turned back to the accounting book. He was going to do this whole thing as above board as was humanly possible. The vivid daylight came through the window and struck the lens of his unstylish Ray-Bans and threw a kind of prism of color upon the white paper and the chicken-scratch sums. Nix felt like maybe this was something you would paint if you had the necessary implements and artistic ability. “Maybe we should see if we can get any more help.”

He was mildly ashamed to say it, but the doc had always kind of creeped Nix out. He imagined a hypothetical conversation with Dick, who he knew loved the kid, almost like a son: Listen, don’t get me wrong, he’s a good kid, I owe him my life, yadda yadda. But either he’s dropped the brown acid one too many times or the voodoo exorcism went FUBAR.

The doc had arrived on the farm on the heels of Sunshine and Rainbows, aka Mr. Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed, aka one Edward “Babe” Heffron. Nix had written Babe in South Philly, being as he was a connoisseur of bud and once upon a time had been famed among their company for smoking anything anyone put in his hand, often to his own detriment. The operation was getting big enough that Nix needed another pair of hands, other than Liebgott, of course, who was still fortifying the long driveway whilst giving away his cover by playing Led Zeppelin IV as loudly as was possible. It was a tough calculation, because Babe was a genius of pot, but he couldn’t keep a damn secret, and lo and behold he had dragged along with him a dark shadow in the human form of Eugene Roe. They came up the driveway in a big old Ford pickup that rattled its rust off in the potholes. Liebgott had dismantled the traps specially for their arrival when they had called from Williamsport to say they were an hour out.

“I figured we could use a medical professional to lend some credibility to the operation,” said Babe thoughtfully, sparking a joint on the porch over sweating jam jars of iced tea.

Roe snorted or something but it wasn’t really a normal person’s self-effacing laugh. Winters clapped his back. Nixon knew Roe had dropped out of medical school after two years but there was no need to say anything. Everyone knew that. Now he was working construction and Babe claimed to be working as a mechanic in a garage, but this seemed suspect given the state of the car they had driven up in.

“Well we sure as hell are glad you boys are here,” said Dick magnanimously.

Babe exhaled an opaque cloud that rivaled Nix’s own father’s ability with a stogie. “Can we see the bush?”

They went out all together to the field and ducked between the rows of corn. Babe knelt in the soil. It was damp with dew and quiet in here. It would have been almost like over there except it smelled good. “What’s the cross,” Babe said, inspecting the plants.

“It’s an indica blend…”

“Well, I can tell that,” he said.

“So you’re an expert on the plant now too?”

“I’ve just smoked an awful lot of joints in my life, Captain Nixon.”

Roe snorted again. When they all looked to him he said, “You said in the letter there was some kind of altruistic reason for all this.”

“It’s medicine, Gene,” Babe said gently, but also like they had had this conversation thirty thousand times. Nix filed away for later the intimation that Roe had read the letter he’d sent Babe at home in South Philadelphia.

“I guess you don’t remember the psychic break you had at the Do Lung Bridge.”

Babe waved this remark off, even though Nix remembered it too. It threw a chill down his back, like a water balloon had hit him at the base of his neck. “That was laced,” Babe said.

“With what!”

“I don’t know! Something bad!” Babe turned to Dick and Nix. “Gene’s teetotal,” he said, like this was a big old point of contention.

So that counted out the bad acid. Maybe he was just like this. Maybe he had had those big sad bug eyes as a child or an infant or a fetus in the womb. “Good on you, Doc,” Nix said.

“I ain’t trying it,” Roe said, folding his arms over his narrow chest, “no matter what it does.”

The doc was a tough cookie. Babe had claimed, over there, about as high as the Byrds song, that the doc came from a long line of the kind of folks described in Dr. John’s “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” and that, as such, he could heal wounds with his mind. When it didn’t work, as on the night when Jackson died, or the night when Hoobler died, or in the forest when Muck and Penkala died, or the night when Liebgott stopped speaking, he went to sit for a while on the edge of camp until Dick went over and made him eat something. Nix watched them in a state of confused envy, and then he went to write the letters to the families, so that Dick wouldn’t have to.

At dusk, after they ate a light dinner of corn on the cob and rice and beans, he took the boys up into the hayloft with an armful of blankets. “Sorry this is the best we got,” he said. He had said that about a hundred god damn times since they got here.

Roe looked like he wanted to say, you’ve got to stop apologizing for everything. Instead he said, “Where does Lieb sleep.”

Babe perked up. “Joe’s here?”

“You didn’t see him in the driveway?”

Nix sighed. “He’s gonna want to know what he did wrong that you saw him,” he said.

“Does he still — ”

Nix shook his head. “Not a peep.”

In a couple days time, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he was hot and tired and stoned, up to his elbows in earth in the field, showing Babe how to replant the hatchlings he’d grown from seed. “You guys room together or what?”

“Me and Gene?” Babe’s eyes were red in the corners from smoking and from the sun. “What about you and Dick?”

Dick, who had the radio on inside turned up as loud as it would go, so that they would hear it in the field, playing Crosby Stills and Nash doing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” “What about me and Dick?” said Nix.

Babe was a smart kid. He realized this was going nowhere. With muddy hands he popped one of the seedlings out of its little pot and cradled it into the ground. “Well, I think he thinks he’s looking after me, but in actuality, I am looking after him.”

#my fic #asks

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obscure-sentimentalist · 4 years

Text

Because some interest was expressed...

Part 1: AO3 Tag At Large

Backstory in brief

I didn’t intend for this to get so detailed and comprehensive--honestly, it just started because I had a particular question and some free time to go digging for the answer. And I did get my answer, but in the process uncovered a wealth of other ways to expand my study. It’s been a ride (complete with a few anxieties thanks to some researcher part of my brain), but overall a fun one, and hopefully the resulting data-cronch will be intriguing.

As noted, this is the first part of a planned three-part data series. This installment will cover statistics for the contents of the Flommy AO3 tag as a whole, while the second part will zoom in a bit and break it down into smaller categories. The third will be a bonus post where the dataset will be narrowed to examine how it compares to the tag at large, which is how I began and previewed bits of my work before broadening the scope.

Below the cut, you’ll find a breakdown of the data collection and some information on the measures I examined, before we get into some stats. There are a number of charts included, as well as written overviews and additional facts. I’ll admit that it’s... a bit, even after being selective with the charts and data to highlight, but if you have questions (or are curious about any stats not included here), let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Methodology

The overarching goal of my study was to examine and catalogue the contents specifically within the “Tommy Merlyn/Felicity Smoak” relationship tag on Archive of Our Own. All works featured in these results are tagged as (or otherwise wrangled under) this relationship tag; though it’s doubtful that this is the case, any works featuring this relationship that are not tagged in this way (and thus do not appear) will not be counted.

