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andreafmn · 3 years

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Collision - Chapter 4

Word Count: 3,821

Characters: Female Reader Uley Character, Sam Uley, Allison Uley, Charlie Swan, Bella Swan, Seth Clearwater, Billy Black, Jacob Black, Emily Young, Paul Lahote, Harry and Sue Clearwater, Leah Clearwater

Story Description: (Y/N) Uley is back home after being away for four years. Her life at its first standstill and she is taking this time to find out who she is without school. But she never thought that coming back to the reservation would turn her whole life around. In the midst of secrets and mystery, a man crashes into (Y/N)’s and her life will never be the same.

*DISCLAIMER* I do not own in any way Twilight, all credits of the pre-established characters, script, and storyline belong to Stephanie Meyer and Summit Entertainment. The only thing I own is Uley Reader insert, any upcoming characters, and her storyline, as well as her effects in the others’ story line.

Chapter: 4/?

A/N: Don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but the story takes place before New Moon but after Twilight. It starts at the end of May after the dance, so it’d be the summer before Bella’s birthday in September. If you enjoy my writing I’ll also be posting them in AO3 and Wattpad along with other stories (I also hope to start taking requests if ya’ll want) Hope you enjoy and all constructive criticism is encouraged.

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Chapter 4

The next time she awoke she was back in sight of the blinding hospital lights. Her head was heavily pounding and the clothes on her body felt alien to her. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the white lights of the sanitized room, but they were suddenly off.

“Back again, Miss Uley?” She recognized the voice, Dr. Cullen. “I’ve already turned the lights off so don’t worry about that.”

Her eyes finally opened to reveal the smooth pale face of the doctor. A wave of calmness rushed over her as soon as her eyes connected with his golden ones.

“What can I say?” She chuckled. “I just couldn’t stay away.”

“Well, it seems you’ve been having a recurring headache, insomnia, memory lapses, and a lack of appetite. It looks like post-concussive syndrome. Your mom told us you were feeling like this for a few days, why didn’t you come back?” Carlisle questioned. He was trying his best to look like he was breathing but if he took even a single breath all his years of self-control would be over in an instant.

“I thought if I could just make it to at least seven days it could clear me from coming back to the hospital, at least as a patient.”

“What do you mean?” This comment had perked the interest of the man. Thoughts raced through his head faster than he could analyze them.

“I was thinking of applying for a medical assistant job here in the hospital. I recently got my degree in biology, and I’ve been thinking of going to medical school after.”

“That sounds like a plan, but let’s work on getting you better first.” It did sound like a good plan to Carlisle. He wanted to be as close as possible to her every single day, but it also meant he would have to work triple as hard to control his thirst. “We’d like to keep you for the next few days and make sure you’re in good health before you can go back to business as usual.”

“How long would a few days be?”

“About four to five days, just to make sure that the symptoms don’t worsen, and we can give you an all-clear.” It would also give him a few days to grow accustomed to her smell. “We can work over that application for medical assistant, make sure it’s something you want to do.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” She smiled at the man in front of her, her heart fluttering with every breath she took. “Thank you, Dr. Cullen.”

“Please, call me Carlisle,” he smiled. “Now, why don’t you continue resting, and whatever you need just call. My office is right down the hall, I’ll be here in no time.”

The girl stared at the retreating form of his body and covered the heat that was rising to her face with her pillow. The butterflies in her stomach had made her uneasy and had her hands shaking. She didn’t understand why she was feeling this way. It had only been a week since her first encounter with the doctor, but those few seconds were enough to have her drooling over the man like a lovesick schoolgirl.

A few days had come and gone quickly. (Y/N) had grown attached to Carlisle, seeing and talking to him every day had felt like a dream. In his free time, she would go over to his office and pick a book to read, which they talked about the next day. They spent hours talking about nothing and everything.

It had been a long time since Carlisle had felt this way, centuries. Being around her had gotten easier each day that passed. Her smell becoming comforting instead of a trigger to the endless hunger for human blood – he’d never had a simple drop of it, but nothing could explain how much he wanted to have hers. Getting to know her had been a welcomed activity by the young doctor. He could spend days upon days listening to the sweet sound of her voice, admiring her curious-filled face when she started a new book – which she read swiftly, taking only a couple of hours to finish most of them.

“Can’t believe you have so many first editions, and you leave them at work.” She ran her hand across the spine of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. “I would keep them in a well-preserved chamber, and no one would be able to even breathe on them.”

Carlisle smiled as the girl gawked once again at his book collection. It wasn’t hard to acquire first edition novels when you were alive when they were published. “If you’re impressed by this collection, you’d be completely astonished by the one I have back home.”

“You have more?!” He nodded. The girl shined like a kid on Christmas, her eyes gleaming at the thought of a big library. “Oh, that sounds like a dream.”

“You’re more than welcome to come over any time. It’s always refreshing to meet a literature aficionado such as myself.”

“Really? That’d be amazing!” She grinned brightly. “I could spend all day reading, forget about work.”

The duo laughed. “Too late to withdraw the application but you’re always welcome to pass your downtime in my office.”

“Sounds like a plan,’’ she smiled. “Now, doctor, what will you ever do now that I’m not going to be here every day?”

“Oh, how will I ever go on?” He chuckled. “But if you ever need help during that time, just come by. My office is always open. And hopefully, you’ll visit from time to time on personal time.”

“I’m sure it’s something that can be arranged.”

If there was still blood rushing through his veins, the capillaries in his face would have widened. He felt like he now understood Edward; how being with her made him feel human again. And there was nothing more that he wanted than to take their friendship to another level, but he wasn’t sure if she would ever feel the same. Carlisle knew that she was unaware of the supernatural since (Y/N) had allowed him to be in her life. But what would happen once she knew everything? How could he ever come between her and her family?

“Miss Uley, your mother is here,” a nurse spoke up, peeking her head through the office door. “Discharge papers have already been filed.”

“Thank you, Nurse Dalen. She’ll be out in a moment.” Carlisle smiled.

“Well, the time has come.” (Y/N) took her phone out of her back pocket and handed it to the doctor. He looked at her with a question-ridden gaze. “I’m gonna need your phone number so we can arrange any future endeavors.”

“Right,” he laughed, typing his number into her directory. “I’ll be waiting for that call.”

“I’ll be making it soon enough,” she grinned. “I’m gonna go now. I’ll see you around, Cullen.”

“I’ll see you, Uley.”

She left the office with a huge smile on her face, holding her phone close to her chest. For the first time, she was experiencing something she had heard of most of her teenage years. Once she had met Carlisle all she wanted to do was get to know him better, spend her time with him, just being near him would suffice. It was the first time she was learning what falling for someone was, and even though it was scary, she was jumping in headfirst.

“Hi, honey. Ready to go home?” Allison hugged her daughter for the first time in five days. (Y/N) nodded, truly ready to finally sleep on her own bed.

“So, how are you liking Dr. Cullen?”

“MOM!” Allison laughed at her daughter’s reaction. It was easy to see that (Y/N) had taken a liking to Carlisle Cullen, and vice versa.

“What, darling? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.”

“It’s not like that, mom.”

“But you’d like it to be like that.”

“I’m not talking about that with my mother.” (Y/N) placed her cold hands on her cheeks, trying to cool down the warm blood that had rushed onto her cheeks. The cool air of the car’s A/C was only helping her so much.

“I just want you to be careful with that, honey. He’s older than you, technically has kids, and rumor has it he is married.”

A breath hitched in her throat. Married? She knew he had adopted five kids, most of them her age, but not that he was married. Had she read the situation wrong? He didn’t wear a ring, he didn’t mention any relationship, he had no pictures of a woman in his office. Then again, they had only spent five days together at the hospital. She didn’t know what he did when he went home at night, who he went home to at night. (Y/N) shouldn’t feel betrayed—they weren’t anything, and they weren’t on track to become anything.

“Don’t worry, mom. I’ve just been picking his brain about working in the hospital, and he’s been helping me with what I’m gonna be doing this summer.”

“Oh, have you decided what you want to do?”

“I’m gonna get my medical assistant certification. It’s a three-month course then I can work at the hospital.”

“That’s great, honey.” Allison smiled at her daughter from the driver’s side. “Is that where you’d see yourself making a career?”

“Not sure. I want to take this time to see if life in a hospital is truly where I’d like to work – see if medical school would be it for me.”

(Y/N) hadn’t taken the time to focus on her future. In her high school career, she spent her time focusing on the present and piling on as much as she could, and now she had no sense of direction. She would take every day as it came, hoping one day she would find her purpose.

Finally, back home, she hopped off the truck and stretched out her limbs, stiff from the days on a hospital bed. Taking a deep breath of fresh air and basking in the afternoon sun. The cold that had seeped into her bones from the hospital melted off, and she smiled feeling the warmth surround her.

“Why don’t you go upstairs, honey?” Allison told her daughter. “There’s a surprise waiting for you in your room.”

(Y/N) smiled and quickly made her way up the stairs to see what her mom meant. Opening the door, tears forming in her eyes. Her room had done a 180-degree turn. The walls had been painted a light beige color, and plants hung from the walls bringing warmth to the room. The bed was adorned with a white cover, and a fluffy duvet to keep her warm at night. A wooden frame sat atop the bed dressed in white linen and ivy vines. A bookcase lived in the corner of her room, filled to the brim with her collection of hardbacks and peppered with potted plants. Opposite the bed was a small desk with a dark green suede chair, her laptop set up in the workspace. Her room finally felt like hers.

“Do you like it, honey?”

“Mom, did you do this?”

“I wish I could take credit, but your brother and your friend Paul came over when I was at work and redecorated. I was actually surprised that they even came over.”

“I’ll have to thank them,” (Y/N) grinned. Even though their relationship was strained at the moment, and she had yet to see Paul since coming back, she was glad that they had taken time out of their days to do this for her. “I’ll go over to Sam’s house for a bit, maybe now he’ll have time to see me.”

“Why don’t you go tomorrow, honey? You should take it easy.”

“I feel a lot better, mom. You don’t have to worry too much.”

“I’m your mother, I’ll always worry. If you’re gonna go out, go see Jacob. He was really worried about you.”

“I will.”

(Y/N) kissed her mother’s cheek and grabbed her bag to head out. Her first stop was to the Black residence. Jacob saw her coming down the street and ran out to wrap her in a hug. When she collapsed last week, he had been very concerned when she collapsed in his garage. Jacob was glad that she had made a full recovery and was now back home, with minimum side effects showing. The visit was short, only a quick hello to ensure the boy that she was okay.

After spending some time with Jacob, she walked towards Sam’s house – she hoped to catch Paul there too since she had heard he now spent his time there alongside Jared Cameron. It hadn’t clicked in her head why Paul would ever hang out with her brother and Jared. Even when they were back in middle school, he never paid them any mind, having a separate friend group. She had only become his friend by spending time with him away from school, and her brother had always disliked them together, claiming he was a bad influence.

Outside of the small house, (Y/N) could hear the low chatter of manly voices, a higher-pitched one joining after. There was no mistaking that Sam was home. She started feeling nervous as she raised her hand to knock on the door. The shaky limb was able to make contact with the blue door twice before it opened wide open, revealing a shirtless Paul Lahote.

“(Y/N)?” He questioned. Paul knew she was back, but Sam had given him clear instructions to stay away from her due to their situation.

“Hey, Paul. Long time no see, huh?” The girl smiled at her friend that now towered over her. A few years ago, they were still of the same stature, but too much time had passed since then. She went in for a hug, and Paul cut it short – worried she might note his burning temperature. “Is Sam home?”

“Uh, yeah.” He scratched the back of his neck, turning towards the kitchen. “Sam! (Y/N)’s here.”

The older male appeared in front of them, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Hey, (Y/N). Good to see you’re doing better. What brings you around?”

“I just wanted to thank you both for what you did in my room. Mom told me you worked on it while we were away. It’s a dream.” Sam smiled at his younger sister and shared a hug with the smaller girl.

“I’m glad you liked it, (Y/N). We wanted to give you a place where you could rest better after the accident. It’s the least we could do.” The alpha could hear the duo that was left in the kitchen had grown curious about who was at the door. “Do you want to come in for a bit?”

“Are you really inviting me in?” (Y/N) was taken aback – the last thing she thought was that she would get that invitation.

“Yeah, there’s someone I want you to meet,” Sam responded, keeping his doubts of the encounter to himself.

(Y/N) walked through the threshold and instantly felt the warm aura that emanated from inside of the house. It was a welcoming environment that she had grown to love from her own mother’s house. She walked behind Sam, Paul following behind them. `There was nothing that could prepare her to the sight she was met with.

In front of her stood a beautiful woman. She had tan skin, long black hair, and a beautiful smile. But there was something that stood out to her, something she was sure stood out to everyone – three long gashes ran through the front of her face. Yet, they didn’t distract from the alluring atmosphere that surrounded her. Sam moved to her side, and (Y/N) quickly connected the dots and figured that was Emily Young. The Uley girl wanted to be indifferent to her presence, knowing how one of her friends had been hurt by the union in front of her, she couldn’t help but note the love that radiated from the pair. It had been a long time since she had seen her brother as happy as he looked as he stared at his fiancé.

“(Y/N), it’s an honor to finally meet you.” Emily stretched out her hand towards the girl, which (Y/N) gladly took. “Sam has told me so much about you.”

“I wish I could say the same,” (Y/N) joked. “Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to get to know each other more. I’d love to get to know the woman my brother is set to marry.”

“I’m sure we’ll have enough time now that you’re back.” Emily smiled and grabbed a basket filled with muffins, offering them to the girl. (Y/N) gladly took the baked good in her hand, picking at it and placing the piece in her mouth – a wonderful taste that quickly melted in her mouth. “You’re welcome over any time. Any family of Sam is family to me.”

“Thank you, Emily. I’ll be sure to take you up on that.”

Not much time passed before Sam had cut the meeting short, claiming there was something important the duo had to do. “We should do this another time, (Y/N). Paul and I have to go.”

“Go where?” (Y/N) questioned. “It’s already night, not much to do.”

