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preciousthingsareprecious · 3 years

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In Line at the Prize Counter

So this fic was originally intended to be part of Dick and Damian week, but life intervened and I didn’t end up finishing it anywhere near on time. That said, I found it too much fun to write and didn’t want it to live forever in WIP form. So, I hope you all enjoy this adventure featuring one Very Done Damian as he’s forced to rescue Dick from a Bomp n’ Stomp.

Characters: Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne

Words: 4,965

Summary: When Dick Grayson is kidnapped, Robin is the only one who really believes he's being held at the Bomp n' Stomp entertainment center. So he rolls up his sleeves, and heads into the dreaded building to rescue his brother from the likes of ball pits, twisted slides, and yes even go karts.

AO3 Link

Of all the places in the world Damian Wayne expected to walk into, a Bomp n’ Stomp was not one of them. In fact, he had argued viciously against ever entering the indoor playscape when his brother had suggested they spend a Saturday there.

To make matters worse, in an attempt to convince Damian of it’s legitimacy, Richard had called it an arcade.

An arcade .

The nerve of the man to sully that term by applying it to this ball pit filled, gum ridden, dirty carpeted, sticky establishment. A true arcade, like Shelly’s JoyCon, home of Cheese Viking, would never allow it’s door handles to leave a strangely greasy film on Damian’s gloves as he moved his search from a back room back out into the main area.

The inside smelled of old pizza, spilled soda, and that strange almost chalky scent of fog machines. It was, in a word, disgusting. Damian felt a pull at the bottom of his boot every few steps, like the carpet was coated in something sticky. He wrinkled his nose.

No, this was nothing like his favorite arcade.

Granted. It was also closed for renovations, with the promise of things like all new games, flooring, and yes even door handles. Still, Damian thought nothing could quite erase the smell of greasy pizza. That was a scent that stuck.

He shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about greasy pizza and continue working on why he was truly here. Some odious criminal had thought it a good idea to kidnap Richard on his way into Gotham.

It would not be stood for. Not someone snatching his brother. Nor holding him up in a place as terrible as this. To top things off, whoever had taken Richard had deprived both he and Damian of a perfectly excellent evening that should have been spent at the Observatory.

Damian sniffed and picked his way past skee ball games, an overly large wheel with inane words like “Double Prize Winner!!” in bold peeling letters on it, and the playscapes namesake, a Bomp n’ Stomp game.

At the Bomp n’ Stomp, he stopped to peer down at the curious game. It was obviously broken. The machine was little more than a garishly painted box with various holes covering the top. Out of one peeked a chipped plastic facsimile of a mole. Hanging off the machine were two objects strung on cords that looked ready to snap at any moment. The first was a toy hammer, it’s fabric ripped and leaking stuffing, the other a boot attached to a stick.

“Tt.” Damian discounted it and looked back up.

Whoever thought a game designed around attacking moles was a good idea surly must be a criminal.

He’d neared the end of the ‘arcade’ portion of the building and was entering a larger more open space. The carpet changed from soiled red to blue spotted tile. At the change, the ceiling rose at least a second story above him, towering high enough to fit a series of large structures.

To one side of this new area rested a climbing wall. It, out of everything Damian had seen so far, actually looked interesting. Even from here he could see portions that might make for a mild challenge in climbing.

Next there was a multistory play set filled with slides, jungle gyms, large netted areas he supposed children were expected to crawl through, and so many tunnels it would put most professional guinea pig enclosures to shame. A sign outside the entrance indicated that somewhere towards the center of the structure rested a huge ball pit.

Damian really, truly, hoped Richard had not been placed within that. If the rest of the Bomp n’ Stomp was sticky and dirty, the ball pit must be truly foul. He could not even imagine what had happened within it or what--he grimaced-- fluids could have coated the orbs.

He turned to the last attraction, a small go kart area. Perhaps the climbing wall was not the only redeeming quality to the establishment. Provided of course that the carts actually moved quickly.

So far, he had seen no hint of Richard. His brother had not been hidden behind a garishly colored game, and he did not seem to be dangling from the climbing wall. After a brief examination (and admiration of the engines on the small cars) Damian determined that his brother was either being held in one of the staff areas indicated by the back wall or-- He glanced at the huge play place.

After a moment’s hesitation, Damian squared his shoulders. As detestable as it would be to crawl around in there, he would do it if it meant rescuing Richard from being trapped inside. He could not imagine being held within the structure longer than a few minutes. It would be torture indeed.

The truly strange thing about his investigation so far had been that no one had attempted to stop him. There were no guards at the front, nor the back, and the building was empty of signs of life. The power was on, with some games sluggishly lit or playing bites of music, but Damian had not seen anyone besides himself.

He considered this as he made his way to the entrance to the play structure. He knew for a fact that Richard was here, even if Father did not.

Damian pushed the plastic draping away from the domed entrance and stepped inside the structure. He was surrounded by net, his feet no longer on solid ground, but pressed into some kind of foam. Ahead of him was a rope ladder that looked designed to be as unstable as possible. He sighed and began to climb.

Of the three possible locations Richard could have been taken to the Bomp n’ Stomp had been deemed least likely by his Father due to the fact that it was not altogether abandoned. While, over the weekend no one would be inside, the possibility of a worker coming in was high enough Father had assumed any capable kidnapper would discount it.

The other two locations, an empty ice cream parlor, and an abandoned junk yard, had been deemed higher priorities and dangers. But something had told Damian that the Bomp n’ Stomp was the right location, and he had argued that it should be checked out.

So while his family was split between the other two locations, Father had reluctantly allowed Damian to check out his hunch, promising to meet up with him after they'd cleared their own locations.

The ladder exited onto a platform made entirely of the netting Damian had seen from outside the playhouse structure. Tentative, he pressed a hand into the thick black cording, and when it gave less than he’d assumed it would, he climbed atop it.

Balance was a tricky thing on the strange floor, and Damian could not help but think the League would benefit from installing something of the kind in one of their training rooms. It turned a normal floor into something to be treaded on with care or risk getting a toe caught between the net. If he was unlucky he might end up tumbling to the ground or twisting his ankle. Damian couldn’t imagine it filled with children.

He was keeping his ears open for any sounds of either Richard or the kidnappers. From the letter and accompanying picture Father had received there were at least three men holding Richard, but there were sure to be more.

Father had immediately identified the men as being part of a relatively new gang in Gotham. Their motive was both money and an attempt at scaring Bruce Wayne into cooperating with them in the future.

Damian scoffed at their foolishness as he hopped off one platform and onto another. His eyes went wide as, instead of the net he’d grown used to, the floor rolled under his feet.

He bit back a yelp as his feet slipped forward, and he went tumbling, hands pinwheeling out beside him in an attempt to catch his balance. He stumbled back, then forward, then one leg was in the air, followed by the other and Damian was staring up at the faded yellow ceiling of the play place.

For a moment, he lay there blinking up at it. Wondering about the strange flatness, and remembering this thing had another level above him. If someone was above him, would he see imprints of feet? Sections weighed down by a kid stepping over it?

It did not matter. What did, was finding Richard and escaping this cursed place.

Damian felt the floor under him, and realized it was not a single solid piece, but four cylinders that each rolled on their own. Whoever had designed this place was a madman. Putting a trap like this in a place where anyone could fall could only spell injury on a normal day.

He grunted, and carefully pushed himself up, moving off the shifting section and onto firm foam again. Well, not quite firm. It sagged with every step Damian took, but it was far better than the rolling part or the net.

The next hurdle came when Damian reached the tunnels. He had seen them of course, out looking up at all this. Plastic, colored brightly, sometimes one segment a different color altogether than the last, little windows dotting the sides. But he had hoped he’d find Richard before having to crawl through one.

He crouched and stepped inside. After a few moments he realized he was going to have to actually crawl. He wrinkled his nose as he pressed palm to plastic and began moving. At one point his palm stuck and after a moment, he pulled it up to reveal gum pressed into the green of his glove. Richard had better be thankful for what Damian was putting himself through to rescue him.

The space was tight, and as a defensible position it was terrible. If a fight took place within the tubes it would not be good. Even Damian, as small as he was, would have a hard time maneuvering within them. He’d have a better chance of winning a fight in some of the Batcave’s tighter spaces.

They were also impossible to be silent in. Every inch forward created squeaking or creaking or the echoing sound of a knee hitting against plastic with a series of thumps that were anything but rhythmic. Any chance of silently finding his brother was dashed a minute after he entered them.

Once Damian realized that, he no longer bothered trying to move slowly through. Instead he hurried, around turns, down dips, and up tiny plastic hills. He was thankful for the extra padding over his knees and the leather of his gloves. If not for them he was certain his palms would be red and irritated and his knees bruised.

Damian was in such a hurry to get through the tunnels that he missed the slide. One moment his hand was pressed into plastic, the next it fell into nothing. His momentum was such that he’d assumed it was another dip, a temporary fall.

But no.

His next hand hit nothing, with the other was still in air, and then Damian found himself staring down the tube of a slide, and hurtling down it face first. It twisted, and turned, and at one point his chin caught on a portion of the plastic that was raised. Damian winced, feeling the plastic scratch his skin, sure he’d be wiping blood away if he ever exited this terrible contraption.

At last, he burst out. He got one good look at a space enclosed by netting and more slide exits before he saw what was below him. To his growing horror, the ball pit waited. Staring at the pit in bullet time Damian decided this whole place was ridiculous. A death trap made for children . Even Nygma could not come up with something so fiendish.

Nothing Damian could do would stop his crash. Balls of yellow, red, blue, and green exploded around him, bursting up and into the air even as his trajectory took him down, deep into the pit. He was drowning, and yet not.

After a moment he realized he’d stopped moving. The balls around him had coalesced into a kind of solid form that still allowed him to move. It took some work, but eventually Damian righted himself and managed to semi-swim upward, kicking off against the ground before shooting back up. And at last, his head popped out into clear air.

“Robin!?” The surprised voice came from his left.

Damian shifted, careful not to sink again, “Richard!” he cried, then corrected himself, he was in uniform and Richard was a civilian. Even here, the kidnappers might be watching.

“Mr. Grayson, I am here to rescue you.”

Richard actually snorted, an aborted version of what would have been a startled laugh. He was half buried in the ball pit himself. His torso and head above the sea of color. Rope was tied around what Damian could see of his chest, presumably holding his arms back, but otherwise he looked fine.

It was a miracle Damian hadn’t plowed right into his brother during his wild exit from the slide. He’d landed a foot or so away from him, close to the middle of the pit. The problem was, figuring out how to get both himself and Richard out.

Damian glanced around the enclosed space holding the pit. He counted four slides at various sides of the netting, and two rope ladders leading up. One to another tunnel, and the other to what looked like a real ledge.

“So, Mr. Robin , what’s the plan?” Richard asked, his tone far too delighted with their situation.

A scowl crossed Damian’s face, “Do not patronize me. It is your fault we are in this mess at all. Do you know how unsanitary this all is? From the pit to those cursed tunnels. Even the door was sticky.”

Richard gave him a patient smile, “But it’s not all bad right?”

“Tt. It has been horrendous. I do not know how you have survived.” Damian said, and began wading over to his brother’s side.

It was difficult to push through the pit, but he found that thankfully, the closer he got to an edge, the higher the ground under him was. It went from almost nonexistent, to high enough he could stand on his toes beside Richard. It was not ideal, but at least he was no longer at risk of being swallowed whole.

“There has to be at least one redeeming quality about this place.” Richard continued, “Even Robin must have liked something the old Bomp n’ Stomp has to offer. Maybe one of the games?”

“Nothing.” Damian answered, defiant even as he thought of the go karts and climbing wall, “Especially not the games. This place is childish, Richard. Childish and demeaning, and even you would not stoop so low as to drag me here.” he ranted, forgetting that he was Robin with a civilian and not Damian and his brother.

His brother’s smile was full of delight now, “You protest too much. I bet at least one thing caught your eye.”

“I said nothing.” Damian declared again, and sending balls flying, “Now come on, we do not have time to waste speaking of such moronic things.”

Richard cleared his throat, “Uh, Robin, aren’t you forgetting about something?”

Damian turned to see his brother shrug, plastic balls rolling away from him, and Damian caught sight of the ropes still binding his brother.

Fire lit hit his cheeks. He swallowed down the embarrassment and moved again to hastily slice at the ropes holding Richard’s arms to his sides. Even in his rush, he slowed as the blade neared his brother, the night would only be worse if he accidentally hurt him.

The ropes fell away easily, and soon Richard was massaging his wrists and stretching his arms up into the sky, “That feels great, thanks, Baby Bat.”

Damian ignored the nickname, and Richard’s attempt to reach out and ruffle his hair. He ducked and turned towards the ladder by the platform, “Come along, I would like to get you out of here as soon as possible.”

Richard hummed, “Yeah, I have no idea when those guys will be back, so haste is probably a good thing. Unless you already took them out?”

“The building was empty when I entered.”

Damian scrambled out of the pit and up onto the ladder. He climbed up, only to realize Richard had not followed him. When he turned to frown at his brother, he could see the man had stopped at the ladder, his eyes focused on the rungs.

“Richard?” he asked, voice quiet.

“I’m fine, just a bit dizzy. I’ve been sitting there a while, my arms and legs are tingly and just waking up.”

“What else is wrong.” Damian did not ask, but demanded the answer.

His brother shrugged, “I might have sprained my ankle when they tossed me in?”

Damian nodded, assessing the situation.

“Can you climb?”

If it were Damian in Richard’s shoes, he’d power through the ache, but he did not wish to press his brother into doing something he couldn’t. He could support Richard as they moved, and they could utilize a slide to exit this structure, but if he could not climb, getting him out of the pit might prove challenging.

Richard nodded, “I think so.”

He placed his hands on the rungs and started up. It was not an overly high ladder, but even so, Richard made it a few rungs before he paused wincing.

“Here.” Damian said.

He knelt down and reached out for his brother, “I will pull you up.”

Richard gave him a look that could only be described as incredulous. Damian glared at him in return.

“I can handle lifting you a short distance. Push off with your good foot and let us get this over with.”

After another moment of hesitation, Richard reached up and took one of Damian’s hands. His other, he kept pressed to the bars for leverage. Damian pulled as Richard pushed himself up. Below him the ladder wiggled a threat. However, he managed to grab hold of Damian’s other hand with a tight squeeze.

Richard was heavy, but together and with another awkward step onto the ladder, Damian managed to help drag him up. For a moment, they sat together looking at each other.

“Well.” Richard said, “I guess we should keep going?”

Damian nodded, “Indeed. I believe there is a slide exit in that direction.” he waved in the general area he remembered seeing one. At least he hoped it was there. His internal map of the structure felt a little turned around after his dive into the ball pit.

He helped his brother up, and they began moving through the rest of the structure. Damian stuck close to Richard, who insisted he didn’t need to lean on him yet. Still, he kept one eye on his brother, ready to assist if he showed the slightest sign of wavering.

They reached another area where solid panels switched to a rolled floor and Damian threw an arm out to stop their progress.

“Careful, that part can be deceptive.” he said, pointing down at them, “Allow me to walk you over them, so you do not injure your ankle further.”

Richard had an odd look on his face, a smile that seemed as if it hid another emotion, but Damian wasn’t going to worry about his brother’s reaction to his protectiveness. He always seemed to blow things like that out of proportion anyway.

They traversed the trap easily, and had just about reached the slide when a question that had been bugging Damian burst to the surface.

“Why were you in that ball pit? Surely there was an easier place to hold you.”

“Apparently, I talk too much.” Richard chuckled, “In truth, I was seeing if I could irritate them into letting me go.”

Damian couldn’t stop a surprised laugh at that, “It does not seem to have worked.”

Richard shrugged, “It was worth a try, it’s worked in the past.”

At last they reached the slide.

“I will go down first, so I can look for trouble and assist you if you have any problems.”

This time, Damian’s trip down a slide was a controlled one. It was a not altogether unpleasant experience sliding at a quick speed, and turning round and round in a spiral.

He couldn’t help but think back to watching Father, back when the man had lost his memory, playing with children on a large playground. A pang of want, not as strong as then, lodged in his chest. He tried to swallow it back as he popped out. Landing on his feet before he hurried forward to get out of the way.

Damian turned his attention away from lost memories and onto the rest of the Bomp n’ Stomp’s interior. His eyes ran from the go karts, paused at the entrance to the arcade portion, and moved over to the climbing wall on the far side of the room. Still empty.

“You may come down, it is clear.” he called up the slide. His voice echoed slightly up the plastic tube, sounding a little hollow and odd.

“Yeah!” Richard cried, his voice bouncing loudly down to Damian.

He could hear his brother swish and bump down the slide as he traversed it, the plastic rumbling as he reached the end. When he came out, he stopped himself with his hands at the exit, and carefully pushed himself to his feet, grinning.

“I don’t care how much you hate these places, we’re coming back.” he declared.

Damian rolled his eyes.

Before he could respond, there was the sound of metal on concrete. He spun on his heel and turned as a large metal door labeled Staff Only rolled up to reveal four very angry looking men carrying guns. By some stroke of luck, they hadn’t noticed Dick or Robin yet.

“We’re leaving now.” Damian said, grabbing Richard’s hand.

He made to run back towards the exit, but Richard yelped, his hand staying behind Damian. He froze, and turned on his brother, eyes looking over him. Richard was wincing and Damian remembered the man’s ankle. It must be worse than he’d let on.

Damian cast his eyes around him for something to get them out of there safely. He stopped when he saw the go karts.

“Can you make it there?” He pointed at them.

Richard’s eyes lit up, “Yes. That’s a big yes.”

Just in case, Damian hooked an arm around Richard’s waist to help support him, and together they hurried at a not quite run for the go karts. Just as Damian was helping Richard over the barrier separating them from the karts he heard an angry yell.

He glanced up to see the men running towards them, a cacophony of voices yelling at them to stop. Damian knew they had moments before the shooting started. He shoved Richard into the nearest kart that had two seats, and ran around to fiddle with the exposed engine. His earlier examination had been brief, but enough to tell him that the karts had safety measures equipped to limit their speed. That would not do.

His fingers were fast and clever, even working on an engine he’d never worked with before. It was moments and he was throwing himself into the open chair. Thankfully, a key was in the ignition and Damian had the kart roaring to life after a moment.

Just as he revved the engine, the gunfire started.

Damian threw the kart to the side, thankful the area the karts were in was somewhat open, and made a large loop, letting the cart pick up speed as he moved.

“Robin--” Richard’s voice was a question, “Just what’s the plan here?”

They were roaring towards the plastic partitions they’d only just hopped over. Damian was confident they were flimsy enough to ram, especially at the speed they were going.

He grinned, “We are going through them. I would suggest ducking. I do not wish for you to get shot while we escape.”

“Damian,” his brother hissed, “There’s an opening to the outside behind us.”

“To an enclosed area. The walls are high there, we would be trapped. This is our best option.” He'd seen the area when entering the Bomp n' Stomp earlier.

Even as he spoke they were nearing the path of no return. The kart raced towards the partition, the men racing towards them. Damian pressed his foot harder against the pedal and then the pointed front of the go kart was slamming through the short plastic partition, breaking apart the multiple pieces that kept it together and sending them flying.

Damian could not help but grin as one piece caught a kidnapper in the side, sending him tumbling to the ground.

He wove the kart through the remaining three as they yelled and one of them got off a shot. The bullet pinged off the side of the kart.

“Whohoo!” Richard cheered as they blew past the last man and sped through the building.

Damian pulled them back into the part of the building filled with various small games. The kart shook as it shifted from tile to carpet. The sound it made changing from a flat rumble to something more muffled. At the bump, Richard winced again. Damian frowned.

“We will be exiting soon.” Damian said by way of comfort.

He could hear the rumble of feet behind him, and even the sound of another go kart having been started. Damian snorted, unless they’d modified it, he and Richard still had the advantage. To make sure, he glanced behind him.

There was only one kart chasing them down, another two seater, with both seats filled. Unfortunately for them, it did seem to be running quickly. Damian swore as it began closing the distance between them. He threw himself back against the seat as the man who wasn’t driving leveled a gun at them and fired.

The bullet sped past them by a wide margin, but the danger was still there.

“Hold on.” he told his brother and pulled the cart around one of the games, twisting through the maze of Jurassic Park simulators and skee ball machines hoping they’d shake their pursuers.

“He’s still there.” Richard said, now taking Damian’s place in watching their backs.

“Lean back, you’ll get shot.” Damian hissed, “We need only make it out the front doors.”

Richard followed his lead, just in time as more shots rang out around them. Damian caught sight of Richard's worried expression out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t have time to turn to him. He kept the cart moving forward, dodging games left and right.

At last, the doors were in front of them. Damian prayed the cart would trigger the door’s automatic response. As they sped closer and closer he started to wonder what it would be like to just plow through those too.

Then they swung open and Damian and Dick burst through.

Behind them, Damian could still hear the squeal of the pursuing kart. That didn’t matter however, as Damian’s eyes lit on the Batmobile. Father was already out, Red Robin beside him. It took them a moment to understand the extent of the chaos Damian had dragged outside, but soon they were moving too.

Damian pulled the kart around them, and heard the distinctive pop pop of something exploding. The men in the kart behind them yelled with surprise, and the sound of the kart cut off with a sudden deafness.

Feeling safe, Damian pulled his foot off the gas, slowing his own kart and turning it to drive closer to Father’s car so Richard would not have to limp far.

Turned now, they could see the other kart coated in foam. One of Drake’s newest experiments, and a successful one at that.

As they stopped, Damian grinned over at Richard, “See. As I said, we only needed to make it outside.”

Richard was grinning, and Damian found himself relieved to realize his brother was fine. Their mad dash did not seem to have resulted in his injury.

They sat in the kart as Batman and Red Robin took care of the two men in the other kart, and then moved inside to deal with the other two goons.

Damian leaned his arms on the steering wheel and gave Richard a small smile.

Richard, leaned forward to mirror him, elbow bumping against Damian’s, “Admit it, you had fun coming through there to rescue me.”

Damian considered the thought for a moment, “Never.”

“Ha! I knew you did.” Richard sat up, delighted.

“I said nothing of the like.”

“But your face did.”

“The go karts were acceptable.” Damian admitted.

Richard reached out and tugged Damian into a half hug, “Good, we’ll do go karts when we come back, and try the rock climbing wall. And I’ll win you enough tickets to get one of those giant stuffed bears.”

“Father could buy me one for less than it would take you to get those tickets.” Damian pointed out.

“That,” Richard said sternly, “is not the point. It will be a thank you, for the rescue and one of the most exciting nights I’ve had in a long time.”

Damian snorted, but leaned a little closer into his brother’s side. Watching as Batman and Red Robin led the remaining two men out of the building.

“I can accept that. I will allow you to bring me back to the Bomp ‘n Stomp when they reopen. Even if the doors are still sticky.”

#Damian Wayne #Dick Grayson #Batfamily #fanfiction #humor #fluff #this one's just fluffy you guys #kidnapping #rescue #Damian is out of his depth but that's not stopping him #Dick is having a Great Time #Precious Posts

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nicknellie · 3 years

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Anonymous requested: Alex gets hurt and ends up breaking his arm, and Willie takes care of him. It really gets Alex down because he can’t drum and feels like he let the band down and he can’t use drumming to help with his anxiety and he feels useless because he can’t do much himself. Willie helps him with stuff he can’t do and tries to help him use other ways to cope with his anxiety. Lots of overprotective and soft caring Willie.

Snap

Alex had known it was a bad idea from the very beginning. Maybe it was the glint in Reggie’s eye, or the mischievous way Luke was biting his lip as he grinned, or the way they introduced the idea with, “You’re probably going to say no,” that had tipped him off. The point was, Alex had known that it was the worst plan his bandmates had ever come up with right from the get-go.

What he didn’t know was why he agreed to go through with it.

“You’re probably going to say no,” Luke had said when he and Reggie had entered the studio that morning. Alex had been trying to set up his drum kit, but looked up as they came in. He was immediately wary of the grin on Luke’s face. “But at least hear us out.”

“I’m worried,” Alex told them, glancing between each of them.

Luke waved a dismissive hand. “You’re always worried. Listen, it’s a great idea, I promise.”

“And,” Reggie added, “we’ve already got everything set up so it’ll be a total bummer if you say no now.”

Alex frowned. “What is it?” he asked warily.

“Just come with us, bro, I swear it’s awesome!”

Luke’s enthusiasm was hard to say no to, so Alex sighed and reluctantly stood to follow them out of the studio. He didn’t like the way his friends kept giggling at each other, then glancing back at him, and giggling even more. He didn’t like how this was a spontaneous adventure that he hadn’t had any time to prepare for. He didn’t like how he had no idea what the boys were planning.

But that didn’t stop him from following them.

They walked for a while, Luke and Reggie a few steps ahead of Alex, muttering conspiratorially between themselves. Eventually, they came to the top of a hill from which Alex could see the beach in one direction and the city in the other. Luke and Reggie stood side by side, then slid apart from each other in a grand reveal, announcing, “Ta-da!”

They moved apart to uncover a shopping trolley. A rusty, grimy shopping trolley that was missing a front wheel and looked as if it wouldn’t even be safe to push around a supermarket - somehow, Alex doubted that was what Luke and Reggie wanted to use it for in any case.

“Where did you get that?” Alex asked, eyeing the trolley.

“Washed up on the beach by my house,” Reggie said excitedly. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“You could say that,” Alex muttered. “You two seriously pushed it all the way up this hill?”

“Yep,” Luke said brightly, popping the ‘p’. “It took, like, three hours because the missing wheel kept making it turn and roll back down. We got it here though!”

He and Reggie high-fived.

“Uh-huh.” Alex had a dreadful sense in his stomach that he knew exactly where this was going. “And, uh... why did you want to show it to me?”

Luke grinned. He pointed to the trolley and said, “You’re gonna get in and we’re going to push you down the hill.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!” Luke whined. “It’ll be fun!”

“I’m not concerned about it being fun, I’m concerned about it being dangerous!”

Luke scoffed and Reggie made a ‘pfffft’ sound. He slapped the side of the trolley. “This thing is perfectly safe! It’s sturdy - it survived being in the sea, remember?”

“It didn’t survive, it’s missing a wheel, which is the very thing that makes it dangerous,” Alex countered. “I’m not getting in that death-trap.”

“What if either Reggie or I go first?” Luke suggested. “You’ll see it’s safe, we can push it back up the hill, and you can have your turn.”

Alex shook his head. “You just said it took three hours to get this up here, I’m not waiting that long just to meet my certain doom.”

“There’s no doom,” Luke said.

“Alex, please,” Reggie said, breaking out the puppy-dog eyes. Alex felt his defences weaken.

And then Luke had to go and join in. BAM! Double puppy-dog eyes, both of his bandmates silently begging him to do that one simple task that would make them happy.

He sighed begrudgingly. “Fine. But if I die, you need to make sure my drum kit goes to someone who will appreciate it.”

“Gotcha,” Luke said, grinning from ear to ear. He slapped Alex’s shoulder. “Thanks, buddy.”

Against his better judgement and his choice, Alex steeled himself and clambered into the trolley. He felt the metal groan against his body weight, the cold rust digging into his bottom and back. It was probably staining his favourite pink hoodie, he thought with a grimace.

“Did you bring a helmet?” he asked, a nervous hitch in his voice. Now that he was in the trolley the hill looked a whole lot steeper.