As of data collection on August 5th, 2020, there are 441 works (inclusive of hidden works viewable and accessible only with an AO3 login) within the Flommy tag. Aside from the individual work name and author, each entry was catalogued with the following additional variables:

Publish Year

Year in which work was initially published

Update Year

Year in which work was most recently updated

Rating

Author-assigned content rating (G, T, M, E, or Not Rated)

Work Length

Categorized as Oneshot (single chapter with an expected chapter count of 1) or Multichap (expected chapter count does not equal 1)

i.e. Works that only have a single published chapter but more are anticipated (so the chapter count reads as 1/?, 1/3, etc.) are categorized as Multichap

Completion Status

Works marked as Complete in the AO3 system are counted as such; all others are counted as Ongoing

Additional Relationships

Works may have Flommy as the only romantically-tagged (/) relationship, or additional ships; works in the latter category also had the other ships logged

Since this study was more quantitative and centered on AO3 tagging, more audience-based measures such as kudos, comment, and hit counts were omitted from the dataset. Also would like to remind that this is something I started because I was bored and curious, and I am just one person handling this data, so please keep this in mind in terms of data validity and human error.

Publish Year and Update Year

Breaking the data down by year was, oddly enough, an afterthought for me, but one I’m glad I did eventually think to add. This provided a glimpse at various trends in Flommy works over the years.

The first two sets of charts will feature both Publish Year and Update Year, as there were a few interesting datapoints I found when comparing the two of them. Moving forward, though, yearly data will be shown in terms of Publish Year, unless noted otherwise.

I pulled together this first graph to see if there were any major differences in either curve as the years went by, and overall, they share a similar shape--to be expected, given that a number of works published in one year may also have been last updated in that same year. Either way, both show a gradual increase in Flommy-tagged works until 2017, before plummeting in 2018 and continuing with a coasting decrease as of August 2020.

However, there’s an interesting shift over time between the two yearly measures: while there are (understandably) more works first published than last updated within the same year from 2013-2015, this becomes about equal between 2016 and 2017, before reversing in 2018-onwards. This goes to show that, while fewer Flommy works are being published these days, there are still some older works that are getting updated even now. People are sticking with Flommy, in some way or another.

Below is another way to compare these two measures, in terms of share of works:

The chart on the left (Publish Year) shows that the majority of Flommy-tagged works were published between 2013 and 2016--about 55%. However, the Update Year chart gives us an exact 50/50 split between the first four years of the tag and the last four, proving that the tag activity is still going strong!

Some other Publish and Update Year Fun Facts:

Because I’m too used to examining change year-over-year (YOY) for other purposes, I pulled some of those stats to accompany the line chart, focusing on Publish Year

The smallest change YOY was from 2016 to 2017, experiencing a 7% increase in published works; the largest was the 176% increase in 2014 over 2013

The decline in published works that began in 2018 has indeed slowed in 2020. 2018 had a -55% decrease YOY from 2017, and 2019 followed suit at -52%; 2020 is only down -21% from 2019, and that number can only improve as the year goes on!

12% more Flommy-tagged works have already been posted in 2020 than were posted in 2013, the first year of the tag. As the two years with the fewest works, that’s at least something!

Rating

There are more than a few ways I could break this one down, but I think this one covers the gist of this particular measure:

As might be expected, T is the most common rating, accounting for almost half of all works. The remaining ratings (aside from Not Rated) are all within a very close range of each other, but those in the E-rated category do have the edge to take second place, which, I’ll admit, also isn’t much of a surprise.

Some other Rating Fun Facts:

Took a look at some YOY changes in Rating:

E is the only rating that experiences two consecutive massive increases: 300% in 2014 over 2013, and then another 500% in 2015 over 2014

Actually, 66% of all E-rated Flommy-tagged fics were published between 2014 and 2016

...For a rating into which I rarely-if-ever personally venture, it certainly has a wealth of stats.

Work Length and Completion Status

Combining these two under one header, as they’re pretty tied-together and didn’t yield too many significant results. About 71% of all Flommy-tagged works are Oneshots, which assures that completed works will hold at least the same share within the Completion Status measure before factoring in Multichaps (which brings it up to about 81% complete). I instead put these measures against the others in the hopes of finding some interesting call-outs; after making up a few charts, there was really only one that I felt had a story to tell.

Let’s take a look at the Work Length trend over the years:

While single-chapter works hold the significant majority share, their reign over multichapter works doesn’t fully begin until 2016. In 2013, the Oneshot count was less than half the Multichap count, and the following two years showed a less than 10 work-difference between the majority category and the other. And while the year is not yet complete, 2020 is currently tracking towards following a similar pattern to the early years of the tag.

Additional Relationships

This one is going to serve as our jumping-off point for Part 2, and get us into the motivating factor for my research. Here’s one chart to say it all:

...Yup, that’s less than a quarter of Flommy-tagged works that a) have Flommy as the sole romantically-tagged relationship, or b) have other romantic relationships tagged that are not Oliver/Felicity.

That’s an answer in-and-of-itself, but my research question was two-fold: how else does this break down? How many works tagged for both pairings are compilations, such as oneshot prompt collections where the pairing varies by chapter; how many are OT3s; how many fall into a different category, whether a platonic pairing is improperly tagged or one pairing is the endgame or any other reason that doesn’t fit in any of the other categories?

We’ll get this breakdown--and a zoomed-in look at the measures covered in this installment--in Part 2, coming soon.

#The Great Flommy Tag Analysis 2020 #flommy #this project has become a monster but it's fun but how on earth did this happen

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thesummerstorms · 4 years

Text

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 14)

CW: typical violence, hint of off-screen murder to happen. pretty light in this chapter, comparatively.

TL;DR Recap: Uthan reveals that, actually, she’s been lying to Hokan about how much danger her virus still poses to non clones, and he expresses the desire to kill her. Omega, Jinart, and Etain strategize. Hokan murders Guta-Nay.

Beginning Kal Count: 25 Ending Kal Count: 26

We open with Uthan and Hokan. Uthan is pissed because she and her staff have been moved back and forth more than once for Hokan’s ruse. Hokan is fretting while he looks at the plans for her facility and its defensive drawbacks, but convinces himself he’s fooled the enemy enough they’ll attack the villa anyway. Uthan wants to evacuate her work, but with no communications and a Republic ship in orbit, Hokan decides they’re digging in. He challenges Uthan, because she was the one who designed the facility in the first place...

which is when she finally admits it was designed to her worry about things getting out.

I mean, I really don’t know what you expect when you’re guarding a scientist who’s still in very early stages of creating a biogenic weapon. If it was more targeted than this, they would have already rolled it out. But we established already that Hokan doesn’t really have a grasp on how viruses work. Still, he doesn’t take it well.

“The fact that he was dealing with a woman was the only thing that made him hesitate” UGH. At this point I have to decide that Traviss is purposefully writing him as a sexist, if only for my own sanity. And to be fair, she has had Omega say multiple times now that they have no problems shooting old women.

I will say Uthan has some guts. She’s shaking because she’s afraid and that’s sensible, but she absolutely doesn’t back down. I like a lot of what this character could have been, had Traviss not later thrown it out a window.

Also, Hokan is going to have to eventually find a solution to being disappointed that isn’t just shooting the nearest staff member. Manager from hell. Hokan and Uthan continue to spar verbally for a bit about the fact that they’re sitting on a metaphorical bomb and that he wants to keep her separate from her staff and the virus to spread out the chances of losing the project. Then the officer who Hokan had kill the last guy who he disliked comes in, having brought in Guta-Nay as a prisoner. It’s against orders, but Hokan decides to hear him out.