“I can’t really tell you, sis. But it’s important.”

“So still guarding secrets?” Sam shrugged. “It’s fine, Sam. I’m growing used to it.”

“(Y/N)…”

“I can take a hint, Sam. I know when I’m not wanted,” (Y/N) smiled. “Thank you for the muffins, Emily. They were divine. I’ll be sure to take you up on that offer and visit sometime soon.”

“Of course, (Y/N). I’m sorry we had to cut this short.”

“It’s okay. I’ll see you guys.” (Y/N) took her bag and exited the house. She was confused on why Sam had welcomed her in only to have her leave soon after – there was something big he was hiding, and she needed to find out what it was.

“(Y/N), wait up!” Paul jogged up to her, turning her around. “Look, I hope you understand that we’re not trying to push you away on purpose. There are things that Sam is protecting you from.”

“Like what, Paul? What danger could possibly be surrounding us that he would stray from his family?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not my place to tell you, (Y/N). As much as I hate keeping this from you, Sam would not allow it to come from anyone but himself.”

“Are you serious? What kind of power does he have over you?”

“PAUL!” Sam shouted, gaining the attention of his beta. “Let’s go.”

“I’m sorry, (Y/N). I hope one day you’ll forgive us.” Paul kissed her forehead and went to meet up with his alpha.

(Y/N) stood still as she watched their bodies disappear into the woods. She debated whether to follow them for a brief second, but she was exhausted. She left back home with a million questions running through her head. The pair of Sam and Paul was a strange view, and she was determined to get to the bottom of things.

When she got home, (Y/N) noticed her mother asleep on the couch, the tv in front of her still playing. The years that passed were clear on her face, the worry that she carried for both her children plastered in the lines of her face. She could see the exhaustion that she held, years of caring for two kids by herself taking a toll on her. (Y/N) grabbed a blanket and laid it on top of her mother’s body, making sure that she was warm during the night. She left a kiss on her cheek, thankful for everything her mother had sacrificed for her.

After showering the day off, (Y/N) changed into her pajamas and laid in bed staring at her phone’s screen. She thought if she stared at it long enough a message would magically pop up. Minutes passed and her phone kept silent, not a single notification appearing on the screen. She scrolled through her directory until it landed on the newest listing. Carlisle Cullen, it read. Her finger clicked on it and selected new message.

Her fingers danced atop the keyboard of her phone, no words coming to her mind to send to the doctor. Should she even send him a message? What if he truly was married? She would never want to come between a couple. But her fingers did not follow her thought train. Unconsciously, they started typing away a message and before she could analyze her actions, she sent the message.

Hi, Carlisle. It’s (Y/N). I made it home okay and don’t have any symptoms, seems like you fixed me up! Anyways, wanted to know if you possibly had some free time this weekend to join me for some dinner at La Bella Italia. Hope you had a good rest of the day at work!

Her jaw fell when her screen read message sent. There was no way to delete it now. It was out there, and it would make its way to his phone. (Y/N)’s head fell onto her pillow and muffled a scream that escaped from her throat. This feeling was alien to her, and she was learning what steps to take to grow closer to the astonishing man. Minutes felt like an eternity to (Y/N), thinking that she had imploded the friendship she had built with the man over the past week.

Beep.

The sound from her phone caught her attention. She scrambled for her phone and quietly shrieked at the words on her screen.

Hello, (Y/N). I’m glad you’re feeling better, hopefully, no symptoms will arise once more. And I did have a good day at work, although I missed our afternoon book chats. I have a free day on Sunday. Tell me a time and I can meet you in Port Angeles. Hope that day is good for you.

“He said yes. If he were actually married, he wouldn’t have said yes,” she thought.

So, she typed back.

I’m glad you had a good day, and the book chats have an easy fix. I’m just a phone call away. As for Sunday, it’s a perfect day. I think around 5:30 would be a good time for dinner. Let me know if it works.

Sent.

Seconds later, another beep.

I’ll make sure to schedule those calls then. 5:30 sounds perfect. I’ll see you there. Have a good night, (Y/N).

See you then, Carlisle. Good night. 😊

(Y/N) smiled at her phone, joy wanting to burst from her body. She was reveling in this new feeling and the happiness it brought her. If it was Carlisle, it was worth it, she believed.

That night she went to sleep with the biggest smile she had experienced in her life. Unbeknownst to the life-changing moments that were to follow this meeting.

Tag List: @daniallh @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @imaginetwilight2704 @jessicas-undrground @hey-you-therexo @mauvette268 @mxyee @beefwhobarksandisalilmadalot

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t-o-m-hollands · 3 years

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Summary: It’s the late summer of 2004. You are set to travel across the country for university and your best friend Tom is staying behind. You spend your last night together before you leave.

Themes: Friends to lovers, love confessions, first love.

Warnings: Drinking beer. One mention of smoking weed. Mentions of parents fighting and also implied neglectful parents. Smut (+18), two spanks?? otherwise pretty tame.

Word count: 3,4 k

Notes: I don’t know, this might be a bit different? Or it might just feel that way to me. It’s very reminiscent of teenage years and first love and nostalgia. Please let me know your thoughts, I’m genuinely not sure what to think about this one.

Massive thank you to @augustholland who read through it and very kindly reassured me that it wasn’t bad 💖

Also, this fic was inspired by the Phoebe Bridgers song. I’ve never actually listened to it but it keeps showing up in my recommendation and i like the title of it so this is what i imagine that song is about. Mostly I listened to Harry Styles - Fine Line while writing this.

You finish up early that afternoon. Wayne, your old boss, tries not to cry as he hugs you goodbye. He tells you to take care in a gravelly voice close to breaking, as he avoids looking at you. It’s your last shift in the greasy bar, where for the last two years you’ve been selling cheap beer and watered down whiskey to weary old men and rowdy students who come in for a game of pool. It hasn’t paid much, just a few pounds an hour; just enough so that on each thursday you and Tom have enough money for movie tickets at the local cinema. It’s your tradition. Like a religious man goes to church each sunday; you spend your thursday nights with Tom’s arm slung around your shoulders, watching whatever new film they have on, sharing a bowl of popcorn between you. Afterwards you'll have burgers at the fast food joint across the street; talking about the movie long into the night, sharing a bag of fries.

When you were younger and hadn’t been able to afford to pay Tom had sneaked you both into the cinema anyway. Your hand in his, he had led the way into the movie theatre when no one was looking. Sitting in the back row he’d sneak you Fruit Polos to snack on, his arm slung around your shoulders, as you watched movies you were way too young for.

Last week was your final movie screening; some light-hearted American comedy, and the entire way through it you fought the lump in your throat, forcing yourself not to cry. Tom hadn’t laughed either; had just held you closer than usual.

Tomorrow you are set to leave the small seaside town behind you, the place where you have spent most of your life, for a drive all across the country; to start university in a city you’ve only visited once before. You’re not sure when you’ll return.

Thus lately everything has been laced with goodbyes; childhood having reached its end.

Just two days ago there had been the last bonfire where you had watched the Holland boys fight each other while playing football as his parents looked on and laughed, grilling sausages over the open fire.

It was on the same rocky beach where you have spent many summer days; grilling food on the open fire and throwing back cheap beer with your friends from school. You have scraped your knees on these rocks, burned your skin from both the bonfire and the sun there; have had your heart broken over and over and over again during your school years as you watched Tom kiss whatever girl he was dating at the time by the fire during summer night parties.

Maybe you had broken his heart a few times as well.

As the afternoon light turns everything golden you drive through the main street in the small town where everyone knows everybody, and has done for generations. You watch the people as you drive them by. You know everyone’s name, know each crack in the pavement; can find your way home in the dark.

God knows how many shoes you’ve worn out over the years walking down these streets.

The radio plays a blink-182 song you know by heart as you follow the road out of the city, through the woods and up to the coast. At the end of a muddy track, on the border to the forest, stands a shabby old caravan. It faces the beach and above the door christmas lights are lit up all year round.

The Holland family legend says that Tom’s great uncle had won the small patch of land in a bet. Unable to build a large house he had bought a caravan and put it on the lot. The old man had lived in the Shed for the rest of his lifetime, before passing it on to Tom; the youngster of the family, his younger brothers having yet to be born. When he had turned seventeen he moved out of his parents larger, more comfortable house, and into the Shed. His mother had agreed on it on the condition he took on the apprenticeship to become a carpenter that he had been offered.

You remember when he had told you of his decided future, one late evening as you sat on the driftwood by the beach, smoking weed and watching the sun set over the horizon. It had felt right somehow, you had been able to imagine him working with his hands, skillfully forming and bending wood to his will; his long and slender fingers knowing just how to fix things. Tom has always been good at mending things. It had been three years now and he was a full time employee at the JBT Carpentry Services. He says it doesn’t pay much, but he’s happy; and that's all that matters.

As you park the car outside the Shed Tom comes out. Standing under the colorful christmas lights he grins widely as he sees you, his eyes crinkling at the sides. The most genuine smile you know. He’s tanned from a summer spent on the beach, his hair a wavy mess; as if he’d just woken up from sleep. It’s a warm august day and the world seems sunbleached somehow; but in the afternoon light Tom looks golden.

You are painfully aware that it is the last time you’ll see him like this for many months to come.

Walking up to him and he gives you a bear-hug; his warm, hard body pressed against yours, holding onto you tightly. With your face in the crook of his neck you breathe him in and discover that a faint trace of bonfire smoke still lingers on his skin. It all feels achingly familiar and safe. So heartrendingly unlike the uncertain life at university that lies in front of you.

Tom is your safe place.

Your parents had always fought like cat and dog and sometimes when you were younger and they’d argue you’d climb through your window and walk all the way over to the Holland household. You were always welcomed there and his parents didn’t ask any questions, no matter how late the hour; instead they fed you, treating you like a member of the family around the dining table with gentle teasing and reminders of homework that needed to be done, letting you sleep over when needed. No questions asked.

With the years the fighting at home got worse. When Tom fixed himself a beat-up old Land Rover and moved out to the Shed you’d call him from the payphone down the road. He’d always answer, telling you to pack up; and that he was on his way. He’d pick you up by the end of the street, a duffle bag with schoolbooks and a change of clothes slung over your shoulder. He’d take you back to his place to sleep. His caravan only had one bed, so you used to curl up next to each other in bed. On the nights when you were crying he’d hold you, and in the morning he’d make you breakfast before you both went off to school.

Your parents never noticed your temporary absence.

Tom lets go of the hug, but with an arm around your waist he leads you into his home. There’s a lingering scent of fried food in the air and the boombox is playing the 3 Doors down CD he’s been obsessed with since you bought it for his birthday. You tread the cherry wood veneered flooring with your battered tennis shoes, feeling more at home here than anywhere else on earth.

“Fancy a beer?” Tom asks, leading the way to the kitchen area. “Warn you though, it's warm. Just got back from the store so they haven’t had time to cool”.

Everything is warm today, and the caravan is no exception. The ancient AC had given in years ago and Tom could never afford having it fixed. You heave yourself up on the countertop, replying a simple “sure” to his question.

He opens a Stella and hands it to you. He isn’t wrong, the beer is tepid. Yet you drown half the bottle in one big swig; happy just to have something to do with your hands when he’s standing so close to you. Gulping down on the liquid and you cannot help but notice Tom’s eyes on your throat as you swallow. He opens a bottle for himself and takes a swig.

You smile at the ancient gray t-shirt he’s wearing. At one point there had been a band logo on it, but it has long since been washed out. He notices you smiling at him and as if it's infectious a smile broadens on his face as well. “What?” he asks, leaning against the small counter across from you.

“Nothing” you say, smiling wider. “Just wondered how many times I’ve seen you in that shirt. I mean, it has to be near a couple of thousand times by now”.

“You don't exactly love buying new clothes either” he says, a teasing smile playing at his lips as he looks at your washed out jeans shorts. “I know for a fact that those aren’t new, darling”. His eyes linger on your legs for a moment too long before he looks away, taking a swig from his beer.

“So, when are you leaving?” He asks, and you can tell that he’s trying to sound relaxed, but leaned against the countertop, his arms crossed in front of him, head bowed; holding onto the bottle of Stella he’s nursing with a tight grip. He looks tense and on edge.

“Tomorrow morning”

He takes a swig from his beer. There’s nothing more to say, not really. Everything that happens now is just aftermath; you might as well have already left.

“I’m nervous” you admit, biting your lip, trying hard not to et out the tears you’ve been holding in for days now; embarrassed that your voice trembles on the last word.

His head snaps up to look at you. Pushing off the counter he takes a step forward, placing himself in between your legs.

“Hey” he says, with a voice a low and gentle as a whisper, his hand cupping your cheek. You look up at him; long dark eyelashes framing his beautiful brown eyes, his thin lips slightly parted and across his nose freckles are spread out, the result from a summer spent in the sun. His calloused hand strokes your cheek. “You’re going to take them by storm, Pebbles”.

You smile, despite your fluttering heart. He hasn’t called you Pebbles for a long time. It had been his nickname for you when you first became friends, the reason behind it long forgotten. He was the only one to ever call you it, and the name had lingered long into your late teenage years.

“You took me by storm,” he admits.

You blink up at him through wet eyelashes. Your family had moved to the town when you were ten years old. This was the kind of small town that strangers seldom came to and inhabitants rarely left; and so the new addition to the small local school had everyone talking. You had felt like an astronaut shuffled into space on your first day, trying to find gravity in the unfamiliar school corridors. You had felt the pull of gravity in form of the brown-eyed boy sitting next to you in english class. He had given you a warm smile as you sat down next to him. He had made you his friend, listened to you and confided in you; had made you laugh until your stomach ached. You found further gravity in his home; surrounded by his family and their endless squabbles and laughter, sitting next to Tom at the dinner table.

It hadn’t taken long before you and Tom were an inseparable item; your names always linked to one another in the mouths of others.

“You’ve worked so hard for this scholarship” he says, and the corners of his mouth tugs up into a smile, “I mean, I’m pretty certain you’re the only reason I even finished school”.