Luke and Reggie laughed, readying themselves on either side of the trolley. Reggie said, “No. You won’t need one - we told you, it’s totally safe.”

“Are you ready?” Luke asked.

“Will it even matter if I say no?” Alex deadpanned.

“No. Okay, Reg, let’s do this. Three, two, one, go!”

Luke and Reggie, both clutching the trolley, took a great running start across the hill. As they gained momentum, Alex began feeling less and less steady and secure. He gripped the bars of the trolley for dear life; his eyes were open as they neared the edge, but only because it was an “I don’t want to look but I can’t not look” situation. As they drew ever closer to the drop, Alex felt the need to eject himself from the trolley but couldn’t make himself move.

And all of a sudden he was hurtling down the side of the hill, the trolley swerving unpredictably beneath him, running smoothly for a moment but then shooting off to the left or right with sharp turns that flipped Alex’s stomach. He collided with rocks, roots, and tree stumps that sent him and the trolley flying through the air for just a second before they landed without grace and sped down the hill once more.

Alex saw the main hazard long before he reached it but by that point it was about three minutes too late to do anything about it. As he gathered yet more speed, he found that he was headed directly towards a high barbed-wire fence. His mouth opened to scream but no noise came out.

Alex and the trolley smacked into the fence. In what Alex could only assume had looked like a spectacular acrobatic display, he was launched from the trolley and pinwheeled through the air, arms and legs star-fished around him. He landed in a heap on the other side of the fence, awkwardly jarring his arm on an unfortunately placed rock and then, because luck was not on his side, landed with the rest of his body weight on it.

Snap.

That didn’t sound good.

It didn’t feel good either. Immediately, Alex was aware that he couldn’t feel his right arm - the only sensation was a faint buzzing in it as if he had pins and needles.

He sat himself up, using his other hand for leverage, and looked at his arm. It was... not the shape an arm was supposed to be.

He had known this was a bad idea.

Six hours later, most of which had been spent in a hospital with a frantic Luke and an inconsolable Reggie, Alex had made his way to Willie’s place. The two of them were on the couch, Alex laying with his head on Willie’s lap and his face buried in Willie’s t-shirt, Willie gently carding his fingers through Alex’s hair. Alex’s right arm was wrapped in a pink plaster cast and hoisted up against his chest with a sling.

“This sucks,” he mumbled into the fabric of Willie’s shirt for what had to be the twentieth time that day.

Willie sighed. “I know, hotdog. Broken bones are never fun. But it’s only six weeks, right?”

“Six to eight,” Alex groaned. “That’s six to eight weeks where I can do pretty much nothing.”

“Hey,” Willie said gently. “Don’t give up so easily, it’s only been a few hours. I’ve broken a ton of bones skateboarding, and I know a whole bunch of fun things we can do while you’re all bandaged up.”

Alex harrumphed. “I can’t drum. So no band.”

“No playing with the band. That doesn’t mean you can’t hang out with them or go to rehearsals.”

“Great,” Alex said sarcastically. “That’s one really fun and exciting thing I can do - watch my friends have fun without me.”

“Stop it,” Willie said, voice a little firmer. Alex stopped. “They won’t be having fun without you because you’ll be there. A broken arm doesn’t stop you being their friend.”

Alex muttered to himself, “It’s stops me being useful.”

“What did you say?” Willie prompted.

Alex sighed haggardly and sat up, shuffling around to face Willie. “I said it stops me being useful. To them, to the band. I’ve let them down! We had three gigs lined up next week and now we don’t have a drummer so those will all be off. And what really sucks is that all of those gigs had managers and record execs coming to watch them, now they’re not going to see us. It’s my fault!”

Willie took his hand, the one that wasn’t strapped up to his chest with the sling. Alex felt him thread their fingers together and told himself to breathe. Breathe and look into Willie’s eyes. Calm.

“It’s not your fault, Alex,” Willie said, and as always whatever he said immediately made sense in Alex’s mind. Of course it wasn’t his fault - why would it be? “It’s nobody’s fault. The guys pressured you into getting in, you did, Julie wasn’t there to tell you all how stupid you were being, and I wasn’t there to at least offer you my helmet. We’re all a little to blame, but it’s not anybody’s fault, least of all yours.”

“I’m still letting them down,” Alex said quietly, struggling to maintain eye contact.

Willie shook his head. “You know that isn’t true. You’re Julie and the Phantoms - none of you have the ability to be disappointed in each other or let each other down. You’re like one person; if one of you is down, you all are.”

Alex was unconvinced, and it must have shown on his face because Willie sighed and continued.

“Remember last year when Reggie tried to fix his amp in the rain, got electrocuted, and then couldn’t play that school dance? So instead of getting mad at him you all took turns staying by his bedside, fetching him whatever he needed, keeping an eye on him, even helping him to the toilet and stuff like that?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “That was different. He could have died.”

“You could have died today,” Willie pointed out. Alex shuddered at the thought. “But okay. What about when Julie had a throat infection? You all started learning sign language to try and communicate with her. Sure, you all remembered that she could still hear you and that she could just write down what she wanted to say, but you were willing to learn a new language for her.”

“That’s still different!” Alex protested. He tried to throw his arms up in the air in frustration, but one was tied to his chest, so his left arm just flopped pathetically by itself.

“Why?”

“Because it’s Julie. We’d do anything for her.”

Willie fixed him with a glare full of love, unnerving and endearing at the same time.

“And they would all do anything for you too,” he said. “You know that. Tell me you know that, Alex.”

Alex swallowed thickly. “I know that,” he admitted quietly.

“And I would too,” Willie added, still gazing at Alex. “We’ve got this, hotdog.”

Finally, Alex felt the barest beginnings of a smile creeping onto his face. He squeezed Willie’s hand.

“We’ve got this.”

It was all well and good saying “we’ve got this” but the actual “getting this” part was easier said than done. It hadn’t been a day and Alex had already caved.

It had started that morning. He had woken up and been hyper aware of the cast on his arm. He could feel it like a hand clasped around his forearm, a sensation that couldn’t be shaken off or rubbed away. It had made his head tingle and he couldn’t seem to focus on much of anything.

When he’d gone downstairs, his father had tried to clap him genially on the shoulder, but being touched had felt like being suffocated. Alex hadn’t said anything, just tried to shrink away.

Then, inevitably and despite the nice greeting he had attempted to give, his father had launched into a spiel about why it was so awful that Alex had chosen to have a pink cast. It had sent his mind reeling, made his legs numb, and started his eyes watering.

So he had been feeling stressed. He had needed to get out of the house so he had gone on a walk - the nice breeze and the warm summer sun had been helpful, but there were so many noises outside. Birds chirped, bees buzzed, car horns honked, people laughed, footsteps echoed, leaves crunched, wind whistled, dogs barked, and every other noise the outside world created seemed stuck on an endless, repetitive, painful loop that attacked Alex’s ears and brain.

He could feel his anxiety beginning to spike. If one more thing touched him (in the metaphorical or literal sense) he was sure he would break.

He got a text from Willie: Going to be late but will bring a fun surprise!

Snap.

The floodgates opened and Alex began to cry. All he wanted was for things to be normal - he wanted his arm out of the cast, he wanted to drum with his band, and he wanted to see his boyfriend right now like they had planned.

So he did something stupid. He went to the Molinas’ house, let himself into the studio as he and the other boys regularly did, sat himself down beside his drum kit, slipped his cast-covered arm from the sling and began to drum.

It wasn’t the easy release it always was. It just hurt even more. Alex should have expected it; using a broken arm to whack a drum didn’t sound fun when put bluntly. But usually drumming helped so much, usually it made the tight feeling in Alex’s mind loosen. Not today.

Still, he kept drumming, because now it almost felt like he couldn’t stop.

It hurt.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there when the doors to the studio opened and Julie popped her head in. “Alex?”

Finally he let his arms fall to his sides, knackered and aching. His right arm was throbbing and there were tears running down his cheeks.

“Hey,” Julie said gently, hurrying towards him. She held her hand out, an offering for him to take it, but Alex shook his head and she withdrew it.

“Alex,” she continued. “I need you to put your broken arm back in the sling. Here, give me your drumsticks.”

He did as she said, grateful for order and instruction. He handed her his sticks, then winced as he manoeuvred his arm back into its sling.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” Julie asked softly.

Alex shrugged. How was he supposed to know?

Julie made the decision for him. “I’ll see if I can get hold of Willie.”

As she left the studio, Alex couldn’t help but laugh. Of course that would help and of course Julie knew that.

It wasn’t five minutes before Willie pushed the doors to the studio open and skated inside in one smooth move that Alex might have found impressive another time. He propped his board up against the wall and headed straight in Alex’s direction, crouching down beside him.

Alex fumbled to take Willie’s hand.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Willie said quietly. “Julie said you were drumming?”

Alex nodded.

Willie huffed an affectionate laugh. “That was a dumb thing to do.”

Alex felt a smile tug at his lips. “I know,” he croaked. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Willie said soothingly. “I know how hard this is for your. But, when your anxiety spikes we’re going to have to find other things to do in the meantime. Drumming isn’t going to do you any good.”

Alex nodded again. “I know. It hurt.”

“Do you want to head up to the hospital?” Willie asked, gently touching Alex’s broken arm where it was safely in its sling. He was probably imagining it, but Alex could have sworn that the pain went away when Willie touched it. “Make sure you’ve not done any more damage?”

“I think it’s fine,” Alex told him. Willie looked up at him, disbelieving. “I didn’t go hard, I’m not that stupid.”

“Okay then. I believe you. I’ve got something planned, but is there anything you want to do first? Or do you still need a little time to calm down?”

Alex squeezed his hand. “Can we just... I don’t know. Can you just sit with me for a while?”

Willie smiled and Alex felt his heart burst. “Of course, hotdog. Whatever you need.”

They moved to the couch and cuddled up together. Willie positioned himself so that he could easily press gentle kisses to Alex’s forehead - Alex didn’t know whether Willie had done that for his own enjoyment or for Alex’s, but he didn’t mind either way. Just having Willie there, holding him, supporting him, made him feel a whole lot better than he had before.

Alex hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he found himself yawning as he woke up. He tried to stretch his arms, then remembered one of them was bound to his chest, and awkwardly let the one arm that had moved fall to his side. He heard Willie giggle and turned to face him where he was cuddled practically beneath Alex.

“Tired, sleeping beauty?” Willie teased, brushing hair out of Alex’s face.

Alex felt his face flush. “I’m not sleeping beauty,” he said. “I’m not any princess.”

“You got that right,” Willie said, pointing to a wet patch on his own shirt. “Princesses don’t drool on their boyfriend’s shirts.”

Alex rolled his eyes and laughed a little, pushing himself into a sitting position. Willie sat up too, and pressed a quick kiss to Alex’s cheek.

“Right,” Willie said, pulling Alex to his feet. “Ready to do what I had planned?”

“Okay,” Alex said, grinning.

Willie tugged on his arm and led him out of the studio. They walked together for a while, Willie talking his ear off about this and that and everything in between. Alex was grateful for Willie all the time, but especially in times like this - times when Alex was struggling for words and wasn’t feeling quite up to talking at all, and Willie would simply know when he felt like that and do all the talking for him.

Eventually, Willie came to a stop so sudden that Alex walked straight into him. Willie laughed and clutched Alex’s hand, pointing to the building they’d stopped outside.

It was a museum, one that Willie had taken Alex to many a time before. Alex knew how much Willie loved this place - the way his face lit up when he talked about all the different exhibits was endearing and downright beautiful. Alex didn’t ‘get’ art himself, but he would never pass up an opportunity to visit the gallery with Willie.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

Willie shrugged. “I was brainstorming ways to help you combat your anxiety while drumming isn’t an option, and I remembered that they just opened a new temporary feature here. It’s all about noise being its own form of art and they’ve added an area where you can make your own.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Your own noise or art?”

“The point is that it’s both,” Willie explained, leading him inside. “And I think the way they’ve designed it could be a very effective stress-reliever. Come on.”

Willie led him through all the exhibits, wending his way through the bustling crowds with ease. He didn’t stop to talk about all the paintings and sculptures like he usually would, so Alex’s curiosity was piqued.

Willie pulled him into a room. Which was really all it was - just a room. It was relatively large with a plain white ceiling, floor, and walls (except for one which was entirely glass and showed the bright spring sunshine outside). Alex looked around for some instruction of what to do; Willie had said the exhibit was all about noise, but there was literally nothing in the room that could be used to make a sound.

“So... what do we do?” Alex asked.

Willie grinned. “You make your own noise.”

And then he screamed.

It was a long, loud, sustained note and when Willie finally finished he was grinning from ear to ear, looking absolutely exhilarated. Alex (impressed that Willie had held the note so long and now weirdly curious about his lung capacity) stared at him, dumb-founded.

“This is really what we’re supposed to do?” he asked sceptically.

Willie nodded vigorously. “Yeah, man, and it’s awesome! You just... let go! Shout all your worries away. Now you try!”

Alex nervously let out a weak little, “Ahhhhh.”

Willie laughed loudly and took hold of Alex’s shoulders. “Come on, bro, you’ve got to put some effort in. Come on, like this, ready?”

He screamed again.

Alex screamed back.

And for god knows how long, the two of them stayed together, screaming into each other’s faces, competing to see who could scream longest and loudest, and Alex hardly noticed that his worries were dissipating as he let himself be confident and have fun with Willie. The minutes ticked by into hours and they only stopped screaming when they were totally out of breath.

Willie blew his hair out of his face, eyes shining hopefully. “Feels good, right?”

“Yeah,” Alex replied, pulling him into an awkward one-armed hug. “It does.”

Alex spent the night at Willie’s, not feeling up to going home. When they woke up to Alex’s alarm the next morning, Alex felt Willie shuffle into his side, head on Alex’s shoulder, clearly not wanting to get up.

“It’s, like, five o’clock in the morning,” Willie grumbled, throwing an arm across Alex’s midriff. “I want to stay in bed.”

“We’ve hit snooze a dozen times and it’s nearly eleven a.m.,” Alex returned, smiling fondly. “I’m very sorry but it’s time to get up.”

Willie sighed and rolled himself out of bed, grumbling about Alex interrupting his dream. Alex just laughed and sat up too, automatically looking for his own wardrobe and then remembering he was at Willie’s and had nothing to wear.

“I should have headed home and grabbed some clean clothes,” he thought out loud. A moment later he was struck in the back of the head by one of Willie’s t-shirts and a pair of trousers.

“Put those on,” Willie said as he pulled on a tricolour jumper. “I’m pretty sure they’ll fit.”

Alex picked up the clothes (a tie-dye crop-top and a pair of acid wash ripped jeans) and began his attempt at getting dressed. There were many things Alex had found that were hard to do one-armed, but putting clothes on was the biggest challenge, bordering on impossible. How was he supposed to get his arm through the hole if he wasn’t supposed to use his arm?

He heard Willie giggle somewhere in front of him and was glad that the shirt jammed over his head covered up his blush.

“Need any help, hotdog?” Willie teased.

“No, no, I’ve got this,” Alex lied. He shimmied a little, trying to get the shirt to fall down over his face.

There was another quiet little chuckle, and a moment later Alex felt Willie’s cold hands on his skin as he gently maneuvered Alex’s arms and head to go through the right holes. When the shirt finally was on properly and Alex’s eyes were uncovered again, he was greeted with the lovely sight of Willie smiling down at him affectionately, eyes bright and smile wide.

Willie finished helping Alex dress, ignoring Alex’s insistence that he really could do it by himself (”I think you’ve just proved that you can’t, hotdog.”) and the two of them left the house. Willie told Alex that he had planned another something to take Alex’s mind off the cast, this time down at the beach; Alex had no idea what it could be, but didn’t find himself stressing out at the thought of not knowing.

It was strange, but it made sense. After all, having Willie there to help him over the past few days had made Alex’s life a whole lot easier. Having Willie in his life at all made it that much more enjoyable. With Willie, Alex felt safe and able to trust himself and his boyfriend. He felt free, even though he was trapped by the cast.

He was certain that whatever Willie had thought up would help him get through the pain and the anxiety, and he couldn’t wait.

#willex #willie x alex #alex x willie #willie jatp #alex mercer #julie molina #luke patterson #reggie peters #julie and the phantoms #julie and the himbos #willex fic #jatp #jatp fic #fanfiction #request #hurt/comfort #sunset curve #writing #fic

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cptnbvcks · 4 years

Note

Ok but think abt phone sex with javi (I mean it IS cannon that if you call him at work saying you want his cock in you, he'll run out of the office like it's on fire to go fuck)

dial tone (javier peña x reader)

words: 1.3k

rating: mature/explicit (18+)

summary: you decide to have some fun with javi (and murphy) after feeling a little bored while he’s at work.

warnings: phone sex, female masturbation, mild murphy tease/cuckhold-y.

a/n: its kinda short kinda hot might blueball you too i’m sorry

(gif source: @december-nimbus)

“Hey, Murph, is Javi there?”

Tucking the bulky landline receiver between his cheek and his shoulder, Murphy lifted his gaze from the growing molehill of paperwork that had slowly begun to consume the pair of crudely shoved together desks.

The Embassy was busy tonight; the hallways humming low with indistinct conversations that all seemed a little too antsy for the time of night. The white-noise drawl was loud, but not loud enough to mask the pillow-soft voice at the other end of the line. Murphy shifted the phone closer to his ear.

“He’s a little tied up right now,” Murphy offered, casting a lazy glance over to the glass paneling that separated Messina’s office from the rest of the space. He bit down the smirk that tried to work its way from his mouth to his voice as he watched Javier pinch the bridge of his nose in annoyance while mutedly listening to Messina chew him out, “Pissed off Messina again.”

A hazy little laugh bubbled from the other side of the line, drawing its end on a breathless sigh. Murphy raised a brow, lowering his gaze to the phone cord as his thoughts pinwheeled around that airy amused sound.

“I think he likes her,” your voice pulls molasses slow from your throat; slow and honeyed enough that it makes him swallow and shift the phone against his ear again, “He only pisses off people he likes.”

“Then he must love me,” Murphy rallied back, winning another chimed laugh that made him feel like he’d been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar when his partner met his gaze from behind the glass walls. Murphy straightened his back and pointed to the receiver, mouthing your name as Javier began to respectfully wave Messina off.

“Oh, I think he loves you more than he loves me, Murph,” You sigh around his nickname and fight the smile that arches your lips at the pregnant pause that suspends the air with phone static.

“If I knew any better, I might be jealous,” The words come more urgently now, catching heavy in your throat and Murphy can’t help but note that it sounds like you’re laying down. Even more so when he hears the soft fabric shuffle of sheets. His brain sputters as your words curl tighter. “Should I be jealous, Murph?”

Murphy opens his mouth, bone dry and fumbling for a response as he watches Javier swing open Messina’s door. He clears his throat and tries again.

“No, ma’am,” he manages, swapping the phone from one ear to the other as Javier shakes his head at him before adding the folder in his hands to the cascading collection already pooling over the desks. Murphy follows his partner with his eyes as the man sits back heavily in the adjacent chair and makes no explicit move to take over the line of conversation.

Murphy arches a brow at the phone, and Javier shakes his head again as he drags his typewriter closer.

A quiet hum purred through the warp of the phone line, testing the softer octaves of your vocal cords as the words pulled from your throat.

“You still there, Murph?”

“We’re a little busy out here right now, sweetheart,” Murphy offers, his tone clipped and quick as he stared at Javier, who was doing a pointed job of working, “Want me to pass on a message—?”

The words abruptly staggered to a halt in his mouth.

Did he just… hear you moan?

“I don’t think you can pass on this— this message, Stevie.”

Oh.

Your words are swallowed and thick and the sudden pause in Murphy’s words draws Javier’s attention just as the man juts the receiver out across the table for him to take. Murphy tips his head and shoots him a look that says you better take this.

The next voice you hear is Javier’s. Heady and deep and razing warm from his chest with that baritone that made your cunt clench with emptiness.

“Baby—” He exasperates into the receiver, his voice laden and heavy as he pins Murphy with an irate expression that quickly falters when you wrap your lips around his name and gasp for it like you’ve been holding your breath from the minute you called in.

“Javi— Javi, baby—”

Your words are light and triumphant and they hang in the air of little quick gasps that sound far too loud and too intimate for the ugly glaring fluorescents of the unquiet Embassy. He looks away from Murphy then, who’s making a point of distracting himself by tapping out a cigarette from its carton, and hunches down in his chair to shoulder the room.

You whine again, a high and tight sound that makes his cock stir to life in his jeans. Javi casts his eyes across the room, lowering his voice when he speaks with those abrasive words masked with the thin veil of both threat and intrigue. “What do you think you’re doing, mija?”

“I just— mm, fuck— I miss you, Javi. Needed t-to hear your voice—”

The sheets shuffle again, faster this time, and Javier doesn’t need to see you to know that it’s the sound of your feet kicking off the covers. He doesn’t need to be there to know that it’s your fingers curling and twisting deep in that pretty little pussy of yours that’s already so wet and aching and weeping for him.

Fuck, maybe if the Embassy was quieter he’d be able to hear every soaked noise it made while you listened to him speak. Instead, he presses the receiver closer to his ear.

“I’m working, baby. I can’t—”

You choke out a pathetic little noise then — a simpering tone that glimmers in the bedroom air every fucking time he digs the pad of his thumb up against your soft clit. He knows the way your thighs jolt every time he does it; the way it pulls the air, gasping and empty, right from your lungs.

“Then put Murphy back on the line.”

The baseless taunt drops into the pit of Javier’s stomach and coils hot and insidious and you’ve placed the checkmate that’s gotten him moving immediately. Murphy looks up from where he’s been pretending to read a Centra Spike transcript, watching now as Javier snuffs out his cigarette and impatiently yanks out the half-typed page from the typewriter reel.

“Say that again, sweetheart. See what happens.”

Your cunt bottoms out at the warning; clenches wetly around your curled fingers until your hips instinctively roll harder into your palm. Your exhale catches clearly on the other end of the line and Javier stands up with enough suddenness that his chair skitters back across the tiled floor.

“Javi?” Murphy voices his concern but Javier’s more focused on the hasty words that begin to fall from your mouth, and he knows you’re on the edge of something devastating with enough wickedness in you to try to drag him down too.

“Do you think he’d help me?” You croon, panting quick around every syllable as you listen to Javier’s breathing hitch to match your own, “Do you think he knows that I’ve got two fingers curled up in my pussy, thinking about you, Javi? I—I think he heard me. You know how loud I get s-sometimes. How wet—”

The line goes dead before you finish the thought.

“I’m heading out,” he blurts out to Murphy, dropping the phone into its cradle before snatching up his leather jacket from the back of his seat and yanking it on, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Javi.”

There’s a note of amusement in Murphy’s voice and Javier pauses, one foot already ascending the step leading to the main exit. He stops and turns, watching as Murphy tucks his cigarette back into his mouth and pours himself a glass from the half-empty whiskey bottle.

“Did she say something to you?”

Murphy’s brow lifted as he looked from Javier’s pointed finger before meeting his half-accusing stare. He leaned back into his chair until it groaned in protest and raised his hands defensively.

“Not a word.”

—

Tag List

@sophiria @imspillingcoffee @plumbuck @romqnofff @sexygaypalpatine @elisaa-shelby @readermia @the-dream-catch3r @pinkmoontribe-blog @madkingcrowley @whenimaunicorn @petalduck @fairylightsandchai @osejn @mandowhoreian @letdecemberburninflames @chickens-are-velociraptors @naiomiwinchester @peregrinestook @space-helen @virtuousburden @daddehhmando @thechampmylove @kiame-sama @knightheartcd @lustriix @deviantloving-detective @headsindreams @sebastianstanslefteyebrow @sgtbookybarnes @celestiaalbliss @coonflix @thetrappednerd @brooklymw @the-omni-princess @sav-a-nna @actuallyanita @equalstrashflavoredtrash @claynarwale @pedrolovebot @mermaid-seachelle @sasha1005 @cafescrema @otherthingsinhead @maia-hocane @thatoneemosithlord @whenimaunicorn @ah-callie @whataenginerd @motherswarrior @irishleesh93

#inbox #anonymous #javier pena #javier peña #javier pena x reader #javier pena smut #javier pena fic #narcos fic #pedro pascal #narcos #idk tf else to tag this #myfic #steve murphy #steve murphy x reader

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scapegrace74-blog · 3 years

Text

The Second First Christmas

A/N Despite the fact that I’m posting it after Boxing Day, this little fic is about Metric Jamie and Claire celebrating their first Christmas as a couple. It is unadulterated fluff, and in keeping with the season of giving, I’m going to give this an Explicit rating. You’re welcome.

With special thanks to @lady-o-ren, for Jamie’s gift idea!

All other parts of the Metric Universe are available on my AO3 page.

December 24, 2018, Spitalfields, London, England

Claire could hear her phone vibrating loudly on the metal shelf inside her duty locker. Overcoming fatigue so severe it blurred her vision, she entered her combination and yanked open the door, thumbing the screen just before the call went to voicemail.

How did he do it? Jamie had an uncanny, and frankly slightly unsettling, ability to guess her whereabouts, even remotely. The past week he had found her in the massive Spitalfields Market merely on the hunch that she would be craving sushi after her Pilates class. At one point she’d found his prescience disturbing, but now it soothed her. Someone cared for her enough, knew her well enough, to plot the passage of her days on the virtual map of his mind. And that someone was on the line.

“You’ve reached the voicemail for Claire Beauchamp’s circadian rhythm. Press One if you’re a cortisol suppressant, Two if you’re an espresso machine, or Three if you’re Claire’s boyfriend, last seen in the flesh prior to the winter solstice.”

Jamie’s low rumbling chuckle filled her ear.

“Ye’re verra funny for a lass goin’ on twenty-four hours wi’out sleep, Sassenach. How was yer shift?”

Having worked most holidays in the A&E since graduating nursing school, Claire knew they went one of two ways: either complete bedlam, or utter boredom. This one had been the latter, for which she was thankful.

“Surprisingly calm, but that means no lovely adrenaline to keep me awake. I may sleepwalk into the Thames on my way home. Are you at the station already?”

“Aye, jus’ starting my shift. Can ye be at the main entrance of the hospital in five minutes? I’ll call ye an Uber.”

“Jamie, that’s really not necessary. I’m quite capable of walking...”

“Claire...” he interrupted, and needn’t say anything more. They’d had numerous conversations and minor confrontations since becoming a couple over what Jamie termed her “wee addiction to self-sufficiency”. She was trying to learn to accept help when it was offered, but it was an iterative process.

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that. Will I see you tomorrow morning before I go back on duty?”

Both Jamie and Claire were working extra hours over the holidays to offset the cost of refurnishing their flat. Every minute spent together was therefore doubly precious.

“Aye, I’ll wake ye when I get in an’ we can celebrate our second first Christmas t’gether by tryin’ tae keep the other awake long enough tae open our presents.”

She smiled, but it morphed into a yawn.

“Get some rest, Sassenach. And Claire,” he added in a serious tone, “t’would be a fine gift tae find ye in my bed, preferably naked, when I come home on Christmas morn.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she husked, suddenly much more awake.