We cut to the next scene, which is from Niner’s point of view, and has lots of little Dar/Etain foreshadowing bits I like. The squad, Jinart, and Etain are planning their next move. At the moment they’re trying to decide what to do with their gear because despite bringing it all with them, it’s become more than they can carry. Atin is very insistent about his Trandoshan weapons.

Atin, love...

Niner is fretting about only having the four commandos to carry all the equipment through tight spaces and accidentally getting stuck. Etain insists she share the burden, but Niner is skeptical and privately asks Darman for an opinion over the squad’s helmet link.

They go on to talk about plans A and B, what’s possible if they can set off an explosion in a villa versus if they have to do a split attack. Etain notes that both plans sound difficult and someone tells her the odds were never good. She also is worried that she won’t be of use against the droids, which is when Atin-

This is the moment that gets us Etain and her LJ-50 (tiny general, massive rifle) for the rest of the series, and honestly, my heart. Admittedly, from what I remember of the Republic Commando game and can confirm from the Wiki, and LJ-50 concussion rifle and the Trandoshan array blaster (technically speaking a Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun) aren’t the same. The LJ-50 is, well, a concussion rifle. The array blaster? Is a shot gun.

LJ 50, which honestly looks weird in this picture:

Array Blaster:

BUT, we also will get this quote in Triple Zero:

So... I think maybe it’s a continuity error? But any which way, I’d forgotten that the “very competent gentleman” in this particular case was actually Atin. And you know what? Fuck it. Next time I have a chance to work a friendship between them into a fic, I’m doing it. Also... I wonder if Darman ever brings this up with Atin later, while he’s watching his girlfriend haul around a rifle that’s almost as big as she is.

Okay, okay, I promise, I’m moving on from Etain and her giant guns armaments rifles & shotguns.

They keep talking plans, and Fi is pretty dismissive of Etain. But to be fair, he doesn’t have the context Dar does to understand the real scope of what she’s trying to offer. Meanwhile, Niner is just trying to keep him from digging a hole with his mouth. Attempt One:

And attempt two:

Niner is gonna spend the rest of these books being the responsible but aggrieved big brother desperately hoping his squad will stay out of trouble, or at least be polite and well-dressed. In this moment, he just wants Fi not to get them in trouble with the Jedi. I kind of love it.

Jinart agrees to smuggle some explosives in her pouch into the villa, so they all head that way back together up to a certain point to prep. Etain hangs close to Darman the entire way, which worries Niner.

I mean, my shipper goggles for Etain and Dar aside, it’s rational that she stick the closest to Darman and feel the friendliest to him, since they’ve spent a few days together and saved each other a few times and she only just met everyone else the night before? Also, Kal Count just increased to 26, a lot of Niner’s worries about saying the wrong thing to a Jedi are explained, and I wonder how the Kaminoans felt about Kal undermining their Jedi-are-demigods campaign.

Niner spends most of this chapter worrying about Etain as a complication in some way, shape, or form and talking about her behind her back. I’m prickly on Etain’s behalf because I’m biased, so I don’t like the slight conditional to Dar’s defense here - “Physically, anyway”- but I acknowledge it makes sense plot wise, and that Etain hasn’t had a chance to prove herself to the rest of Omega yet. And I kind of love Dar defending her with “If she drops, it’ll be because she’s dead.” Atin is the designated stubborn one, but Etain is also ori’atin’la.

Jinart heads off with the explosives, Niner starts to break out the food and wants to ask Etain’s permission/opinion on using up all their rations now rather than saving them for a time after the mission when they’ll be too busy or dead to need them, But Darman cuts him off.

Again, Darman and Etain have gotten to know and read one another pretty quickly. Niner is, as always, a skeptic.

We cut back to Hokan.

Hokan: *is about to commit brutal murder*

Also Hokan: *is distracted wondering how lightsabers work*

Guta-Nay proceeds to feed the false intel to Hokan that the squad gave him about having two squads of commandos and a Jedi who are all targeting the villa. The Trandoshan slaver accompanying him volunteers to help so that he can go back to selling off the Qiilurans, and Hokan accepts. Hokan asks if Guta-Nay knows anything else about the commandos and isn’t expecting much, except then Guta-Nay describes the clones armor, which Hokan takes as a description of Mandalorian armor.

Hokan is not thrilled by the revelation about the clones, and starts to question some of the bullshit Uthan has fed him about them being “docile” and generally dependent and mindless. But one of his officers suggests that as there’s a Jedi with the squad, maybe the Jedi is the tactician. More importantly, the squad has just screwed their own plan.

Rather than being convinced they’ll attack the villa, Hokan decides that if they have enough forces, they’ll definitely attack the villa and the facility both. Work just got harder for Omega. Finally, as promised, Hokan kills Guta-Nay with Fulier’s lightsaber, which sets us up for Chapter 15.

I hate Chapter 15. It’s my least favorite in the book.

#Republic Commando #RepComm #Rev Recaps RepComm #Etain Tur-Mukan #Darman Skirata #Niner Skirata #Ghez Hokan #Qail Ovolot Uthan #Hard Contact #Atin Skirata #Fi Skirata

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crowsent · 4 years

Note

👶,⭐,💘, and💻. Love you!!

thank you for ask anon! writer ask game is here if yall wanna send in something. still taking asks for these btw

👶- advice for new writers =

yall this is hella fucking generic but PRACTISE. theres a reason almost literally every writer on tumblr gives the advise of “practise practise practise” and that reason is it works. practise doesnt mean ‘oh just write bc youll automatically get better over time’ it means ‘write bc if you dont, you wont figure out what you need to improve.’ did yall know that i literally had no sentence variation in the past? i started every sentence with [character name] or [character pronoun] and i didnt realise until i was 15/16 and i only realised bc i started writing a lot.

i think there’s a fear of failure with new writers. there’s this lingering doubt of “what if its not good?” and boy howdy i will answer that question right fucking now. it wont be good. when i compare my current work to my earlier work, my earlier work sucked fucking shit. i spelled soldier with a fucking ‘j’ and i had no idea what the hell a point of view was. and thats okay. whoever tells you that youre going to perfect writing is a fucking liar. there is no perfecting writing. 20 years from now, imma look at the writing from today and im gonna think it sucks shit. writing is a process. its a craft. you get better and better over time and the way you get better is by experimenting w different styles, different genres, different ways of writing.

and the only way you can experiment and improve is through practise. in video games, especially rpgs (which are my favourite kind of video games), you struggle in the early game. youre at a low level, you dont have good equipment, you have a hard time moving to the next area. but the only way you progress is by grinding, gaining levels, and getting stronger. same w writing. if youre a level 1 writer, just starting out, no idea what to do, just experiment. fuck around a bit. write crackships, write rarepairs, write niche self-indulgent reader/character fics. at the end of the day, you should write for yourself. its good and cool if other people like your stuff and validate all your hard work, but at the end of the day, the one who should enjoy your writing the most is yourself.

you WILL mess up and you WILL struggle, but thats the only way you can improve. i struggle with pacing the most. still do. but others might have pacing down pat and struggle instead with word choice or pov or something else. cant figure out where you need to improve if you dont write, so just practise and worry about all the fine print later