You had helped him write most of his essays at school. He’d struggled with reading a lot and found the assigned novels difficult. There were evenings where you’d spend hours laying on the bed; twisting the phone cord between your fingers, as you read the books out loud for him.

Sometimes, in order to be left alone from his parents and younger brothers, he’d walk down to the end of the street and to the payphone there, where he’d spend all his pennies listening to you reading. You had talked and talked until your voice got hoarse; until he ran out of pennies. Yet when he hung up you always felt a tug of longing in your chest, knowing you wouldn’t be able to see him until the next day in school.

“Well, I heard you’re doing pretty good as a carpenter” you say, smiling up at him. “I always knew you’d be good with your hands”.

As soon as you’ve said it you can feel your face heat up. You had heard the rumours at school; Tom Holland is a stellar fuck. Once, while you were in the bathroom stall, you had heard a gang of girls discuss it as they reapplied their lipgloss in the mirror. One of them told the story of her one night stand with Tom, how he had made her come several times over with his hands and mouth; how he’d fucked her so long and so good. You had stood in the stall, your heart in your throat; feeling sick to your stomach, but unable to stop listening.

There were girls that reached out to you in school, knowing you were Tom’s closest friend, and asked you in hushed but awed voices if it was true. If he really that good in bed.

He looks you dead in the eye, an unusual seriousness to his warm eyes. He knows what you’re thinking, knows what thoughts have made your cheeks flush with colour. Letting go of your cheek he places his arms on either side of you on the counter; caging you in.

“There’s never been anyone but you, Pebbles. Not really.” His tone is heavy with meaning and you feel light-headed; both oddly detached from your own body and painfully aware of the closeness of his. Your heart is beating hard in your chest.

This is a line you’ve never crossed before.

“I know I’m ruining everything by saying this, but you’re leaving tomorrow and I’ve been walking around with this secret lodged in my chest like a bullet since i was ten years old; I love you, Pebbles. I’ve always have”.

You should speak. You should tell him that you’ve known for a long time how he’s felt. That it’s been evident in the way his eyes keep lingering on your legs, in the way his arm usually finds its way to rest around your waist. In the way he’s always been there for you. You should tell him that you understand why he hasn’t been able to voice his feelings for you; because you haven’t done it either. Too scared of losing him. But your breath has caught in your throat and all you can focus on is those caramel eyes on you, and how hard your heart is beating in your chest.

“I love you too” you say, voice hardly louder than a whisper. You swear there was music coming from the boom box but all you can hear is the blood rushing through your body.

He kisses you.

He takes your mouth slowly, kissing you thoroughly until you can’t think straight; can’t remember any other kiss than his. Then his lips move over yours with more fervour; more urgency, one hand around your throat and the other tangled in your hair. He kisses you until you're both moaning and gasping for more.

This is it. You’ve crossed the invisible line between friends and lovers; and there is no return, no going back from here. When you leave tomorrow you will leave knowing what his mouth feels like pressed against your.

You dig your hands into his soft hair, runs them both up his chest, realising that this is what your hands were made for. He lifts you off the counter and you wrap your legs around his waist. He moves you both across the caravan and into the bedroom. It’s baking hot in there and you can already feel sweat forming at the low end of your back. The room, just big enough for a bed to fit, is lit up with sunlight. His bed is a mess of rumpled white sheets and the walls are the same cherry wood colour as the rest of the caravan.

You kiss and lick his jaw, his neck, his throat; anywhere you can reach you stroke him. You tug at his hair, kiss his soft lips, and nib at his ear. It’s like the gates have been opened, because even though his arm has always been a comforting presence around your waist; and even though you’ve slept in the same bed more times than you can count, his body curled up next to yours, forming himself like a question mark around your body; he’s never been yours to touch before. Not like this.

His breathing is accelerated, his chest rising and falling in rapid speed, and so is yours. There’s a heat to his eyes that tells you he’s just as turned on as you are. You pull at his shirt before he’s even laid you down on the bed; impatiently craving all his warm, suntanned skin pressed against yours. It’s an almost feverish frenzy, and in the back of your mind you know that you should take this slow. You don’t want this to end too soon, because this might be all you get. But the sun hasn’t even set yet and through the old white-washed curtains you helped put up and light shines through, bathing you both sunshine.

Outside the waves keep crashing against the shore and in the kitchen his boombox keeps playing songs you’ve heard a million times before. It is like it always has been at Tom’s, except that for laying on his sofa and talking he’s removing your clothes; kissing his way down your body. Wet, opened mouth kisses that leave a trail of heat in its wake that have you bucking your hips up for more. His hands are everywhere, exploring your legs. He’s looking at your skin with wide-eyes adoration. With his body in between your wide spread legs he kisses the soft inside of your thighs.

“So soft” he groans against your skin, “and so sweet”.

You feel overheated and breathless; aching all over from wanting him. Perched up on your elbows you observe him; his dark hair brushing against the low of your stomach as he kisses the tender skin of your hip bone. He bares his teeth and bites the sensitive flesh.

His hand cups your cunt. You’re wet and aching and as you presses his thumb to your clit, gently but steadily moving up and down, you feel like you’re going to combust. His strokes are soft at first, before speeding up, making you moan wantonly, spreading your legs wider for him.

“Glad you like that,” he says, a satisfied smile spreading on his face. “Do my fingers feel good on you, darling?”

All you can do is moan in response, arching and moving your hips up to meet his hand. His movements are fast and slippery and it doesn’t take long until your close, so close, so close; on the brink of tipping over and then -

A sharp slap on your pussy, leaving a stinging bite, and it is like the world splits into two.

“God” you moan, voice hoarse. You’re shuddering all over; moanes falling freely from your lips.

He looks up at you from his position in between your legs, his dark eyes sparkling. He kisses the soft inside of your thighs again. “You have any idea how long I’ve wanted to kiss you here?” he asks. “I bet you do, torturing me for fun in those short jeans shorts”. He spanks your pussy again and you couldn’t have stopped the moan falling from your lips even if you tried. “How long I’ve wanted to taste you here?”. And he places a hot kiss on your wet slit. You can feel his soft hair pressed against your thighs; his warm breath against your skin.

His lips part and he covers you with his mouth, his tongue moving over your opening; touching you, stroking you, tasting you. A guttural moan leaves him. He looks up at you through tassels of hair, caramel eyes glued to your face.

You fall back against the mattress, “more” you demand, in a voice that sounds a lot like begging. “Please, more”.

It is as if he’s been unleashed. You have never felt anything like it, but he laps you up, tastes you; his fingers moving inside you; pressing against the place that has you seeing stars. You can’t even look at him now, you’re eyes shut; too overwhelmed by the stimulation. Both aching for more but not sure if your body can handle that kind of pleasure. Your thighs are shaking, and something in your stomach grows tighter and tighter by each flick of his tongue against your clit.

“I’m coming” you cry out breathlessly “fuck I’m coming”

And you do. Hard. He keeps kissing and touching you through it; both grounding you and dragging out the intense sensation.

His hands, now familiar with your thighs, make their way up to the soft swell of your breasts, as you struggle to regain your breath. He’s cupping them in his hands, pinching your nipples in between his fingers, kissing them with ferveor. Hungry hands move over your breasts, your stomach, your face; cupping it so that he can kiss you with the sort of yearning that comes from years of unanswered desire.

Your hands move over his body as well, moving over his abdomen chest and arms, defined from long hours of hard work. You kiss his throat and collarbones, kissing at the skin; licking, sucking and biting until you hear guttural moans coming from his throat. His lips are slightly parted, and his glossy dark eyes are fixed on your face; his fingers loosely tangled in your hair.

He presses you down onto the mattress again, until he’s face to face; his arms on each side of your face, holding himself over you.

“You sure?” he asks, voice hoarse, panting slightly.

“I want this” you answer him, voice low but clear, “I really, really want this Tom”

He smiles, breathing out the breath he’d been holding and moves away from you, reaching for the side of his bed and to take out a condom from the drawer.

He places a quick kiss to your lips, your cheek, your belly button, before he sits up. He removes his underwear and you can feel your face heat up again. Because this is Tom, your Tom, whom you’ve been in love with for half your life. But being with him, both naked as the day you were born, feels right. You know everything about this man, all his preferences and secrets; his favourite movie and how he likes his food and why he skipped class every day for a month in year nine. And he knows everything about you. It feels right that he should know this as well; know each curve of your body and the way you like to be kissed and what has you moaning and begging for more.

He unwraps the foil package and puts the condom on with firm fingers. Leaning over you again he lines up against your opening. His eyes glossy with lust, damp hair falling over his face; his mouth swollen and wet from kissing you.

Then with a sharp thrust and a groan he’s inside you.

All coherent thoughts go out the window as he starts moving in and out of you. The only thing that exists is his strong, sweaty body above you, moving in and out of you with slow, deep thrusts. He’s so hard where you are soft and you can’t stop touching him, dragging your fingers over his back, pulling at his hair, kissing his arms. It’s like the wires in your brain have crossed, sending out sparks of pure pleasure in your body.

He hits a particularly tender spot inside you and the groan that leaves you is almost animalistic.

Tom nearly halters in his pace, before collecting himself again. “Fuck” he moans out, kissing your neck. His movements become more frenzied and you roll your hips under him, meeting his movements; trying to get him deeper inside you.

He pushes himself up onto his hands, pulls back slightly; and pushes in. Starting to really fuck you.

You can’t stop looking up at him; naked body damp with sweat, muscles moving as he works; arms flexed and cheeks flushed. His eyes are closed pleasure now. Your hands are on his hips helping him set the pace as he fucks into you with fast, hard thrusts. Without warning you clutch around him in pleasure and he groans loudly.

“How the fuck does your cunt feel better than it tastes?” he asks, panting for air. “

He presses a hand over your heart, letting it rest there. You wonder if he can feel it pounding for him. You feel like you’re dissolving into a thousand tiny pieces as you come around him with a choked scream.

He’s so close and you can practically feel it; aching for him to have it. You want him to come; in you, on you, over you.

And then he does, his brows furrows; like the pleasure is so intense it hurts him. The sounds he makes when he comes are guttural; almost whimpering.

As he falls down on the bed beside you he pulls you close, has you pressed against his body, an arm firmly wrapped around you. The sun has set now, but the ocean waves still crash onto the shore, the sound of it the only thing to fill the silence part from your laboured breathing; the music having gone quiet in the other room.

Neither one of you say anything. You knew the end to this when he kissed you. You’ve regretted nothing that has happened here, and you know that he doesn’t either; but tomorrow you are leaving to drive all the way across the country and he cannot follow. You don’t know what will happen now, and he doesn't have the answer to that either. And so you just let him hold you; wishing with all your might that you could stop the morning from coming.

***

Please let me know your thoughts, genuinely don’t know what to make of this one.

#tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland imagine #tom holland fanfic

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peachy-panic · 3 years

Text

Only Temporary: Sebastian Tate

Hello. I was completely blown away by the positive response I got on the first piece of Jaime’s story (title under construction). Thank you to everyone who had a kind word to say about it! You made me really happy I made the mildly frightening choice to post.

In the interest of acclimating to the no-rules, freedom-to-post-out-of-order structure of this community, I wanted to introduce a new piece of the puzzle this time, with a new character that will come into play later.

Also, this piece goes into a little bit of the details, but for frame of reference on the BBU-adjacent thing: this story takes place in a not-so-distant future of the BBU, where WRU has undergone some changes. I look forward to exploring this world building more as I go.

Anyway, I’m rambling again. Thanks for reading. Here it is:

WARNINGS: General BBU warnings, talk of institutionalized slavery, classism, and general terribleness of large corporations. Referenced past homophobia and rough parental relationships, briefly implied/referenced non-con.

When Sebastian reflects on the day he graduated from med school, a sort of emptiness is the memory that first bobs to the surface. Among the cheers and camera flashes in the crowd, white coats and proud smiles, what Sebastian recalls most vividly from that day is looking out into the sea of parents and families and people there to support their loved ones on one of the biggest days of their lives, and not seeing a single person that had come for him.

What should have been one of the happiest moments of his life had been quickly overshadowed by the sinking feeling that none of it mattered as much as it would have if he had someone to share it with. Like there was something so fundamentally wrong with his life, that even something as objectively good and right and decent as becoming a doctor could be dulled over into a feeling of nothingness.

Perhaps, he thinks in hindsight, that moment had been foreshadowing for the following months ahead of him.

Watching rejection after rejection pour in from his top residency programs had felt like nothing short of his own personalized nightmare. He had spent several nights in a row on the phone with Alex, his undergrad roommate and only friend, clamoring back from the edge of many a panic attack, spiraling into all-out existential dread about the future and the past and what all of it meant for him if he couldn’t land an internship, let alone a real job out of school. To his credit, Alex never gave up hope in his friend. Or at least, he did a decent job hiding it if he did. Which was probably exactly what Sebastian needed to get through that particularly dark time in his life, and a good reminder of what a solid friend he had. Even if it was a party of two.

Unfortunately, Sebastian did not have the same faith in himself.

He was able to keep up some facade of optimism as his top five were picked off one by one. Telling himself, despite his devastation, that they were a pretty far reach, anyway. Even with good academic standing, it was famously no walk in the park to land yourself at John Hopkins or Mayo as a first-year. He even maintained a brave face as his first few safety programs reached capacity and moved forward without his name on the roster.

It wasn’t until he received his final rejection letter from some internal medicine place in Bumfuck, Idaho that he felt himself slip into dangerous territory. Sebastian knew himself well enough to know his own depressive patterns by then, and he knew it was only exponential decay from there.

Rock bottom came, as it did, in the wee hours of the night, after a full bottle of wine. Alone in his small apartment, surrounded by half-packed boxes with no destination, Sebastian found himself sprawled out on the floor with his laptop hot against his thighs. He couldn’t have explained why he opted for a privacy browser, but something about it allowed him to justify the words that he typed into the search bar.

It was a new low, and one he had sworn to himself he would never stoop to. Yet there he was.