***

There was a puff of cool air and then the Earth moved. Straining to hold onto slumber, Claire rolled away from the disturbance, gripping the blanket beneath her chin. A low chuckle preceded a solid warmth radiating along the entire length of her spine. Something bristly abraded her shoulder and she flinched away.

“Has anyone told ye ye look like a wee hedgehog when ye sleep, Sassenach?”

“I’m fairly confident they haven’t,” she retorted, rolling onto her back and stretching before opening her eyes. The room was mostly dark, but Jamie’s auburn curls glowed in the dim lamplight escaping their living room. His bare shoulders were humid and pink from the shower. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Gone four. We have a few hours afore ye have tae be back at the A&E, aye?”

“Mmmm,” she hummed affirmatively, caught up in tracing the ligatures of Jamie’s upper arm.

“Good. That should leave us jus’ enough time.”

“Just how many presents are we exchanging?” Claire laughed, mesmerized by the eager passage of Jamie’s eyes over her face. The hand that wasn’t bracing his head aloft began a lazy exploration beneath the blankets, touching her naked skin so softly that it almost tickled.

“Only two. An’ the first one’s already unwrapped.”

“How fortuitous,” she teased before leaning upwards to capture his waggish lips in a warm introductory kiss. “Merry Christmas,” she murmured as they parted some time later.

“An’ tae ye as well, Sassenach. Ye canna imagine how many times I thought of ye t’night, yer beautiful skin warm against my sheets.” Jamie’s free hand was on the move again, firmer now along the contours of her body as it came alive to his touch.

“Slow night, then?” she gasped as his knuckle found her nipple, slackened with sleep.

“Painfully so.”

There was no further conversation for a time, mouths being employed far more enjoyably. Four months of intimacy had bridged the span from friends to lovers, replacing hesitation with ardour. They were still learning each other’s tells; when to lead and when to follow, how to ask and how to demand. It was a giddy education for them both.

Tonight, Jamie’s fatigue and drawn-out anticipation left him shaking with want, a sensation akin to sharing a bed with an earthquake. His broad torso was outlined in the light from the door as he knelt between her thighs, lust pinwheeling like sparklers in his eyes. Fortunately, condoms were no longer a necessity after they both produced clean blood tests and Claire had an IUD implanted. So when he slid into her body, there was nothing but the needy clasp of flesh on flesh. Her sigh of pleasure mingled with Jamie’s groan of relief as they began their dance.

“Yer breasts, mo nighean donn,” Jamie growled past the iron clench of his jaw. She dragged her pupils down from the back of her eyelids to observe the twin objects in question, undulating in time to their meeting and parting.

“Touch them for me,” Jamie commanded.

Aware that her every movement was being minutely observed, she made a show of arching her ribs and running her hands first beside, then below, and finally between her breasts.

“Seadh, mo ghaol.” The words snuck unbidden between Jamie’s strained lips. She didn’t have the Gaihldig, but his meaning was clear. Go on. So go on she did, dragging fingernails over the creased flesh of each areola before giving both nipples a sudden pinch. Whatever tectonic fluctuations her actions caused, Jamie felt them, for he let out an ecstatic whimper. A worried furrow now marred his brow. Her fluent eyes read the desperation written on his face. He didn’t have long, and he needed her to go before him.

Her right hand drifted down to where they were joined. His cock was thoroughly coated in her moisture as it emerged from her body. Wetting her fingertips, she began to trace the intricate geometry of self-pleasure against her flesh. Breathy moans filled the air. Jamie’s teeth were bared in a snarl of panicked concentration. She wasn’t going to overtake him in the wire sprint to the finish, she realized.

“Do it, Jamie.” His crazed glance snapped upward to meet her own certain one. Doubt clouded the seascape of his irises. “God, please,” she begged. They’d spoken of it. A fantasy. A mental titillation not yet brought to life.

Resolution came just in time. Slipping from her heat, he grasped himself and with two hard strokes erupted all over her skin with a hoarse cry, anointing the final acceleration of her fingers as she echoed his climax with a convulsion and a sob.

Minutes later, they lay side by side, still recovering their breath.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Claire warned. “We still need to exchange gifts.”

“Greedy wee thing,” Jamie groaned, already halfway to slumber.

***

A shared shower and two cups of strong coffee later, they sat on their new sofa. Claire’s carefully wrapped gift for Jamie lay on the coffee table before them.

“I can’t help but notice that there’s nothing under our tree for me, Fraser.”

“Och, ye mean ye expect me tae serve ye and give ye a wee present, Sassenach. Ye truly are greedy,” he groused dramatically. Standing, he extended his hand and confused, Claire allowed him to lead her towards her bedroom. For a moment she considered that he might actually be taking her back to bed. As he turned on the light she understood his intention.

As a lifelong wanderer, Claire could count on the fingers of one hand her precious material possessions. Her mother’s emerald earrings. Her father’s pocket watch. A jade fish from the Cat Street night market in Hong Kong, a lucky talisman she carried in her pocket for every test and exam. And a beautiful antique print of Persepolis left to her by her Uncle Lamb. All but this last had survived their apartment fire unscathed, but the water and smoke damage to its parchment had been irreparable. Or so she had believed.

“Jamie,” she gasped upon seeing the lithograph once again mounted in its frame on her wall. “But... how?”

“Well, I willna bore ye with the details, but suffice it tae say that there’s an antiquarian o’er in Bermondsey who can work miracles. There’s still a wee bit o’ smudging near the edges, but I reckon it adds to its character,” he explained.

“A palimpsest,” she said, taking his hand. At his questioning look, she explained, “when one story is written overtop of an older one. This print is a remembrance of my Uncle Lamb and his love for me. And now, when I look at it, I’ll be reminded of your love as well.”

“Aye, just so,” he agreed.

***

Claire was unaccountably nervous as Jamie began to unwrap her gift. She’d felt certain she’d picked just the right thing for him; personal without being sappy, meaningful without being extravagant. But with eyes still misty from the thoughtfulness of his present to her, she was having doubts.

“Tis rather heavy,” Jamie observed as he lifted the rectangular package onto his lap. His eyes were alight with childlike glee, which was a gift unto itself.

“A chess set!” His smile was genuine, but Claire’s heart plummeted. What kind of woman bought her lover a chess set? She began to stammer.

“I... ummm... I thought you could invite your friend John over to play. You mentioned missing the challenge, and ummm....” she broke off, floundering, but Jamie paid her no heed. He was lifting each wooden piece from its velvet resting place, inspecting its shape with a look of utter fascination.

“Where did ye find this, Claire?” he asked at last.

“Oh, uhh, online, actually. It’s from a store in Inverness, but of course I wasn’t able to...”

“It’s Culloden,” Jamie interrupted.

“Errr, yes. I thought, you know, a chessboard is a tactical battlefield. And with you being Scottish and your family’s Jacobite history...”

“Claire, this is the most amazing chess set I’ve e’er seen. Look here. See this wee knight? Tis a Scotch Hussar. An’ the white king is the Duke of Cumberland.” Jamie’s finger traced the words and images carved on the plinth of each piece, going on and on about the clans represented by the tacksmen pawns and his own grandsire, Lord Lovat, symbolized by a tiny strawberry carved on the base of an ebony rook. Claire’s ribs began to loosen their vice-grip on her lungs. Maybe she hadn’t horribly miscalculated after all.

“Sassenach, thank ye. Truly. Tis a grand gift.” The chess set had finally been set aside and they sat facing each other, hands gently caressing as the winter sun slowly warmed the room in tones of blush and grey.

“You’ve very welcome. I’m so relieved that you like it,” she replied with candour.

“I love it. But no’ half sae much as I love ye.”

“I love you too.” It was only after the words had taken flight from her lips that she realized she had never said them aloud before. Not to Jamie, whose sudden stillness indicated that he had heard her. It was too late, then, to pluck her soaring words from the air and cage them once again inside her heart. Too afraid to meet his gaze, she concentrated on smoothing her palms over the backs of his hands in a hypnotic rhythm.

His response, when it came, was whispered into the secret stronghold they had built together.

“There’s naught on Earth tae compare wi’ the gift of yer heart, mo nighean donn. I want ye tae ken that I shall treasure it, an’ ne’er give ye reason tae regret placing it with me for safekeeping.”

Jamie lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them both sweetly. Still looking down, she nodded her acceptance of his pledge, a single tear escaping from the tip of her nose.

It was well past sunrise by the time Claire rose from their bed a second time, kissing her sleeping lover goodbye before creeping out of their flat and into the gemstone light of a perfect Christmas morning.

#my writing #outlander

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kelyon · 3 years

Text

Golden Rings 22: An Offer

The Storybrooke sequel to Golden Cuffs

Lacey has a meeting with Mayor Mills

Read on AO3

Content warning for verbal abuse and sexual fear

The clacking of Lacey’s heels against the sidewalk was music to her ears. She felt right, dressed like a whore and parading herself down Main Street. After her conversation with Mayor Mills, the stupid voice in the back of her head was quiet. Finally, things were back to normal.

Now it didn’t matter that Mr. Gold had been acting like a stranger since October. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want her, that he was fucking somebody else. She didn’t need him. She didn’t have to be “Mrs. Gold” in order to get what she wanted out of life. All that bastard did was pay her. He didn’t own her. He’d given up that privilege months ago. She didn’t have to belong to him. There were lots of other people out there. Mayor Mills wanted to help her. Mayor Mills wanted her.

At least, she was pretty sure she did. It was hard to tell. Lacey had never had a woman look at her the way Mayor Mills did sometimes. It was a sharp, laser-focused look. A look that cut her to the bone and then began to saw into her marrow. Like everything Lacey was, everything she had ever been or had ever dreamed of being, was laid bare for Mayor Mills’ approval.

Mr. Gold used to look at her like that.

Lacey dug her nails into her palms. Or maybe she was an idiot. Maybe she had been imagining the little signs. Maybe the mayor of Storybrooke would try to help anybody she came across in town, offer them rides in her sporty black Mercedes-Benz. Maybe she would arrange an after-hours meeting with any married woman who called her up. Maybe it was a public service.

Or maybe not.

She remembered this feeling, this knowing-but-not-knowing. The anticipation. The unanswered questions. The tension gave her a thrill. A thrill she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Maybe that was why it was so easy to lie when she walked into the pawn shop.

Mr. Gold looked up from his inventory book when he heard her. His eyes were cautious. Afraid? Was this sad little coward really afraid of her? Maybe that was why it was so easy to grin at him, to reassure him with bright eyes and a lilting voice.

“I wasn’t sure what you were doing for lunch,” she chirped. “Want me to pick up something from Granny’s?”

The corners of his mouth lifted up. It was almost a smile. “No thank you, Mrs. Gold. I brought leftovers from home today.”

She nodded, and tapped her fingers against the counter in front of him. How many times had he fucked her against these display cases? How many times had she dropped to her knees behind the cash register while the shop was still open? He would challenge her to hurry, to suck him off before a customer walked in on them. He told her he would beat her black and blue if she failed.

What kind of things would Mayor Mills want her to do?

“Hey, I’m sorry about this morning,” Lacey lied. “I’ve just been really stupid and emotional lately.”

“You’re not stupid,” Mr. Gold said softly. “I know I haven’t made things easy for you. I’m sorry about that.”

A plastic smile was a wonderful talent. She was used to using it on other people, but now Mr. Gold was as easy to fool as everyone else.

“It’s not your fault,” she said sweetly, even though she was ready to spit acid in his face. “I just needed some time to myself this morning. But I feel better now. Later today I’m gonna get my hair done. I scheduled an appointment for around five.”

Easy as it was to lie, there was a specific delight in letting him get the wrong idea from entirely factual information. He had taught her how to do that. She would go to Janine’s and get her hair styled. And then she would have her appointment with Mayor Mills at five o’clock on the dot.

And he just nodded, just went along with it. Idiot. “The shop will be closed by the time you’re done. I can pick you up at the salon.”

She wrinkled her nose. Playful, casual. Not a care in the world. “No, I don’t know how long I’ll be, and the weather looks like nothing but blue skies. Besides, you’ll want to start supper. What are we having tonight?”

He began to ramble on about spring onions and fricasseeing, while Lacey counted the hours until her appointment at City Hall.

****

Officially, the city offices closed at 4 PM, but everybody knew that Mayor Mills stayed as late as she needed to keep the town running. Everyone admired her devotion, but pitied how often she had to leave her sweet little boy unsupervised. Rumor had it that was why Henry was so troubled, why he kept hanging around shady characters like Sheriff Swan, his birth mother. But his real mother was doing the best anyone could under such circumstances. Henry had appointments with Dr. Hopper several nights a week to keep his moods under control.

Why do you know so much about Regina’s life? Why is that woman the center of the universe in this town? Think about it!

Of course the voice was back. Lacey wasn’t sure if she wanted a stiff drink or a total lobotomy. Whatever would get it to shut up.

City Hall was quiet, that was part of the trouble. The empty hallway echoed so much she could hear her heart beating along with the sound of her footsteps. The voice always started jabbering at her during moments of stillness, moments when she should have been at peace.

She couldn’t tell if City Hall was serene or creepy. Like most buildings in the rich part of New Town, the design was sleek and modern. The interiors were stark white trimmed in black--plaster walls and gleaming tile floors. Right now, it had the terrible oddness of a place that was supposed to be filled with people, but wasn’t.

At this late hour, the fluorescent lights were dimmed. During the day the brightness was intimidating, but long evening shadows didn’t inspire confidence either. The doors lining the hall were a fake wood laminate, so dark they were almost black. The only other color came from the occasional piece of corporate art hanging up on the walls. Black and white photos of Storybrooke, all in frames as red as blood.

This is a bad place. You need to leave!

“Shut up,” she hissed. She would try not to tell Mayor Mills about the voice right away. No need to let the mayor think she was crazy. Besides, if all this went right, Lacey would feel a lot better very soon.

The door to the mayor’s office was ajar, but Lacey still knocked on the ebony frame.

“Come in,” Mayor Mills’ voice was brusque. For a split-second, fear clenched at Lacey’s stomach. She should listen to the voice in her head and run! Run away from this place that felt like a haunted house, run back home to Mr. Gold or to her father or to Sheriff Swan or anyone but Regina!

But she didn’t.

All Lacey did was adjust her purple bustier and walk in.

“Close the door behind you.” Mayor Mills didn’t look up from her paperwork.

Lacey did as she was asked--did as she was told. Her pulse quickened to be obeying orders again.

Like the rest of City Hall, the mayor’s office was nothing but black and white. The only difference was the clutter of prints and patterns. The wallpaper, the curtains, the upholstery on the conference table chairs--they were all a different print, but they were all monochrome. There was no illusion of serenity here. The room looked designed to disorient.

Even the stone floor was inlaid with black and white. An outline of a circle took up most of the space between the door and the desk. The circle was black, with tapered black flags coming out from the center. It looked like a pinwheel, or a clock, or something a bad guy would use to hypnotize someone in a cartoon.

Without any other instructions, Lacey decided to stand in the middle of the circle. She waited, at the point where black and white met and disappeared into each other.

Mayor Mills stayed at her desk. After a few more signatures, she set her pen down in a drawer and began to stack the papers neatly into a shiny black file folder. So she was meticulous. Lacey could appreciate that.

She kept waiting. The mayor didn’t look at her until the desk--a white slab of polished stone set on top of two carved stone pillars--was empty.

“You were seven minutes early,” she said at last.

Lacey swallowed and kept her hands at her sides. “Mr. Gold says that punctuality is the virtue of princes, Madame Mayor.”

One perfectly outlined, jet-black eyebrow raised on Mayor Mills’ forehead. “Mrs. Gold, if you’re looking for a prince, I don’t think I can be of any help to you.”

Would it be okay to laugh? Or would Mayor Mills think that was impertinent? Lacey just pressed her lips together and said nothing.

“Do you want to tell me what you are looking for, Mrs. Gold?”

Now she opened her mouth, but she didn’t have the words to answer.

Rumple. Rumple, help me! Rumple!

“R--r--really, I… I don’t know if I can put it into words, Madame Mayor.”

Mayor Mills gave her a considering look. She stayed at her desk, but leaned back in her black leather office chair. “Sit down.”

Two black and silver chairs sat in front of the desk. Lacey put her purse down in one and perched on the edge of the other.

“Would you like something to eat?” Standing up, Mayor Mills went to the conference table that took up most of the space on the right-hand side of the room. A large white bowl--ceramic, and shaped so that it looked like a collection of bleached, dead coral--was full of apples. All of them were as red as blood. The mayor took two and held one out to Lacey. “I often find that when I need to think, one of my prize-winning Honeycrisp apples always helps me focus on what’s most important.”

Lacey took the apple and held it in her hands. If she had seen this in a grocery store, she would have sworn that it was a Red Delicious. But of course the mayor would know her own apples. She had grown apples since she was a little girl. The tree that grew these ones was right outside the window behind the desk.

“Are you going to thank me?” The mayor was quiet, but it was the quiet of a viper about to strike.

“Yes,” Lacey said automatically. “Yes, I’m so sorry, Madame Mayor. Thank you for the apple. And for your time. I--I know you’re busy.”

“I am,” Mayor Mills agreed. Behind her desk, she pulled open a drawer and took out a silver knife. There was a design carved into the handle, Lacey couldn’t tell if it was an apple or a heart. After walking back to the front of the desk and leaning against the edge, the mayor began to cut into her apple. “There’s a lot of trouble brewing right now in Storybrooke. But I’ll make time for you, Mrs. Gold.”

“Why?” Lacey muttered. “I’m just a cheap, trashy slut.”

Grinning, the mayor took a slice of her apple. She chewed, swallowed, licked the juice off her red lips. “Is that what Mr. Gold told you to think of yourself?”

“Yes,” she whispered, looking down at the apple in her lap. She had said the words before to people, said them with a smile, like they were an honor. She had puffed up her own performance like a balloon. Only now she had popped, and there was nothing left of her but tattered shreds of rubber.

Lacey felt something cold on the bottom of her chin. Mayor Mills held the flat edge of the knife against her skin and lifted her gaze until they were eye to eye. Sitting down, she was looking up at the mayor. “Is Mr. Gold in charge of you, dear?”

She blinked. “I--He was. But I don’t want him to be anymore.”

“Did something happen?”

“Yes.” Lacey wanted to look down again, but the mayor hadn’t released her yet. “He--he cheated on me. And he’s been keeping secrets from me. And--and he’s just different, I don’t know how to explain it, but I hate it. I hate it, Madame Mayor!”

Mayor Mills took the knife away, and cut herself another slice of apple. She smiled. “He’s not the man you married.” She seemed almost smug to say it. “So now you’re looking for someone who can take his place. Someone who can remind you of why you were put in this world.”

“Yes!” Absurdly, Lacey felt her eyes begin to well with tears. Those were the words she had been looking for! She had been so right to come here. Mayor Mills knew exactly how to make everything right again! “I--I hope you’re not offended or anything. That I thought of you first when I wanted to find someone who would--would treat me the way I like to be treated.”

“The way you deserve to be treated, you mean.” Her voice was so low, so dark and so dangerous. “You cheap, trashy slut.”

It was like her heart had been ripped out of her chest and she was just perverted enough to love it. Repeating the same words that had just caused her shame, rubbing them in her face. This was exactly the kind of pain she had been looking for. Mayor Mills was brilliant.

She wanted to kiss her boots.

Lacey looked up at the mayor, at the way her crimson dress clung to her curves. Her silhouette was an absolute hourglass, tapering down into legs wrapped in tasteful nylons. So much classier than Lacey’s whorish fishnet stockings.

Mayor Mills’ eyes were dark and intense. Black, where Mr. Gold’s were brown. Her makeup was dramatic but flawless. Her lips were as red as the apple she was eating, her teeth as white as its flesh.

Lacey had never felt so small before, not in front of another woman. Not in front of anyone but Mr. Gold. She looked down. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper, a breath. “What can I do? In order to deserve you?”

The mayor’s laugh was rich and throaty. It sounded like red wine at a midnight feast. She set down her apple and her silver knife and held Lacey firmly by the jaw with her own silky-smooth hands.

“Let’s make sure we understand one another, Mrs. Gold: You don’t deserve me. You can’t deserve me. Nothing you could ever do would be enough to get you even close to my level. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Lacey whispered. She couldn’t move. Fear and arousal were too overpowering. “Yes, Madame Mayor.”

“Good.” She took her hand away and went behind her desk. “You know, you’re actually a very lucky girl. Until quite recently, I was content with the submissive I had. But then he… disappointed me, and we had to part ways.”

You killed that poor man, you vile--

“So!” Lacey said, too loudly. “Are we agreed then? Will you take me on as a ‘submissive’?”

Mayor Mills looked at her from her office chair. Her gaze was steady and unblinking. “Do you think you can submit to me? Even though I’m not your husband?”

“Yes,” she said. “At least, I’d like to try.”

“Have you ever served a woman before, dear?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “No, of course you haven’t, not properly. Well, I’ll warn you, we’re not like men. We’re not easy. There’s no one-and-done climax while you lie back and think of England.”

Lacey opened her mouth. Her instinct was to defend Mr. Gold, to say that sex with him had never been like that. But that wasn’t anything Mayor Mills wanted to hear.

“I’m going to demand a lot more of you than a man would,” the mayor went on. “I’m not satisfied by anything but perfection. And the cocks I use never go soft.”

She shifted in her seat. Were these threats or promises? “I would like to satisfy you, Madame Mayor,” she said softly. “I would like to please you.”

The mayor smiled again. “Of course you would,” she purred. “I think everyone in this town understands the benefits of having a happy mayor.” Her eyes flickered over Lacey’s body. “Are you wearing anything underneath that ugly skirt?”

A flash of heat went through her body. Partially it was the shock and pleasure at the sudden shift in the conversation. But there was also a bit of embarrassment. Lacey liked this skirt--black vinyl with blue tulle ruffles underneath. Was it really ugly?

“Well?” Mayor Mills said patiently.

“Oh! I--yes. A thong. It’s purple, like my bustier.”

“Mmm.” The mayor smiled like a cat with a bluebird in its paw. “Well, that I simply must see.”

Lacey sprang to her feet. She moved to unzip the tight skirt, but then she got an idea. “May I take off my blouse as well?”

“Oh, if you insist.” Leaning back in her chair, the mayor picked up her knife and cut off another slice of apple. She ate it, while Lacey stripped down to her lingerie and folded her clothes neatly on the conference table.

Then she stood in the center of the circle again, in front of the mayor’s desk, wearing nothing but purple silk, black lace, high heels, and jewelry.

Looking at her, Mayor Mills crunched into the last bite of her apple, then threw the core into the trash.

“Turn around,” she ordered. “Slowly.”

Lacey obeyed. God, this was amazing. Under the mayor’s scrutiny, every inch of her felt alive. This was what she was made for. This was the reason she existed in this world.

“You're groomed, at least. And it looks like you have some marks,” the mayor said coolly. “Am I safe in assuming they’re not recent?”

“No--I mean yes. They are not recent. Mr. Gold hasn’t touched me since October.”

“I imagine that would be frustrating,” she smirked. “For both of you. Come closer.”

Lacey stood directly in front of the desk. It was like she was here on official business, like she was going to ask for funding to re-open the library or something.

“Bend over, with your elbows on the desk. Lean forward until that pert little ass of yours sticks up in the air like a bitch in heat. I’m sure you’re familiar with the position. Keep your head up, but your eyes lowered. Don’t look at me.”

She did the best she could, remembering that the mayor was only satisfied by perfection. Once she was settled into place, she kept her eyes downcast. Her head was spinning. For some reason, it was hard to breathe.

Then Lacey felt the mayor’s hands on her throat.

She gulped, but didn’t move. Do the brave thing. And it wasn’t that she was afraid of Mayor Mills. But the movement had been so sudden, so unexpected that it caught her off guard. And the mayor did have a very tight grip.

Her hands weren’t cold, but Lacey would have been hard-pressed to call the touch warm. A better word would have been to call the touch… proprietary. Appraising. She was inspecting the goods before she made a claim on them.

Obediently, Lacey kept her eyes down while the mayor touched her. She couldn’t see her face. She heard her chuckle as her fingers explored the skin of her neck.

“All these little scars here look like you lost a fight with a rose bush. How did you get them?”

You gave them to me, you bitch! You and your dragon! She made thorns grow into my skin while you made me fuck you!

“I don’t remember,” Lacey said. Honestly, she didn’t remember having scars on her throat. “I don’t think Mr. Gold gave them to me.”

“Hmm.” Despite Lacey’s ignorance, Mayor Mills sounded pleased. Her hand moved from Lacey’s neck down to the upper edge of her bustier. There was enough space between the cloth and Lacey’s skin that the mayor could have slid inside and copped a feel. But all she did was trace her fingers over the mounds of cleavage and pinch.

“Ow!” Lacey yelped, but stayed braced against the desk. It was a little shameful how quickly she reacted. But a sharp pinch could hurt more than a spanking and she was out of practice. Besides, Mr. Gold always liked her to be vocal. He liked to know exactly how much pain he was causing.

The mayor rubbed at the sore patch of skin and gradually expanded her touch so that she cupped the whole of Lacey’s breast.

“Oh poor thing,” she cooed. “I’m just surprised to see that they’re real. Of course, it would be a waste of Mr. Gold’s money if you paid for tits and these were the best you got.”

The mayor emphasized her words with a sharp twist, digging her long nails into the soft flesh.

Lacey gasped in pain. The heat of it started at the mayor’s hand, coursed through all the nerves in her body, and eventually settled between her legs. The gasp turned into a whine, and then a moan.

“Good girl,” Mayor Mills said quietly. “But remember, slut, this is a public building. I can’t have you defiling these hallowed halls with your grunts and groans. You disgusting animal.”

Pressing her lips together, Lacey tried to swallow her hungry noises.

“Ugh.” She could imagine the mayor rolling her eyes. She could imagine the disdain, the contempt on her face. Lacey was so worthless. And now she had finally found someone who understood that she was worthless, who would treat her like she was worthless.

God, she was so wet.

“Here.” The mayor took Lacey’s apple from where she had set it down earlier. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you refusing to eat this. That was exceptionally rude. Ungrateful, even. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s ingratitude.”

“I’m sor--” She began to apologize, but as soon as her mouth opened, Mayor Mills had shoved in the apple. Lacey’s teeth broke through the red skin and she tasted the sour-sweet juice on her tongue. After only a moment of having the apple in her mouth, she felt the juice dripping down onto her chin. It mingled with her saliva and made her a slobbery mess.

“Better.” Now Mayor Mills’ voice was gentle, sweet. She was happy. It was good to make her happy.

Lacey heard her footsteps move around the desk. She couldn’t see the mayor, and she couldn’t make any noise. Apple flooded her senses of taste and smell. All she could do was hear. And feel.

The mayor was behind her. Manicured nails scraped at the exposed flesh of Lacey’s ass. She would have made a noise, to show how much her body liked the attention, but the apple was an excellent gag.

“You know, I can smell how wet you are, you tramp.” Her hands rested on either one of Lacey’s hips. “You stink. You’re filthy. You’re a disgrace.”

Unable to moan, Lacey shivered. Her hips rocked against the desk for a minute, until Mayor Mills dug her nails in and she stopped.

“Why do you even wear panties?” She plucked at the straps of her thong. “You always soak right through them. Every time I walk by you, you reek of pussy. You needy, greedy little cunt.”

She couldn’t stop herself. She jerked up, pushed against the desk in a desperate search for any kind of friction.