⭐️- how do you get your inspiration? =

this is definitely not universal, but i just sit on my bed, close my eyes, and meditate. cycle through all my emotions and thoughts and filter them out. then i just toss everything out the damn window. like. id just meditate for a while, focus on breathing, on experiencing the present, picture a field and a tree and myself and breathe. thoughts fly by and i let them happen but dont focus on it.

meditating gives me some semblance of emotional control bc i normally have none, and it gives me kind of this space. this safe space that only exists for me and me alone. so i use that space to let the world drift away. just me and my thoughts and sometimes, those thoughts end up being good writing ideas. but i usually meditate for a set amount of time. like 15 minutes or 30 minutes so i dont write until i finish meditating.

then when i get out of my headspace, i open up my laptop and see what i remember. thinking too hard about something causes it to muddy up. same with art. in digital art, artists flip the canvas to refresh their eyes, see if there’s anything weird or wonky about the illustration that they normally dont see bc theyve gotten used to it. flipping the canvas is like giving our eyes a jumpstart and lets us see what we could do better. in traditional art, its turning the canvas this way and that or repositioning yourself. meditating is like that. a break. a cleanse. a kind of pause where you dont think about anything and just try to process what you already have. you relax and kind of let yourself float down a river of thoughts and sometimes, a fish would jump out of that river and youd go “hey, thats a good idea. i should try that” so when you get out of the river, youre refreshed and ready to go.

same principle with showers. more ideas come to you in the shower when you dont have anything to write with bc youre not thinking about it. youre not focusing on finding inspiration or motivation so ideas naturally flow through you. you know that feeling when you want to do x then someone comes along and says “hey you should do x” and suddenly all motivation to do x leaves? same w your brain. focus too much on “i should be writing” or “i want inspiration” and its never gonna come. just let things happen. at least, thats how i do it. some people might get inspiration by reading or watching tv. everyones different so if thats not what works out for you, dont feel pressured to try my method

💘- what’s your favorite AU? Least favorite? =

magic au. specifically fantasy au set in like a pre-modern era. shows like avatar where theres all this magic and fantastical beasts and so on and so forth. semi-modern like six of crows and nevernight are great too. i want that magic to be woven into people’s lives. harry potter is okay but there’s like this separation between magic and muggle. there’s this feeling of “magic” but like as a tool. like a spoon or a gun or a shovel. i want magic au’s that are INTEGRATED with the world its set in.

like in atla, earth kingdom people have trains they move with bending while fire nation people have machines powered by heat and steam. both correspond to their bending and makes sense for the world they live in. but if your plot is like harry potter and its less worldbuilding and more action, then there’s this book series called seasons rising (read it. so good) where there’s a bunch of spells but the spells have character. the people using the spells GIVE it character and it feels much more intimate. pokemon does the whole fantasy mixed w reality better. give two trainers the exact same pokemon and by the time that pokemon reaches lvl 50, its gonna have a different moveset, different fight style, etc bc it was shaped by the world and people around it. i like harry potter but tbh it could have been so much better

for the least favourite au, it’s A/B/O i dont like the whole “omegas are only good for breeding hurr durr” and “alphas are violent and aggressive and cant control themselves around omegas” thing and it squicks me out. major squick. i read the original harry potter squick (THAT one. yeah. you know the one) and i still hate a/b/o more. i get why people like it, and there are one or two fics set in a/b/o au that i enjoy reading, but as a whole, i severely dislike a/b/o fics.

the themes are squick, the character dynamics get so messed up, and shipping dynamics (bc a/b/o fics usually have shipping) just get so blown out of proportion. there are so many a/b/o fics that turn ooc or the character interpretations radically change or something else. no hate against a/b/o fans bc yall are amazing for writing/drawing yalls au. there are things that you can only do in this setting and exploring those things can be incredibly fun for people, but for me personally, its not an au i like to visit.

💻- three works of yours that are must reads =

i. dont know what fandom youre in anon or your genre preferences. so ill just rec you one fic for a different fandom each with kind of different genres. ts masterlist is on my side @hufflepuff-deceit and regular fanfic masterlist is on my writing blog @crownonymous

(BNHA) Viper. its my first serious attempt at fanfic in YEARS and its my baby. currently has 7 chapters, i havent updated it in a while bc im hyperfocused on ts rn, but i love it to bits. its just all of my fav bnha fics crammed into one fic. quirkless kind of villain izuku with stain as a mentor as they work together to bring light to the injustices of hero society and where bakugos bullying has visible and long-lasting repercussions? sign me the fuck up. you can read it on ao3 HERE bc its not on tumblr. kind of fast-paced, has a lot more action scenes than anything else ive written. heavy plot-wise but has a lot of humour and comedy to break things up

(Kimetsu no Yaiba) I Pray To God He Hears You. not related to my other kny fic oleander which is a multichap retelling au. iptghhy is a standalone one-shot and kind of a character study on one giyuu tomioka. i love him so much. giyuu is my baby and i adore him. so of course i wrote a sad fic focusing on him. well technically, the fic focuses on giyuu AND his relationships. SPOILERS for chapters 130 and 131 of the manga. focuses mostly on giyuu and sabito, but there’s a fair bit of giyuu and tanjiro and urokodaki. you can read it HERE bc this is also not on tumblr. also deals with heavy things but more emotion-wise since it doesnt have that much of a plot. loss. grief. moving on. survivors guilt. that kind of stuff. very sad. hurt but with comfort, especially at the end.

(Sanders Sides) Logan’s Birthday Fic: Logicality. just what the title says. i wrote 5 different fics and published them all on logans bday but the logicality one received the most feedback and honestly? the cutest of the bunch. its gonna be crossposted onto ao3 but for now, you can read it HERE on my ts sideblog. theres no plot since its literally just domestic and relationship fluff. and puns. patton is in the fic, theres gonna be puns. nothing but good things and warm feelings bc logan deserves it.

thank you so much for such interesting asks anon! i enjoyed answering these. have a lovely day!

#crowsas answers #kny #bnha #sanders sides

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eternallyyoungjustice · 5 years

Text

Wherever the Winds Take You: Chapter 1

Author`s note:

Look at this! I`m actually posting the thing I promised a month ago! Off to a great start!

Anyways, yea, here is the first full chapter of my young justice x oc fanfic!

As I have mentioed before in the teaser, this fic follows my oc through the series. I`m giving it a T rating just to be safe, but its honestly going to be very innocent, or at least thats the plan. Ships and couples are all canon in the first “book” AKA season 1, save for the inclusion of kaldurXlina kater on in the story. For more info, see the teaser.

Anywho, thank you for reading! Hope you guys enjoy!

With a sudden gasp of air, Lina's eyes snapped open.

Not that it did anything however, as she quickly became aware of the fact that everything around her was empty and pitch black. Not only that, but that she was floating through it. It was strange, like she was hovering just over the floor of a room that held no visible things save for pitch black walls she couldn't touch.