He gave himself a moment to reconsider, to back out of what was undoubtedly a morally-gray train wreck waiting to happen as his thumb hovered over the enter key. And then the alcohol decided to override his moral compass.

Facility Care is the open secret of the medical profession. It comes with its fair share of stigma, and rightfully so, but it is notoriously easy to break into and pays a decent wage.

There are two types of people who end up stooping to that kind of employment. More often than not, it consists of doctors and nurses who had their licenses revoked or suspended somewhere along the line and needed a way back in. As far as Sebastian understood, they aren’t terribly ridgid about the particulars of each circumstance. After all, in the eyes of the law, the patients they would be treating are a price tag away from being entirely expendable.

The other percentage of Facility Care workers, and the reason Sebastian found himself staring at his too-bright computer screen with a sinking feeling of dread that night, are young medical graduates who find themselves in a tough spot. It isn’t difficult to spell out the logic behind that one when you open the WRU CAREERS tab on the home page and see the bright white words printed across the top of the screen:

LOAN FORGIVENESS.

It is shamelessly predatory and aggressively capitalistic, but Sebastian supposes that particular exploitation is pretty far down on the list of transgressions for an institution of legalized slavery. A few broke and hopeless medical students were hardly going to keep the Powers That Be up at night when they were able to rest easy under the weight of hundreds of thousands of stolen lives.

The whole thing is part of the massive PR overhaul the company did a few years back. In a world that was slowly inching toward civil activism and with the accessibility of platforms like social media to hold them accountable, WRU had to adapt to survive. Adaptation, in this case, took the form of changing the barest of minimums in order to keep themselves above board — to the public eye, anyway. Anyone who dares to take a closer look at the policy changes can see that it’s bullshit.

Changing ownership conditions to a rent-by-contract basis isn’t the humanitarian move they try to paint it as. In the end, it probably just equals out to more money in the company’s pocket when they can get more return on their “investments,” and a larger chance of exploitation for the people being moved around.

Getting rid of the Romantic division is an entirely meaningless gesture when they are still loaning out human beings with no legal rights and the inability to say “no.”

And offering an open job market with good wages and healthcare options to lower class individuals is a pretty convenient way to mute the backlash.

Essentially, you can tie a system of slavery and abuse up in a bow and make it pretty on the outside, but at the end of the day, it’s still fucking slavery.

Not that he has any room to criticize now. Now that he’s one of them.

In the end, Seb tries to justify his decision a few different ways. He is, after all, more or less a young man alone in the world. The odds are stacked against him and have been for a while. With only his own two legs to stand on, the only force stronger than his internal ambition is his instinct for survival, and he’s been running on those fumes for longer than he can count.

He had lasted less than two months under his parents’ roof after he came out of the closet at eighteen. It wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone involved; Sebastian’s parents had known about (and subsequently bottled) his… urges… since he was in high school. Probably before that, if he is being honest with himself. And Sebastian, for his part, had spent the better part of his teenage years mentally preparing for the inevitable. He can recall long, late nights he had spent crying into his pillow and the perfectly-scripted ‘coming out’ speeches he recited to his mirror when he was one-hundred percent sure his parents were asleep.

Of course, none of the preparation had been anywhere near adequate when he actually found himself wilting beneath the heat of his father’s glare, the weight of his mother’s grief.

But. He had recovered. That is the point he tries to remember when the memories sting fresh beneath his skin, even all these years later. He has more-than proven himself to be a survivor. He has worked harder than anyone he knows for every scholarship, every grant, every dollar to put himself through school. Sacrificed nights out and real relationships for night shifts at shitty diners and long weekends cramming for exams. It hadn’t been easy, but he considers it the price he had to pay for his independence. For freedom, to live the life as the person he is meant to be, despite his unfortunate odds. He spent years telling himself it would be worth it. That one day, his hard work would pay off.

He can’t stop now.

Sebastian doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to reroute when his navigation has gone amiss. He is walking the precarious line of rapidly accruing interest and student loans and a dwindling savings account, and there is no safety net below him.

Beggars can’t be choosers, and as it turns out, beggars sometimes have to compromise their moral integrity in order to survive.

It’s only temporary.

That is the mantra that gets him through the (half-drunken) application process and the (disturbingly lax) interview process. It is a job. One job. In the medical field, though the details are up for debate, and it is real-life money for rent and food and a savings that will hopefully be sizable enough to get him where he really wanted to be. Which is… really, anywhere else.

He can do ‘temporary.’ And perhaps, some misguided part of him thinks he can do some genuine good from the inside, too. ‘Be the change you want to see’ and all that.

It is a far jump from the floor of his apartment, sloshed and exhausted and desperate, to the cold, sharp reality of walking into his place of employment on his first day of work. Ironically, it feels a lot like an echo of the emptiness from his graduation day.

‘Sterile’ doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Sterile’ is the expectation of any well-respected medical establishment, but the inside of the facility walls has been wiped clean of far more than bacteria and germs. It is completely devoid of humanity. The long corridors that connect the medical wing to the general ward are windowless and dimly lit by flickering fluorescent panels that had make his head pound for the entirety of his first week.

He is given an office, though it is a term he, himself, might use loosely, as it is more akin to what was probably a storage closet before the old prison had been converted into the state’s training headquarters. It leaves him just enough space for a small desk and two chairs. On his first day, he asks if it is okay to bring in some personal items to spruce the place up. The older, balding doctor who had been assigned to show him around merely shrugs, and Sebastian decides to take that as a yes.

The small, pink-framed photo of a six-year-old Sebastian Tate in his grandfather’s white coat and an old-school stethoscope around his neck is hardly enough to make the place cozy from the corner of his desk, but it’s a good enough reminder of why he has to make this work.

‘It’s only temporary.’

‘Be the change you want to see.’

He will do his best.

#Sebastian Tate #bbu #like bbu adjacent?#tw: human trafficking #tw: slavery #implied noncon #whump #Do No Harm: Jaime & Sebastian

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romeulusroy · 3 years

Text

Being The Smartest Shelby Would Include:

Polly knew you were smart from the start

She said so when you were a baby, but of course no one believed her

Everyone thought their kids were special, but you really were

Born just a few years before Finn, you weren't the baby, but you definitely weren't the oldest, so it was hard to be taken seriously

It started with your homework

You spent a lot of nights trying to tell your siblings it was just too easy

You weren't just getting every answer right, you were finishing pages of work in minutes, faster than anyone in your class

Eventually, you moved on to your brothers work

Finding it discarded on the table, you recognized Johns scraggly handwriting

He'd only made it halfway through, so you decided to finish it, even fixing some of his mistakes along the way

You wanted to show them what you'd done, but of course no one listened

At least, not until you stood on your chair and demanded that someone look over your work

It was a bit dramatic, and made for an embarassing story later, but you wanted to be heard

They did, finally, and they were shocked

Tommy handed it to John, who passed to Ada, skipping over Arthur, who eventually got it to Polly

"Well?"

"It's right, all of it. . . ."

"Fuck."

It wasn't just math though. You were reading every book you could find, even the ones your siblings struggled to get through

You had a knack for puzzles, for figuring things out no one else could, able to pull things apart and put them together just in your head

Polly knew, and she was going to do something about it

Anything she could find to keep you entertained, occupied, your mind at work, she'd bring it home

You had an incredible memory too, remembering everything from the contents on the back of bottles you brothers drank from to entire speeches Polly gave when all of you were misbehaving

It was amazing, to say the least

You were a kid when your brothers went off to war, so it was mostly Ada and Polly who spent long nights with you at the table over homework

You didn't think it was fair, that you were forced to stay in school when none of your siblings were

Polly called it a gift, said you shouldn't take it for granted

She had big plans for you, the kind of career kids like you could only dream of

Finn grows up with you reading to him every night

Even helping him with schoolwork, though that didn't last very long

It still irks you Polly let's Finn drop school, not even getting past reading himself, but you know better than to push the subject

By the time your brothers come back, thankfully all in one piece, you've become a bit of a myth or legend around the Small Heath

Not only are you taller and with more acne, a young teenager, you've made a name for yourself, and a business

After school you could be found with a hat on the ground, getting pocket change for your "abilities"

Showing off and splitting the money with friends, you put on shows

Memorizing the faces of strangers, drawing them almost perfectly by hand, reciting lines of poetry from class all from memory, etc.

Sometimes you bring Finn along, promising candy for his silence, making him part of the act

Your favorite is showing off the languages you've lesrned, switching between Romani, French, Italian, and German (to name a few) without a second thought, so effortlessly

Arthur caught you once, but instead of saying anything, he simply cheered you on, laughing at the fact that your business was doing better than the familys

You spent a lot of time in the shop like Finn, growing up there, but never really allowed in on business, not even to listen

Instead you were ordered to be quiet and focus on your studies

And you did, for a few years, slipping notes to John about what you thought would improve business, pressing your ear to the door to listen, putting up with being categorized as "one of the kids" with Finn

And then you made an announcement, one that almost killed Polly

You weren't going to university, and instead you'd be joining the family business

Your aunt put up a good fight, but your brothers were more than happy to welcome you, with rules of course

Ada wasn't too thrilled either, knowing how smart you were, and how special it was, but she wasn't going to stop you

Pol was, or at least she was going to try

"You could be anything you want y/n."

"And I choose this."

"You're-"

"Wasting my potential? So you've said."

You'd be more behind the scenes, working on the business side rather than the side with razors and guns

Your brothers were more than happy to hear that, though you'd gotten more than a few comments muttered by Pol

If you really wanted to, you could always be a doctor or a lawyer later in life, for now this is what you wanted most

You were finally part of your family

Within the first week, you have a full list of what could be improved and you're center stage in the family meeting

To say that was nerve wrecking was an understatement

Tommy had his doubts, of course, but John knew you'd been keeping their heads above water for a long time

"Go on then, you've got our attention."

You were the one they went to check over the books, the numbers, catching mistakes no one else did

It wasn't just spelling mistakes or addition issues, you were taking stock in inventory, in all the bullets that were wasted, the little things that went missing that no one seemed to notice

It didn't take long for you to work your way up, prove yourself not only to Tommy, but Pol too, showing her this wasn't a waste of your time

She's still not thrilled, but you're as stubborn as the rest, and she knows it's a losing battle

At least you're being smart with your work

Tommy made you check over every contract and agreement he made, making sure he didn't miss a single detail that would screw them over

He brought you to the races too, working out probability, though your math was shaky at best under that kind of pressure and uncertainty

You were the one counting the profits and losses too, weighing the options of whether or not to invest

You're really the only one who knows just how much the family makes

That is a dangerous thing in itself

You make friends quite easily

Not only can you speak an array of languages, bonding with everyone, but you've got that Shelby charm and good looks, too

You're quite popular, though your brothers constantly get in the way of any potential relationship

You're smart though, and not just for their gain, but yours too

If and when you're ready to date, you'll find a way

Alfie adores you

Tommy drives him mad, but he'd have you over any day

Not only does he love the fact that you can keep up with him, witty beyond belief, but your Hebrew is perfect

"So, you're the brains behind the whole operation?"

"Something like that."

You're brought along to a lot of in person deals

You pick up on things no one else does, remembering the littlest of things that can and will be weaponized if need be

Their kids and spouses names, the way they look at you, how they speak and carry themselves

It doesn't take long for you to know exactly who they are

"They're lying Tom. I know they are."

"How can you tell?"

"They look away when they answer, their eye twitches, and they always lean forward when they're saying something true."

"You got all that from a five minute conversation?"

You're not only their beloved little sibling, but the perfect weapon

They don't teach you how to use a gun, but you've been watching for years, making note of every tiny detail

When you do use a gun, which is inevitable, it's a perfect shot

Arthur and Tom insist you carry something with you, but you're fine sticking with a simple razor

The guns can stay with them. . . .

Not only does it come in handy with work, but your family, too

You pick up on the way Arthur escalates, talking him down before there's a full outburst

You know the nights Tommy does and doesn't sleep just by the sound of his voice, the way he signs his name

You know when to check up on Ada if she's not doing well after Freddies gone, even if no one else can see the hurt in her eyes

That's the thing everyone seems to forget, is that you're not only book smart, but people smart, too

Constantly making fun of your siblings right in front of them

"Pol, y/n's making fun of me!"

"I am not! You don't even speak Russian."

"No, but I can guess."

He'd never admit it to you, but Finn really is amazed by you

Ever since he was a kid he always looked up to you

School and homework and all that never came easy to him, and it lead to him giving up, so the fact that all of this comes so easy makes him proud to be your brother

"Y/n, curse in a language we all know or don't say it all."

Along with learning weapons along the way, you pick up on how to be a nurse, tending to whatever it needed

From your nieces and nephews scraped knees to bullet wounds

"Do not get blood on my new shirt!"

No one really suspects you to be listening or watching the way you do, so when they need it, you go "undercover"

Gaining the trust of the enemy, pretending to be a stranger that just so happens to get their attention as if you hadn't been figuring out what makes them tick, distracting them with drinks and small talk

If anything goes wrong, you picked up on how to get away, how to fight without getting too much attention, and not just by watching

With a memory like yours, there are some things you'd like to forget and can't

A lot of things do leave you with nightmares, with flashes of panic, with this dreadful feeling in your gut like you'd seen it all before

At one point or another you've called your siblings and aunt in the middle of the night, just to check up on them, see if they're okay

Begging your brothers to be more careful

They rarely ever listen though

"Is there anything you can't do?"

"I can't go on a date."

"Nope, not until you're forty."

"Come on Arthur, you can't scare them all away."

Despite all this, you're still treated like a child

Your siblings still see you as that smart little kid correcting their work and growing bored of even the most complicated things

No matter what you do or say, you'll always be small in their eyes

#i got a lil carried away :P #headcanon #peaky blinders #peaky blinders headcanon #thomas shelby #arthur shelby #john shelby #ada shelby #finn shelby #polly gray #ennasfavorites

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isolemnlyswearpevensie · 4 years

Text

Paper Cut | Edmund Pevensie x Reader Soulmate AU

Warnings: Mentions of injury/blood, describing pain, seemingly near-death experience and talk about death, probably some cussing

Time/Era: Modern AU but the Pevensies have been to Narnia.