“Wriggling like a worm,” the mayor sneered. “You’re not even really a person, are you? You’re just a sex machine, like a junkie looking for a fix. You’re nothing but your need. Just a trio of fuckholes, desperate to be filled.”

When had Lacey started crying? She was bent face down on the empty desk. The apple in her mouth was the only thing that kept her face from pressing against the cold stone. Her hands were balled into fists on either side of her. She didn’t dare move her arms.

Everything the mayor had said echoed in her mind until she felt the vibrations of the words in her body. Her flesh trembled and shook. Her cunt clenched and it didn’t matter that it had nothing to clench against. She just wanted. Her body wanted...

“Don’t you dare!” Mayor Mills roared. “I forbid you to come. Don’t you--”

But then there was silence.

Desperate to obey, Lacey tried to stop her orgasm. She had done that often for Mr. Gold. There was a trick to it--pretty much the same thing as stopping yourself from having hiccups. As her body calmed, she became aware that Mayor Mills hadn’t spoken.

Then she became aware of a breeze swishing back and forth over her nearly-bare ass. It was like when Mr. Gold would pretend to spank her, just to see her jump. He would laugh at that. But Mayor Mills didn’t seem to find it amusing at all.

“What the hell?”

Even without seeing her, Lacey could tell that Mayor Mills was clenching her jaw. Again and again, she felt the breeze of phantom spankings. Did the mayor not want to spank her? What was going on?

“Hands flat on the desk!” the mayor barked. “Let me see your fucking wrists!”

Her wrists? Why? But Lacey did as she was told. Gracelessly, the mayor pulled on her hands. She turned them around and examined them. While she was distracted, Lacey dared to look up at Mayor Mills.

She was livid. Her breath came out in huffs and her red lips snarled around bared teeth. Suddenly, she slapped her right hand beside Lacey’s left.

“This ring,” she hissed. “That’s your wedding ring, isn’t it?”

Lacey lifted her mouth off the apple and nodded.

Mayor Mills looked angry enough to burst into flames. “Take. It. Off!”

Hands shaking, Lacey tried to obey. She couldn’t remember the last time she had taken off her wedding ring. Mr. Gold had wanted her to wear it day and night. But what the fuck did Mr. Gold matter now?

When the ring was off, she set it on the desk next to the gnawed apple. She stood at attention, with her eyes downcast.

The mayor took the ring and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at it, and shook her head.

“Unbelievable.”

Yes, it was unbelievable that Lacey would go to a seduction still wearing her wedding ring. What a stupid whore she was. Thoughtless. Sloppy. Ungrateful.

Mayor Mills tossed the ring back down on the desk, like touching it made her sick. Then she stood up again.

“Let’s try something else.”

For a moment, her anger had abated. Her hips swayed softly as she walked over to Lacey. Gently, she put one hand on Lacey’s neck, and cupped her cheek with the other. She tilted her head back.

Lacey closed her eyes and parted her lips--but nothing happened. The mayor’s hands moved away. After another moment, Lacey opened her eyes.

Mayor Mills had one hand extended toward Lacey’s face. It was flat and open, like she was about to slap her. But she wasn’t. She hadn’t. Aside from some pinching, Regina hadn’t been able to do anything to her.

Rumple, you genius!

When Lacey caught the mayor’s eye, she started and looked away. Without a word, Mayor Mills walked over to the other side of the room. There was a cabinet by the fireplace, from which she pulled out a bottle and a glass.

Her back to Lacey the whole time, the mayor poured out a measure of clear alcohol and drank it in one gulp. Then she took a deep breath.

Then she turned around.

“Mrs. Gold, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to continue this relationship.” She gave a bittersweet smile. “You see, unlike some people in this town, I value marriage. I couldn’t possibly engage in an affair with a married woman.”

“What?” Lacey’s voice cracked. “No, you can’t mean that! I-- Mr. Gold isn’t taking care of me anymore. Our marriage is dead! I--I need you, Madame Mayor!”

“And you can never know how happy I am to hear you say those things, dear. But the facts are facts--as long as you’re married to your husband, I can’t touch you. Not in any way that matters, at least.”

“Fuck.” Lacey put her hand over her mouth. “Oh fuck, Madame Mayor. I--I really need this, you know?”

“I know,” she nodded. She went over to the conference table and picked up the stack of Lacey’s clothes. She held them out to her. “And I am truly sorry that I won’t get to punish you the way you deserve. But this is how it has to be.” She turned back to her desk.

“Wait!” Lacey clutched her clothes to her chest. “You--you’re just doing this because I’m married, right?”

The mayor nodded again. She had pulled out a paper towel from a desk drawer and was wiping up Lacey’s spit and apple juice.

“Well, what if--what if I left him? What if we got a divorce?”

Mayor Mills stopped cleaning mid-wipe. For the first time in a while, she looked Lacey in the eye. “Divorces can be messy. They can take a long time. I thought your issue was more pressing than that.”

“I--I don’t know what else to do, Madame Mayor.” Dumping her clothes on a chair, she got on her knees in front of the desk. “You’re right, I do need what you can give me. I need it now, and I’ll do anything to get it!”

She smiled. A light shone in her black eyes. “Anything?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Hmm.” The mayor stood. She began to walk around Lacey in a slow circle. “Well, my point still stands. I simply can’t do anything worthwhile to you while you’re married to Mr. Gold.”

Lacey opened her mouth to beg again, but Mayor Mills lifted a finger and she fell silent.

“And, as we’ve established, a divorce might take a while to finalize. Especially with your husband’s thorough approach to contracts. So I suppose I’m forced to meet you halfway. I’ll just need some proof that your marriage is dead.”

Lacey licked her lips. “Proof?”

“Yes.” When her circle was complete, Mayor Mills was in front of her desk again. The golden ring was still on the surface. She picked it up and handed it out to Lacey.

It was a bizarre reverse-proposal. Lacey was the one on her knees. The mayor was giving her her own ring back to her, in exchange for a promise to end a marriage.

“This is part of a matched set, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s useless on its own. Your husband wears the other one?”

Lacey nodded.

“Alright,” Mayor Mills said. “So in order for me to have you, I’ll need both of them.”

“What?” Lacey felt her eyes going wide. “You want me to take Mr. Gold’s wedding ring?”

The mayor shrugged. “If your marriage is as dead as you say, he won’t miss it. If it isn’t, then, well, I have no power over you.”

“No.” Scrambling to her feet, Lacey took the ring from the mayor’s hand. “No, I want you to have power over me. I really do!”

A knowing, full-lipped smile. “There’s not much that would make me happier than having absolute power over you, dear. And it will happen, just as soon as I have both of your wedding rings.”

“It will,” Lacey nodded. “I’ll make it happen. I won’t disappoint you, Madame Mayor!”

#golden rings #rumbelle #rumbelle fic

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dearestones · 3 years

Text

Hellish Snowdays (Charlie Scenario)

Warnings: Slapstick.

@welovemonstergirls Request: Hi. I have a scenario request. The scenario is that hell has a snow day, and Charlie is attempting to enjoy it despite hell's harsh snowfalls. However, in doing so, she ends up suffering borderline Tom and Jerry levels of slapstick. Despite this? She still has fun.

Charlie loved snow.

But today, snow didn’t love Charlie.

It started out as any normal day in Hell. The residents within the hotel were busy preparing for the heavy bouts of snow when Angel Dust had declared that he had enough and had bounded outside, stringing along Husk and Nifty in tow. Vaggie had been adamant in trying to reel them back, but Charlie had simply tossed on both their heavy winter coats and ordered that it would be a free day for everyone.

(Of course, all of the hotel residents were supposed to adhere to their lifestyle restrictions and mandates in order to qualify to go to heaven).

As Charlie finally convinced Vaggie to go outside, the young princess of all of Hell found herself delighted. The snow had been steadily increasing steadily since it began last night, which had drastically changed the scarlet landscape into a soft pink hue. However, despite the rosy hues dominating the landscape, winters in hell were far more terrifying and potent than the average Earthen snowfall.

For instance, there were times when the snow falling from the red tinted sky was as hard as hail or as icy as burning fire.

A conundrum, one would say, but it was, after all, Hell.

As Vaggie tended to Nifty’s attempts at trying to corral the snow into manageable piles along the walkway back to the hotel with a small shovel, Charlie spotted Angel Dust.

The spider demon had begun creating a typical snowman with atypical physical characteristics. That was to say, Angel Dust brought his special care package of “toys” and were using them as the physical characteristics for said snowman. Charlie hesitated upon seeing Angel Dust’s creation, but she thought about it.

And let it go.

It wasn’t exactly sinful to use one’s resources—it was actually kind of…imaginative?

And wasn’t utilizing one’s creativity one of the ways that could get someone to be on the fast track to go to Heaven?

Nodding in resolve, Charlie began running towards Angel Dust, eager to get a closer look.

However, Hellish snow wasn’t as pure or as angelic as other types of snow.

As her feet pounded forward onto the freshly fallen drifts, the princess wasn’t at all aware that her shoes began to slip and slide, the friction of the soles not proving to be a match against the elements. Faster and faster she ran, her movements gradually becoming more erratic and out of control. By the time Charlie realized that she wouldn’t be able to stop in time, it was already far too late.

One second, Charlie was valiantly fighting off the natural law of gravity.

The next, her arms began pinwheeling out of control while her legs slipped on the snow.

Her velocity only accelerated and with a sudden shriek from Angel Dust, who had been casually eyeing his benefactor with unconcealed glee and trepidation, she fell face first into the snowman.

The toys that Angel Dust had precariously stuck within the main body of the snowman had fallen out due to Charlie intervention, leaving behind only a mildly disgruntled princess in its wake.

The spider demon rounded the snowman and patted Charlie’s drooping face kindly.

“Yo! You okay, Charlie? Coulda sworn that royalty were supposed to be… I don’t know—“ He thought for a moment. “—more graceful and light on their feet?”

Charlie laughed a little before gently shaking her head.

“Mom always told me to take my ettiequte lessons seriously.” She shrugged. “I didn’t.” Then, Charlie patted the rotund stomach of the snowman before looking up at Angel Dust with appreciation. “By the way, I really liked the creativity here! We should totally get the rest of the hotel residents to join a snowman competition!”

The spider demon looked a little taken aback at the princess’ suggestion, but later shrugged it off. Charlie had the weirdest idea for rehabilitation, but at this point, he was willing to go with whatever she planned.

“Whatever,” Angel Dust muttered. He stuck out one of his long arms and held it out for the princess to take.

Just as Charlie was about to congratulate Angel Dust for his random act of kindness (bonus points!!!), when something (was that a shovel?) pushed her from behind.

Startled, Charlie pitched forward and began somersaulting into the snow. Because Angel Dust’s snowman just happened to be situated at the apex of a small hill, well…

Angel Dust whistled lowly as he watched his friend become a gigantic snowball that was only a few seconds away from careening straight into oncoming traffic.

“Was I a little too rough?” Nifty asked innocently. Her large eye blinked owlishly as she glanced down at the rolling snowball that housed Charlie. “She looked like she needed to get out!’

Angel Dust happened to glance down at Charlie who had somehow managed to erupt from the snowball unscathed.

Lucky gal.

“She got out all right.” Angel Dust began packing snow into his hands before setting to work on his mauled snowman. “Wanna help out, Nifty?”

If you want to donate a Ko-Fi, feel free https://ko-fi.com/devintrinidad.

HAZBIN HOTEL MASTERLIST

#hazbin hotel #charlie magne #hazbin hotel charlie magne #charlie magne scenario #dearestones #devintrinidad

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savannahsdrabbles · 3 years

Text

Ocean Song - Part 10/11

Rating: PG

notes: 2.9k words. A03 link can be found here. I can’t believe I’m almost done with this fic! <3 Big thanks again to my beta-readers, @starfiretheninja and @rusty-wayfarer.

ALSO! I posted character references of the boys here, and @bakedbananners over on Twitter drew them! <33 I may or may not have cried. <3 OK! Now on with the fic! :D

***

“Ay-puh-ril, nicetumeetchu Dawn-ee, Cay-see. I Don-ee, Cay-see, Ahpril nicetumeetchu,” the turtle hummed softly under his breath, still rolling the words over and over in his mouth. He squinted, brown eyes straining to focus in the dim light as he used a claw to trace abstract patterns in the dirt. It had been at least thirty minutes since Casey’s departure, and with their main light source being the soft glow from April’s phone, the two unlikely comrades had settled into a quiet reverie beneath the pine trees. “Don Dun Dunntello Don Dondon Dawn-ee… April?”

“Yes, Donnie?” April glanced down at her phone for what felt like the hundredth time, her teeth working impatiently on her already cracked and sore lower lip. When the screen only blinked back a warning of low battery, she tucked the device into her pocket and drew her knees to her chest. It was getting chilly out – hopefully Casey was doing okay without his hoodie.

“Cay-see go?”

“Mh-hm. Remember? Casey went to rent a boat, and then you’re going to guide us so that we can take you home.” She cast her eyes sideways, watching as Donnie furrowed his brow and bobbed his head to show he was listening. “Right now we’re just waiting until he texts and says that the boat is ready.”

“Tehks?”

“Yup,” April tapped the phone-shaped outlined in her pocket, then bit her lip and mumbled a silent prayer that he didn’t ask for a further explanation of technology and digital communication – she’d had a difficult enough time explaining that to her grandparents. “Until then, we’ve just got to wait here.”

The turtle tilted his head and squinted at her pocket for a long moment, his expression clearly saying that he had more questions, but finally nodded and turned back to his doodles. “Bōto o matsu.”

April blinked.

Bōto o… wait for boat? Okay, so not only had he understood, but he understood enough to respond in another language. Cool, cool, okay.

She brought a hand to the bridge of her nose and squeezed, trying to ignore the migraine that had been building behind her eyes over the past few hours. How in the …? She knew he’d used a few Japanese phrases when they had first spoken in the lab, and logically she knew that living in Japan that would be the language he was most exposed to – but in the same vein, none of this made any logical sense. What kind of person could imagine a multilingual, anthropomorphic mutant turtle, accept that as fact, and then continue about their day?

Before her brain could wander any farther down that trail of thought– what next? Aliens? Superheroes? - April felt her phone buzz and heaved a grateful sigh of relief. “That should be Casey – time to get moving!”

The turtle perked up, his head swiveling like a periscope to search the surrounding shadows. “Where-?”

His question was cut off as April surged to her feet, her hands carefully grasping and guiding him upwards alongside her. The turtle yelped in surprise and grabbed for handfuls of her top once upright, wobbling slightly as he tried to balance himself.

“Here – Casey’s hoodie is going to help keep you covered, okay?” April reached down to grab the jacket from the ground, bundled it up in her hands and then gestured for the turtle to raise his arms. He did so reluctantly, then yelped once more as she quickly pulled the material over his head and began to guide his arms through the fabric. “There likely won’t be too many people out at the marina on a school night, but we want to make sure we don’t draw any extra attention – plus there’s plenty of security cameras out there and it’ll be impossible to completely avoid those.”

“Mmmf!” Was Donnie’s only response, his arms starting to pinwheel frantically before April caught hold of them. A stretch of the hoodie’s neckline had gotten caught on the turtle’s snout, partially obscuring his eyes and totally covering his mouth. April adjusted the fabric with a chuckle, freeing the creature from his polyester prison, and then took a step back to examine her work.

Even compared to her relatively average five and a half feet, Donatello was short – if she had to guess, he probably wasn’t any taller than four foot ten. Considering that the hoodie he now wore was made to fit Casey’s nearly six foot self, it was hard not to see the turtle as a toddler playing dress up in his parents’ clothing. The way that the fabric hung and draped over his body made him look even smaller, if that were possible; should he sit down, he might get lost amongst the apparel. Were it not for the glinting metal collar around his neck and the look of growing discomfort on his face, April would have thought he looked ready to curl up in bed.

“Hmmm,” Donnie hummed pensively, clearly not feeling the comfort that April was perceiving. The turtle gave his fabric-obscured hands a hard shake, eyes wide and increasingly nervous noises emanating from his mouth as he rapidly rotated his limbs in search of his missing appendages.

April giggled and started to step forward to help him roll up the sleeves, but then held back when a quiet voice in her mind chided. Let’s see if he can figure this out.

Donnie glanced up with a piteous whine, looking as if he had her thoughts and realized she wasn’t coming to his rescue, then hesitated. April could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as he stared at her rolled sleeves and free hands, then turned back to his own predicament. After a brief moment of thought and one more comparative look, the turtle raised an arm to his mouth and bit down on the sleeve, then gently tugged until his hand slowly slipped free.

“Hoo-dee!” he chirped triumphantly, holding up his free hand and waving it in delight.

“Right, you’re wearing a hoodie!” April grinned, then reached around the turtle to guide the hood over the back of his head. He didn’t seem to mind now, attention already turning back to the process of freeing his second hand. “We’d better keep the hood up for now, but look at us! Just two normal teens on the beach!”

The turtle’s eyes lit up at her last word. He dropped his sleeve in surprise, then turned to point a claw in the direction Casey had disappeared. “Beach!”

“Yup! Now let’s get you home!”

***

Donnie’s heart pounded as he stumbled along behind April, her warm hand holding him steady as the ground beneath them slowly transitioned from poky greens to the tan, shifting sands he knew so well. He’d been able to hear the ocean for a while now, but the moment they pushed through the last bushes and stepped out onto the beach - suddenly everything felt real. The cool, moist air, the promise of water and food and Home and his family – he was so close!

With every step towards the illuminated Human structures in the distance, he felt the urge building in his system – the desire to break loose from April’s gentle guidance and take off running towards the ocean. A familiar tugging sensation pulled incessantly at the back of his mind, calling out in the voices of Father and his brothers.

“This way, Clever, this way! Almost there! Almost Home!”

Their voices were like a siren’s song, beckoning him closer and closer with promises of healing and reassurances that he would soon be safe in their arms.

A breathless half-sob caught in his throat, and he swallowed thickly before trilling in response, his voice echoing out across the beach. “Wait for me; I’m coming! I’ll be Home soon!”

No sooner had the call left his mouth when April shook his hand gently, calling his attention back to the situation before them. He sighed and slowly drug his eyes away from the shore. As much as he wanted to release April’s hand and take off running… something told him that he needed to wait and stay with the two Humans. They had gotten him this far, and if the danger was imminent enough that he and Brothers were going to have to relocate…

“It looks like there’s a few people out on the marina, but I think we’re good,” April spoke in a low voice as she gestured towards the fast-approaching structures with her free hand. Two rows of buildings stood tall amongst the rolling dunes, serving as a departure from the otherwise untouched beach. Sand made way for a long wooden platform that served as the buildings’ foundations and stretched almost a mile out into the ocean. “My dad brought me down to the pier a few times when we first moved to Osaka - it’s pretty fun during the daytime. There’s a few shops and restaurants out on the board walk, and during the summer they host a carnival.”

Donnie nodded absently, his focus already drifting back out across the ocean. “Casey?”

“We’re almost to him. His text said that he was under the –”

A long, shrill whistle suddenly cut through the air, followed by a loud ‘YO!’ that snapped Donnie back to attention. He startled slightly, the sharp movement shaking the hood from his head and sending it sliding down his shoulders.

April heaved a sigh.

“And that would be the Master of Subtlety himself.” Even without looking, Donnie could imagine the way that the girl’s eyes were rolling and her shoulders slouching. He’d seen that exasperated look – and worn it – whenever his brothers did something foolish. With a sigh and a tug on his hand, April headed towards a shadow-y area tucked under the edge of the pier. “Come on.”

The turtle nodded obediently, his pace quickening and heart fluttering they moved closer towards the shoreline.

***

“You know, the point of texting was supposed to be that we kept quiet,” April called out as they approached the pier. She squinted, searching the shadows until they slowly began to give way to separate, more distinct shapes. “You could have at least waited until we got closer before you let the whole beach know where you were.”

“I wanted to make sure that you guys found me,” Casey replied, his voice already sounding smug– clearly a sign that he was up to something. There was a soft grunt as he pushed against one of the pier’s support beams, and then he and the boat slid out of the shadows.

April opened her mouth, hesitated, and then closed her eyes. The headache from earlier was returning. “Casey – what in the world is that?”

“Oh, you mean this beauty?” the teenage boy patted the side of the boat, an impish grin on his face, and then threw out his arms as the tiny, rust-ridden vehicle slowly began to tip towards the right. He flailed wildly for a moment, water splashing as the boat continued to rock from side to side, then finally froze with arms outstretched in a T-pose. “Er – she’ll be much more steady once you guys get in and help distribute the weight.”

“Mh-hm.” April cocked an eyebrow. “I can deal with unsteady; I’m more concerned about getting tetanus, or that thing sinking the second I put one foot in.”

“Yeah, well apparently it’s pretty expensive to rent a nice boat to go ‘somewhere in the ocean’ and come back ‘at some point’,” Casey stuck his tongue out, but kept his arms outstretched. “The shop owner guy looked like he wanted to kick me out more than anything, but I managed to make a deal with him. Apparently they were planning to send this boat to the scrap yard tomorrow morning, so the Jonesman – that’s me - offered to take it off of their hands and save them a trip.” Casey moved to fold his arms across his chest, but then threw them out once more as the boat rolled beneath him. “I was – oh boy, one sec – thinking of naming it the O’Neilmobile, but with that attitude I just might have to reconsider.”

“How will I ever deal with such a loss?”

“I guess Jonesmobile: The Squeakquel will have to do.”

“Casey.”

“It’s Captain Casey now.”

“I’m not calling you that– do you think that thing will stay afloat with all of us? Maybe we should rethink our plans –”

Suddenly and without warning, Donatello dropped April’s hand and surged forward.

“Don-?”

The turtle stumbled heavily as he cleared last few feet of sand, clearly too frantic to think out his steps, but the moment his claws touched foam something seemed to click inside.

“Water – look! Water-water-home!” Breathless words and excited sounds spilled from his lips like a pot bubbling over, coming quick and fast and soon dissolving into a symphony of hums and noises that April could only think to call laughter. He tipped his head back, eyes closed and body shaking with the sounds as he kicked and frolicked through the surf, sending salt water splashing in every direction. “Beach-water-Family-water-water-Home!”

April cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, half afraid that his mirth would attract unwanted attention, but Casey waved the thought off.

“Just… give him a minute,” he smiled, eyes following the turtle as he danced amongst the waves. “I think he needs this.”

April hesitated, but she couldn’t help the smile growing on her face, nor the relieved laugh she gave as Donnie turned towards to them. He grinned widely, eyes shimmering, and then flopped backwards into the water.

“Look! Look water!” His chest heaved as he laughed breathlessly. “Water!”

“I’m happy for you, Bud,” Casey said, nudging the edge of the pier once more so that the boat drifted closer. “We’re so close to getting you home.”

The turtle nodded and laughed again, then pushed himself up into a sitting position. Rivulets of water ran down either side of his face, congregating under his chin and then dripping down to the already soaked hoodie that now hung heavily from his shoulders. He gave a slight shake of his head, sending droplets skittering across the water’s surface, and then lifted a hand to pat his chest. “Donnie.”

Casey cocked his head, eyes sliding to April. “Donnie?”

“It’s short for Donatello,” she smiled and held out her hand towards the turtle. He stood and took it gratefully, eyes gleaming with renewed energy and more life than ever before. With a little tug, she drew him alongside her and stepped closer to the boat. “He needed a special name.”

“Kind of a hard name for someone just learning English,” Casey leaned down to grab a few items from the bottom of the boat and then shifted backwards to give them more room. “I was thinking something more along the lines of ‘Bill’ or ‘Casey Junior’.”

“Pfft - as if,” April held the edge of the boat steady as Donnie scrambled over the side, then plopped himself by Casey’s feet. When the boat didn’t immediately capsize under the weight of a second passenger, she pulled herself in and settled on the bench seat opposite Casey. Now that she was actually in the boat, tucked beside the two guys she was on this adventure with… it suddenly didn’t seem so cruddy. No, this boat was just right for what they needed. “Hey – did you get life vests?”

Casey turned to face the motor and straddled his seat, the movement causing the boat to rock dangerously. “Naw, we’ll be in the boat the whole time, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Plus you and Donnie can swim.”

“Wait – can you not?”

“And off we go!”

The engine took a moment to roll over as Casey tugged on the pull cord, but eventually started with a loud roar that sent Donnie scrambling for safety against April’s legs. She reached down and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and then they were off! The little boat began to power forward at a steady speed – not as fast as she would have liked, but enough so that April’s hair began to tangle around her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, spitting a strand out of her mouth and suddenly wishing that she’d brought a hair tie.

“Here – take this!” Casey called over the sound of the engine. April opened one eye, then grinned when she saw what Casey offering. “Coach said I’m only allowed to keep my hair long if I pull it back during practice, so I always have extra rubber bands on hand!”

“Thanks!” April took the present gratefully and quickly pulled her hair back into a tight bun. Now that that problem was solved… “By the way – did you end up grabbing food like you mentioned?”

The boy’s eyes lit up, and he bent down to grab the objects he’d moved to make room for Donnie. “Oh, yeah! I hit up the McDonald’s on the board walk right before I went to the boat place. I asked the cashier what she suggested for my ‘pet turtle’ and she said suggested a head of lettuce. They were out of that at the moment though, so…” He passed a brown paper sack to April, and then extended a small box to the turtle. “Donnie, can you say ‘chicken nuggets?’”

“Chih nuddets.”

#savannah drabbles #sea turtles au #tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt fanfiction #april o'neil #casey jones #tmnt donnie

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boarix · 3 years

Text

Wraith in the Ruins: A Fallout 4 Story Part XXII

The Crown of the Monster Queen

Trigger warnings: canon violence, language, gun, drug and alcohol use. Mature/sexual content.

Please enjoy!

…..

It was his turn at watch, but when Wraith checked the bedroll, Danse was nowhere to be found. His power armor was gone as well, “What the heck?” She pushed down a brief surge of fear, “Probably has the internal military clock and is already up… off having a pee…” The two of them were on their way to Breakheart Banks to clear a super mutant camp, and the little nervous voice in her head was suggesting that he had taken it upon himself to scout, or even worse, engage the pack without her. “He doesn’t strike me as the impetuous type… goddammit.” She waited patiently for all of five seconds before suiting up and going to look for him.

The previous evening Danse had frowned at Wraith’s suggestion to camp on the river, “In light of our power armor, it is ill advised to bivouac with water to your back.”

His pushback irritated her, “I thought you said you’d follow my lead on this trip, considering it’s for the Minutemen. Besides, in light of the existence of mirelurks, we would be more likely to retreat inland. Plus,” she folded her arms and smiled at him, “it’s pretty here.”

Your stupid blimp is at the airport. The airport is on a peninsula. With water around it!

He raised a voluminous eyebrow and glanced around, “I suppose the visibility is optimal at this location. And this outcropping of sandstone should provide concealment for a smokeless fire as well as a vantage point,” he gave her a slight smile of his own, “to watch for said mirelurks.”

The small cove had a clear view of the river as well as a relatively easy escape route up and into a small cluster of sheltering trees. Wraith and Danse collected dry driftwood along the shoreline and while he started the fire she disembarked her power armor to start meal prep.

“You should practice doing more tasks while in the armor.”

“Okay, but after I finish setting this tripod up, I’m going to go water those bushes,” She gave him a significant look, “and that’s not a task one does in the suit, correct?”