Moving her hand through the empty air, Lina was honestly a little surprised to find that her appendage did in fact move along with her brain's commands. Deciding to push her luck, she moved her whole arm and made a grabbing motion with her fingers. She failed to feel or grab anything, but the limbs moved accordingly. Next her other arms, her hand, her back, her neck, even her head: all moved as Lina's brain called for. The only peculiar thing she found was that, upon feeling with her hand, her hair floated and waved around as it pleased. Despite the fact that Lina could feel no wind.

“Where am I?” Lina thought to herself, but then realized the words had escaped her lips. The French words resonated in the air, a small echo that bounced off the out-of-reach walls. “What on Earth? Hello?” Not really to her surprise, her cry was not met with a response. This made her heart fall, as it meant she was alone in...wherever she was.

Looking down at her body, Lina realized she was wrapped in a simple white dress. The flowy skirt floating and waving in the same non-existent breeze as her hair, wide enough to block the girl's view of her feet. Suddenly, the sense of fear encased Lina's stomach. What if she didn't have any feet? What if she disappeared into the nothingness of the room after the skirt? Sure, she could feel her legs, and everything attached, but what if it all just wasn't there?

And so, not seeing any possible consequences to her actions, Lina took what to her body felt like a leg, and motioned to kick. As her foot swung forward however, an enormous wind suddenly came out of nowhere; hitting her full force. The wind caused her to spin uncontrollably like an infinite summersalt, and Lina let out a loud yelp in shock and fear as she stuck out her arms to try and balance herself to no real avail.

It was only a moment later that the voices came. Cold, loud, and crowded; as if there was an individual voice on every breeze, and each was yelling at the top of their lungs right into Lina’s ears.

Who are you? “Who am I?” “Why are you here?” “What is this feeling?” “I don’t like this!” “Let us go!” “Please!” “Why are we here?” “Please!” “Why are you doing this?” “Are you even in control right now?” “Do you really think you deserve to be here?” “Please!”

Lina clapped her hands over her ears and scrunched her legs up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. It didn't help. The voices seeped into her ears and seemed to wrap around her like a python, strangling her. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t stop spinning. The voices kept growing, not stopping. They carried questions that Lina could hardly make sense of over the noise. Tears began to escape her eyes and stream down her cheeks, and Lina thought she started screaming but she couldn't be sure over the noise.

“Shut up!” Lina screamed, her brain grasping at any way for the winds to quiet down as her body began to rack with sobs and shivers. “Just shut up! I want to go home! Please just shut up!”

And just as quickly as it had started, any trace of the screaming winds and their questions vanished. Everything returned to how it had been at the beginning, or that was what Lina thought before she opened her eyes.

“Lina.” A sweet, familiar voice called out. The voice immediately caught the girl's attention, but out of shock she did not open her eyes. “Lina, mon coeur, please look at me.”

Slowly, the young girl lifted her hands off of her ears and opened her eyes. Looking up at where the comforting voice was coming from, Lina was met with the sight of the all too familiar woman standing before her.

She was tall and slender, a perfect dancer's body, with a heart-warming, smiling face that's only sign of age were the nearly invisible smile lines that decorated her light hazel eyes. Long, sleek, light brown hair flowed behind her in the same way that her younger's did, along with a similar white dress that seemed to have an unworldly glow as if radiating into the black nothingness that surrounded them. She looked down at Lina, her plump lips pulled into a small smile, standing with her hands neatly folded in front of her.

“Mama..?”

The woman’s eyes lit up slightly at the recognition, her smile widening to reveal perfectly white teeth behind her lips.

“Hello my little Butterfly.” The soothingly sweet voice of Veronique Dubois seemed to glide through the air as gracefully as her acrobatic moves once had been.

“Mama, w-” Lina stuttered lightly, her body unmoving, “where are we?”

“That,” the woman hesitated, tucking a strand of light brown hair behind her ear, “is a very hard question to answer, my Darling.”

“What do you mean, Mama?” Lina asked, her voice quivering. “Mama, I’m scared. Where are we? What just happened with the air?”

“I’m very sorry, Lina.” Veronique replied, her eyes filled with sympathy for her daughter. “But I cannot give you the answers you seek.”

Lina said nothing in return, but her glassy eyes were quick to fill with tears as they looked hopelessly up at her mother. Veronique bit her lip as her eyebrows furrowed with a sort of frustrated sympathy. She lifted her hand slowly, as to reach out to her daughter, but paused. Squeezing her fist tightly for a moment, the older woman then dropped it.

“What's the last thing you remember, my little Butterfly?” The woman asked, pulling her hand to her chest and her eyes filling with determination.

“W-what?” Lina sniffled.

“Think back,” Veronique said sternly, “what's the last thing you remember before you awoke here?”

Lina's eyes furrowed but looked down in thought as her mind raced to do as she was told. But it was unclear, like all her past memories were at the bottom of a swimming pool. She could just make out their shapes, but as the ripples and waves flowed the picture moved and warped. But then, just as a tear rolled down her cheek, a small breeze brushed against it. The small wind felt cool on the tear's trail, but not in an unkind way. Aside from the cold, the breeze felt like a cat's tail, moving against her cheek and then curling behind her and brushing her hair. But then it spoke…

“The flames.”

The voice was quiet, hushed, like a whisper.

“What?” Lina asked, looking up at her mother even though she knew that the whisper had not come from her.

Veronique did not reply, only looked back at her daughter with the only visible emotion on her face being patience.

“The flames.” The whisper repeated, this time blowing through Lina's hair and speaking into the opposite ear as before. “The flames.”

“The flames…” Lina echoed.

And just then, Lina was hit.

As Lina flew through the warm summer air, her single fist held onto the smooth material of the aerial silks that she hung onto. Her body helped swing the fabric in a wide circle over the round audience stands as she closed her eyes, embracing the feeling of her flight and the smell of sweat, chalk, and cheap circus food.

Once her flight over the stands had finished, Lina opened her eyes as she swung her body up and twisted her leg in the fabric above her, nearly reaching the top where the hanging mechanism lowly creaked, and nimbly wrapped her torso up securely so she hung safely upside down.

She waited a moment, then released her leg and held her breath as her body began rolling straight down towards the ground at top speed.

Embracing in the amazing chaos that came with tumbling to the Earth at about 50 mph, Lina's legs moved with muscle memory to reattach to the fabric.

“Now!”

The sharp, whip-like command from her mother ordered Lina's leg to yank, and with that she stopped her body and ripped her torso up, which she caught by using her hands as support, just as her legs zipped apart with the aerial fabric, landing her in the splits with the supporting fabric wrapped firmly around Lina's pointed feet. To land the pose, Lina threw her hand up towards the sky.

As Lina panted for breath, drops of sweat made their way down the sides of her face. And after a moment, when the dull sound of white noise left her ears, the sound of a small but passionate applause entered them.

Turning, she saw a small crowd of six people watching her. Her parents, her brother Calvin, and the familiar faces of Ringmaster Cortez and Mateo Alfonsi, the strongman of Cortez circus; were the ones applauding.

“That was spectacular!” Markus Dubois said, smiling proudly at her daughter. “You're really getting good at your solo act, Evangelina.”