Word Count: 2.4k

Summary: Every injury your soulmate receives, you also receive. When you finally meet your soulmate, you have a few bones to pick.

A/N: Hello! This is the first imagine I’ve written on this blog, so I decided to do something a little more light-hearted for our favorite just king. I’m also a sucker for soulmate aus. There will be a part 2 for this story :D Feel free to leave requests :) Also, I’ve never been to Cambridge University so please take everything I say about it with a grain of salt lol

Part 2 | Part 3 | masterlist | read on ao3

It’s a common courtesy to try and be as careful as you can when it comes to your body. Not for your sake, but for your soulmate’s. Every papercut, cramp, broken bone, and even every itch you feel, your other half does as well. So, it was common sense to try to be as careful as you could to not inflict pain on them. Or at least that’s what Y/N thought. She spent her whole life dodging anything she felt could cause her harm. This included “normal kid” things like playing on the playground, rolling down hills, jumping off things, or playing sports. Her heart was always in the right place, even if her friends and family called her a stick in the mud for declining their “fun” requests. She could not, and will not, injure her person. When she was around 8, she had been playing with a paper airplane and it just barely sliced her finger. It left behind a pesky papercut that stung. Bad. The small injury left Y/N guilty for days afterward. She has assumed that her soulmate was on the same page as her for the longest time. Aside from a few skinned knees (they were kids after all,) Y/N was left unscathed. She went on her days carefree until she was about fifteen.

It seemed as though Y/N’s soulmate had completely changed their deminer overnight. It started with a bit of road rash on her palms. Y/N assumed they had fallen accidentally. Annoying, sure, but it was more than manageable. Then, her lip split open and bled for almost 15 minutes.

As the week went on, large bruises started appearing on her legs and hips. Maybe the road rash fall was worse than she initially thought. Again, she just rode it off as clumsiness. It wasn’t long until her fingertips started to turn purple. This made Y/N panic.

“Ma’am?” Y/N interrupted her science teacher in the middle of her lecture, “I think there’s something wrong with my hands.” The purple started to spread down her fingers towards her knuckles. They also proved to be getting harder to move.

“Oh, dear, you’re freezing.” Ms. Adamson remarks, taking Y/N’s hands into her own.

“What’s happening? Am I dying?” Her entire hand was now numb.

“I don’t think so, Miss L/N, but, it’ll help you and them out if we warm you up.”

Her toes suffered the same fate, she discovered during a visit to the school’s infirmary. (Which wasn’t even worth visiting in Y/N’s opinion.) The nurse at Y/N’s school didn’t have the “jurisdiction” to help Y/N properly, so she had to settle for a wet paper towel that was warmed in the microwave. Y/N just wished to be sent home instead. By the time she was finally set free, the purple had faded but her skin tone was not back to normal. Hopefully, the paper towel did something for her soulmate cause this sure as hell wasn’t Y/N’s fault. Her parents were flabbergasted when she got home, mostly upset that they made her miss so many of her classes. Neither had any explanation but tried to offer unhelpful comforting all the same.

When Y/N awoke the next morning, all of the fingers in her hand had gone back to normal and she regained feeling. Finally, her soulmate was finally safe.

She spent the day coming up with ridiculous reasons as to why they had almost given her frostbite. Maybe they got locked in a freezer at an ice cream store and had to wait for the store to reopen to let them out. Maybe they live in Antarctica and they got locked out of their house in their underwear. Maybe they were trying to win a bet to see who could stay in ice water the longest. The daydreams were cut short as she was harshly awoken by a searing pain in her abdomen.

Ms. Adamson dropped her whiteboard marker and panicked when she heard Y/N scream. It wasn’t a normal teenage girl scream either. No, this scream was filled with pure agony and distress. It echoed against the walls and vibrated the desks. It sounded as if she was getting murdered. Y/N fell to the floor and landed in a big heap. The scientist hurriedly ran towards Y/N and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the teen’s blood pooling on the linoleum floor. It appeared she had been stabbed, by the looks of it.

Pointing at various other students to do various tasks, call an ambulance, call the office, and to go get another teacher, she took hold of Y/N’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” She whispered, “You’re going to be fine. Keep your eyes open for me.”

Y/N felt very odd. Was this what dying felt like? She felt as though she was underwater; she could hear Ms. Adamson but her voice was muffled and she couldn’t make anything out. Y/N felt dizzy and sick at the same time, all she wanted to do was shut her eyes. So she did. Relief filled her as quickly as the pain. Her wound felt cold as if someone was pushing a damp cloth onto it. The pain lessened and lessened until there was none at all.

Five years later she had almost forgotten about what had happened. Almost. In the years that followed the incident, severe gashes and bruises had become a normal occurrence. Her body was riddled with what seemed like battle scars, and she was almost always on edge. She had no way of knowing what was going to happen to her, nor when it was going to happen. This felt really unfair. She had been so careful for them, but they treated themself like a rag doll.

Much to her delight, when she hit eighteen all of the injuries suddenly stopped. The last injury she had received was a dark black bruise that covered her entire side, then nothing. It had been two years and all she got were papercuts and burned tongues.

“Take a break,” Y/N’s roommate grabs the pen out of her hand and places it on the desk. “You’ve been working on that for ages, come get coffee with me.”

Y/N was currently in her third year at Cambridge University, working on her undergraduate biology degree. For her degree, she had to take organic chemistry and it was, in simple terms, kicking her ass. Her professor is shitty, the work was hard and Y/N was losing motivation.

“I can’t. If I stop I’ll fail the final, then fail the class then never graduate.” Y/N mumbles, picking up her pen again and scribbling something down.

“That’s not true, just come with me. Please?” “I said no, Y/B/F/N.”

“What if you take your books with you? A change of environment might help you study.”

Y/N leans back in her chair and looks up at her roommate. Maybe she had a point, it might do her good to get out a little bit. She packs her things and the two make their way to the coffee shop.

The coffee shop on campus was small and always packed. The school preferred to call it “cozy,” but still, it’s small. Surprisingly, there weren’t many people inside.

“Most people must’ve already left campus for break,” Y/B/F/N said, seemingly reading your mind.

Only three of the tables had students sitting at them. One in the far corner had a girl who looked to be a very frustrated first year, huddled over a croissant and an English textbook. A few tables down sat four boys and one girl. Each had books open and pens in their hands, but by picking up snippets of their conversation, they were talking about whether Voldemort or Darth Vader would win in a fight. Finally, near the window, sat a boy who was staring straight at her. She recognized him from a few of her general education classes. Y/N had never talked to this boy, but he was rather cute. He was wearing a crimson sweater and ripped jeans with converse, hair messily tossed to the side. Y/N couldn’t decide whether or not he was staring at her or was in a very deep thought so she waved. No wave back.

The two girls get their coffee and sit down a few tables away from the boy.

“Do you know that guy?” Y/B/F/N asks, moving her head towards crimson sweater.

“Not officially, I recognize him. Oh, what’s his name? I knew it at one point…” Y/N reaches into her bag and pulls out her books again, placing them on the table. As if it were a habit, she immediately starts studying again. She glances past her friend; the guy was still staring at that one spot.

Time passes fast for Y/N but slow for Y/B/F/N. She tried to speak with you but ultimately gave up. So, bidding you goodbye, she left to go find her boyfriend. Y/N was kind of relieved, she can finally study in peace. The big group also left, after fighting about whether a time turner should be illegal or not, so the cafe was left with an almost eery silence. So silent that you can hear every pencil scratch, every tap of a keyboard, and every gulp of coffee.

At some point, the boy had gotten up to get another cup of coffee and passed by Y/N. He was wearing a shit ton of cologne, so he left a scent trail wherever he went. Making his way back to his table, he tripped and spilled his coffee all over Y/N’s chemistry notes.

“No, no, no, no, no!!!!!” Y/N screeches, wiping away the coffee with her bare hands. The drink splashes onto the boy’s pants and shoes.

“Oh as- oh fuck, I am so sorry!” He grabs a wad of napkins and tries to blot the paper. She had worked on that study guide for hours, and now it was ruined. There was no way her professor would take it now. Thank god her laptop was still in her bag.

Panicked, Y/N picks up her notebook and starts flipping through it. Her pen marks were bleeding together and there was no way to save them. Coffee crimson boy grimaces and picks up the notebook.

“I don’t suppose this was an art class and you could turn it in as an abstract piece?” He says in a serious tone, though the words were highly sarcastic. Y/N lets out a single laugh.

“I wish it were, but no. O Chem,” Coffee crimson’s face contorts even more.

“Ouch, um, do you have it backed up anywhere?”

“Ah yes, I have my notebook backed up.” The previously broken ice was discarded and Y/N was frustrated again.

“You should have done it on your laptop.”

“And you should watch where the fuck you’re going.” Y/N snatches the notebook from his hand. Coffee crimson notices your tone and quickly backtracks.

“Hey, let me redo it for you then,” He glances at the textbook casually. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“And why should I trust you? I don’t know you and my grade is riding on this.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” His smile was warm. “I’m Edmund Pevensie, I’m in the prelaw program.”

“Oh, perfect, a law student that’s going to attempt my organic chemistry homework. Wonder what could go wrong.”

“I’m sure I can figure it out. Law is hard, maybe a different kind of hard, but still hard. I can do hard.”

“Take a shot every time sweater guy says hard. I feel like I’m at a frat party.”

“I’m trying to fix my mistake here,” Now Edmund is the one that looks frustrated. “Here, take my number. I’ll text you updates and meet you back here tomorrow.” He looks at the clock. Damn, he had a gorgeous jawline. “4:32 pm. Exactly 24 hours from now.” Edmund scribbles his number onto a napkin and hands it to Y/N. As he writes, she can’t help but notice a long, jagged scar running the back of his hand. She scrunchs her eyebrows.

Edmund actually kept his word. Every hour until four am that night he sent Y/N updates. Goofy pictures of him googling stupid questions or him writing. He sent a video that gave Y/N a perfect shot of the scar. Curiously, Y/N looks down at her own hand.

The next day, his photo updates started coming again. This time they were more serious, showing the study guide. He ended up putting his own commentary in the margins; some funny some that made her think of the material differently. Y/N could really tell he was smart, even by his handwriting.

He sent a picture to Y/N at 4:25 of the table in the coffee shop. “I’m early” was sent at the exact moment Y/N opened the door.

“Wow, I’m impressed. I didn’t actually think you’d show.” Y/N sat opposite of him and smiled. He was wearing the same (coffee stained) jeans as yesterday and a button-up shirt.

“I wouldn’t do all that work for nothing,” He smiled again and handed Y/N a new notebook she had never seen before.

As she gripped the pages, the corner dug into her palm and cut her.

“Ow!” The two said at the same time. They both had a thin cut in the middle of their palms. His large brown eyes met Y/N’s and they stared for a moment. Y/N then grabbed his hand and pushed up his sleeve to show the scar going up the back of his hand. Y/N couldn’t look away from his skin; just as she had thought, it was identical to hers.

Meeting his gaze again, she pressed a hand to her stomach. Her hand rested right above a large, jagged scar that didn’t seem to heal quite right. His eyes followed the line of her arm.

“Edmund, I think you have a lot of explaining to do.”

#edmund pevensie #edmund pevensie x reader #edmund x reader #the chronicles of narnia #narnia #edmund pevensie fanfic #edmund pevensie fanfiction #the chronicles of narnia fanfic #the chronicles of narnia fanfiction #soulmate #soulmate au

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drakeandkatherine · 3 years

Text

Reunion- Ch 2: alstroemeria (Drake x MC TRRAU FanFic)

Hello! I am so excited to show you guys the second chapter to Reunion!

I’m sorry this took sooooooo long to upload. My personal life has been super hectic lately, and I haven’t had time to really write!

(Drake, Liam, Hana, Maxwell and any other The Royal Romance characters belong to Pixelberry! Katherine Delacroix belongs to me!)

Series Overview: Reunion is a short series about Drake Walker and Katherine Delacroix, along with their friends, Maxwell, Hana and Liam. In this series, we see the gang at a high school reunion, five years after they’ve graduated. There will be flash backs, taking place up to nine years ago (the start of high school) up to when they graduate. You’ll get to see how the gang came together, and how they fell apart, only to come back together, and the main focus is how Drake and Katherine come back to each other after years apart.

All chapters of this series are named after flowers, with certain meanings. This chapter is named “alstroemeria”. It has meaning of friendship, love, strength and devotion. They're often thought to represent mutual support. And the ability to help each other through the trials and tribulations of life. This chapter, it flashes back to where the group of five became friends.

Word count: 1578

Warnings: adult language, mentions of death and drinking

Tags: @burnsoslow @drakewalker04 @marshmallowsandfire

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future chapters!

Katherine and Hana spent the rest of their first day back after five years in Cordornia preparing for the next night. They tried to plan out just how long they would stay and who they would talk too if those people showed up.

“Hana, are you really sure we should be there that long? I feel like two hours is more than enough time to say hi, have a drink and get the fuck out of there.” Katherine complained as she fished for her pajamas in her suitcase.

“We came all the way here for this reunion, we might as well stay longer than two hours; possibly even the whole time, Kat.” Hana said, a small chuckle escaping her lips. “Besides don’t you wanna see Olivia again?”

“I don’t really want to see much of anyone to be honest, Hana. I’d rather go get a couple drinks and maybe say hi to Olivia, if she even shows up and then I want to bounce.” The truth was, she did miss Olivia and all the fun nights the three had during junior and senior year, she just wasn't going to admit it.

Hana shook her head and continued to put away her clothes in the dresser that they shared in the room as Katherine changed into her pajamas. “Should we order room service?”

“I think a better question is, can we order alcohol?” Hannah laughed.

The next day as Katherine was preparing herself mentally, her mind wandered back to sophomore year of high school, the year that Hana and her became friends with a few others who soon had become the closest thing to family she had had in a long time. Family, she sadly remembered, that barely talked to her or Hana anymore.