His eyebrows knit, “That’s too close to camp for a latrine, knight.”

Proud of herself for choosing such a great campsite, Wraith sported a large grin while she made dinner. She was in a good enough mood that she turned her radio on low and hummed tunelessly along with the music. She noticed Danse watching her, an inscrutable look on his face, “You need something, Paladin Danse? You’re just kinda spacing out o’er there.”

He blinked and shook his head, “Negative,” He lowered his eyes and his voice, “I was simply lost in thought.”

Mama Murphy had told Wraith that she could “save a soul lost in steel” and she had taken that to mean Elder Maxson. To that end she had reconsidered her previous rejection of Danse’s invitation to join the Brotherhood. Now, she figured the best way to gain the elder’s ear and remain in his good graces was to play friendly with his apparent favorite. Initially she had been put off by Danse’s stiff and formal demeanor and had put him in the same category of irritating as Rhys, but after spending more time with him her opinion had begun to soften. Somewhat.

“No problem. You know, if there’s something bothering you, I’m happy to listen.”

He looked surprised, “Oh! That’s not... Thank you. I’m going to do a perimeter check, if time permits…”

“Chow will be ready in about ten.”

Can’t wait to get away from me, huh?

“Acknowledged.”

They hadn’t spoken very much after that and the silence was less than comfortable. Wraith had volunteered first watch and had been relieved to put some distance between them.

Now she was worried for him (underneath the irritation) and she set a brisk pace as she stomped southward along the shore. She hadn’t gotten very far when she heard a shrill whistle from behind her. Whipping around, she lost her balance. The shoreline had angled upward sharply to form a cliff and she had a scary moment where she attempted to pinwheel her arms as she teetered dangerously close to the edge.

Danse came charging to her rescue, “I got you!” He whipped off his helmet, a glare created from worry on his face, and immediately launched into a graphic lecture on the finer points of drowning in power armor, “… and furthermore the joints and cockpit are not water tight. Ha… although this allows for a greater mobility… ha… it will fill quickly,” As he spoke a grin kept pulling on the corner of his mouth as the image of her flailing arms kept playing over in his mind, “and so standard procedure maintains you must keep a level head and wait until the water has completely filled… ha… the quick release… ha ha…” The smile had gotten free and now there was no denying he was laughing.

Wraith was not amused, “You picked a helluva time to develop a sense of humor!”

“You…” He stopped trying to fight it, “your arms!”

Wraith sighed and chuckled, “Yeah, yeah.” She shoved him playfully, “Where were you?! I don’t think it’s standard procedure to disappear like that.”

He pointed back toward camp, “You walked right past me, knight. I hailed you but you must not have heard me over the noise generated by a quick march.”

“Okay, but why were you up already?”

He kept a perfectly straight face, “Morning constitutional.”

Wraith’s laugh came out like a bark, “HA!” She shook her head and smiled, “Okay. Okay.” Turning away from him, she headed back to camp. “Paladin Danse, I think we have been working next to each other but not with each other.”

“Agreed.”

“So we need to communicate better, right? No more one-word answers…”

“Agreed.” He smiled at her when she turned around to give him an incredulous look, “That was a joke, knight.”

“That’s another thing; call me ‘Wraith’, please.” They were back at the campsite and she exited her armor, kicked off her boots and crawled into the bedroll.

“That’s too…”

“You call Haylen and Rhys by their names. You guys are a bonded team, right?” She yawned expansively, “We need to be a team too. So start bonding.”

He chuckled, “I believe that works both ways, knight. I’m going to patrol now; we can bond over super mutant eradication later today.”

“OORAH!”

“AD VICTORIAM!”

That afternoon the pair scouted the super mutant camp before falling back to work on a plan. To her surprise, Danse was all for just the two of them clearing the site and not calling for reinforcements.

Maybe he’s more reckless then I thought…

On the eastern edge of the former farm was a small lookout tower with a single super mutant in residence. After Wraith quietly dispatched the occupant, they set up a perimeter of mines then both took up position in the tower. Picking their targets, they began their first volley.

The mines were quickly exhausted as the humanoids swarmed the tower. This was all part of the plan and Wraith, whose armor was modded for melee, vaulted over the rail to smash and chop their opponents; keeping them clear of her teammate. The two of them stayed in constant communication: calling encouragement and tips back and forth to one another. It was working out fairly well until the alpha, a huge and imposing primus, got a couple of hits on Danse. The mutant called his two remaining pack mates back to him at the encampment’s main structure, and ducked back into cover before Wraith could return fire.

“Are you alright?!” Wraith retreated back toward the tower, crouched as low as the armor would let her.

“Affirmative. Taking cover.”

She put the tower between her and the primus and removed her helmet, “What’s your status?”

“Shoulder’s a little hot, but no stimpak required. This monster has fought the Brotherhood before.”

“Or, at the very least, opponents in power armor. Can you get a shot on either of his brutes?”

“Both, actually.”

“Okay, pick one.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna kill the other one, silly.”

His small grunt indicated his annoyance at her oversimplification, “I understand. What I’m asking is ‘then what’?”

“Well, we’ll see, but I’m hoping the big guy will be motivated to come out of cover once he sees how much fun wrestling with me can be.” She winked at him.

He chuckled, “Put your helmet back on, knight. I’ll take the one on the left.”

“Fantastic. I’ll signal you when I’m in position.”

To get within striking distance, Wraith looped right, part way down the steep, rocky hill that overlooked the river while trying desperately to be stealthy in the power armor. Rather than stare at her intended target, she kept her eyes on a tuft of grass just in front of them.

You don’t feel me. I’m not here. You somehow can’t see this large, metal suit coming to kill you…

Once satisfied with her position, she uncovered the small mirror on her gauntlet and sent a ray of light back toward Danse. After counting to three she launched herself at her intended victim. She could hear her teammate’s plasma rifle hit the brute on the left just as she slammed her gauntlet’s bayonet through her brute’s closest knee. The impact forced their legs together and when Wraith raised her arm to flip them onto their back, the incredibly sharp instrument sliced right through, severing the leg completely. A quick chop at the neck beheaded the humanoid and Wraith was satisfied to see a large puddle of green where Danse’s mutant had been standing.

All according to plan.

“TIME TO DIE, HUMAN!”

The primus, on the second level of the farmhouse, took several shots at Wraith through the floorboards, clipping her helmet while she attempted a somersault which she couldn’t complete, “DammitFUCK!” She was able to roll away to the other side of the structure and get to her feet, but dropped her rifle and was shot two more times in the process, “Fucking ARMOR! Now I know why Deacon fuckin’ hates this shit!”

The primus laughed at her, “HA! BUCKET HEAD IN THE DIRT LIKE A MOLE RAT! HAHAHAHAHAA!”

“OH YEAH? WELL, PUNY GREENSKIN IS AFRAID TO FIGHT ME WITHOUT A GUN!”

The primus howled in rage; swinging his fists as he thundered down the shack steps to prove her wrong. Just as Wraith moved to meet him, an alarm sounded which indicated her fusion core was low.

Gotta wrap this up quick.

The alpha was an excellent fighter and Wraith, having some small difficulty adjusting to the suit’s more limited range of motion, got her bell rung a couple of times. She backed away as they grappled, hoping to bring him into range of Danse’s rifle, but when she cleared the building, she could see the paladin was no longer in the tower.

Gotta wrap this up quicker!

She trusted that her partner would circle around the other side of the building as soon as he lost sight of her, probably even taking the same route she did, so she didn’t panic. She was tired of being bashed around though so she caught up her opponents arms at his wrists and held on for dear life.

“GAAAAAARRR! LET GO, BUCKET HEAD!” Flexing powerfully, the great mutant lifted Wraith a couple of feet off the ground in his attempts to free himself from her grasp. He shook her back and forth but when that didn’t work, he raised his arms even higher before slamming her violently back to earth.

She was able to keep her feet and her grip, “HA! Can’t get rid of me that easily!” She heard a gasp behind her and was able to turn her head just enough to see Danse was watching them, “Don’t just stand there being impressed! Help me!”

Danse flinched guiltily before blasting the primus to green goo, “Are we clear, knight?”

Wraith doffed her helmet and patted her sore head experimentally, “Yeah, he was the last of ‘em.”

Danse removed his own helmet and was beaming at her, “Outstanding! Are you sound?”

“I hear ringing, if that’s what you mean.”

He chuckled, gave her a hefty pat on the back and ducked into the shack staircase, “We should check to see if they had any valuable equipment…” he turned back to her when Wraith didn’t immediately follow, “Are you seriously injured?”

“My core’s spent.”

He frowned, “You should still be able to move…” He smiled at her when she stuck her lip out at him, “I’ll just switch it out for you. I didn’t realize it was so low. I thought you said you went through the checklist I gave you…”

“Danse, I really like working on power armor…”

“As do I.”

“But, fighting in it…”

“Practice makes perfect, knight.” He gave her another pat, this time more gentle and affectionate, “You’re all set. AD VICTORIAM!”

“Oorah.”

…..

“Emogene…” Hancock narrowed his eyes as he repeated Wraith, “Emogene…” He turned away from her and looked to MacCready, “Emogene? That Cabot dame? Isn’t she…”

“Dead? Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

Hancock looked down at Infamy who had flopped backward and was lying on the floor, “What the hell’s she mean?”

Panting, they weakly waved him away, “I couldn’t begin to guess.”

Hancock knit his brow and briefly entertained the images of choking the life out of the glowing one as he walked past them on the way to the staircase, “Nicky… I need Valentine...” He took the steps two at a time with MacCready, Deacon and Danse hot on his heels.

“You’re thinking you got something?” MacCready tried but failed to keep the desperation from his voice.

Hancock paused before picking up the Radio Freedom receiver, “What I’m thinkin’ is that we need to find out where Wraith hid the alien artifact that started this shit.”

“Alien artifact?” Deacon’s eyes widened, “Like, UFOs? I leave for a little while and you guys are picking fights with aliens?”

“Why are you looking at me?”

“Well, MacFeisty, I just assume it was you…”

“WHAT THE HECK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!”

“Will you boys be quiet?! I’m on the phone!”

The minutemen operator who answered was less than courteous, “It’s the middle of the night and I’m not your errand boy, Mayor Hancock. Furthermore, this line is strictly for Minutemen personnel, and not for your personal use.”

“May I?” Danse accepted the receiver and lit into the unfortunate solider at full volume, “SPECIALIST REGIS, THIS IS CAPTAIN DANSE. THIS IS AN URGENT MATTER AND YOU WILL PERSONALLY COLLECT NICK VALENTINE AND BRING HIM TO THE RADIO AT ALL SPEED OR I WILL PERSONALLY SEE TO IT YOU ARE ON LATRINE DUTY UNTIL THE DAY YOU EXPIRE! IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?!”

MacCready smirked at him, “Well, I guess you’re useful to have around after all.”

In a few short minutes, Valentine’s worried voice came through the speakers, “John? What’s going on?”

“Tell me everything about what went down with Emogene Cabot.”

…..

Mama Murphy sighed, “Child, I know I can be of use. The Buffout won’t kill me. It’s my choice regardless.”

Sofie prickled at being called a child, “Ms. Murphy, what you do with your free time is none of my concern. That being said, I will not condone the recreational use of chems. As for your being of use,” her smile was forced; her perfect teeth a stark contrast against her scarred lips, “I’m sure Wraith wouldn’t want you to risk your health to help her.” The tiny ghoulette returned her gaze to the reports on her desk, brooking no further argument.

Murphy sighed again as she rose stiffly to her feet, “Thank you for seeing me, then.” After she left Sofie’s office she had fully intended to go home to her chair, but found herself walking through the door of the clinic instead. “Hello? Noah? Are you in here, son?”

The handsome young man poked his head out of a supply closet, “Hiya, Mama! How can I help you today?”

“I need you to give me some Buffout and then write down everything I say after.”

He blinked rapidly for a moment, “Uh… I’m a medic, not a chem dealer?”

“Semantics.”

He frowned, “I think the subject matter is a little more complicated…”

“Wraith needs my help. Our help. I can feel it…” She half closed her eyes and reached a hand out toward the ceiling as if the vision was tangible and she could pull it from the air, “I can just see…” She let her arm drop, “Please. I’d prefer if someone is with me; my memory ain’t what it was when I was young. But if you won’t help this old lady out, I’ll still find my own way to what The Sight wants me to see.”

Williams bit his lip, his dark eyes troubled, “This goes against what the doc taught us… but I seem to remember her also telling us to explore and discover new science, so… loophole?” He ducked back into the closet, “How many do you need?”

“Just one, child. Get ready to take notes.” She settled into the office loveseat, tossed the pill into her mouth with a casual negligence and closed her eyes, “Ohhhh, that’s the stuff. Feels like I could tear down a building, ha ha.” After a few seconds her eyes opened and when she spoke her voice was different: a cadence closer to chanting, “The one who can’t speak will tell them where. I can see them descending into the deepest dark where there is no air. Power’s lesser, ravaged twin calls to it. Guarded only by an ancient, unseeing eye, they seek and find their sorrow at the very bottom of the world.”

Williams felt compelled to the edge of his seat. After a few moments of silence so absolute, he could hear his heartbeat in his ears, he touched the elderly woman on her arm, “Mama Murphy? Are you okay?”

She sniffled and wiped a tear from her eye, “I… think so. Oh dear. Oh no…” Alarmed, Williams half stood but she waved him back to his seat, “I’m okay, son. Oh, Noah, I didn’t see him come back. Child, I fear he’ll be lost to the darkness.”

…..

“DARN IT, GERTY! MOOOOVE!” MacCready shoved at Bossy’s brahmin, “How can you have two heads, BUT NO BRAINS AT ALL?!”

The caravan from Goodneighbor to Sanctuary had been ambushed by super mutants near Lexington and in her attempt to flee, the terrified bovine had trapped the merc in the doorway of one of the town’s many dilapidated buildings.

“Damn it, MacCready, will ya stop playin’ with Gertrude and give us a hand?! The hell I’m payin’ ya for?!”

Diving between the brahmin’s front legs, the young man had to roll to the side as one of the mutants attempted to stomp him with a large green foot. He unsheathed his bayonet as he went and stabbed viciously, piercing the limb. When the humanoid involuntarily lurched downward, MacCready vaulted to his feet and slashed their throat from ear to ear before spinning away and shooting two more mutants who were closing in on the bawling cow.

Bossy nodded at him, “Now, that’s caps well spent.”

“Hancock’s caps, you mean?”

“Bah…”

Just as MacCready felt they were making a dent in the mutants, a mob of ferals, attracted by the commotion, attacked as well, “What is going ON TODAY?!” He dodged a roundhouse from a super mutant that when it made contact with the feral behind him, all but annihilated the ghoul’s misshapen head, “Thanks!” MacCready smiled at the mutant then shot him in the eye. He was knocked flat a moment later as a tangle of ferals verses mutant crashed into him. He got the breath knocked out of him and panic settled in as he realized they were being overwhelmed by the sheer chaos.

“CHOOOOOO CHOOOOOOOO! HERE COMES THE PAIN TRAIN!”

Wraith, wearing her power armor and wielding a rocket sledge, came crashing into the middle of the brawl; scattering ferals and mutants alike. Danse followed right behind her, strategically reducing the mob’s numbers to green puddles as he came.

There was moment when Danse nearly shot a caravanner, but for MacCready slamming his rifle butt into Danse’s arm, forcing him to miss.

“SHE’S NOT A FERAL YOU DUMBASS!”

Wraith stepped in between the two men as it looked like it might come to blows, “Easy boys. We’re all allies here…”

“Yes, it’s fortuitous that we happened by. Otherwise this group of… wastelanders, would have surely been killed…”

MacCready stepped around Wraith to hiss in Danse’s face, “We were doing just fine…”

“Must’ve been hard to get an accurate assessment from your back…”

Wraith saw the deadly look in MacCready’s eye and quickly intervened, “Whoa, whoa! Knock it off, Danse.” She turned back to MacCready, “I’m sorry about that…” She was interrupted by a message from Radio Freedom and after listening intently to her Pip-Boy for a moment she smiled apologetically at him, donned her helmet and left with Danse as quickly as she had arrived.

It was much later that night when Hancock crossed through the mostly empty bar and poked his head into the V.I.P. section of the Third Rail. There he found an extremely morose MacCready, well into his drink, “What’s the good word, little brother?”

After answering with an impressive burp, the young man patted the couch seat next to him, “Comere ‘nd cheer me up.”

Hancock slung an arm around to squeeze his shoulder as he sat next to him, “I see yer drinkin’ with purpose. Bossy said ya had a bit of a dust-up today…”

He waved the comment away, “’Snot that. I saw Wraith.”

Hancock made a face, “Still stomping around with the full metal jackass?”

MacCready laughed, but it tapered off to growl, “Can’t believe she ditched me for that tin can. What the heck’s she doing helping the Brotherhood of Squeal for anyway?”

“Well, I think she’s mostly touring ol’ rusty bottom ‘round the Commonwealth helpin’ Minutemen settlers. She wants him to see the plight of the people on the ground so when he flies up and reports to that balloon-wielding clown they call ‘Elder’, maybe he’ll have a more down-to-earth sensibility, you feel me?”

MacCready guzzled the last half of his beer and belched again, “I feel they should’ve mindeded their own busses… boise… butts, back to the Captinnal…”

“Or, better still, puncture their zeppelin on Trinity Tower and,” Hancock ran his thumb through the air while blowing a raspberry, “cast themselves out to sea in one long fart.”

MacCready laughed so hard he nearly fell off his seat, “Whew! Isneedsome air!”

Hancock helped him up the stairs, but hesitated when they opened the door to a substantial storm, “Oops, looks like this air’s damper than usual…”

The merc gently pushed off of him, removed his cap and stepped out into the torrent; closing his eyes and lifting his chin to let the rain wash his face, “Feels good…”

Hancock caught his breath as the young man turned and smiled at him just as lightning flashed across the sky; turning his eyes a brilliant aquamarine. He stepped out into the deluge, caught MacCready under his arm and led him past the doors to the bar and into the Old State House proper, “Can’t have you getting’ sick, now…”

Once up the winding stair, the ghoul led him to his bed and eased him down on it, “You can sleep it off here…” he helped him out of his gear and stooped to help with his boots as well.

“You gonna take my pants off too, big man?”

It would be so easy. Hancock could picture it in his mind: pushing MacCready onto his back, his mouth on his, hands exploring the young man’s warm, lean-muscled skin in search of scars… But when he brought his dark eyes level with MacCready’s brilliant blue ones, he hesitated. Yes, there was lust there, but it was the bleary-eyed-non-specific lust of someone lost in drink. He leaned in close, pushed his damp hair from his brow and planted a kiss on the merc’s forehead, “Ask me again when yer sober.”

When the ghoul turned to walk away, MacCready caught at his hand, “Please… just… I don’t want to be alone… Would you read to me? I… wanna to hear your voice.”

Hancock’s sigh was weary, but he smiled kindly down at him, “Whatever you need from me.”

…..

“I need you to stop naggin’, that’s what I need!”

“It might be that Strong is the only thing keeping her at bay, and now you’re running off on a wild goose chase…”

“Nicky, I’m not…”

“When you know you have people who can go for you!”

Hancock stopped his jog, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Valentine, you have my permission to shoot me if Radiance turns me feral, alright?!”

“Christ, John!”

“I should be able to restrain you in the event that you are mentally incapacitated.” Danse’s armor squeaked slightly as he pantomimed a hug.

Hancock chuckled at him, “Thanks, brother.”

After much debate, Hancock and Danse had left the Peabody Safehouse, stopped at Diamond City to pick up Valentine and were now making their way to the Cabot’s home.

“Besides, Nicky, she’ll have more of a fight on her hands: I’m stone sober.” He resumed running, “I think the closer you are to being out of your mind the easier she can get in it.”

“I can see that being a possibility; you said most of your people just had headaches, but the ones who were steady users went feral.”

“Were you imbibing on the day in question?” Danse tried to phrase the question as politely as possible.

“Well, no. I was watching my grand baby. But, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind, you feel me?” Hancock picked up the pace, “Wraith missing, and Preston named General as if she had died. Not to mention that my people were going feral all around me and I had no idea why.” He grunted uncomfortably, “This is all getting a little too touchy feely…”

“So, high mental anxiety paired with what? Your being a ghoul? Still feel like we’re missing a piece of this puzzle.”

“According to Mother Isolde, some of the human Children of Atom were suffering from headaches as well. No doubt from when Radiance was in the Glowing Sea gathering feral ghouls.”

Valentine was breathing hard trying to keep up, “When I questioned Infamy, they said most of the horde had been from their efforts and that Radiance had stolen them.”

“The piece we are missing is that alien headband…”

“There’s no way, Hancock.” Valentine talked louder when the ghoul tried to object, “There wasn’t enough left of anything after Deegan shot Emogene!”

“Well, if I see what’s left lying cold and still in the ground instead of floating around terrorizing the neighborhood, then I’ll have nothin’ more to say ‘bout it!”

Valentine took point when they reached the Cabot House and the patrolling sentry bot seemed to recognize him as he was allowed to ring the intercom, “This is Nick Valentine calling, and I was hoping to talk to Jack, if he’s available.”

Edward Deegan’s tone was cool, “What’s this about?”

“We’d like to talk about the unfortunate events that took place on the day that Ms. Cabot passed…”

“You’ve a lot of nerve, Valentine…”

Hancock gently pushed Nick aside, “You been keeping up with this Radiance business?”

“Hancock? Uh, yeah sure. Why?”

“Wraith says she’s Emogene.”

The door practically flew off of its hinges and Deegan, backlit yet clearly enraged, stood huffing in its frame, “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?!”

“Edward?!” Jack’s voice came drifting down the stairs, “Who on earth are you bellowing at?!”

“It’s Nick Valentine, Hancock and some Minuteman-In-A-Can…”

“Well, let them in!”

The angry ghoul stabbed a finger at Hancock, “Just you watch yourself. You hear?”

As he listened to Valentine briefly outline Wraith’s current plight and the subsequent revelation that Radiance was Emogene, Jack grew increasingly agitated, “I question the validity of any claim made by the former general as she is clearly insane.”

There was a heavy, ominous silence as Wraith’s three friends were shocked to speechlessness. This was followed by absolute bedlam, as all five of them started yelling at and to each other. After a few minutes, the noise took on yet another layer of volume as Jack’s mother Wilhelmina walked into their living room banging two pots together. Then silence reigned again as they all stopped to stare at her.

“Gracious! Five grown men yelling like little boys. What on earth is the matter with you all?”

“Please, Mother, it’s nothing I can’t…”

“Hush now, Jack. Don’t presume to tell me it’s ‘nothing’.” She turned to Valentine and gave him a toe to crown look, “Who are you, young man?”

He chuckled at her choice of words, removed his hat and dipped his head respectfully, “Mrs. Cabot, I’m Detective Nick Valentine, P.I.”

“Oh, that’s right. You were with my Emogene…” She fell in on herself for a moment then straitened and gave him a hard look, “What do you want with what’s left of my family?”

Doffing his helmet, Danse dropped to one knee, “Apologies, Miss, but we would like to pay our respects to your late daughter. Such a tragedy was her passing we would lay a laurel on her gravesite, but only with your approval.” As all eyes turned to him, he maintained a look that was a masterful mix of chivalry, humility and sorrow; the perfect personification of a knight.

Wilhelmina was completely entranced and stood gazing at him for a moment, “Yes. Yes of course. She’s entombed in the family crypt at Wildwood Cemetery.”

“Mother! These ruffians fully intend on disturbing her grave and you just told them where to go!”

“Now, don’t be ridiculous, Jack. Why should they want to do that?”

Although he was irritated by the pomp of the Cabot household, Hancock wasn’t without sympathy for a mother who had lost a child. He followed the example set by his companions and removed his hat, “We’ve no intention of desecrating a quiet grave, ma’am.”

Jack glared daggers at him, “I shall be going along to make sure of it.” He turned to Deegan, “Edward?”

The family guardian sighed heavily, “Yeah, Jack, me too.”

The group left almost immediately yet the sun had set by the time they arrived at the cemetery. They paused at the broken gate and crouched low, expecting to see feral ghouls wandering around. However, all was quiet and the only thing moving was a swirling mist that had settled into the graveyard.

The scene sent chill fingers up his spine and Valentine found to be very fitting, “Like the set of a horror flick…”

Jack scoffed at him, turned on his flashlight, stood up abruptly and briskly led the way through to the mausoleums built in to the eastern embankment. His pace slowed as the beam of light reached what was meant to be his sister’s final resting place, “How…”

The concrete building had been blasted apart from within.

“Looks like she’s not in at the moment. Perhaps we should check back later?” Hancock was smug.

“Fascinating!” Jack turned to Deegan, “I was shocked that any part of her head remained. The bullet must have fully struck the artifact! I gave what I thought was the total remains of it to Wraith, per her insistence, but I must have been mistaken. A small portion must have remained. Perhaps the combination of radiation…” He spun away from Deegan and grabbed Valentine by the arms, “I must go and speak with Wraith!”

Valentine blinked a few times before looking over at Danse and Hancock, “Anyone else just get whiplash?”

…..

“I don’t trust you…”

“Naturally.”

“And I don’t like you.”

“Oh! I’m terribly hurt.”

Once again Wraith and Infamy were together in the void of her consciousness. No longer pure white, there was a yellow-green haze overhead that bent down to meet with the horizon. Wraith theorized that because none of it was technically real, the coloration was a way that her mind had come to terms with Radiance’s barrier. It gave her something to push against so she had grudgingly admitted that Atom’s Assassin was apparently helping. The glowing one had danced around her gloating and so she wanted to make sure they understood what their relationship was.

“Once I’m free of her then I’m going to make sure I’m free of you.” Even though it wouldn’t take her away from them, she turned her back and walked away anyway.

Infamy followed behind, skipping, “And here I thought I was beginning to grow on you, hahaha!”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a cream for that...” Wraith trailed off as she felt a change in the void. If air existed there it suddenly became heavy and hot. She turned back to tell Infamy off if it was something they were doing, but the words died on her lips. Radiance was standing right behind them.

Infamy turned as well and took a few steps backward to get outside of striking range, “Looks like your chaperone is here. Curfew already? Hmm. Seems sooner than usual…”

“Infamy, you should leave,” There was something different about this Radiance: something more solid. More like the version that tormented Wraith with the memories of Marie’s death. More like the one that had burned her, “I don’t think this is a proxy…”

Radiance had locked eyes with her opposing glowing one, “You. I thought I could ignore someone as weak as you.” She glanced at the barrier, “You’re becoming a problem, I see. I’m close enough now though. Close enough…”

“Infamy! Leave! Leave NOW!” Using all her strength, Wraith ejected her ally before Radiance could destroy them. Then, left alone with her tormentor, she lifted her chin defiantly.

Wraith’s display of strength and nerve thrilled the monster queen, “Yessss. Beloved, you are strong!” She took a step closer, her arms out wide, “Imagine how much more powerful you could be if only you would join with me. Give yourself to me, my love. I could give you such pleasure…”

Wraith growled at her, “Never. You don’t love me. You don’t love anyone.”

“You’re wrong! From the moment I met you when came to rescue me from that silly preacher, I have loved you.”

“Prove it. Let me out.”