“You like any help there, Little One?” Mateo asked in English coated in a thick Russian accent. Lina smiled and shrugged, and the mountain-like man smiled and walked over, strongly grasping the thirteen year old girl and-after she disentangled herself-placed her on his heavily broad shoulders and walked her over to her parents.

“It was a very impressive routine Lina.” The old Ringmaster says, stroking his long white beard in thought. His bright green eyes, already framed with smile lines, squinted. “You looked almost as beautiful as your mother flying up there.”

“Oh hush Mikael.” Veronique tutted, lightly slapping the Ringmaster's arm. “You flatterer.”

“He has a point, My Love.” Markus smiled, sliding an arm around his wife's waist. “She so very much takes after her mother.”

Veronique blushed, but kissed her husband's cheek with a smile.

“What do you think, Mikael?” Calvin said, grinning up at his boss/family friend. “Do you think Lina will be able to do a solo show soon? She's been practicing way more often than most of the solo artists, and we all saw how muc-” “Calvin, slow down.” Veronique said sternly. However, her hard tone was offset by the small smile on her lips and her fingers carding through her son's blonde hair.

“Excuse my son Ringmaster. He's excited to have another family act to preform under.” Markus apologized, a smile on his lips that matched his wife's.

“I do not blame the boy.” Mikael said, slapping the eldest of the Dubois siblings on the back. “A brother/sister act involving Lina's acrobatics and Calvin's flames would be exciting to say the least.” The old man's eyes lit up in thought. “Le Papillon et Le Pyrrhocore”

“The Butterfly and The Firebug?” Mateo asked, testing to see if he had gotten the correct translation.

“It's a metaphor, right?” Lina whispered to the man who held her. “I'm not really a butterfly.” Mateo smiled and nodded.

“I like that name, and I bet Leo would be happy to help make the poster for it!” Calvin said, a large grin on his face. “What do you think Lina?”

Lina simply smiled and nodded.

“My little Butterfly,” Veronique smiled at her daughter with love and pride, “a name most fitting.”

“Well I imagine we'll have to do a lot of set up and even more rehearsing before we get you your own act, as it's even more dangerous than doing it with your mother…” Cortez said, “but I don't see any reason why we can't open up this act in, say, a few months once you turn 14.”

Calvin cheered loudly. Lina smiled, and laughed quietly to her brother's emotions, but remained silent on top of the mountain that was Mateo. The strongman looked up at the girl, smiling, and she reciprocated it but still did not say anything.

“We need to tell Leo!” Calvin said, stepping towards the tent's entrance. “Lina, you coming?” Lina looked at her mother, and then shook her head.

“I have some stuff I need to do with your sister to prep for tonight's show, my Firebug.” Veronique answered. Calvin shrugged and ran out of the tent anyways.

“I should follow him, make sure the boys stay out of trouble together.” Markus said to his wife, tilting her chin up towards his as he gently kissed her. “Be gentle with her alright, don't work her too hard.”

“I never do.” She replied, and the married couple held each other's hands as Markus walked away, until they grew too far apart and had to detach.

“We should probably leave as well Mateo. We indeed have a show to get ready for after all, and I think the elephant-handlers could use your muscles and height to get them ready.” Mikael said.

Mateo replied with a simple hum and turned to look up at Lina.

“Is it alright if I put you down now?” He asked, and Lina nodded in return.

“Thank you Mateo.” Veronique said politely, smiling up at the man. “What do you say Lina?”

“Please Miss,” Mateo interrupted, putting out a hand to motion his request, “no thanks is needed, not when it comes to Miss Lina.”

Veronique sent her daughter a small wink, but then went back to smiling at Mateo as he looked down at the girl in from of him.

“It was truly a lovely routine, Little One. I look forward to seeing more of your dances.”

“Thank you.” Lina said, smiling up at the man, who nodded at her before walking out of the tent, followed by Mikael.

“Well my little Butterfly,” Veronique grinned as she turned to her daughter, “Let's get started, shall we?”

It wasn't more than half an hour later that the mother/daughter duo was prepped and ready for the show. The equipment had been prepared and checked over thrice, two full runs of the routine had been successfully completed without a single hitch, sparkly makeup had been applied to both women's faces to make their features visible from the crowds far below, and both their matching costumes had been put on.

Although that didn't stop Veronique from “fixing” her daughter's outfit.

“You're getting so big, we're going to have to get new costumes soon.” The mother said with a small smile.

“Yours fits fine, why don't we just get a bigger one for me and keep yours?” Lina asked with a raised eyebrow. Veronique's lips turned up into a mischievous smirk.

“Never give up an opportunity to get new clothes, my Darling.”

“But Papa says-””Your father is brilliant at many things. Fashion and costumes do not fall under those categories.”

Veronique let out a little giggle, but Lina was just confused.

“And you have your earplugs in, right?” Veronique asked, looking over to see the bits of squishy foam in her daughter's ears.

“They're uncomfortable.” Lina admitted, scratching at the skin attached to her ear.

“I know my Darling, but you have to wear them for the show. You know how the loud music and the crowd's noises hurt you.” The mother said, sternly but voice filled with kindness.

Reluctantly, Lina nodded.

The costume that clothed both females was tight, and mostly coloured white with gold, sparkly, swirled patterns that Lina liked to trace before she went on to ease nerves. This was the duo's primary colour scheme for all their costumes, what they'd been wearing ever since their first show. As their first routine of the evening was an aerial act, their costume was a full-bodied leotard, with a small elastic on the sleeve that was worn on the middle finger to keep the sleeves tight.

Veronique always said that although she loved aerial work, she much preferred ground acrobatics and dance routines-their second and third acts of the night's show respectively-because the costumes were so much prettier and “theatrical”.

“There we go,” Veronique said, finally standing and letting go of Lina's costume, finally suited to her liking, “so very beautiful.”

Lina smiled, but the moment was cut off when the smell of smoke entered through the crack of the dressing room door, causing Lina to cough.

“What the…” Veronique stepped toward the door, reaching for the handle, only to pull her hand away as the hot metal burned her hand.

Not a moment after, the door crashed off its hinges to reveal Mateo enveloped in a cloud of thick smoke.

“Miss, we need to get out now!” The large man said, causing the older woman to step back and grasp the coughing Lina's hand.

“Mateo, what-””there's no time to explain!” The man roared, as he grabbed Veronique's hand and began to run out with both women in tow.

Between her coughing fits and the heavy black smoke that emitted from them, Lina was greeted with the sight of the circus tent coated in roaring flames. The painted canvas, the wooden beams, the stories-tall equipment, the ring's walls, the bleachers: everything was blazing within the flames’ grasp. The agonizing heat all around them caused Lina to falter, managing to pull her hand out of her mother's grasp to cover her face. Veronique let out a sharp squeal before grabbing her daughter's hand again with all the strength she could and resumed pulling her along.

They were so close to the exit, Lina could feel the cool breeze from the outdoors contrasting with the fire's heat. But suddenly the sound of splitting wood came from up above, just above the entrance, and Veronique's head whipped up. Her gaze then snapped to the entrance, which was still a few meters away.

“Go!” She yelled. And they did. Working purely on adrenaline, the three circus performers began to sprint even faster towards the door. But both adults proved too fast for Lina's much smaller legs, and the younger girl tripped and fell. Just as she did, the wood over them let out one last deafening crack before the tumbling wood began to crash to the ground.