8 years ago

Liam and Drake were two of the most popular boys at the high school. Both were star football players and in the winter, star basketball players. A lot of the girls tried their best to get the boys to notice them, but sadly none of their efforts worked. It wasn’t until one Saturday in detention that they met two other girls who would soon become their best friends, as well as another man who was known for his shenanigans.

“Alright, this is Saturday detention. All of you know why you are here. Your assignment for today is to write an 1000 word essay on how you recognize that your actions have consequences. I will be in my office which is just down the hall and I will come check on you periodically to make sure you are writing quietly. Once the bell rings at 3 o’clock, you’ll be dismissed and can go home for the day.” Dean Constantine told the teenagers, a strict tone in his voice.

All of the students rolled their eyes but complied nonetheless. After about an hour of trying to focus on anything other than the assignment, a tall boy with sandy brown hair finally spoke, breaking the silence that hung in the room.

“All right, I’m kind of over the silence. Not sure if anyone else is, but hey guys, I’m Maxwell. I’m in here because I made a stink bomb in science class and the teachers weren’t so happy about it and neither were the other students.” He smiled triumphantly as if he was proud.

“That was you? I’ll never be able to get that smell out of my nose. Good job.” Katherine smiled. “I’m Katherine and I’m here because Hana,” she paused and pointed to Hana who sat next to her. “and I decided to go off campus for lunch and they found out and caught us when we were coming back.” She looked at the two boys sitting side-by-side a few rows behind them in the classroom. “What about you two?”

“Someone on the junior varsity team was giving me some lip, so, I punched him in the lip.” The darker haired boy said, holding up his hand to show the bruises on his knuckles. Katherine eyed him, wondering how strong he was.

“I got in trouble because I tried to break up the fight but the coach thought I had helped start it, so thanks to this one I am in yet another Saturday detention.” He playfully shoved his friend.

“Oh please, Liam. You would’ve been here regardless just because your dad makes you come here.” Drake laughed.

“Who’s your dad?” Hana asked.

“Well as Drake so helpfully mentioned, my dad would put me in Saturday detention regardless because it’s his way of keeping an eye on me. My father is the dean of the school, Dean Constantine.” Liam said, a somber look on his face.

“No shit, are you serious?!” Katherine asked, her eyes wide.

“Sadly.” Liam replied, expression flat.

“So what you’re saying is that you can leave whenever you want because you’re just gonna be here next Saturday anyway? Why are you here then?”

“Let’s just say it would be hell at home if I ditched.” Liam grimaced.

“And what would he do to us if we just got up and left?” Katherine asked, Hana giggling next to her.

“He probably would just give you guys another Saturday detention to be honest. Most of the students here never do anything that would require suspension or expulsion.” Drake explained.

“I think it would be wise if you guys just got through this day and not provoke the beast.” Maxwell chimed in, not wanting to get into any more trouble, as he was in Saturday detention almost as often as Liam.

“Really? Because I say that when it gets to lunch time we all sneak out, get past him and then ditch this place and go to the beach or something.”

“Katherine as much as I love that idea I really don’t wanna have another Saturday detention. My parents would literally kill me.” Hannah said with a frown on her face.

Katherine didn’t much care what happened to her but she did care what happened to her best friend, so, even though it frustrated her and as much as she wanted to leave this hellhole, she nodded, agreeing, before saying “You’re right, Hana, we should probably just stick it out and then go back to my house.” She looked at the three men surrounding them. “I know we just all met each other but you guys are welcome to come with us to my house afterwards. My grandma is a nurse and she works mostly night shifts so she’ll be gone, meaning we can raid the liquor cabinet.” Last year, Katherine would have never asked this to anyone besides Hana. Becoming friends with Hana had made her enjoy life again, made her want to make friends again.

“You drink?” Liam asked, sincerely.

“Usually Hana and I will sneak a couple drinks sometimes but we don’t usually drink.”

“Well if your grandma has some whiskey, I’d be down.” Drake said. “My old man, before he passed, would drink whiskey all the time. Sometimes he would let me have a little sip. I always told myself once I was old enough I have glass in his honor.”

Katherine’s felt tugs on her heart strings. She felt for Drake since, she too, knew the pain of losing a parent. The difference is that she lost both of hers. Though she didn’t really know him so she didn’t know if his mom was still in the picture.

“All I know is is that I don’t want to deal with my brother when I get home so I'm gonna go where you go, Katherine.” Maxwell said, saluting her as if she was the group’s leader.

“And then there was one.” Katherine smiled at Liam.

“Well I have nothing better to do and it’s better than going home to my dad who's always in a bad mood, so, sure I’m down.” Liam smiled softly, a hint of sadness showing before he quickly looked away, hiding his emotions.

“All right, it’s settled then. After we get out of here we will follow Katherine back to her place and we’ll have a good time.” Hans said, clapping in her hands in excitement.

As soon as 3 o’clock came around and the bell dismissed them, Katherine took off running as soon as she was out the door, the rest running close behind her. ”Come on guys, what are you? A bunch of snails?” Katherine laughed as she ran on ahead.

Drake and Liam quickly caught up to her. “You wish we were snails. Not our problem you decided to choose a race between two star football players.” Drake smirked. Maxwell caught up to them a minute later saying “And I’m on the track team!”

Katherine slowed down matching Hana’s pace, chuckling. “Jokes on them, they don’t know where I live.” The girls laughed when the men came to a stop, wondering where they were going. Katherine then proceeded to show them the rest of the way to the house and instead of running they walked.

Present

“Hey, Kat, are you okay?” Hana’s voice snapped Katherine out of her memories. She turned her head and looked at her best friend in the entire world, who had a worried look on her face.

“I’m just having a little anxiety about tonight. What am I going to say to him if he shows up?” Katherine said, panic showing on her face. If he showed up, she didn’t know what she would do. Katherine wasn’t sure if she was ready to face the reality of what happened to them.

“I think you’ll know when the time comes. I can’t tell you what to say, it wouldn’t be authentic.” Hana gave her a small smile. “Now come on, it’s time to put on your make up and get dressed!” Katherine threw a pillow at her, making both of them laugh.

“Okay. Let’s do this.” She said, rising from the bed and walking to the bathroom to start her make-up. Katherine wasn’t sure how tonight would go, but she couldn’t run anymore. She had to finally face him.

#drake walker #drake x mc #katherine delacroix mc #katherine delacroix #the royal romance #the royal heir #liam rhys #maxwell beaumont #hana lee #olivia nevrakis #the royal romance fan ficiton #trr fan fiction #trr au

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classic80sand90smovieloves2 · 4 years

Text

Meeting and Dating Kevin Pickford

(Not my gif)(requested by anonymous)

(I love this pointless movie)

- You and Kevin meet after your friends convinced you to go to one of his parties. You could of made up ten different activities you’d rather do than go to a highschool keg party but your friends insisted and you soon found yourself packed into their car.

- Now you had had a little crush on Kevin for a while, ever since freshman year when you saw him for the first time, so even though you weren’t very excited to spend your night surrounded by your drunken peers you were a bit excited to maybe, hopefully see him.

- So you arrive at his house; let’s pretend this is another party that didn’t get shut down, and you walk through the front door to see the typical shit show. You stick by your friends for a while, nursing a beer and trying to convince yourself you’re having a good time. That is until your friends all but ditch you to go and mingle.

- Soon enough you’re all alone standing uncomfortably in the relatively abandoned kitchen. You’re debating the idea of just leaving, walking home didn’t seem all to bad given the circumstances, but just as you feel like you’ve made up your mind...in walks the host. You felt like your heart was going to jump out of your chest when you saw him, you stared down at your cup hoping he would just sort of ignore you as he rummaged for whatever it was he was looking for.

“How ya doin?” Shit.

- It seemed like he was just trying to be friendly so you gave him as much of a smile as you could muster and a small “fine” before glancing down at your drink again. From your experience this was usually when the person would just nod and walk out but he didn’t. He gathered the stuff he had came in for but paused at the counter.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before... whats your name?”

- I think you’d have to be a year younger than him because if you were in his grade prior to this he would have asked you out or at least spoken to you before. So you’re a sophomore going into junior year and he’s a junior going into senior year.

“Oh you wouldn’t really know me, I’m a sophomore. My friends brought me, I’m y/n.”

“Oh cool man cool. I’m Kevin.”

“Yeah, I-uh, I know,” you chuckled a little. “Nice party.”

- He smiled and was about to say something before he was called back to the party by a loud shout. “Well I’m gonna go deliver the necess-it-ies. You should come out, join the living, raise a little hell.” And then he was once again lost in the sea of people flooding his living room.

- After he was gone you freaked out for a hot minute over the fact that you had just talked to your longtime crush. You decided that maybe you could stomach a little more of the party and took a deep breath before wandering out of the kitchen. It was maybe thirty minutes later that the two of you found each other again and started up a mini conversation.

- Soon enough the two of you were heading up to his bedroom so that you could actually hear each other speak. You spent a surprisingly long time just talking to each other while the party went on downstairs; it was four in the morning by the time you checked the clock again.

- You figured it was time for you to go home, so you stood up and began to say goodbye before he tried to convince you to stay a little longer. It’s nearly impossible to deny him, it’s pretty much been your dream for this exact scenario to happen. You promise to stay for another hour, which turns into another hour, and finally you really need to go so that you can avoid meeting your parents at the front door. He asks for your number and you write it down for him before you leave.

- You end up walking home in the rising sun which almost feels like the perfect way to end the night.

- He calls you a few days later asking if you’d want to come over which you obviously agree to. You get together, chat some more, listen to music, all that fun teenager shit. But then he leans over and kisses you, pulling away with that gorgeous smile of his and, well, you’re walking on clouds for the rest of the day.

- Later on you kiss some more and he gives you a “so does this mean you’ll be my girlfriend from now on, cause I think I’d like that, a lot”.

- Listen most of your dates are more or less just the two of you hanging out not really doing much besides enjoying each other’s company.

- But he does take you to a drive in restaurant for dinner so you can count that as your first “official” date. He wanted to “give a good first impression for your relationship”.

- You’re together like 90% of the time. The both of you are kind of clingy with each other and neither of you seem to mind.

- Whenever you’re together he always has some form of physical contact with you at all times.

- Sitting on his lap.

- He loves PDA but it’s mostly because he just loves affection in general.

- He’s a big baby who likes being cuddled and that’s a fact. He lowkey loves being the little spoon but it genuinely doesnt matter to him how you cuddle as long as you do it.

- Keeps tabs on you whenever you go out together. He usually stays close by or at least knows where you’re going to be, he likes to make sure you’re alright.

- You definitely have little routines together whether it be when his parents almost catch him smoking or cleaning up after a party or just when coming home from school.

- Helping to make sure his parents don’t catch him smoking in his room. You’re usually sent out to distract them or you clear things up while he talks with them.

- He’s so interested in your talents and hobbies, show him what you’re passionate about baby! He wants to know!

- Always being offered free booze or weed.

- Awkward first introductions to his friends when they crash one of your hangouts to try and buy some herb.

- Being invited to all of his and his friends parties.

- Helping him plan his parties.

- Helping him with all his antics.

- He’s always fiddling with something whenever you’re together so be prepared to see him doing something at any given moment in the corner of your eye.

- Making out, he could kiss for hours.

- Always having shotgun reserved for you.

- Laying on the hood of his car together and talking about random shit.

- Trying to hide your laughter while you listen to his weird weed fueled theories and stories.

- He shows off everything you make or do, he’s a subtle cheerleader.

- You spend most of your time in his room, sitting in his egg chair or on the windowseat while he smokes a joint.

- You’re constantly on the same wavelength.

“Thats what I was gonna say!!”

- Braiding and running your fingers through his hair.

- He plays with your hair as well, twirling strands between his fingers and stroking it when you’re cuddling.

- He’s honestly so adorable and absolutely smitten with you. All his friends can tell he’s whipped but he doesn’t care.

- He thinks it’s so cute that you had a crush on him, well that’s if you ever admit it to him.

- Hand holding especially whenever you’re walking together.

- Staying up till dawn together.

- Making flower crowns together, dont deny it he’d do it.

- His parents love you and are always really sweet, his mother is an absolute angel.

- He isnt going to force you to smoke with him but he does need you to accept that hes not stopping just because you dont want to. He’ll agree to not smoke around you because thats fair enough but he’ll still do it with his friends or on his own. I can assume you’re alright with that if you want a relationship with him.

- Kevins pretty chill so there’s rarely any fighting and the fighting you do have are more so just arguments rather than actual fullblown fights. They’re usually over a dangerous idea or stupid action he had/did. These arguments usually end with him realizing and admitting you’re right or saying how he can see why you’d think that. He gets it even if he doesnt think its as big of a deal as you do.

- Kevin is a moderately jealous person, he doesnt think every man you talk to is a threat to your relationship. He’s pretty calm, which is what you’d expect from a stoner, he more so just smirks at the guy he knows is flirting with you and shows that you’re his with an arm around your shoulder and/or a kiss. He never dwells on it or let’s it ruin your night.

- He’s a very loyal boy, no cheating, no flirting with other girls. You’re the only girl he has eyes for.

- Swapping clothes and accessories.

- You share pretty much everything; food, drinks, homework, joints, a single braincell.

- Going to the emporium and playing fooseball and pool together or jokingly cheering him on while he plays someone else.

- A lot of nicknames; he definitely calls you flowerchild and other very 70s sounding ones.

- Having a lot of Polaroids together.

- Concert dates.

- Record store dates.

- Late night hangouts.

- Going on random trips to different stores to get food or drinks.

- Well if you’re becoming a junior then you’ll have a year in highschool without him in the near future. He doesn’t really mind waiting for you to graduate so that you can advance your relationship but it will bother him when he isn’t able to see you for more than six hours, five days a weeks

- Probably proposes to you in bed, late at night with a “how would you like to be a Mrs. Pickford?” while he spins the ring between his fingers.