Radiance seemed to flicker out of focus and just for a moment, an image of Emogene Cabot flashed in her place, “We can’t. You have something we must have. We are incomplete without it.” Now the glowing one turned up the heat and sent tendrils of chartreuse flames crawling across the unseen floor toward Wraith, “You must tell us! Tell us where we can find the rest! Tell us where our crown is!”

…..

“Ah, here you are.” Danse had been looking all over the Prydwen for Wraith and it had been Proctor Ingram that suggested he check the forecastle of the airship. “I take it your audience with the elder didn’t go as you had expected?” The wind was intense and he practically had to shout in order for her to hear, “It’s certainly bracing out here!”

Wraith stood at the very tip of the narrow beam. She was in her power armor, but had removed her helmet and was staring at the city, “No. It went pretty much exactly how I expected.”

“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you, knight.”

She chuckled humorlessly, and turned her head to smile sadly at him, “I’m on the precipice, Paladin Danse. I’m going to have to make decisions soon. Hard choices…” She could see he was confused and concerned. The concern was genuine and she felt a guilty tug at her heart. “I’m having a hard time getting through to him. I thought that I should… find it easier. He doesn’t want to hear me.”

“Take the time to remember why we’re out here; the elder has only the highest concern for the citizenry of the Commonwealth…”

“All her citizens?”

“You mean ghouls?”

“Don’t make that face.” She walked back toward him and had a brief moment of disorientation as she wasn’t used to looking down to talk to him, “Daisy. Remember Daisy?”

“The shopkeep in Goodneighbor? What about i… her?”

“You very much enjoyed speaking with her… don’t shake your head!” Wraith let herself sound angry, “Your elder would have her ejected from any B.O.S. settlement and forced out into the ruins.”

“Simply to protect any human citizen from the day when it… she, inevitably goes feral...”

“No human has ever acted spontaneously out of passion and hurt or even murdered someone? Besides that, there is a distinct lack of evidence that all ghouls would go feral given enough time.” Saddened, Wraith swallowed a few times to prevent herself from crying, “I guess I’ve failed with you too.”

Danse looked slightly panicked, “Failed? How do you mean, knight?”

“I’ve grown to like you, Danse. I feel like we’ve become friends. How do you feel about us?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times. Unaccustomed to heart-to-heart conversations, he was struggling to articulate how he felt about her, “I’ve told you off-the-record, personal information. Things I’ve never told anyone. You’ve become a confidant; a true friend.”

“I’m glad.” Her smile was sad. She let her eyes drop to the airport and was quiet for a moment. “Do you know where I got this?” She drew Kremvh’s Tooth and held it aloft so that the setting sun glinted off the wicked-looking blade; making it seem as if it was made of fire. “Hancock and I were responding to a Minutemen call at Dunwich Borers. There was a raider clan there. Bedlam. That was the name of their leader.” She sheathed the ornate knife and returned her eyes to the ground below, “After the fight we pushed forward. I guess we felt like tough shit and were looking for trouble. I saw some stuff. Never could explain… anyway,” She looked back at Danse who was listening intently, “There was a well… or something and I decided I was going to show off for Hancock. I dove in and swam to the bottom which is where I found the knife. I can hold my breath for a very, very long time, but I didn’t tell him that. About half way back I saw him. He had jumped in, fully intending to save me. Except now he was half drowned and I ended up towing him to the surface. After he caught his breath, do you know what the first thing he said to me was?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess.”

“He said ‘Whoa! That’s a badass knife!’ and asked if he could hold it.”

“Knight…”

“He risked his life in an attempt to save mine…”

“I don’t see how that’s rel…”

“Of course it’s relevant!” She wasn’t shouting just because of the wind anymore, “He’s a ghoul, yes, but that doesn’t preclude him from being a caring person! A citizen of the Commonwealth! Why should his wellbeing be any less a priority?” She pushed on when he didn’t answer, “I hope that you will spend some time thinking about what I’ve said. For now, we should go our separate ways.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand…”

“I know you don’t, Danse. And that’s upsetting.”

“I’ll… verify if there’s a vertibird available for you…”

“No need.”

“No! Do not jump from here. If you land in the water…” He trailed off as Wraith had already vaulted over the railing. He saw her land safely and was impressed despite his frustration. He stood at the rail for a long while; letting the harsh wind buffet him as the sun went down.

…..

Infamy stood, dazed, “She kicked me out. She kicked me out?! She kicked me out!”

“Stop saying that! What the heck are you even talking about?”

They acted as if they couldn’t hear MacCready and ran up the basement steps, “Ohhhh, Strong! Where are you my great green galoot?”

“STRONG IS NOT YOUR ANYTHING!” The massive humanoid had been sitting in the doorway cleaning Smashy but now lurched to his feet to glare at the glowing one.

“Never mind. Radiance is here! Somewhere…”

“How do you know?” MacCready ran out into the yard with Strong. Peering through his binoculars he rotated in a circle.

“She crashed my session with our problem child.” They scrunched up their face, “Wraith just might have saved my life. Not sure if it was just self-preservation or if she genuinely cares what happens to me. She is the sort who would act automatically altruistically. Yet again, I like to think I have a way with people, you understand…”

“Will you shut up?! Jeez! You’re making it hard to concentrate!”

“Never realized one might need their ears to see. But, then again, you are the professional.”

“GHOUL’S SKIN WOULD MAKE A NICE BELT AND HAT!”

Infamy took the hint.

“I don’t see any glowing lights. I think you should still go out, Strong. Even if we can’t see her we want her to see you.”

He nodding then threw back his head and bellowed mightily, “RADIANCE! STRONG WILL RIP YOU APART AND PRESENT YOUR GUTS TO ALPHA!”

Deacon, haven taken an earlier shift, was napping on the couch when he heard their commotion. He joined MacCready on the lawn with his own pair of binoculars just as the super mutant jogged away, “Infamy, what‘s Radiance’s range?”

“For me it’s a few hundred feet or so. Might be more, might be less with your caged monster.”

“I don’t see Radiance but I do see our intrepid trio… Looks like they brought guests.”

The two groups came together and brought one another up to speed. Danse woke Curie and afterword they moved en masse to the basement. Rather than greet them with her customary threat display, Wraith gazed vacantly off into a shadow-filled corner. Apart from Deacon, who stayed near the staircase, they fanned out around the cage and stood in silent uncertainty.

“You thinkin’ she might be duking it out right now?”

“Could be. It’s hard to tell…”

“I suppose I should try to get back in. As much as I love being here this close with you all, breathing in your various body odors, no sense standing around waiting for something to happen.” Infamy sat cross-legged on the rough-hewn floor and closed their eyes.

To the shock of all, Wraith suddenly lunged across her prison, reached through the bars and grabbed Infamy by their foot. They struggled helplessly as she lifted them completely off the floor before violently slamming them to the ground as if she were cracking a whip.

Hancock and Danse leapt to an attempted rescue; each grabbing ahold of one of her arms. She laughed manically as they struggled. Jack, Deegan and Deacon joined in as well while MacCready ran up the stairs for the syringer.

“Emogene! It’s your brother. Please stop.” Jack pleaded with his sister, “If that’s you, then talk to me! Tell me how I can help you. What do you want?!”

She let go of the unconscious glowing one and shook herself free. When she spoke it was still Wraith’s voice, but the tone and enunciation were just different enough, it was if someone was doing an impression of her, “What do I want? I want it all, you simpleton!” She spread Wraith’s arms and spun in a circle, “I want power and love and to indulge in their delights for all time.” She came to a stop and leveled a murderous gaze at her brother, “I want the artifact. All of it. You will tell me where the rest of my crown is or I will burn Wraith from her mind and leave you all with her broken husk.”

“It won’t make a difference either way, you hag. You’ll still try and kill us all; even if we give you what you want.” MacCready leveled the rifle at her but didn’t pull the trigger.

“O’er my dead body.”

“That’s the idea, Hancock.” She smiled at him evilly, “Though in your case, I’ll be making an exception. I will see you dance for me, just like you did for Wraith.”

“I don’t know you, sister. I’m thinkin’ I don’t want to. And I don’t think you thought this through.” He spread his arms and gestured to the group, “Ain’t a one of us who knows where your dime-store crown is.” He leveled a finger at her, “There’s only one person on this entire planet who knows, and you’re squatting in her brain!” He shook his finger back and forth, “I would think that you’d play this a little nicer; you get more with sugar than salt.”

She yawned, “Ugh, what a bore. I forgot how much you like to hear yourself talk.”

“He’s talking a lot of sense, Emogene.” Valentine stepped over Infamy’s prone form and stood just outside of her reach, “Give this up. There is a chance we could still help you. Curie here is an excellent doc. Not to mention your brother…”

“MY BROTHER?!” She gripped the cage bars and leaned forward to shriek at him, “MY BROTHER HAD ME KILLED!”

“I… no… I…”

“NO!” Deegan wouldn’t let that stand, “Your brother sent Valentine and Wraith to try and help you. I… I shot you, Emogene. I thought you had killed everyone. That you’d become a monster. And the only way I could save the memory of a girl that I’ve known since she was a child…” The ghoul closed his eyes and looked away, unable to continue.

“Oh, poor Edward. Poor sweet fool; I am a monster! And just to prove… what?” She took a step back, her eyes confused “How? How did you find me?!” Confusion turned to fear, “NO! GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU BRUTISH, GREEN…”

As suddenly as she had become Radiance, Wraith returned to herself. She shook her head a few times before leaning into the bars, “I could really use an aspirin.”

Deacon stepped over Infamy and reached out a hand to touch her, but caught himself and pulled it back, “How much time do you have?”

“Ah, the eternal question.” She was happy to see a few half smiles on her friends’ faces, “I’m not sure. I don’t even know all of what just happened.” She popped her chin at Atom’s Assassin, “They alright?”

Hancock nudged them with a boot and seemed satisfied that their groaning was indicative of good health, “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll mend.” He pushed his tricorn back to clunk foreheads with her, “You sound better, sunshine.”

“She must’ve dropped the barrier completely. How did you manage that?”

“I sicked Strong on her.” MacCready came to give her a kiss, “I hope he eats her or, whatever.”

Curie passed a bottle in-between them, “Excusez-moi, Madame, but please drink this.” She beamed as Wraith drank it down without question, “You see, Monsieur Deacon; it does not taste like frowns!”

“That’s… not exactly what I said.”

Danse made a mental note that Deacon had once again taken a step back so the others would have room. It irritated him but he wasn’t sure why. He waited until Wraith had finished chugging Curie’s health drink before reaching through the bars to give her a bear-hug that was almost crushing. He didn’t trust himself to speak so held her quietly for a few moments while gently patting her back.

Wraith caught sight of Jack and pointed an accusatory finger at him, “You! You made this mess. You had better damn well help me clean it up!”

“I’m not entirely sure…”

“Tell me how to block the artifacts effects!”

“I’m not sure…”

“How about a goddamn tinfoil hat?!”

“Block nothin’,” Hancock was holding one of Wraith’s hands, “destroy is more my thinkin’, you feel me?”

“Unfortunately, that is quite impossible. The artifact is simply too powerful; it cannot be destroyed by any means…”

“Clearly, it ain’t.”

Valentine nodded and gestured to Wraith, “I was wondering about that too. You mentioned that it was indestructible, but maybe it only makes you think that it is. It’s proven to be vulnerable against an AMR, at any rate.”

“It’s sentient, then?” Danse was making a face.

“Absolutely.”

“Well, then, let’s go get it, strap it to a mini nuke and call it a day.” MacCready turned to Wraith, “So?”

“So what?”

He blinked a few times, her confusion having confused him, “So, uh. Where’s it at?”

She released Hancock’s hand and folded her arms, “Nope!” She started to laugh and shook her head, “Ha ha. You almost had me, Radiance.” She took a few steps back away from her friends and shook her finger at the ceiling, “There’s no way I’m telling you where it is so you can just sit and spin.”

“She thinks she’s… that we’re…”

“Not real.” Hancock was crushingly disappointed.

“But of course we are real. Why should this not be so?”

Once again Wraith’s eyes glazed over and she growled lowly. There was a collective groan and Curie began to softly cry. Danse held her and whispered soft words of encouragement into her ear.

MacCready clenched and unclenched his fists, “She went someplace by herself.” He seemed to be speaking to the ceiling, “No, that’s not right. She took Dogmeat!” He turned to Valentine, “Wraith went off someplace, just her and Dogmeat, right after you got hurt. That must’ve been when she ditched the alien thingy!”

“So the dog knows? Maybe. Does that help us?”

He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by someone yelling through the Radio Freedom speakers. The group trouped up the stairs to hear better, leaving Infamy in the tender care of the concrete floor.

“I’m not sure if you heard me; this is Mama Murphy. Noah, dear, I know how these work. Probably better then you, sweetheart, so stop pushing buttons. Hello, kids? Is anyone at home?”

Hancock picked up the receiver, “Murphy? What’s happening?”

“Hancock, I’ve seen the way to help Wraith.”

.....

Thank you so much for reading! Like what you read? Looking for more? Please see my masterlink post tagged under Wraith in the Ruins (also my pinned post). As always, if you have any questions/concerns/comments please drop by and send an ask. Anon too. =^..^=

#wraith in the ruins #fallout companions #john hancock #hancock #fallout 4 #fallout fanfic #fallout fanfiction #deacon #danse #maccready #fallout curie #fallout strong #nick valentine

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fredheads · 4 years

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WIP WEDNESDAY (special birthday edition)

i flopped hard and did not write a thing for @fredsythes birthday not a special fic and not even a chapter of my own debauchery that i was gonna pass off as a present real quick so in order to make it up here is an extra long wip wednesday for clown au ft. some real gay ass shit ❤️ 🧡 💛 💙 💜 💚🥰pls enjoy

Harry Clayton came jogging up to them then, no longer wearing the blue uniform of the Church School band. He had replaced his trombone in the Neibolt School music room, and had changed into blue jeans and a cream-coloured shirt. A canvas bag flapped against his shoulder. FP noted, almost unthinkingly, how pronounced the muscles in his legs and arms were. Harry was built more solidly than any of them, even Hal and Fred, who were the biggest and tallest, respectively.

“Hey,” said Harry abruptly, his eyes sliding over Hiram and FP before landing on Fred. “I saw him,” Harry confided, lowering his voice. “The clown. As we were going up Main Street Hill I saw him passing out balloons to kids.

“It was the same one you talked about. He had a silver suit with orange buttons. And orange hair. And he was smiling, but… there was something wrong about him. He was facing away when I saw him, but as soon as I recognized him he looked at me. And something about him… it scared me. And the paint on his mouth was dripping. It looked like blood.”

“I told you!” Hiram suddenly shrieked. He threw his ice cream on the ground and covered his face with his hands. “I told you! It’s here!”

‘Let’s go,” said Fred quickly. His mouth had hardened into a thin line, and his jaw was taut. He touched FP’s shoulder abruptly, and a warmth flared from the place where his fingers pressed. Fred steered them towards the road. “We should f-find the others. Have you g-got the s-s-slides, Harry?”

“Yeah.” Harry patted his bag. “My dad’s got a lot of stuff about Riverdale. It goes back a long time.”

“Why’s your dad care so much?” FP asked. His own ice cream had melted down to a stump of cone, and he threw it on the ground as they walked.

“He thinks it’s interesting. He told me once it was because he wasn’t born here. It’s like he came in in the middle of a movie and-”

“He w-wants to see the s-start,” Fred said, and Harry smiled at him.

“Exactly.”

They found Hal, Mary, and Alice together at the fence bordering the tilt-a-whirl. Mary had been marching with the Boy Scouts, and was wearing her neckerchief and neatly pressed uniform. Alice was eating a stick of spun pink cotton candy and laughing at something one of the others had said. FP gauged by the exhilarated and terrified look on Hal’s face that they might have spent the morning together. The bigger boy was blushing so badly that FP expected smoke to start spiraling out of his ears.

“W-We’re g-going to my h-house,” Fred explained. “H-Harry’s going to s-show us the puh-pictures.”

The smiles disappeared from their faces, replaced by the serious looks of small adults. They walked in a solemn pack through the crowded streets and away from the festival, pushing their bikes by the handlebars. Fred’s house stood vacant and quiet, though music and fanfare from downtown floated very faintly over the tops of the neighbourhood trees. A tattered row of pinwheels turned doggedly in his neighbour’s garden. Fred pulled up the garage door and began setting up the projector while the others pulled up boxes and stools to use as chairs.

FP stared at a photo tacked above Artie Andrews’ workbench. It was a ragged snapshot of the Andrews family on vacation. Oscar was there, sandwiched between his mother and father with a hand in each of theirs. And Fred was standing at his father’s shoulder, his head leaning against Artie’s arm, beaming at the camera. He looked very young and very happy.

FP had a fantasy sometimes of telling Mr. and Mrs. Andrews off for the way they treated Fred. In this fantasy he was usually over at the Andrews house, maybe eating dinner or sitting with Fred at the kitchen island. The air was thick and painful, and Fred was trying to talk to his parents, and they were ignoring him. FP could see the tears welling up in Fred’s eyes, and his jaw was clenched like he was trying his hardest to be brave, but he was hurting. FP saw him hurting and it made him lose his cool a bit.

In this daydream he jumped up and laid into both of them, really blew up and gave them the business. Fred looked embarrassed, a little, but grateful too. He looked at FP with stars in his eyes, like no one had ever done something like that for him before. FP indulged himself in this vision the way he did his dreams of becoming a rock star or a stand up comic in his adult life - it had the same mythical, incandescent quality as those daydreams, though this particular one recurred with frightening severity.

“You’d better start treating your son right,” he told Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. In this fantasy he also had a strong, gravelly tough-guy voice, like he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. He was suave. He meant business. “Do you hear me? Oscar’s gone, but Fred’s not. Fred’s still here. And your son is the smartest, strongest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even know it.”

His arm would go around Fred, then, wrapping around his broad back and holding him tight. Fred’s parents looked shamed, but FP wasn’t done. No, they’d know when he was done. He was just getting started. “This whole time you’ve been ignoring him he’s been braver than you’ve ever been in your life,” FP told them, and his voice rang out across the dining room clear as a bell.

Sometimes Artie started to give him some trouble, but FP stopped him cold every time.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he would say to Artie Andrews, cracking his knuckles. “I don’t wanna hurt you, but I swear to God, I will. If you make him cry again, I swear to God you’ll regret it.” (He savoured these particular words like spun sugar in his mouth, reciting them sometimes in the veil between dreaming and waking like an actor rehearsing for his opening scene.)

Fred would pull on his sleeve, but FP wouldn’t be calmed. He was a loose cannon. “I’m not crying,” Fred would say sometimes, wiping his eyes and trying to be brave, and that would make FP hold him tighter.

Artie always apologized. They both did. “Don’t say sorry to me, you say sorry to him,” FP would order, and Fred would turn to him with those wide, adoring eyes in which FP could see reflected all the stars in the universe, and a tear would tremble on the rim of his lower lashes.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Fred would say when they were alone. He wouldn’t stutter either - FP would have fixed that one up too.

“Sure I did, kid,” FP said. “You’re my best friend, aren’t you?”

And Fred would smile at him, a smile that was brave and hopeful and then he would

(NO! NO NO NO!)

(yes yes he would KISS-)

kiss FP on the cheek, only here the dream would be so bright and wonderful that FP would come to in a start, would throw it off blushing with his tongue drier than sawdust and his stomach cramping madly, the dream and reality overlapping in lovely translucent strips so that flashes of it were still visible - Fred’s hand on his wrist, Fred’s hot dry lips on his cheek, and then he would leave it entirely with superhuman effort and go back to the start like rewinding a tape, sitting at the kitchen table, telling Fred’s parents that they’d better wise up.

He got as far as telling Artie off the second time around when he looked up suddenly and realized he was the only one still standing in the middle of the garage. Mary was sitting on a folding chair to his right, asking him what the hell he was doing. FP dropped quickly onto a nearby crate and shook the dream out of his head.

“Just thinking me thinks,” he said glibly, crossing one ankle on top of his knee and bouncing it, and Mary shook her head slightly and turned away.

Fred pulled down the garage door, sealing out the light. In the moment before FP’s eyes adjusted to the pitch black, he had a horrible thought. Suppose something reached out of the dark and grabbed his neck, or a set of teeth fastened in his leg? Suppose the clown was behind them all now? Then the projector flashed on, illuminating a square of flat garage wall, and the breath came back to his body.

“Some of these pictures go back hundreds of years, my dad said,” Harry explained. He was feeding slides into Artie Andrews’ projector, his broad shoulders silhouetted very handsomely in the blue light. “When you all were talking about the clown, I realized I’d seen something like it before. And after I saw it today, I’m sure I recognized him.”

“You recognized him?” Alice asked, sounding horrified.

“Look.”

The slide clicked into place, throwing an outline of a photo on the garage wall. The projection was a scan of a black-and-white ink sketch, showing a clown entertaining a group of children. The children were smiling, but the clown was not. Its mouth drooped down in a sorrowful frown, its eyes gloomy black pits. There was an awful aura about the antique photo, as though the black and white lines radiated malice.

PENNYWISE THE CLOWN read old-timey writing across the bottom.

“What’s the date on this?” Hal asked.

“My dad says this one is from the early seventeen hundreds. Back when Riverdale was just a beaver trapping camp.”

This phenomenal news rocketed FP into action. “Still is! Am I right, boys?” FP shoved Hiram hard with his elbow and threw a hand up for a high five. Hiram looked at him blankly. Fred frowned. Mary shook her head at him until FP put his hand back down.

#it au #wip wednesday #fred andrews #fp jones #parentdale

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jazzviewswithcjshearn · 5 years

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Kit Downes: Dreamlife of Debris (ECM, 2019)

Kit Downes: piano, organ; Tom Challenger: tenor saxophone; Lucy Railton: cello; Stian Westerhus: guitar; Sebastian Rochford: drums.

When keyboardist Kit Downes released Obsidian last year on ECM, it was a stunning album. He investigated three separate pipe organs of various sizes and the acoustic properties of each church, and the compositions yielded some provocative and stimulating music. With Dreamlife Of Debris the follow up to last year's effort, Downes utilizes not only the pipe organ once again from St. John's the Baptist in Snape but also piano, his main instrument. The music is an expansion of that found on Obsidian by Downes surrounding the keyboards with Tom Challenger on tenor saxophone (playing a larger role than the former album) cellist Lucy Railton, guitarist Stian Westerhus, and ECM regular, drummer Sebastian Rochford.

The album title is a reference to director Grant Gee's documentary Patience, about the writer W.G. Sebald's inspiration towards his seminal Rings of Saturn. For Downes, Dreamlife of Debris is a way of bringing life, a certain spirit to an inanimate object like an organ. Through looking at even a surface as a table, one can learn there is life and movement in what seems like a solid object-- the concept of giving life to seemingly everything is also a belief in Japanese Shinto-- and indeed in these eight tracks, the organ does come alive in a series of dreamlike sound scapes, where the notion of improvisation (and there is plenty) takes a secondary role to the overall textural environment in the music.

“Sculptor” begins with Challenger's breathy whispered tones. Alongside spidery melodic lines from Downes' piano. Aside from the striking use of space, Downes and Challenger engage in a delicate pas de deux, with strains of organ finally fading into the background at the close of the piece. The familiar fat, calliope sonority of the St John's the Baptist organ is at the forefront of “Circinus”. A Philip Glass like arpeggio sets the mood, Lucy Railton's legato cello, and harmonics adds a new color to the fray with Challenger gliding on top. The listener is transported to a cerulean sky, with a beautiful cloudy mist. The track could almost frame sections of the short Cloud from 1987's classic Japanese animated anthology Robot Carnival. “Pinwheel” captures the joy of a childlike innocence of a literal, bright metallic pinwheel blowing in the wind. As the piece progresses with Railton's cello, Downes' piano and wispy brushes and cymbal work from Rochford there is an underlying sadness and a cinematic quality of beautiful full color fading to black and white. “Bodes” is the album centerpiece, with a reflective melody bolstered by Challenger with soft, flute stop like organ in the background and Westerhus' mandolin like guitar trilling. The piece moves into a tense, nightmarish free improvisation carefully crafted by Downes in post production to match the overall sound of the church acoustics. Amorphous tones from synth pad like guitar beds, screeching cello harmonics and saxophone swirl around in an aural equivalent of a strong wind shuffling curtains creating horrifying, uncertain shapes in a dark room. “M7” was originally sung by Downes' wife, Ruth Goller, and is treated as a solo organ piece. The trailing decay of the whistle stop that Downes solos with that dips in pitch is strangely reminiscent of one of Lyle Mays' trademark patches found on tunes such as “Are You Going With Me?” and adds an intriguing sonic element. The closing “Blackeye” is almost a clash of the ancient and modern as Sebastian Rochford's strong tom tom groove brings it into the realm of the present juxtaposed with the ancient sound of Downes' organ.

Sound

Dreamlife of Debris is excellently captured by engineer Alex Bonney, who also recorded Obsidian. As with the previous album, it is produced by Sun Chung who, while firmly sticking to the ECM ethos of spacious, clear sound, tends to hone in on a quite atmospheric, eerie quality that has informed albums such as Near East Quartet by Songjae Son, Amorphae by Ben Monder and Lebroba by Andrew Cyrille. The sound stage is quite large with aerated piano, massive organ with the forceful sound of air moving through pipes, ghost like guitar, present cello, and saxophone. The album is most certainly reference quality and will thrill audiophiles. The album is especially effective on headphones, and the slight distance from the listener is a perfect match for headphones like the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro's.

Closing Thoughts

Kit Downes has once more created a winning album expanding on the processes that began with Obsidian. The pipe organ is a incredible vessel for composition as a forefather of the modern synthesizer. Through a unique blend of organ, piano, tenor saxophone, cello, guitar and drums it is a journey through the unconscious where one is confronted with everything. The chamber aspect of most of the compositions does blur the line between the written and improvised and is performed in such a way that it is unclear where one line ends and the next begins. Through this masterful use of blurred lines the listener to focus on the arresting array of tones and textures used to convey the message.

Music rating: 10/10

Sound rating: 10/10

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#Kit Downes #jazz #ECM Records #church organ #soundscape

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uldren-sov · 5 years

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AAAA so my lovely rp partner @s0tc commissioned the LOVELY @cytharat with our agents in some not so wintery wonderland conditions and s0tc surprised me with these today and they’re so incredible!!! AAA look at them ;;;

Thank you so much, both of you! Below is my part of our gift exchange.

Out of any assignment they’ve had so far; the jungle, the desert, the interrogation, the poison - this may yet stand to be the worst. It’s been a week and there still hasn’t been any safe weather to go check out their post yet. A blizzard had torn through, nearly crashing their transport shuttle from the space station to the main base here on Hoth upon arrival. And since then, it had not let up for a full week.

Some planets should just be better left unsettled.

Evacios and Evelyn had made due, kept focus on their objective here, and trained … for the first five days. Past that and it was beyond the pail of what they needed to do and what Imperial Intelligence wanted them to do. Besides, it wasn’t like there was any communication out of the base during the blizzard, no one to report on what they could, or couldn’t do.

And what didn’t they do.