Right over Lina.

“Lina!” Veronique cried, let go of Mateo, and ran over to her daughter.

But she was too late.

The wood crashed onto her just as she leapt over her daughter.

And everything went black.

Lina starred in shock, her body frozen from the shock at her last memory.

“The wood…” Lina murmured, mostly to herself. “It hit us, it hit us…it hit you...” Her eyes slowly raised to her mother, who greeted her with a small, knowing smile. “Mama…”

“I'm sorry Lina.” Veronique said for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“No,” Lina breathed, but then she straightened her spine, her tears turning angry. “No! Neither of us can die! Not me, and especially not you! We're okay!”

“You are.”

Veronique's soft voice caused Lina to freeze.

“W-what?”

“My body sheltered most of the debris flames from you when it hit, and thankfully Mateo was able to dig you out before you suffocated or any damage was too severe. Even if you did break your spine, several ribs, an arm, your hip, your lungs were damaged, and you received a concussion that render you unconscious.” Veronique explained. “It's a miracle you survived, even if you were put into a coma. Although I think you'll find that it was less of a miracle and more of a-” “But then you're…”

“Dead.” Veronique finished. “Yes, I'm sorry.”

“No, please!” Lina gasped, hurriedly scrambling through the air towards her mother, who flinched away. “Please, Mama, you can't be dead! Please!”

“Like I said, I'm sorry.” Veronique said, smiling sadly at her daughter. “But my Love, you must learn to move on. Your life is about to change so drastically for, what I believe, is the better and you have to be ready.”

“Change? Well of course my life is going to change! You're dead!” Lina shouted.

“I mean in other ways.” Veronique explained. “Larger ways, ways bigger than you could even imagine. They're happening right now, as we speak.”

“What? How?” Lina gasped. “Mama, you're not making any sense!”

Veronique simply smiled, and stepped towards her daughter as if there was a floor under her that Lina couldn't see or feel. Raising her hands, the older of the women gently cupped the younger's cheeks and stroked her cheekbones with her thumb, wiping the remaining tears away. As soon her hand made contact with her daughter's flesh however, Veronique's image slowly started to disappear; fading away into the empty blackness that surrounded the two of them.

“I love you Lina.” Veronique spoke quietly. “So, so much.”

“Wh-Mama?” Lina stuttered, watching helplessly as her mother's image began to dissipate. “What's happening? Where are you going? Don't leave me!”

“It's time to wake up, my little Butterfly.”

As Veronique pressed a final kiss to her daughter's forehead, she fully vanished into the blackness, and as soon as Lina could no longer feel her presence, the voices came back.

“Wake up” “Are you sleeping?” “Is that where we are?” “It's time to wake up!” “Are you sure this isn't death?” “We can't die” “But you can” “Awaken!” “Wake up!” “Why aren't you awake yet?”

Lina couldn't hear herself scream. Just like she couldn't feel the hot, angry tears leak out of her eyes yet again. But she knew she was screaming, and she knew she was crying. She slammed her hands back over her ears, trying to block out the noise. It didn't do much.

“Wake up” “Wake up” “Wake up” “Wake up” “Wake up” “Wake up” “Wake up!”

With a sudden gasp of air, Lina's eyes snapped open.

8 notes · View notes

sonofhistory · 7 years

Link

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

American Revolution RPF, American History RPF, 18th Century CE RPF

Nathan Hale (1755-1776)/Benjamin Tallmadge

Tags: Young Love, Last Kiss, Brief Smut, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Emotional Roller Coaster, Cuddling & Snuggling, This is the last time they ever see each other, Foreshadowing Death, Fight Scene, Tags will be updated

Part 2 of the Early American History | Stories They Won’t Tell series (fics places in the series get rearranged by date in happens in)

All Fic Total Words: 9,187

____________________

September 15th, 1776 || 3:47 p.m.

6 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes till Nathan Hale’s death

“But here, I think you’re wrong, to blame,

your gen’rous muse and and call her lame.”

_______________________

Nathan Hale could not sleep. His eyes floated back up to the roof of the tent, staring at the sheeting fabric sewn together at the corners in the flash of a simmering candle in the oil lamp. He lifted Ben’s head off of his bare breast, setting it on the single pillow he was lying on and sat up on the cot stiffly, his space filling. With goosebumps rising on the sleeping man’s surface, he tugged the blanket up to the undercut of their chin, slipping off feet onto the ground, grabbing his shirt from the corner of the bed, sliding it over his arms and shoulders but not bothering to button the front up.

He ran his fingers through the front of his hair, combing it back with his nails, sitting back down on the edge of the cot, narrowing his shoulders and his eyes once again dipped to the sleeping man on the bed. With his curly, unruly cinnamon locks, without a ribbon now, the strands tumbling messily against his lower back and his collar bone, barely sweeping the curve of his spine. Nathan sighed, his shoulders declining, fixing out his tense muscles. He wondered what time it was now, it was still dark, perhaps three in the morning? There was no ability to rest left in him, wide awake now. He gazed at Ben’s chest as it fluttered up and down, and his ears twitched in their state making him wonder just what kind of dreams played behind those eyelids this night.

Their brows arched, etching out further those two wrinkles at the center of his brow--he was only twenty-two, why were there already markings on his sheath?

Tenaciously, his own hand departed the cot and aligned upon those two nicks, tracing them with his cracked nail as one would gentle rub a stain from their clothing; they were anything but so. Riveting longingly at a portrait of the most perfect being in his perspective. Fingers stumbling across a dancefloor of flesh, with hands that had already memorized the contours of his spine, ears absorbing the music of those sleepy sighs escaping from his lips. He wanted to write down exactly how he felt as his vision scoped down, trailing the indigo veins until they culminated at his wrist, he knew the paper would remain empty. He could not of described it any better.

Of everything he’d ever seen in his twenty-one years, of anything he’d touched, he kept on touching him , wrapping his grip around that wrist where it lay limp, rising it to his lips, pressing a kiss into his lifelines. It was his bronze laughter, it spread across rooms as hues of the same shape transform the skies. The Connecticut boy felt like scarlet and the most consuming passion, with its vehement divulging shades ripping their pictures around his silhouette. Their lips would meet delicately enough to not crush the rose petals of his skin, no less the devotion as the colors erupted together in the atmosphere revealing the most dazzling display of light.

Dawn was breaking as their interaction stole form across the heavens. A fleeting juncture in a world that romanticized the universe. Nathan’s palm glided up to flicker down his abdomen his touch merely ghosting with fluttering wings like a butterfly, Ben’s gut tightened, coiling in on itself. His smoothing caress arrived to those hips that did not feel quite the same, protruding a little too much and a stomach that now revealed the bottom rib when he inhaled. Nathan frowned, just as exquisite as before in his most innocent form. But, Nathan Hale craved so much more than just form. He wallowed for depth, and for a soul. Something to burn him up with purpose and desire, wishing to be reduced to ashes by it but learn that he could rise from the embers just as fast. An attraction for things that would destroy him in the end.