#dazed and confused #kevin pickford #90s movie headcanons #90s imagine #kevin pickford imagine #dazed and confused headcanons #dazed and confused headcanon #dazed and confused imagine #dazed and confused x reader #kevin pickford x reader #kevin pickford headcanons #kevin pickford headcanon

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iamtaekooked · 4 years

Text

↳Genre: Angst (literally that’s all this is)

↳Prompt: “If you don’t hold me right now, i might just fall apart”

↳Word count: 5.3k

Warnings: Manipulation and betrayal

Pairing: Jungkook x female reader

↳Synopsis:

Jeongguk lets go of you. But when he comes back into your life for the briefest of moments he’s a little too late.

↳A/N: This is for the wonderful @gguksgalaxy for the prompt game which I was doing like months ago. I wrote this long ago and forgot to post it (big dumb energy) Sorry Gwaen. The ending made me super sad though. But I hope you like it!

{18 years of age}

Your heart thumps in your chest as everyone slowly gets picked into the teams. This is why you hated PE. You were usually the last one to be picked because everyone knew of your thorough incapability to play any kind of sports. It was common knowledge within your high school. So when you were forced to choose physical education as an elective to complete the required credits to graduate, you had no choice but to make yourself resilient to the fact that you would always be picked last.

It was worse because right now Jimin and Jeongguk were the captains of the dodgeball teams. As soon as he was chosen the captain of Team A Jimin had immediately looked to you and a sly smile tugged on his lips. You could see the wheels turning in his mind and you knew he was up to something.

So as you stand in the horrible PE attire you hope Jimin chooses you because the alternative will likely end up with you passing out. You can’t be in the same team as Jeon Jeongguk because you have a massive crush on him and every time you see him you feel like you will die. Some people call it being overdramatic but you call it being a teenager with no control over her emotions. You and Gus Isaacs are the only two people left as Jimin picks one of the guys from grade 12 into his team as his second-last pick. Not you, but someone else.

“Y/n”

You hear your name somewhere far in the distance but ignore the call and continue ruminating and chewing on your lip in the process.

“Y/n” you hear your name again, and this time it’s a bit clearer but you still ignore it and think you are probably hallucinating. Until Gus Isaacs elbows your side to bring you back to reality.

You wince in pain and hold onto the spot, giving Gus the evil eye as he motions towards the front. “Jeongguk chose you to be in his team”

You blink stupidly at him as if you can’t comprehend what he’s saying. You can’t. You hear the words ‘Jeongguk chose you to be in his team’ but they don’t connect right in your head. In fact they don’t connect at all so you miss the memo while the whole class gawks at you as you stare blankly at Gus.

“Y/n, do you wanna join the team?” Jeongguk asks firmly and with the usual confidence he carries.

In your repeated blinking state you turn to look ahead only to be subjected to a questioning look by Jeongguk.

Then your vision starts blurring and the last thing you remember is a heavy feeling taking over your limbs and someone shouting your name.

You awaken about an hour later in the school infirmary. You crack open an eye to find a boringly dull white ceiling gracing your view. You open your other eye and lower your gaze to find-

“Jeongguk?”

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

Why the fuck is Jeon Jeongguk here and not Jimin?

“I am fine” you strain as you try to get up. Jeongguk immediately places his hands on your elbows to help you sit up. You’re too wrapped up in your confusion to notice Jeongguk is touching you, otherwise, there would have been a reaction. “Where is Jimin?”

“He had to go to class and well someone needed to be here with you. So, I stayed”

“You don’t even know me” it’s a wonder you’re able to speak at all given that you fainted because of him. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“Are you kidding me?” he scoffs in a non-condescending way. “I have had every class with you since grade 8. Of course, I know you. Plus Jimin never shuts up about you and how great you are”

“You know me?” your eyes widen

He rolls his eyes. “Stop treating me like I am some damn celebrity. Contrary to the popular belief I am not a jerk”

“But you are a celebrity” you mumble under your breath, sheepishly casting your gaze at your lap.

“What?” he squints his eyes at you.

“Nothing. You can go by the way. I am fine” you swing your legs over the bed and plant your feet firmly on the ground. You pull yourself up with effort but a light feeling runs through you and you wobble on your feet and fall back down on the tiny bed.

“Yeah. You’re totally fine” Jeongguk muses sarcastically as he steadies you. “The nurse said you should go home. I’ll take you. Come on”

Your muscles feel tight and you feel the tension in every limb. This is probably what your mom means when she says she’s had an arthritis flare-up. It’s definitely not a fun feeling. You can’t move a muscle as Jeongguk quietly waits for you to say something. This is the most surreal situation you have ever been in. The eighteen-year-old you, crazed by hormones and prone to fantasizing doesn’t know how to deal with it.

“I can go home by myself”

“Sure. If you want faint on the way and then get kidnapped by some random creepy dude. Go ahead. Eighteen-year-old girls are like a hot commodity for those psycho’s” Jeongguk says firmly, clearly trying to scare you into submission.

“What makes you think I won’t get kidnapped if you’re with me?” you question with a slight intention of teasing.

He looks scandalized as his nose scrunches and brows knit together so tightly you never thought it was possible for someone to be that offended. “Excuse me. Have you seen me?”

Yes of course, you have seen him. You’ve memorized his whole fucking face and embedded it so deep into your memory you made sure that even retrograde amnesia couldn’t get rid of it. You have been looking at him from afar for so long, you know every little thing about him.

“Just because you are slightly buff doesn’t mean you can help me”

“Wow” his jaw drops. “I have added weights to my routine so I am way stronger than I used to be. I could protect you”

“Spoken like a true teenage guy living on testosterone” you chuckle.

He rolls his eyes yet again. “So now that I have proven my point, can I take you home?”

“I’ll spare your ego” your lips pull into a grin which he echoes.

He wraps an arm around your waist and you stand firmly on the ground, waiting to feel stable before you begin walking. Jeongguk doesn’t let go eyes resting on your face as he watches you inhale slowly before nodding.

Your skin burns, every limb feels with fiery wrath the effect of his touch. Your mouth dries, throat completely parched. Your hands become clammy as you curl your fists into the sticky palm.

“Are you good?” he asks

You nod. “It’s alright. You can let go”

“And have you fall and then I get blamed for it? No way” he shakes his head, resolute.

You sigh. “Fine then. Walk me home” you say and you won’t lie that even just a little part of you is ecstatic.

“Gladly” he greets you with a grin when you look up at him. “Where is your locker?” he asks as you both step out of the infirmary and into the quiet hall.

“It’s okay. I can text Jimin to bring my stuff later”

“You and Jimin that close?” he sounds resigned about it.

“I thought Jimin talked about me” you question as you walk side by side, Jeongguk guiding you with his hand on the small of your back.

“He says you’re friends. But he never mentioned you were close enough for him to go to your house” Jeongguk explains, his previously cheery voice slightly deflated.

“That’s kinda hard to do when he lives just down the street and he loves my mom’s cooking” you press your lips into a thin smile.

“Ah” he nods in acknowledgement. “Is he just a friend or…” Jeongguk trails, not really needing to go any further because it is self-explanatory.

You reach the west side exit and step out into the cool spring afternoon with the sun shining brightly overhead. “Why are you so interested?” you cock a brow at him.

“No reason” he shrugs. “Just wanted to know if Jimin had a girl” he waves it off casually. “Anyway, so tell me something about yourself”

Your eyes narrow in confusion. “We’re making small talk now?”

“I didn’t mention the weather did I?” Jeongguk chuckles.

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

He pouts, eyes squinting as he looks into the distance. He looks cute when pouts and he does that a lot. It’s creepy that you know this but when you’ve spent a better part of your high school life fantasizing over the guy it becomes second nature after a while.

“Tell me something Jimin doesn’t know” his eyes widen with a hint of excitement.

“Oh, that’s hard because I tell Jimin everything” you pause, trying to rack your brain for something you have never told Jimin.

“There has to be one thing” Jeongguk prompts.

Your lips just out as you try really hard to think.

Then it hits you.

“Don’t tell him but one time when we were younger he thought he lost his favourite toy. But really I took it from him and never told him about it”

“Wow. What a thief” Jeongguk teases with a laugh.

“He still talks about it and it’s so awkward” you shake your head, reminiscing about the time when Jimin has mentioned his missing action figurine.

“Why did you take it?” Jeongguk asks.

“The day before I took it, he went off to play with some of the other kids. I was mad that I had to play alone while he was having fun with them on the roundabout, and the swings and they were running around laughing. I felt abandoned so the next day I took it and pretended like he lost it”

“Remind me not to piss you off” he jokes, his hand which was resting on the small of your back, suddenly thrown over your shoulder.

You look down at his hand as it dangles over your shoulder. It’s awfully intimate for two people who have just met. But you shake your head because you can’t let these thoughts limit you and freeze you up. You’re finally talking to him and you’re having a good conversation. So you can’t jeopardize this because your body automatically reacts to his touch. That can’t be why you shoot yourself in the foot, so you maintain your calm by inhaling deeply and forcing your body to relax.

“Tell me something you’ve never told anyone” you look at him, noticing how he’s chewing on his lips looking into the distance.

He looks down at you with a soft smile. “I’ll tell you. I promise. When the time is right”

“How is that fair?” you pout.

“Wow child” he pinches your nose, wrinkling his own nose in a cute manner. He retracts his hand, letting it fall to his side.

“Fine. It’s not like I’ll die if I don’t know your deepest darkest secret”

It elicits a hearty laugh from him.

{20 years of age}

Jeongguk stands at your door, chewing on his lip as he tries to decide if he’s making the wrong move. But then he remembers he promised he’ll tell you something he hasn’t told anyone. Even if that was two years ago and he’s a little too late in keeping his promise he still needs to tell you. He doesn’t know where it’s going to head, or what exactly he’s going to say because you’re kind of his best friend and he doesn’t want you to feel like he doesn’t care about you.

So with a deep inhale he knocks on the door and waits. He can hear the footsteps nearing and then the door opens to reveal you.

“Who invited you?” you joke, stepping aside and motioning for him to come in.

“I invited myself. I think I can come to my best friend’s house without an invitation. It’s kinda my right” he leans in and presses a kiss to your temple before ridding himself of his shoes and walking down the hall and falling onto the couch.

You follow him with a shake of the head. After two years of being friends and then eventually best friends with him, you’ve made yourself five percent immune to his actions which border between platonic and romantic. You don’t think he realizes it because he always does things like holding your hand out of nowhere or kissing you on the forehead as a goodbye.

You collapse next to him, and like a reflex, he pulls you into him wrapping an arm around your shoulder, fingers stroking the soft flesh. “I ask again you’re here because…”

“I can’t come and see my best friend? I missed you” he presses a soft kiss to your forehead. Your eyes close momentarily as you cherish his touch because this is all you will get. This is as close you will be to being something more to him.

“You can. But you just saw me five hours ago and we hung out. Now you’re here and you’re…” you look up at him and place your index finger in the middle of his forehead. “Now you’re frowning which means you’re stuck”

“I am stuck?” he looks down at you, a soft crinkle in the corner of his eyes.

“I mean something is bothering you” you pull your finger away and rest your hand in your lap.

“How do you always know?” he smiles softly.

Yeah. How do you know?

Is it because you have loved the guy for so long or because you pay very careful attention to him? It’s not like you can tell him so you settle for-

“I just know. Now tell me what’s going on in that big head of yours” you tap his temple with your finger.

“Okay first, I am not big-headed. Secondly, I have something to tell you”

“Are you finally going to keep your promise from two years ago?” you shuffle your head so you can get a look at him. He’s lost in thought, a vacant expression holding his gaze away from you.

“I am kind of dating Kira” he lets out a shaky breath.

You pull yourself away, suddenly feeling cold all over. Your heart pounds against your chest, the rhythm thrumming so loud in your ears they start ringing. You swallow, looking into the eyes of this majestic man in front of you who has slipped from your fingers like sand. There is no hope now. He’s gone.

But worse than that he’s dating Kira. She’s the epitome of a mean girl. Even worse.

“Since when?” you whisper softly, feeling your heart shatter into pieces as each second passes by.

“Four months” he replies, not meeting your gaze. “I was going to tell you but I thought I’d wait until things get serious enough”

If there was ever any hope of recovering from this, it’s gone now. You can imagine yourself moping, and crying in the near future because you couldn’t tell him first how you felt. Maybe if you had given in to bravery instead of your fears you might have been the one dating him.

“Why?” your heartbreak echoes in your words. You don’t know if he can hear it. You’re not even mad that he kept it from you for months. You are so severely hurt you can’t even begin to feel angry about it. It feels hollow inside, like the place where your heart should be is empty. A cold chill runs down your spine as you stare into Jeongguk’s eyes-- the ones that always feel like home-- but now they feel like a strange abyss.

“Because she’s actually sweet. She’s nice”

You put your feelings aside for a moment because this is bigger than you. Just because you feel like you’re suffocating sitting next to him; just because it feels like the end and just because you feel like you’ll die doesn’t mean you’ll let him ruin himself. She’s wrong for him in ways he can’t see.

“Jeongguk. Listen, I know you think you like her. I know you think she’s nice but she’s not”

“Please y/n” he whispers, reaching for your hand and holding it in his. “Not you. You have to side with me on this”

“I want to. If this was someone else” your throat constricts even thinking about it. You swallow. “I would be completely happy for you. But Kira isn’t what you deserve. You deserve better. You deserve good and she’s not it”

Jeongguk’s hold on your hand slackens. “Just because you can’t see the good in her, doesn’t mean she isn’t”

You stare back at him, the way his jaw sets tightly, the way he’s trying so hard not to be angry at you. “I can’t. I can’t tell you what you want to hear. My job as your best friend is to save you not destroy you”

He pulls his hand away from yours and gets up. “Whatever,” he says. “I don’t need your approval. I just thought I should tell you”

“Jeongguk-”

“Bye y/n” his gaze lingers on you before he walks to the front door and leaves.

You didn’t think your friendship with Jeongguk was so fragile that it would fracture under the weight of his feelings for Kira. But since he’s actually avoiding you, you presumed wrong. He’s not been answering any of your texts or calls. He hasn’t visited you even once in the weeks after he admitted the truth to you.