But even that became boring, became inconvenient and more hassle than it was worth. But on the seventh day, the comms crackled to life with the broken up voice of a petty officer on the other end. Communication at last which meant …

Evacios was one of the first to see just how the landscape has changed as a result of all the snow, and after being the one to hit the massive cargo bay doors he -- couldn’t say he wasn’t surprised. The snow had piled up, perhaps 20 feet, along the edge of the door. Some of it started to crumble, to fall into the hangar that led out, but sunlight flooded the room, sparkling off the mostly fluffy snow.

“Well, shit,” he heard Evelyn suddenly grouse beside him. They were both ready in their winter gear to set out, to finally get started so they could leave the planet; Evelyn in appropriate white-and-light-blue accented gear, to camouflage in the snow. Evacios? Evacios already had a stealth generator, so he wore his signature black.

“If they ask us to shovel we’re-” he started, cut off from the base commander emerging along with most of the retinue here.

“All right! We’ve confirmed the storm has passed and has continued South-Southwest which means we need to clear a landing area immediately! New oil for the droids and a shovel for every able hand,” she said and there it was, the pointed look towards them, “and may I remind you that while you two might be Intelligence; here? You’re still under my command.” A quick standoff, as Evacios settled a hand on Evelyn’s shoulder, if looks could kill she’d have probably run the commander through in a heartbeat -- much like how he wanted to. Yet he had to play his part, the responsible one, the leader, so while he might have glared he still snapped to attention.

“Yes, sir,” he managed. It satisfied the commander and he felt, rather than heard, Evelyn deflate beside him.

“So you just get to sign us up for volunteer service?” she said, turning her perturbed gaze his way, crossing her arms and scowling. She wasn’t pleased, that much was certain, but he nonetheless settled his grip on her upper arms, massaging them slightly.

“The sooner we help, means the sooner we’ve finished, means the sooner we can get to work,” he explained but smiled just enough for her to narrow her eyes.

“I don’t believe that for a second and remember I know when you’re lying, now,” she warned - interrogation training; both of them were given separate and unique “win” conditions, and while she at least knew he had been feeding her false information she couldn’t get him to give the answers she needed. A win and a loss, perhaps, but he nonetheless let her think she knew his tells.

“True,” a sigh and then a twitch of a grin in truth. “It’s just, you said you’ve never seen snow before and-” oh, but she looked outraged in an instant.

“This is your fault,” she started, as people began to move about them, around them, the soldiers starting to go through procedure to start clearing the wall of snow.

“It is,” he agreed and leaned in just close enough to only not be kissing her, the steam of their breath floated up between them, “and I promise I’ll make it up to you later.” It mollified her immediately, still upset yet nowhere near the anger he saw.

“You better.” And he sealed the promise with a quick kiss.

Most of the snow was cleared by the droids, while it wasn’t impossible to get up so high for the soldiers, and two would-be Ciphers, to start assisting, it was high enough to warrant caution, especially as more of the snow crumbled in large chunks and scattered across the floor. A small avalanche would ruin equipment, so best let the droids do it up to a certain point.

And that certain point apparently was midway and midday, the droids having pushed the snow aside, meant there were now dizzyingly high walls of snow on either side of the hangar entrance. And while they didn’t need to clear much space, there had to be enough for a fighter and a shuttle to land. The snow wall was some ten feet up, high enough to still warrant a ladder and before long, white-clad soldiers skittered up them like ants up an ant hole to begin work digging out the entrance the old-fashioned way.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Evelyn said from below him on the ladder. He stopped at the top to offer her his hand - which she took.

“It’s your first time seeing snow. How could I possibly pass up the opportunity for you to experience it hands-on?” He smiled and she shook her head. And while he spun his shovel, the loathsome task he signed himself up for as well was one more thing he had to tolerate with this training, he did at least catch Evelyn look out with wonder.

Indeed, spread out before them was a verifiable sea of white, a desert where instead of sand, was ice. It rolled and crested with where the wind found and built dunes upon. The mountainous peaks dotting the horizon were frosted along the peppery black stone and silvery ice as the wind dipped down to woosh gently through the man-made tunnel they were all now creating. The kicked up snow caught the errant flakes, pinwheeling them through the icy-cold air, sparkling in the sunlight of a clear day.

It was hard for Evacios to not share, at least a bit, in the wonder he saw in Evelyn’s expression. Still, he stalked over and pulled the yellow-tinted goggles down over her eyes - snapping her out of her reverie.

“Let’s get to work.”

And what work it was. For hours they toiled, heave-hoing snow off to the side for the droids to push away. The whole platoon, even the commander, took up a shovel to start clearing the area and then create a ramp up to the rest of the world on the far side of the landing. It didn’t have to be completely clear, the whole base was no doubt situated on centuries old ice and snow, and should they dig, they’ll no doubt just find the ice shelf. No, they just had to clear it to an even level of the base. It took the full day, the sun now starting to fall into the horizon - perhaps giving them an hour, maybe two, before it would sink past the mountain ranges and once again make the temperatures unbearable and inhabitable. Evacios tossed his, then Evelyn’s shovel to a passing droid and sighed heavily. His arms, shoulders, and back burned from use - yet even that was not enough to say he was truly warm. Hoth may not have been the worst place for an Imperial to be stationed, that award belonged to Korriban beyond a shadow of a doubt, but damned if this place wasn’t at least top three.

“This might be my first time seeing snow,” huffed Evelyn, as tired soldiers trudged past them, back inside, “but you know what? If I never see any snow ever again, I’m good.” She worked her shoulders out, and then her neck.

“No love for it anymore?” he crossed his arms as she emphatically shook her head.

“I’ve dug trenches in the jungle during the rainy season,” she started and shook her head, “and honestly, I think I like that better.” She huffed. “I can’t wait to get off this planet.”

It wasn’t that much of an issue … yet Evacios knew that so long as she held this animosity, it was only likely to grow. He couldn’t have her frustrated or angry when they haven’t even started their mission. They had bunks here, they had heating here, they had food, and blankets, and warm ‘freshers, and all the amenities of an altogether comfortable - despite the environment - outpost. Evacios himself, as spec ops, have seen and lived through far worse and knowing that their mission took them far outside any kind of military outpost? This was as good as they were going to get, and he couldn’t have her start out like this when morale would probably be the only thing that got them through this test.

He wandered away from her innocently enough.

“Surely you can’t miss the rain, the humidity, the bugs,” he started, just trying to get her going - keep her talking and if not distracted, then at least focused on something else.

“The rain you can keep out, the outposts had dehumidifiers, and there’s bug spray for a reason,” she checked them all off. “I even prefer the vine cats, at least that gave us something to keep an eye out for.”

“You want there to be some kind of deadly creature out here? Lurking just behind any errant snow drift to kill us?” he asked jokingly as he turned his back to her and squatted down.

“Just something to break up all the monoto-” ironically that was when the snowball had hit her chest. She was stunned as she looked down to see the smear of snow clinging to her suit and slowly looked to him, the snow clearly on his hands, twisted on one knee to get the bead on her and throw it.

“I’m sorry, what was that again?” He grinned, giving her his best mischievous look before she snapped back to it and started sprinting at him. He scooped up another handful before running, himself, away from the base, off to the side - where the massive wall of snow would hide them from curious onlookers.

He snapped to a turn and threw the snowball back towards her, it was sudden but she was quick enough to duck and curl, the snowball glanced off her shoulder but she gave a surprised yell at the impact. A new sensation, one she was unaccustomed to, of course her body would react that way but the smile was unmistakable in a second. It even grew, unbidden, from him as she quickly reached down to arm herself as well. He took off and lept over a haphazard pile of snow he thought he could use as cover.

Instead, his feet met with unpacked snow and he sank a solid two feet behind the pile with a surprised gasp. His legs caught very nearly painfully, yet all that happened was give Evelyn time enough to make her very first snowball and launch it at his head. He brought his arm up in time to brace his face but he felt it skid across his hair. He scurried to get out of the hole but by that time she made another and caught him in the back with it.

“This is called payback!” she shouted without any hint of malice as another one caught him in the side before he could finally pull himself out. And when that one hit he even heard a peel of laughter coming from her.

All right then. He may have gotten out of his hole but he kept low and pushed the loose snow up into a small hill - some cover as he kept prone and worked some snow loose around him so he could get even lower.

“You know, I think you’re a better shot with these than you are with a blaster!” he called, and when he looked to gauge her reaction he had to duck at once to avoid a streak of snow - a poorly compacted snowball.

“Real funny, at least i'm not using tactics to win a snowball f-” and from his cover he launched one, two, three more snowballs which caught her in her hip, her side, and her chest. Her eyes widened, her expression a mix of outrage and perhaps exhilaration as she quickly ran behind some cover herself and they began the assault in truth. It wasn’t long before every throw, every connection, was met with shrieks of laughter and tapered chuckles. It was a complicated game of cat-and-mouse with snowballs as the former soldiers and Ciphers in training ducked and moved between covers, between volleys, and admittedly stumbling and tripping over the soft powdery snow where it wasn’t packed down correctly.

It all came to a head when Evacios peeked out over a small hill and saw that Evelyn was not but a few feet in front of him, sprinting as hard as she could and seemed to have no intention of stopping. He could step out of the way, he could slip out of the grasp - perhaps - but he let it happen. She crashed into him, nearly folding him in half as they both collapsed into the soft snow in a plume of flakes.

“I win,” she said between crests of breathless laughter. Poised above him she kept him down with hands firmly on his chest, not that he was making any effort to change that.

“This time,” he conceded, surprised, at least, to find himself smiling. He would have been content at that, but then he remembered - had to always remember and keep up his ploy. He covered her hands with his, his black gloves covering her white ones in their entirety. He met her energized grin with a sly smile of his own, one he knew spoke of promises only he could keep. “Take what you want as a prize.” An obvious invitation but one she nonetheless took.

She kissed him immediately, hotly, full of an aggression and possession she no doubt used with plenty of men before him - men that easily and eagerly wilted from. He, on the other hand, slowly wound his arms around her body, covering over the white of her jacket, and his gloved hands disappearing into her black tresses. He gripped her behind her head and held her back just enough to reply, slower, deeper, languid enough to where she sighed gently through her nose and was compliant in a matter of seconds. He angled her head as he drew her in closer, brushing his fingers down to the base of her skull, keeping her to him, as he kissed her methodically, slanting his lips against hers until he pulled her back and she gasped softly for breath.

“Come on, it’s going to get dark soon and I’m not entirely convinced the commander won’t lock us out on principal,” he whispered with a smirk. She huffed in response, another shake of her head.

“The faster we’re away from her the better, definitely,” she agreed as she unwound herself from his embrace and offered him a hand. He didn’t take it and stood on his own, to which she just shrugged, “by the way. I’m not done with you yet.” She made her own promise in her own way and he had to smirk, raising his split eyebrow in amusement.

“No, I didn’t think you were,” he commented airily, as he started brushing himself off. “But, hm, humor me for a second.” He fished through his pocket as she crossed her arms and watched him curiously. He found his holo, hit a button, and tossed it gently. It landed just a couple of feet from them and began hovering.

“Really? A picture?” she questioned dryly.

“To commemorate your first foray into the elements,” he said glibly as he stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “As I said, humor me.” He smiled and gave a quick kiss to her cheek. She rolled her eyes but she was having a hard time fighting off the smile on her face.

“Fine. One picture,” she relented but snatched the holo from its position to hold it up higher.

1 … 2 … 3 … He smiled and held her close and as soon as it was taken she quickly reviewed it. He watched her from behind, the earnesty of her excitement was touching but the sun was now low, the day was ending, and work would begin again soon. He pressed his cheek against the crown of her head and she leaned back into his embrace, yes - Intelligence work would begin again soon, his work, though, was never done.

#i wish i had money or could draw but below the cut is long!#ly soph!!!#this is so lovely ty guys sm!!! ;;;;#SWTOR #Eve and Eva

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fallforcs · 6 years

Text

Hayrides, Fate, and Fortune Cookies

Art by @imagnifika

Author: @searchingwardrobes

Hayrides, Fate, and Fortune Cookies

Summary: “Wow, you’re hot, but I’m pretty sure that’s your wife.” + “You are incredibly hot, and I keep falling in your lap on this hayride. I swear I’m not doing it on purpose. Wow, this is awkward!”

Rating: G for fall fluff. Like the fanfic equivalent of hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon.

Trigger warnings: None unless you count the possibility of getting a toothache from the fluff :)

A huge thank you to my beta, @looselipswontsinkships . She was swamped with school, yet still managed to look this story over and catch my silly mistakes. Also a shout out to my artist. I had this idea in my head of a beautiful fall aesthetic for my story (which I could never make myself), and look what I got! It’s not only gorgeous but exactly what I was hoping for.

I absolutely adore fall, so I hope you all enjoy this little Captain Swan autumn one shot …

When she woke up that morning, Emma Swan would have never believed that the day would start with a hayride and end with fortune cookies. Of course, she had promised three year old Henry that she would take him to the pumpkin patch in the little coastal town of Storybrooke, Main. The one that all the mom blogs in Portland rated the best pumpkin patch in the area. Peter’s Pumpkins and Pies. In Storybrooke . Ah, she got it. Cute and clever. Or something.

There was so little that she, as an overworked, underpaid single mother, could give to her tiny son. She could at least give him this. She could take pictures of Henry in his cute fall jacket amidst the bright orange pumpkins and post them on Instagram, just like all the other moms.

But then she had awakened to a cold drizzle outside the window and a leaden gray sky. She gently told Henry the weather was just too nasty for the pumpkin patch. Then Henry had dissolved into a puddle of tears on the kitchen floor. Now, Emma wasn’t one of those moms who was ruled by some kind of toddler tyrant. But the thing was, Henry wasn’t that kind of kid. Sure, he had colic the first four months of his life, but it was as if he’d spent all his tears in that brief space of time (though it hadn’t felt brief when she was in the middle of it.) But now Henry was a complacent, easy to please child. His tears that morning were more of the “my little heart is breaking” variety rather than the “I’m going to scream until I get my way” variety.

Emma’s heart broke a little bit too. She was supposed to feel like she didn’t suck at this mom thing for once. So she bundled Henry up in his waterproof jacket with the flannel lining and put his Spiderman boots on his little feet, and prayed the rain would taper off during the 45 minute drive.

For once, Emma’s prayers to anyone up there who would listen were actually answered because by the time she parked in the open field next to Peter’s Pumpkins and Pies, the rain had stopped. However, their feet still made loud squelching sounds as they walked across the soaked grass, and Emma was glad for the rain boots they both wore. The sky was still gray, and the wind that lashed their faces still held a hint of dampness. It also brought the smell of wet, dirty fur downwind from the petting zoo. Not the most pleasant aroma. Emma would have to make sure Henry didn’t notice the barnyard where they kept the animals. The last things she wanted to do was wade through the mud to pet wet, smelly sheep and goats.

“Two please,” Emma said when she reached the ticket booth.

“That’ll be twenty-four dollars,” the plump, cheery woman behind the counter told her.

Emma’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Tw-twenty f-four dollars?” she stuttered incredulously.

“That’s right, tickets are twelve dollars a person,” the woman explained, her smile not wavering in the least at Emma’s reaction.

“But, he’s only three,” Emma said, gesturing down to Henry, “does he get in free?”

The woman peered at Henry over the edge of the booth and shrugged apologetically at Emma. “Only guests two and under are free.”

Emma let out a long breath. “A child’s ticket?” she asked hopefully.

“That is the child’s price,” the woman clarified, pointing to a bright sign decorated in fall leaves that announced: Adult Admission at Child’s Price! This weekend only! “Adult tickets are normally sixteen dollars.”

Emma bit her lip as she fished the money out of her pocket. She had promised Henry, but there went pizza for tonight. She guessed it was bologna sandwiches again.

The good thing about the rain was that the crowd was thin. Emma figured that the weather was a blessing in disguise since the weekend’s special deal usually made it a crowded one. Emma was also relieved to see that the petting zoo was down the hill and out of sight of her enthusiastic three year old. Henry was bouncing up and down and swinging their joined hands back and forth.

“What do you want to do first, Henry?” Emma asked, the sight of her son’s joy causing everything else - the weather, the mud, the smells, and the expensive cost of admission - to be pushed far from her mind. “There’s a corn maze, a story barn, a hay ride … oooh, look you can paint your own little pumpkin!”

Emma was relieved to see that everything, including the mini pumpkins to paint, were included in the price of admission. The only thing they would have to pay for was a large pumpkin to take home and carve and maybe a pie. (Okay, she was definitely getting a pie. If pizza was out, she was at least getting a dessert out of all this.)

The next hay ride wasn’t for another fifteen minutes, so they decided to go the story barn where an enthusiastic teenager in overalls and braids was getting ready to read a picture book to the children gathering around on huge logs. Emma grimaced when they took a seat; the logs had apparently soaked up all the rain. Henry scrambled up to stand on top of the log so he could see better over the gathering crowd.

“Henry care-“ the words had barely left Emma’s mouth when Henry’s left Spiderman boot slid out from under him. He pitched backwards, arms pinwheeling in empty air. Emma reached out to grab him, but another set of hands caught him first. “Oh my God, thank you! I –“

Emma’s words failed her then as she looked up into an unfairly attractive face. The man had lustrous dark hair, a finely chiseled jaw covered in delicious looking scruff, and the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen. The eyes were what left her speechless. Then he smiled. A charming, somewhat rakish smile, and then Emma felt herself go hot. She blinked, trying to rouse herself from this stupor. She never let men affect her this way. Ever.

“Be careful there, lad,” he chuckled as he swung Henry up.

He had a British accent, too. Great. If he wasn’t a solid ten before, he sure was now. And he was fit too she could now see as he deposited Henry gently back onto the log (in a seated position this time). His tight jeans, black leather jacket, and gray t-shirt beneath put his toned physique on clear display. The v-neck of the shirt also showed off dark chest hair that made Emma’s throat go dry. He winked at her as he took his seat again on the log behind them.

“Swing me up too!” the little girl next to him squealed. She was an adorable thing with big blonde curls and huge blue eyes that were the same shade as Henry’s rescuer. The man caved immediately to the little girl’s request, and she giggled in delight as he scooped her up and swooped her around in an arc.

“Put her down, Killian!” a woman admonished, though her words had little heat. “The show’s about to start, and you’re blocking everyone’s view!”

The man – Killian, apparently – obeyed the woman’s request immediately, settling the little girl on his knee. It was then that Emma noticed the wedding band glinting in the sun on his left hand. Emma’s heart immediately sank. Sure enough, the woman beside him also had a wedding band with a sparkling diamond solitaire nestled above it. Emma wondered how those rings could sparkle so much on a cloudy day. They must be mocking her.

Emma turned away, putting her arm around Henry to pull him closer as story time began. It was about a misfit pumpkin who was square instead of round, though Emma had a hard time following the plot. She was far too aware of the handsome stranger behind her, and she had to force herself not to glance behind her. He’s with his wife she kept admonishing herself.

The enthusiastic storyteller had Henry giggling in all the right places. She finished up the story with a bow, informing everyone that another hayride was about to leave from the wooden gate directly behind them. It was insane how fast the mob headed in that direction, and Emma held tight to Henry’s hand. They were jostled by overeager children and parents who acted as if this were a ride at Disneyland instead of a flatbed piled with hay. A large man with an ample midsection shoved Emma from behind, propelling her right into … married hottie.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, her face burning with embarrassment. To make matters worse, her next step sent her sliding through a slick patch of mud, and the stranger had to grasp her by both arms to keep her from falling.

“No harm, love,” he assured as he helped her find her footing again.

“Mommy, hu-wee!” Henry piped up, yanking on her hand.

She shook her head to clear it and saw that the hayride was almost full. She mumbled a thank you to the blue-eyed Brit and hurried after her son. The man’s wife and daughter were already climbing the steps into the hay bed, and he hurried past Emma to assist them. Emma took the opportunity to really look at the woman. She moved with elegance, even when taking her husband’s hand to climb aboard the flatbed. Her light blonde hair was in a fishtail braid that rested over her shoulder. She smiled at the little girl as her husband swung the child up, tickling her as she settled into her mother’s lap. It was a picture of domestic bliss framed with the wooden fence and the trees above covered in red and orange leaves like the covers of those parenting magazines that littered the waiting room at the health department. But she could at least scoff at those, knowing they were fake families made of perfect models. This scene was like salt rubbed right where it would hurt most.

Emma brushed off the melancholy thoughts as she helped Henry up into the hay. She had never been so keenly aware of how scuffed his boots were, how faded his little thrift store jacket. Did everyone on this hayride look at the two of them and feel pity? Or worse, judgment? Emma bit her lip, wondering why the handsome man and his picture perfect family were bothering her so much. She grasped the sides of the flatbed and pulled herself up. She and Henry were the last two on, and the hay was packed with people. Emma hesitated, glancing around for an open spot. Impatient, Henry began to whine and cling to her leg. His weight, combined with the uneven bed of hay and the slight tilt of the vehicle on the rutted trail, sent Emma pitching sideways. She fell into another person, both of them grunting with the impact. Emma braced herself against a strong pair of shoulders and looked up into the shocked blue eyes of the same handsome – unavailable – man as before. What did his wife call him again? Oh right …Killian.

To Emma’s shock, his wife actually laughed as Emma stammered an apology. She had literally fallen into the man’s lap, and her legs were tangled up with his. A blush colored his own cheeks as he grinned at her.

“We’ve got to quit meeting this way,” he teased.

“Stop flirting and let the poor woman go,” his wife admonished with a light slap to his shoulder.

She was either really secure in their relationship, or she was really used to women falling all over her husband. Probably the latter, though most women probably didn’t do it as literally as Emma just had. Emma scooted quickly out of his lap, but still didn’t see a spot for her and Henry. It felt like everyone on the hayride was staring at her.

“Here love,” Killian said, scooting over closer to his wife and slinging his arm over her shoulder, “you and your boy can squeeze in here.”

Emma mumbled a thank you yet again – when had her tongue swollen to twice its size? – and wedged herself between Killian and the back gate of the flatbed. She got Henry situated on her lap just as the tractor lurched forward. She grabbed onto the metal grate next to her to steady herself.

“Killian Jones,” the man at her side officially introduced himself, offering his hand.

“Emma Swan,” she replied, shaking it.

“Elsa Jones,” the other woman said, leaning over Killian to offer her hand to shake as well. The last name snuffed out the tiny flicker of hope that had remained in Emma’s heart. So they were married. “And this,” Elsa Jones added, tickling the little girl in her own lap, “is Bethany.”

“Nice to meet you, Bethany,” Emma told the little girl, “how old are you?”

“Thwee,” the child answered, struggling to hold up the requisite number of fingers.

“What do you know?” Emma said to Henry enthusiastically. “You’re three too, Henry. Say hello to Bethany.”

“Hello,” Henry muttered as if it pained him to do so, then turned his face to bury it in his mother’s chest.

Emma frowned. “What’s up with you, kid? You’re never shy.”

Killian leaned towards her conspiratorially. “Maybe he just has a thing for blondes.”

He waggled his eyes, and Emma wondered what his angle was. Maybe he was referring to his wife? Then again, he had also winked at Emma earlier. The guy’s handsome looks suddenly weren’t affecting her quite the same way. What kind of jerk flirted with another woman right in front of his wife?

Emma pressed her lips together as she purposefully looked away from him. Come on, Emma, a part of her argued, maybe he’s just friendly and doesn’t realize how it comes across. But another part of her argued back that the male gender hadn’t exactly proven itself trustworthy throughout her life. Most were scumbags, weren’t they?

The hay ride took them past a field of cows and another of beautiful horses. Emma and Elsa both chatted with the children about the animals, asking what sounds they made. Elsa laughed and chatted with Emma about the things mothers usually do; the struggles of potty training, the annoying kid shows with songs that get stuck in your head, the infernal stubbornness of three year olds. Emma found it odd that she didn’t include her husband in the parenting equation, and even more strange that he didn’t put in his own antidotes. The cracks were showing in this supposedly perfect little family, but it strangely didn’t bring Emma any satisfaction.

The hayride was incredibly bumpy because of all the rain, much to Emma’s chagrin because she kept falling against the rock-hard chest of the man sitting next to her. The more it happened, the more irritated Emma became and the more apologetic Killian became.

Next they passed a field of pumpkins where families ambled amongst the orange gourds, searching for the perfect one. The children both exclaimed with delight, asking when they would get to choose their own pumpkin. Bethany tugged on her father’s arm, pointing excitedly.

“I see, starfish, pumpkins!” he chuckled, brushing a kiss against her curls.

Emma blinked, her heart playing ping pong with her brain. Who was this guy? Flirtatious jerk? Inattentive husband? Doting father? Emma couldn’t tell.

As they rounded the pumpkin patch, the tractor hit a deep rut and then slid in the mud. For one terrifying moment, the entire thing pitched sideways and everyone on board screamed. The driver corrected, guiding them back onto steady ground with a huge bump. The bump sent Emma careening sideways, and she ended up draped across the chest of Killian Jones, her arms encircling his neck.

She reacted more quickly this time, her “I’m so, so, SO sorry!” now directed at Elsa. The woman, amazingly, still didn’t seem fazed. As a matter of fact, the smile on her face and the light in her eyes almost seemed … delighted?

Emma didn’t want to waste one more minute trying to figure out this little family. As soon as the driver opened the gate, Emma scrambled down from the hayride, balancing Henry on her hip. Her son, however, wasn’t cooperating with her attempt at a quick getaway. At some point during the hay ride, Bethany had apparently become his new best friend. She squealed and grabbed his hand as soon as her family climbed down.

“We wanna do the maze!” Bethany shouted.

“The maze! The maze!” Henry echoed her, jumping up and down.

Then the two of them were off like a shot towards the nearby field of tall corn.

“Don’t get too far ahead!” Elsa shouted after them.

“You’ll get lost in there, Henry!” Emma called out as she and her new friend jogged down the hill after them.

“I’ve got them!” Killian assured, passing them with his longer strides. He grabbed up both kids easily, one in each arm, and they both giggled with delight. He turned towards Emma and Elsa with a wink then set the kids down at the entrance to the maze marked “easy.”

Elsa and Emma slowed their pace, following Killian and the children into the maze. Elsa gave her an almost mischievous smile before leaning over to speak to her in a low voice.

“I think he likes you.”

Emma’s eyes grew wide as saucers and her mouth hung open at the other woman’s words. She glanced over at Killian, then back to Elsa, then blinked rapidly. “He, you mean Killian? As in your … your … husband?” She practically whispered the last word.

Elsa’s eyebrows flew to her hairline before she tilted her head back and let out a long, hearty laugh. Emma narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, failing to see why being invited into some weird open marriage scenario was so hilarious to this woman.

“Oh my God, no!” Elsa laughed, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I guess I can see how you thought that. We should have been clearer when we introduced ourselves. Killian’s my brother-in-law .”

“Ohhh …” Emma said, trailing off, feeling like she’d just gotten mental whiplash, “but he is married. I saw the ring.”

The smile fell from Elsa’s face as she shook her head, “I’ve told him so many times to take that ring off. He says he can’t bear to, but I think it’s sort of a way to protect his heart, you know? Women assume, like you did, so they stay away.”

Emma tilted her head as her gaze landed on Killian again. He grabbed Bethany before she could dash off in the opposite direction from Henry, tickling her as he tossed her over his shoulder.

“What happened to his wife?”

Elsa sighed. “It was a brain tumor. By the time they found it, the cancer was too advanced. He only had Milah for about four months after the diagnosis. That was four years ago.”