Nathan lay his now tired skull back upon the pillow, his face falling allineate with the man he’d studied so earnestly. Their noses brushed, he shut his eyes slowly, edging closer and pressing a kiss against Ben’s lips. Maybe it was an aspiration for the taste of his lips that flashed him to the scent of everything after it had rained, but the sunshine comes out. The lapping sound against the slippery cobblestones and the shamrock moss in between each carving pebble. Tree bark, pine needles weaves with how calm lakes feel against his skin on steamy summer nights with beads of sweat shimmering down the back of his neck and Ben’s form slipping between the water, stunning in the reflection of the moon across the rippling water.

It was every marvelous memory swaddled at the corners of his mouth. He eased his burdens to share his joy and content in his sorrow. Every breath exchanged between urged jaws tasted limitless. Boundary lines pleading with ardent flesh with only that nods could utter. Out of his mortality, that hungers and his tongue that comes to know the semblance in seeking reason. The curvature of his lover’s waiting body fits into his wanting hand, breast warm as sunlight, pressures quick between his thighs. Ben was still asleep as he let go, sensing a stranger shift in his bones as if doing something for the very last time without knowing it. The last time he’d kiss, or the last time he’d kiss Ben?

He felt his heartbeat on his fingertips as he shifted phantom strokes over Ben’s eyelids, spiraling down his nose and around his cheek before sloping to his chin and he drew his pads off, stationing a hand on their chest above his frantic heart. Air plummeted all to quick out of his lungs and he failed to breath, something warmed his veins and his eyes widened. Underneath the layers of skin, and the ribs, the muscle and bone, he was closer to anybody that he had ever been in his entire life. His palm was becoming a prisoner to the rhythm of that pulse.

“You keep your soul in your eyes, Damon.”

“Is that so, Pythias?”

“You unlock it for selective few, but whenever it tis’ there, it guides its arms to the center of my chest.”

“Then you must keep your soul in your chest.”

“How so?”

“Silly question. My soul can always find you.”

Nathan blinked, as the absence of day ceased and darkness crawled back towards the Earth. Those ravenous tinctures of bronze and scarlet brimming up the heavens, shallowing across the tent. Still blind to the time, it must be four-thirty.

It was time to leave.

Reluctance with strings like a violin swarming about him and leaping him back, he shook them off loosely, tipping back up, throwing his feet to the floor and hovering off the cot. He buttoned up the front of his open shirt, plucking down the sleeves to where they washed the coat of his forearm. Pausing to pull the blanket back up to Ben’s chin before passing across the tent; gathering his coat, slipping it over his arms, straightening out the collar remembering Ben’s tormented eyebrows meeting at the center of his brow as he did the same, standing above him, his outline against the eventide and Nathan’s arms behind his head with the most innocence he could establish. For justice, perhaps a copy to keep with him so that he’d carry a movement with him, he mirrored Ben, rubbing two fingers over his collar to straighten the material.

He stood, tugged his boots on, rounding up all of his hair with two hands at the center of the base of his neck, re-doing the ribbon and looping it into his golden fibers once again. He circulated his eyelids, ripping at the corner of his eyes and not sensing the least bit of exhaustion. He tucked his waistcoat into his waist and slid the jacket completely over his torso, ceasing; he was done. Something plunged in his stomach, a cloudy pit of despair; there was nothing left. A moment of dread waded over him. He was done.

Nathan Hale glanced back over to the cot and the man with his face buried in the pillow and rouge coating his eyelids. He didn’t want the chaos to leave him, not ever. It kept him wild, in strange ways of unique attraction. Tonight everything seemed to of made sense, except for the way Ben made him feel. He would depart from his eyes and he wondered if he would remember when he was gone how beautiful it was to feel. How guilty he felt knowing Ben would be waking up in the morning with half shut eyes, reaching automatically for the spot in the bed and remember just about all of his depression.

Tears threatened to drowl from him, but he blinked them back sternly disciplining himself, composing, clenching a jaw in retaliation. He strided back towards gape of the tent, prepared to step out when he heard the cot’s joints creek. Incoherent murmurs flooded the room and he turned back, following the sound and landing on Ben. What began as a mere rustle revolved into kicking, rolling his neck back and forth whimpering. Nathan breathed, rejoining the foot of the cot when the screaming started. “No!”, a shout forced from the sleeping man’s throat, his chest racing up and down, sticky sweat clinging to the strands touching his forehead, “You can’t take him!”, a sob billowed in his chest.

Nathan gathered on his ankles, throwing himself onto the cot, “Ben! Wake up!”

Ben didn’t change, tears flooding onto his cheeks like oceans. His eyelids barely parted, and a sob emerged from his lungs, throwing himself into Nathan’s neck. “Nathan?”

“It’s me”, he pulled him close into his neck, whispering softly in his ear.

“You were gone,” he let out another whimper and covered his eyes with his hand, still half asleep, “You were gone.” He buried his face in the crook of Nathan’s neck, shaking, hands clinging to his shirt, balling his fists, his neck began to feel wet. “Please, Nathan…”

Nathan’s own chest began to ripple, holding back his own emotion by cupping a palm over his aperture, muting himself. “Benjamin, I am not going anywhere.”

“You were gone…”

“I promise.”

Ben grew limp again, flirting with sleep it seemed. A few mutters passed the space in his lips before there were words, “...soft as rose petals…” mentioning the hands clinging to his back.

Nathan quivered, stamping the tears from his eyes, squeezing them shut, “I’m not going anywhere.” He breathed, setting Ben back down on the pillow once again and rising back again on unsteady feet. He held clamped knuckles between his teeth and his trembling chin where it landed in the palm of his hand, inclining, feeling bile rise in his throat that he swallowed down. He smoothed his shirt again with vibrating hands, zipping over the creases Ben’s fists had formed by those nightmarish portraits behind his dreams. He shook his cranium knowing just as well that he would never be back and in a violent or delicate acceptance, a battle shuffled in his chest; the place where Ben had once pointed to his soul.

He grasped the lapels of the tent, parting them patent and treading out into the shimmering dawn luminescence. Breathing in the meadow air, gratified that there was not breeze to mask the warmth. He deviated the opening, peering his eyes back to Ben where they navigated the curve of his body on the cot. Reluctance to blunder away. The parts of the New York boy pulsated inside of him, knotting fingers around his ribs, daisies danced across his spine, pushing between the vertebrae, a garden of dashing roses wilting away. The floating petals plucked off of the stem, gliding to his domestic layers. He witnessed them poking up through his skin and already felt homesick for the places that were never really his own.

“Goodbye, Damon.”

Nathan knew Ben’s lips were moving to form syllables, Pythias. .

Nathan Hale took his last look of Benjamin Tallmadge before shutting the opening, hesitant to step off into bigger things as he landed into their air. The very same bronze and scarlet coasting across the horizon, trailing up towards the sky where he said he might find his words written in the clouds. He smiled, fluttering lashes; the fusing intensities were searing his skin and he knew the familiarity of watery rain-slickened petals.

He started away, not looking back; his lover’s kisses singing to the flowers inside him.

#this is the last chapter #i am sad #halemadge #enjoy #nathan hale #pressles musing #benjamin tallmadge

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