Emma groaned and covered her face with her hands, “God, I feel horrible now.”

Elsa chuckled. “I understand now why you got a little prickly back there. You thought my husband was hitting on you.” She laughed again as if being married to Killian was the funniest, most preposterous scenario. “I mean, he’s a great guy, but he and Liam – my husband – couldn’t be more different. I guess steady and serious is more my type.”

They walked in silence for a moment. They could no longer see Killian or the kids, but they could hear the children’s giggles around the corner and followed the sound.

“Liam is in the navy,” Elsa explained, “and when he was deployed eight months ago, Killian moved here to help with Bethany.”

“Wow,” Emma said, feeling even worse about the assumptions she had made, “that’s a rare guy.”

“Yeah,” Elsa agreed, “that’s why I want to see him move on from his grief.” She stopped and turned to Emma with an earnest expression. “That’s why I was so happy the second he winked at you back at the story barn. I haven’t seen him flirt with a woman that way in so long. And he blushed ten shades of red when you landed in his lap.”

Emma groaned. “Twice. I landed in his lap twice.”

Elsa nudged her shoulder. “Maybe it was fate giving you a little push.”

The “easy” corn maze took far longer than Emma would have expected, and they were all hot, sweaty, and hungry by the time they found their way out. The clouds had rolled away, revealing a bright blue sky, and the temperature had risen with it. Henry had shed his jacket long ago, leaving Emma to lug it around along with her own.

“Why do people think these things are fun?” Emma quipped as they exited the corn field, and Elsa and Killian both laughed in agreement.

“And that was the easy one!” Elsa said with a shake of her head.

“Let’s get some food into these little ones, shall we?” Killian asked, gesturing to a food truck that had been parked along the tree line with wooden picnic benches set up in front of it.

“The little ones?” Emma laughed. “ I’m starving.”

“Uh, why don’t I take the kids and get us a table?” Elsa suggested. “And you two go get the food?”

Emma had only just met the woman, but she was no fool. She noticed the slight tilt of Elsa’s head in Killian’s direction as she locked eyes with Emma. Then she was corralling the kids towards the tables, assuming the other two adults would follow her orders.

“How she and my brother don’t fight twenty four seven is beyond me,” Killian commented with a shake of his head. “They both like bossing people around.”

Emma laughed as they made their way to the food truck. When they joined the long line of people waiting to order, she cleared her throat nervously and shuffled her feet.

“I owe you an apology,” she finally blurted out.

Killian’s brow furrowed. “Miss Swan, you really need to stop apologizing. It was crowded and bumpy –“

She waved her hand to stop him. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about … .” she searched for the right words and finally settled on the one Elsa had used earlier, “being prickly.”

He cocked his head at her. “Prickly?”

She let out a long breath. “I was sort of rude. I … I thought you and Elsa were married.”

He gave a small chuckle but didn’t dissolve into laughter as Elsa hand. Instead he lifted his left hand and fiddled with the ring resting there. “I can’t fault you for being confused, love. And if you were right, I would definitely be worthy of your cold shoulder.”

“Are you always so eloquent?” Emma asked, stuffing her hands in her pockets.

He laughed and scratched behind his ear. “So I’ve been told.”

“So I’m forgiven?”

His smile broadened. “Of course.”

They shuffled forward in the slow moving line, and Emma gazed across the field where Elsa sat at a picnic table. Henry was chasing Bethany in circles nearby.

“Elsa explained it all to me,” she told him quietly.

“About why I’m tagging along with their little family or why I’m still wearing a wedding ring?” he asked bluntly.

Emma shrugged. “Both.”

He nodded, staring down at the ring and twirling it around his finger. “It was hard for me to be around them at first. I know it hurt Liam; he was so excited when Bethany was born. But all it did was remind me of what I had lost.” He looked up and met Emma’s gaze. “Milah was pregnant when they found the tumor. Our child and Bethany would have been about the same age.”

Emma frowned as her heart sank. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

He released a sigh as he rubbed his chin. “But it was wrong of me to stay away. I see that now. When Liam shipped out, I was going nowhere, doing nothing with my life. The least I could do was be here for my family when they needed me. Being around Bethany has been the best medicine for my soul, you know? I love that little starfish with all I have.”

Emma smiled. “Kids can do that. Henry is the only good thing to come from a very painful time in my life.”

Killian frowned. “I’m sorry, Emma. Is his father in his life at all?”

Emma shook her head. “No. He doesn’t deserve to be. Let’s just say he took advantage of me, then left me.” She pressed her lips together, hoping Killian didn’t ask for more of the story. She was shocked she had told him that much.

He reached down and gently took her hand. “He must be the world’s biggest idiot, then,” he told her softly, giving her fingers a tiny squeeze.

Emma felt a blush stain her cheeks even as she rolled her eyes. “Smooth.”

Killian wiggled his eyebrows. “It was rather, wasn’t it?” he quipped, making her laugh.

By that point, they had reached the truck. Emma looked over the menu, which was filled with typical country fair type refreshments: funnel cakes, corn dogs, French fries, and candy apples. Emma’s heart sank as she looked at the inflated prices, imagining the tiny wad of cash remaining in the front pocket of her jeans.

“It’s on me, Swan,” Killian said as he stepped up to the window, pulling his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Anything you and your boy would like.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Emma protested.

He smiled gently at her. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

Emma hated charity, but the way Killian spoke so sincerely, the way his gaze rested warmly on her, it didn’t feel like charity at all. She gave a simple nod, then gave the employee in the window her order. They made their way back to Elsa and the kids laden down with five corn dogs, four orders of fries, an order of onion rings, and five cans of soda. Killian helped her hand everything out, and they all sat down. Elsa and Emma went to work immediately cutting the kids’ corn dogs into bite size pieces.

“Onion rings, not fries,” Killian pointed out before taking a sip of his drink, “I’ll file that information away, love.”

Emma shook her head, hating the way he could so easily make her blush as she concentrated on Henry’s corn dog. She cleared her throat. “Who says you’ll need it?”

He arched one brow and smirked. “A man can hope.”

Elsa smiled delightedly at the pair of them, no doubt praising herself for her matchmaking skills.

*********************************************************

After eating, the kids wanted to go to the pumpkin painting booth. Each child got a complimentary tiny pumpkin to paint. Being typical three year olds, both children were too stubborn to let Elsa or Emma assist them. Little Bethany poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she carefully dabbed blue and yellow polka dots all over her pumpkin. Her circles were blotchy and misshapen, but for three, it was extremely impressive. Henry, on the other hand, insisted on covering his pumpkin sloppily in every color available.

“She’s really good at this,” Emma commented, gesturing to Bethany’s handiwork.

Elsa grinned and elbowed Killian in the ribs. “It’s in her genes, isn’t it?”

“You’re an artist?” Emma asked as Killian scratched behind his ear. She was beginning to wonder if it was a nervous tic of his.

“I dabble,” he admitted with a shrug.

“Dabble?” Elsa snorted with a roll of her eyes. Then she looked at Emma and explained, “he’s a graphic artist.”

“Well,” Killian explained, gesturing to the table before them, “I was referring to the paint. I dabble with painting. The computer stuff is my job. But drawing and painting? That’s my hobby.”

Emma smiled with appreciation at him, then frowned down at Henry’s pumpkin. The colors had all mixed together into a nasty brown. “Well, I can’t say there are any artistic genes in my family.”

Henry turned with a broad grin to show off his pumpkin, and Killian hid a laugh behind his hand. Emma shrugged as she praised Henry’s effort. Oh well, maybe her kid would have other talents, right?

The employees manning the booth lined up all the pumpkins to dry on a shelf behind them, jotting the kids’ names on paper towels. They were informed that they could pick up the dried projects on their way out in about half an hour, so the five of them headed for the pumpkin patch.

“We’re avoiding the petting zoo,” Elsa whispered in Emma’s ear conspiratorially.

“Oh, I’m with you on that one,” Emma whispered back.

“I mean, it rained this morning,” Elsa continued, wrinkling her nose, “do you know how bad those animals are going to smell?”

Emma laughed, “I know, right?”

She remembered reading Anne of Green Gables as a kid. Tried to read it, anyway. The librarian at her middle school thought it would be perfect for Emma; the story of an unwanted orphan finding an unlikely family. The librarian was wrong. Emma Swan had never met a Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, had never been as optimistic as Anne Shirley, and she had certainly never had any friends who were “kindred spirits.” But now, here with Elsa? She was re-thinking the possibility of such things.

The kids raced through the rows of pumpkins, thumping them with their hands like giant drums. Elsa chose a medium sized pumpkin to make a pie, tucking it under her arm. Emma just stood there, looking up and down the rows with a frown on her face.

“Something wrong, love?” Killian asked.

Emma shrugged with a wry laugh. “Never been to a pumpkin patch before. I’ve always just gotten them at the grocery store.”

Killian nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. “The first time I ever went was with Milah after we’d been married about a year.” He pushed a pumpkin idly with his toe before meeting her gaze. “Not many foster parents take the time you know. Never even carved a pumpkin until Liam and I were on our own.”

Emma blinked, shocked to recognize the shame in his eyes. “Foster parents?”

Killian nodded. “Mum died when I was so young, I don’t remember her. Papa just up and left. So …”

Emma bit her lip. “Similar story,” she admitted, “I guess. Thing is, I don’t even know who my parents were or why they abandoned me.”

They were quiet for a long moment, and Emma was relieved to see only understanding, not pity in Killian’s eyes. Then he gave her a soft smile and reached out to twirl a lock of her hair around his finger.

“Well Swan, you never forget your first,” he told her with a smirk.

Emma gaped. “Excuse me?”

He laughed. “First pumpkin that is.”

Emma rolled her eyes and smacked him in the shoulder. “You’re awful.”

“You think I’m cute, admit it,” he teased, sauntering into her personal space.

Emma swallowed hard as she tilted her head to look up at him. The sun overhead sparkled in his blue eyes and his smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“Are you two ever going to pick a pumpkin, or are you just going to keep flirting?”

Elsa’s voice snapped them both out of it, and Killian rushed over to hoist the large carving pumpkin that his sister-in-law was attempting to juggle with the pie pumpkin. Killian turned back to Emma, his expression looking a bit bashful as his tongue swiped across his lower lip nervously.

“We’re having a get together tonight,” Killian began, “for Elsa’s sister’s birthday. It’s real casual; just ordering some Chinese and then having a bonfire. We … we would love to have you. And Henry, of course.”

“That’s a great idea!” Elsa exulted, smiling broadly. “Bethany and Henry have obviously hit it off, and we always order way too much food.”

“Um …” Emma hedged, her gaze darting from Killian to Elsa and back again.

A part of her wanted to say yes. She had only just met these two, and they already felt like such great friends. But the other part of her, the cautious part, latched onto the fact that she had just met these people . Wasn’t this the part in movies where the naïve young mother gets taken in by the seemingly friendly couple who are actually serial killers? Or she accepts a friendly offer only to find herself escorted to the compound of some weird cult?

Emma shook her head before the words were even out of her mouth. “It’s such a long drive to the city. We really shouldn’t.”

Killian glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s three already, and we’re eating at six. You can just come on over and visit until everyone arrives.”

“You’ll love Anna and her husband,” Elsa insisted.

Emma looked into both their faces, so friendly, so open. In Killian’s eyes, and in their conversations, she also felt a deep connection that she couldn’t explain. But instead of those things comforting her, they only freaked her out more.

“I really can’t,” she said firmly.

Neither of them could hide their disappointment. Killian’s shoulders sagged and he dropped his head to stare at the pumpkin in his arms. When he lifted his gaze to Emma’s, his expression was almost pleading.

“It was wonderful meeting you, Swan. Perhaps … I could get your number?”

Emma felt her heart thudding in her chest, the air suddenly tight in her lungs. They had too much in common, too much shared tragedy. He would expect things to get serious, and that terrified her.

“I … don’t think that’s a good idea.” She averted her gaze when she saw the clear hurt in his eyes.

“Well,” he said with a resigned sigh, “let me help Elsa get these to the car, and I’ll come back and carry yours for you.”

“No, don’t do that,” Emma told him quickly. She feared if she was in this man’s presence for one more minute, her resolve might crumble. “We may be awhile yet. First pumpkin, remember? Gotta make it a good one.”

The smile he gave her was forced, and Elsa laid a hand on his arm as they walked away. Emma remembered her words earlier, I haven’t seen him flirt with a woman that way in so long. He had finally put himself out there, and Emma had crushed him. After they disappeared over the hill, Emma collapsed onto an enormous pumpkin behind her.

“Mo-mmy!” Henry exclaimed, pulling on her hand. “Why you sittin?”

Emma looked at her son wearily. “Because Mommy feels like dirt, that’s why.”

She let Henry pull her to her feet, and she wandered aimlessly among the pumpkins. Henry didn’t seem to mind her stupor, content to run around, climbing on pumpkins and using them like bongo drums. She finally snapped out of it and helped Henry pick a pumpkin for them to carve. One that wasn’t too big or too small and was nice and round. When she hoisted it into her arms, she regretted turning down Killian’s offer to come back and carry it for her. Thankfully, an employee came over to assist her, pushing a wheelbarrow.

It wasn’t until Emma had paid for the pumpkin with the last of the cash in her pocket and had the employee lift it into her backseat that she remembered the tiny pumpkin Henry had painted. She contemplated leaving it, considering that it looked like it had been rolled in doggy poo, but then she thought about what would happen if Henry remembered it. She might have a meltdown on her hands, especially since he hadn’t had a nap today. She sighed wearily, took Henry’s hand, and headed back to the painting booth.

Emma smiled at the workers and thanked them as they handed her Henry’s brown-smudged pumpkin. As she turned to go, Henry’s exclamation stopped her.

“Mommy, look!”

Her son was holding up a pink polka dot Minnie Mouse backpack. On the table next to him was the adorable polka dotted pumpkin Bethany had painted earlier. Emma gasped and took the backpack from her son’s hand. She remembered Elsa carrying it around all day, even complaining how she couldn’t get Bethany to wear it. She examined the pack, looking for a tag with an address, but she could find nothing. She zipped it open, and there, written in black sharpie on the inside cover was, “Property of Bethany Jones, 1245 Sweet Haven Lane, Storybrooke, ME.”

“Henry,” Emma said to her little boy with a smile on her face, “I think fate just gave me another push.”

***********************************************************

Emma’s GPS told her to take another right turn, then announced that her destination was on the left. Emma parked along the curb, leaning to look out of the window of her yellow bug at the adorable blue Victorian house at 1245 Sweet Haven Lane.

“I hung-wee, Mommy,” Henry told her from the backseat.

“I know, kid,” Emma told him as she unbuckled her seat belt, “we might be eating in just a minute.” If they still want us, that is.

Emma helped Henry out of his car seat and onto the curb. She grabbed Bethany’s things from the front passenger seat, then took Henry’s hand as they walked up the front steps of the beautiful house. It was a little after six, and dusk was falling. The porch lights were already glowing beside the quaint front door. Emma took a deep breath and knocked.

The door swung open a few moments later, and Emma’s breath left her lungs when she saw Killian Jones standing there. Thankfully, he smiled when he saw her.

“Swan! You changed your mind?”

Emma returned his smile and lifted the backpack up for him to see. “I found this after you left. Your address was inside.”

“Oh,” Killian said, his face falling as he accepted the bag, “thank you.”

“The pumpkin she painted is inside.”

“Uncle Ki-wee!” a small voice called, and then Bethany Jones was colliding with her uncle’s leg. “My bag!” she squealed, grabbing it and hugging it to her chest. “Hen-we!” she exclaimed next, launching herself at her new friend.

“Beffy!” Henry shouted in return.

Before Emma could say anything, Bethany was pulling Henry inside and tugging him down the hall. She shouted as she ran, “They came, Mommy! It worked!”

Killian’s jaw dropped and his face turned red. He pointed at his niece’s retreating form. “I did not plan this, I swear. This was all Elsa’s doing.”

Emma smiled shyly up at him. “I don’t mind. I’m kind of glad, actually.”

He grinned so wide, Emma noticed for the first time that he had dimples. “So you’ll stay?”

She shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I do like Chinese food.”

Killian ushered her inside, where she was promptly enveloped in a hug from Elsa.

“Don’t be mad,” she whispered in Emma’s ear.

Emma smiled at her as she pulled away from her embrace. “Mad? I might just thank you.”

Elsa gave a relieved laugh as she pulled her gently into a formal dining room. A red head walked through an archway that led into the kitchen, carrying two cartons of take out. She actually waddled more than walked because she was very hugely pregnant.

“Emma,” Elsa said eagerly, pulling her across the room, “this is my sister Anna.”

The woman set the cartons of fried rice onto the table and then hugged Emma eagerly. “It is so nice to meet you! Elsa told me all about everything,” she finished with a wink.

Emma could only stammer and blush as Anna stepped away. A man with dirty blonde hair came through the archway next, carrying plastic containers of sweet and sour chicken.

“So who was at the door?” he asked as he came into the room, not really paying attention. “Was it that blonde Killian has a crush on?”

Killian walked in the room at the same moment from the hallway, and he stood there, the top of his ears turning red. Bethany was wrapped around his left leg, and Henry around his right. Both were giggling delightedly. Overall, it made an adorable picture.

“Kristoff!” Anna admonished over her shoulder, then quickly turned back to Emma. “Forgive my husband, he has no filter.”

“Says the girl who asked me why I smelled like wet fur the day she met me,” Kristoff grumbled.

Anna rolled her eyes. “Just go get the soy sauce, honey.”

Chastised, Kristoff shuffled back to the kitchen. Elsa shook her head. “Don’t mind them, their cutting banter is their idea of foreplay.”

Anna laughed as she eased herself awkwardly into a dining room chair. “As you can clearly see,” she said, rubbing her large abdomen.

“When are you due?” Emma asked politely.

“Not for another month,” Anna said on a long sigh, “and I know, I’m huge.”

“You look perfect,” Kristoff assured her as he returned with the condiments.

He leaned over and planted a kiss to her forehead. Anna tilted her head and smiled up at him, squeezing the hand that rested on her shoulder. Emma had to admit they were an adorable couple.

Elsa encouraged everyone to take a seat, adamant about who sat where. Therefore, Emma wasn’t surprised to end up on Killian’s right with Henry on the other side of her. Food was passed around amidst easy chatter, and Emma just soaked it in. The only time she ever had this as a kid was with that one family when she was fourteen. Then they had chosen their “real kids” over her, and she had run away.

“So Elsa said you live in Portland,” Kristoff said, making small talk to include her. “What do you do?”

“Oh, um … “ Emma hedged, squirming in her seat, “right now I’m just a temp, filling in here and there.”

She stared at her fried rice, hoping her answer didn’t make her sound irresponsible. Giving birth in jail at 18 wasn’t exactly conducive to higher education, and even though she had worked her butt off once she got out to be able to keep Henry, employers weren’t exactly jumping to give her a chance.

“That’s so funny,” Elsa laughed, “I was working at a temp agency when I met Kristoff. I would never have offered him a home cooked meal if I had known he would steal away my sister.”

Emma laughed along with them as they reminisced, relieved that no one was pressing her about her career plans. Until Elsa turned to her again.

“Have you thought of online college?” she asked. “That’s what I did while working as a temp. Anna and I lost our parents when I was a freshman in college, and it drastically changed both our plans.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma said softly.

Killian leaned over, “Welcome to the orphan’s club.”

Emma glanced around the table at all of the welcoming faces around her, and for the first time since she pulled up to the curb in front of the house, she relaxed. The conversation shifted to lighter topics, and Emma found herself smiling and laughing.

“Killian!” Anna gasped, reaching across the table to grasp his left hand which was reaching for another helping of rice, “You took off your wedding ring!”

“Um, aye,” he said awkwardly, pulling his hand from her grip and scratching behind his ear. He glanced at Emma and held her gaze as he explained. “It felt like it was finally time to move on.”

“Oh, I’m so happy!” Anna gasped, both hands flying to her face and tears filling her eyes. She grabbed her napkin and dabbed at her cheeks as they spilled over. “Sorry, pregnancy hormones you know.”

“Mommy,” Bethany piped up, tugging on Elsa’s sleeve, “when we get mashmell-os?”

Elsa rubbed her daughter’s back. “In just a little bit, sweetie.”

“I think we’re all done, right?” Kristoff asked. “All we have to do is toss the paper plates and put away the leftovers.”

“Yay!” Bethany cheered.

“Wait!” Anna said. She reached for a small bowl full of cellophane wrapped fortune cookies. “It’s a birthday tradition, you know. Choose a cookie.”

“We all have to go around and read our fortunes out loud,” Killian explained.

“Oh,” Emma said with a nod as she reached into the bowl as it was passed to her.

“Birthday girl first!” Anna squealed, then broke open her cookie. She read it silently, then burst out laughing. “A great change is coming your way.”

Everyone laughed along with her, and Elsa quipped, “Believe me, you have lots of changes in your future, most of them smelly ones. Right, Emma?”

“Okay,” Anna said, rubbing her hands together gleefully, “I choose Killian to go next.” She exchanged a delighted glance with her sister then added in a sing-song voice, “I hope it’s a good one!”

Killian just shook his head at the teasing as he cracked open his fortune cookie. As he read the tiny slip of paper, however, the blood seemed to drain from his face, and his eyes widened considerably. He just sat there for a long moment, staring at it.

“Well,” Anna pressed, leaning across the table and craning her neck to try to see his fortune, “what does it say?”

“Nothing,” Killian said with a shake of his head, “just your generic good luck sentiment, you know.”

“Killian,” Elsa admonished with a narrowing of her eyes, “that’s not how the tradition works and you know it. Read the fortune, Jones.”

Killian swallowed as red crept up his neck. Then he cleared his throat and read, “Kiss the person to your right.”

Every pair of eyes at the table swiveled towards Emma. Except Killian, who stared down at his plate.

“No way!” Kristoff argued. “It doesn’t say that. Let me see!”

He reached across the table and snatched the fortune. Upon reading it, he handed it to his wife. Her jaw dropped.

“That’s really what it says!”

The fortune was passed around until it got to Emma. Sure enough, Killian wasn’t making it up. Emma’s face burned as she slid the paper over to Killian, their fingertips brushing. She ever so slowly lifted her gaze to his. He gave her a sheepish smile and an apologetic shrug.

“Well, kiss her!” Anna insisted. Her sister and her husband added their encouragement as well.

Emma could see that Killian was conflicted. So she arched a brow and gave him a flirty smile as she said, “Well, how about it? You gonna kiss me or just sit there?”

There was a combination of cheering and clapping from the others, even Bethany and Henry, though they probably had no idea what was going on. Killian chuckled and ducked his head, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. Then his eyes met hers again, and he leaned towards her. But just before his lips could connect with hers, he changed his angle and brushed them across her cheek instead. Emma was simultaneously disappointed and amazed at how that simple brush of his lips sent a thrill all the way to the core of her. A groan resounded from the others but Emma gave him a tender smile. Though part of her wanted him to kiss her properly, she knew it would have been awkward with everyone, including her three year old watching. He reached out with his thumb and brushed it across the dimple in her chin. It was only a quick, light touch, but it made her heart flip anyway.

*************************************************

After the fortune cookies, Kristoff and Killian got a bonfire going in the backyard, and everyone gathered around to roast marshmallows. There was also a chocolate cake for Anna’s birthday. Both Kristoff and Killian could play the guitar, and Elsa was an amazing singer. Emma had never heard a better rendition of the birthday song. Then the guys took requests, readily singing and playing whatever was thrown their way, even the PJ Masks theme song (as requested by Henry and Bethany, of course). It showed what good uncles they both were to Bethany that the men already knew all the words.

Now Henry was asleep in Killian’s arms as he walked them to her yellow bug. He gently placed the child in his car seat, and Emma’s heart ached in her chest as Killian smoothed her son’s hair across his forehead. Emma put her hand in her pocket and fingered the fortune she had gotten: When fate gives you a sign, leap.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked as Killian stood and gently shut the car door.

“Sure.”

“Was that kiss really the best that you could do?” her mouth turned up flirtatiously as she said it.

A slow smile filled Killian’s face as well. He sauntered into her personal space as he answered. “Perhaps I was worried that you couldn’t handle it.”

Emma tilted her head as she bit her lower lip. She saw Killian’s eyes drift to stare at that spot, his pupils dilating. “Maybe you’re the one who couldn’t handle it.”

He pounced on her so suddenly, that Emma let out a yelp. It was quickly swallowed up, however, by his mouth on hers. The kiss was deep and aggressive, and it caused Emma to lose her balance. Killian cupped her cheek with one hand and steadied her at the waist with the other. He turned her slightly to pin her between the bug and his body. Emma snaked her arms up his chest and then grasped the back of his head with both hands. It was his turn now as she kissed him back with ferocity, a groan escaping from his throat.

When they finally parted, panting, they were both wobbling slightly and disoriented. They pressed their foreheads together to steady themselves.

“Now that,” Emma gasped, “was a kiss.”

He chuckled, brushing both of her cheeks with his thumbs as he cupped her face. He bent down to kiss her again, this one slow and languid. His fingers drifted to her hair, tangling there and tugging slightly. It took every ounce of willpower Emma had to push him away, and even then she chased his lips, brushing them chastely before reaching behind her and grasping the door handle.

“Good night,” she told him as she opened the car door.

“Wait …” he said, looking completely wrecked by their kisses.

Emma put two fingers to his lips to stop his words, then with her other hand, she pressed a tiny slip of paper into his palm. Then she quickly entered the bug, started the car, and drove away. She glanced in her rearview mirror only once to see him standing in the street, staring down at that tiny bit of paper. She tore her gaze away as she turned at the next stop sign.

Suddenly, her cell phone started ringing. Emma picked it up and grinned broadly to see an unknown number flashing on the screen. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath so that when she answered, she sounded calm.

“Hello.”

“You know, a lesser man might think you were teasing, Swan. Writing your number on such an itty bitty piece of paper.”

“Well,” Emma teased back, “I wanted you to work for it.”

“When can I see you again?”

The timbre of Killian’s voice when he asked the question sent a shiver down Emma’s spine.

“When are you available?”

“Well, we’ve already been on a hayride, solved a corn maze, been to a pumpkin patch, and had a bonfire. How about we continue the fall clichés and carve said pumpkins together? Could you and Henry be here tomorrow afternoon? Or do you work Sundays?”

Emma didn’t know what touched her more; that he wanted to see her again so soon, that he was including Henry, or that he had chosen a casual activity. It took her so long to get herself together, that Killian got nervous waiting on the other end.

“Swan, you still there?”

Emma cleared her throat. “Um, yeah, sorry. I was just … thinking that tomorrow is perfect.”

Over the next few weeks, Killian insisted that they check off every fall tradition together. In addition to carving pumpkins, they watched a Storybrooke High football game cuddled underneath a fuzzy blanket, jumped into a pile of leaves, bobbed for apples at the Storybrooke Fall Festival, and took Henry and Bethany trick or treating. By the time Emma found herself gathered around the dining room table once again for Thanksgiving with Killian’s family, she had decided one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Fall was definitely her favorite season.

#ffcs 2018 #fallforcs #fall for captain swan #blinddate with a fanfic #cs ff #cs au #searchingwardrobes #hayrides fate and fortune cookies

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