He’s vanished from your life-- like he never existed.

It leaves a hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach to know that he’s just decided not to be a part of your life anymore. You feel hurt, but more than feeling hurt you feel disappointed in yourself. Trust is a fickle thing. It’s earned through effort and broken without lifting a finger. Did Jeongguk not know that? Does he not understand that you want what is best for him? Can he really not see that you have always been on his side?

But how do you bring someone back from the edge when they have decided to take the fall?

“Missing your best friend?” Kira makes an unwanted appearance as your eyes focus back to reality. She’s got a sly smirk on her face.

You roll your eyes. “I am sure you got into his head”

“He’s not a plaything. He knows what’s right and wrong for him” she folds her arms across her chest.

“You got what you wanted. Fuck off now” you bite through clenched teeth as you gather your belongings, ready to leave. You’re almost out of the door when Kira speaks.

“He knows you like him.” she says in a condescending tone.

Your steps halt and so does your heart. You turn around. “Just when I thought you couldn’t sink any lower”

She shrugs. “Your perceptions of me are your problem. Not mine”

“A snake like you doesn’t deserve him”

She laughs with a roll of her eyes. “You think you deserve him?”

Your jaw sets tight as you glare at her. “I do. I deserve him because I’ve been with him through thick and thin. I’ve mended his broken heart, I’ve tended to him when he fell sick, I’ve put my life on hold to help him live his. So fuck yes I deserve him”

She quietly observes smirk still plastered to her lips like she’s incapable of expressing herself in any other way. But then the smirk falters and sets into a frown. “Y/n please don’t” she reaches for your hands, crushing them between hers on purpose.

“What?” your nose scrunches in confusion.

“Jeongguk is your best friend. Don’t leave him because of me” her eyes become glossy, furthering your confusion. “I’ll break up with him” a single tear escapes her eye.

“Wha-”

“Kira. Dont.” a firm voice draws your attention. You turn around to find Jeongguk glaring at you.

With quick strides, he stands between you and Kira and he tugs her hands out of yours.

“I know you don’t like her but I never thought you would try to go behind my back and try to sabotage my relationship” Jeongguk looks at you with such venom laced eyes it pulls at your heartstrings.

“What? I didn’t even-”

“It’s okay kookie” Kira sniffles leaning into his chest.

You gawk at her, blinking repeatedly at the scene in front of you.

“Wow” your brows knit together, jaw agape as you look at her completely mortified. “She’s lying” you turn to Jeongguk. His nostrils flare, chest heaving as he stares at you--clearly not believing you, his best fucking friend of two years. He takes the word a girl he’s known for a few months. He doesn’t even need to say anything for you to know what he’s thinking. His eyes say it all, the hatred with which he’s looking at you says it all.

“You know what Jeongguk, she’s changed you and you can’t even see it” your eyes sting with tears. You have so much to say but you bite your words because Jeongguk can’t see past his feelings.

“You just can’t see me happy because you like me” his voice cracks, and you can see the shine overcoming his eyes before he turns away.

Your heart sinks in your chest. It’s not what he’s saying. It’s the accusatory tone of his voice that hurts. “Well, congratulations Jeongguk. You don’t have to feel burdened by it anymore. Have a great fucking life” you bite.

Kira looks up at you, a smile quivering on her lips. She glances up at Jeongguk who’s looking away to the side and then turns to you as she lets herself smile. She’s won.

You turn on your heels and walk away from them-- from the pain of it all because there is no point anymore. It’s like someone has driven a stake through your heart. It would have been better if that happened because the alternative is losing your best friend which hurts more than any pain that could be inflicted on you.

There is a sharp ache that settles in your chest as you walk away. But even as you do there is a tiny sliver of hope that he’ll call out your name and tell you to stay. Bit by bit it breaks as you step further away from him, until you are out of the door.

But you don’t hear his voice

{23 years of age}

You didn’t think you would ever get over Jeongguk. But Jimin helped you in ways you couldn’t imagine. He never took advantage of your vulnerable state, he never inserted himself in your life when you were at your weakest. He was just there, being your friend when you realized that somehow he had pieced your heart back together without even trying.

He never tried to get you to move on from Jeongguk. He knew you liked him-- loved him rather. He was there for the drunken nights when all you could manage were sobs because your chest felt tight, and memories of Jeongguk would come rushing back in your inebriated state. Jimin’s silence spoke volumes and even through the haze you could see how much he cared as he would silently place your head on his shoulder and hold you close.

Since the day Jeongguk let you walk away from his life, Jimin has been there. He’s with you now, holding your hand, squeezing it tight as Jeongguk stands in front of you, puffy-eyed. Jimin slowly laces his fingers with yours, eyes never wavering from Jeongguk. The breath that has been caught in your throat finally releases and relief floods your chest. A slight ache settles deep somewhere, into far depths of your entire being and it begins to radiate until you feel a sharp stabbing sensation in your chest that has you squeezing Jimin’s hand like its your lifeline.

“Y/n” Jeongguk’s quiet and firm voice reverberates through the air as it reaches you

Pain forgotten, your eyes find purchase on the floor. You can feel your knees beginning to give out, a slight quiver indicating that you won’t be able to stand much longer. You are suddenly steadied on your feet. You look down at your waist to find a hand resting on your side.

“I’ve got you y/n. You just have to be brave” Jimin whispers in your ear.

You don’t know how to be brave. You thought three years was enough time to prepare yourself, to harden your heart to the fact that Jeon Jeongguk would never be a part of your life again. But maybe you never could move on. Maybe you will never be able to forget Jeongguk. Maybe you will never be strong enough to stand on your feet by yourself in front of him, and perhaps he will always be your greatest weakness.

But he looks broken.

As much as you did the day he let go of you without a second of hesitation. You can still remember the look of determination in his eyes, his set jaw, as he had looked away and without even a glance let you walk away from him.

That should be enough to make all the panic go away. That should give way to anger. But all that serves to do is remind you of how much it hurt to let him go.

“How have you been?” Jeongguk speaks but this time his voice shakes.

You shudder.

“I- I wanted to see you earlier but…” he trails off.

You just have to be brave- Jimin’s voice rings in your head.

“Let’s go Jimin” your voice is meek. Your action is anything but.

Jimin nods and leads you, his hand still holding onto yours tightly as you begin to walk past Jeongguk. It feels slightly nostalgic--walking away from him all over again.

“Y/n wait” Jeongguk is quick to catch a hold of your wrist just as you are passing by him.

You’re tugged in both directions as both men hold onto your hands. You’re forced to stop and face Jeongguk.

“You know you have some nerve Jeongguk” Jimin’s voice is firm as he grits his teeth.

“Stay out of it, Jimin. Please” Jeongguk stares intently at Jimin, but his tone isn’t hostile.

Jimin rolls his eyes. “It’s making her uncomfortable” Jimin bites back, hardly able to control his anger. It seeps through his words.

Jeongguk’s eyes shift focus to you and it’s clear as day that you are in fact uncomfortable. He notices the pained look in your face, the cloud of wispy breath fogging his view as you inhale sharply. He can see it in the way you’re avoiding him, the way your eyes are dancing around, restless and refusing to settle.

He lets go and licks his lips. “I am sorry y/n”

That gets your attention. It’s taken him three years to say that to you. “Sorry?” you scoff, anxiety and inhibition are forgotten as you meet his gaze.

“I know I was a dick to you-”

“You broke my heart Jeongguk. You broke--” you stop to gulp the tight knot down your throat. “You broke my heart to pieces and you didn’t even hesitate. Your ‘sorry’ won’t fix it”

“I know. So tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix it”

“You can’t. I won’t make you feel guilty and tell you that you could have done it. I know you were in love. But were you so afraid of my feelings for you that you couldn’t even have listened to me? We could have been friends in the very least. I would have been fine with it”

There is a pregnant pause. Jeongguk’s eyes flutter to the ground, and he chews on his lip in silence.

“I wouldn’t have been y/n” his gentle voice cuts through

“What?”

“You’re right. The moment I found out you liked me, I freaked out. I realized something at that moment and it scared me. I didn’t know how to deal with it so I thought the best thing would be for me to let you go. Then I saw Kira crying and I thought you guys got into a fight and it gave me a reason to let you go. Otherwise, I never would have”

You feel Jimin looking at you through the periphery. You quickly glance at him. Jeongguk lifts his head to meet your gaze.

“What scared you?”

“The fact that I liked you. The realization that I had--have-- always liked you scared me. It terrified me because it was too real. I could see it in my head y/n-- being with you. It was easy to imagine but I have been a commitment-phobe my entire life. I just couldn’t bring myself to”

You gulp hard. Your mouth is dry and in the cold January morning, your hand starts to sweat. You blink profusely at Jeongguk, unable to fathom his words. Jimin squeezes your hand, reassuring you, and reminding you to stay in the moment and not get swept away in the flood of your feelings. It grounds you and enables you to look a Jeongguk without feeling like you will lose your breath at any moment.

“I am sorry Jeongguk. You’re a little too late” you spare him one moment of a glance before turning on your heels.

“If you don’t hold me right now, I might just fall apart” his voice squeaks.

You halt in your steps. You pivot on your heels and face him. He stands with his head hung low, soft muffled sounds escaping his mouth, and you can see a tear fall down his cheek. You quickly look at Jimin.

“Y/n” he says warningly.

But you nod your head in reassurance and he loosens his grip on your hand.

“I’d never let you fall apart Jeongguk. Never” you say quietly as you stand on your toes and wrap your hands behind his shoulders in an embrace. A moment passes as he stands limply in your arms before you feel his hands squeezing around your waist. “I know what it’s like to fall apart and feel alone. I’d never wish that for you” you hug tighter, resting your chin against his shoulder. You can hear the sound of his tears hitting your jacket, and it breaks your heart too.

A few beats of silence pass while you hold each other. You feel the heaviness that had weighed your heart down for three years melting away. Jeongguk sniffles and steps back, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“So does that mean-” you can see the glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“No” you say firmly, holding his hands into yours. “No Jeongguk. I won’t be able to this time” you shake your head and just like that the dull look is back in his eyes. “Look at what not being together did to us. Being together would destroy us. The possibility that it could go sideways at any moment would ruin both of us. I told you, I will not let that happen to you” your voice quivers.

“Y/n…”

“I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember Jeongguk. I still do and maybe I always will. But we can’t always have what we want, can we?” your lips curl into a faint smile.

Jeongguk sighs heavily. Tears stream down his cheeks as they do yours. “No, we can’t” he replies, his fingers slipping through your hands.

“Bye Jeongguk” you stand on your toes as you kiss his cheek, lingering for a moment before pulling away.

“Bye y/n” he whispers, closing his eyes. He hears your footsteps retreat. He feels the cold breeze of wind caressing his face. He opens his eyes.

You’re gone.

And he is alone.

Let me know your thoughts! Thank you so much for reading this!

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route22ny · 3 years

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Inside DC’s Secret Covid Morgue

Written by Luke Mullins

April 21, 2020—The clerics have been sworn to secrecy. On this warm morning, they’ve come to a vast and empty parking lot, instructed not to tell anyone of its location. The pitch of asphalt is unusually secure, hidden behind a 12-foot chain-link fence that’s been swathed in sheets of black tarp to prevent anyone from peering through. At the front gate, armed soldiers stand guard.

Inside, large trailers are arranged behind tented canopies and banks of lights. Metal ramps are affixed to each trailer so that stretchers can be wheeled in. The interior walls of the trailers are lined with seven rows of metallic shelving, sturdy enough to support thousands of pounds. The temperature is 24 degrees.

The clergymen gather with a handful of city officials in front of the canopies. They form a circle, each six feet apart from the next.

Reverend Andre Towner of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ.

Imam Talib Shareef of Nation’s Mosque.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom–The National Synagogue.

Dr. Donell Harvin, a top official at DC’s homeland-security department.

Kimberly Lassiter, a supervisor at the medical examiner’s office.

And Dr. Roger Mitchell, the chief medical examiner himself.

Wearing masks and rubber gloves, they bow their heads. Tomorrow, the first body will be sent here. Today, a blessing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

One by one, the clerics offer prayers, solemn exhortations for strength and humility, courage and dignity, resonating above the grinding hum of the trailers. Imam Shareef invokes the victims—“Their deaths,” he says, “are not to be in vain.” Reverend Towner prays for the workers, that their bodies will be protected from the virus, that their minds stay healthy during the difficult days ahead. Rabbi Herzfeld stresses the righteousness of the mission. “In Judaism,” he tells the group, “we believe that the greatest kindness is to care for the dead.”

***

It’s an ominous time in the nation’s capital. Several miles away, federal officials are dismissing warnings about the deadly airborne pathogen that has exploded out of Asia. Their unwillingness to act has impelled local governments across the country to launch their own scattered efforts to prevent Covid-19 from decimating their communities. In the District of Columbia, where African Americans make up 46 percent of the population, the task is especially urgent, given the virus’s disproportionately cruel impact on people of color.

Over the previous month, the city has been locked down as panicked residents watch their leaders navigate a 100-year crisis in real time. Mayor Muriel Bowser shuttered businesses. The DC Council pushed through legislation to extend unemployment benefits. Health-department officials opened testing sites and implored residents to wear masks and keep their distance. But away from public view, a weightier matter has come to preoccupy a little-known but essential corner of the bureaucracy: the caretakers of the dead.

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys. You’re not going to get discounts or big thank-you signs. The work we do, we do in silence.”

It’s a problem of space. As Drs. Mitchell and Harvin prepared for the pandemic, they realized that the city’s morgue didn’t have the capacity to handle the surge of fatalities that the virus would leave behind. And so, over the previous few weeks, they hustled to secure the land, equipment, and manpower necessary to build an additional facility.

The clergy who led prayers on the day the field morgue opened were there to make sure the space didn’t violate the tenets of their three distinct faiths, and to consecrate the site as one. Then the work began. Over the next two and a half months, Harvin, who describes himself as the “general in charge of the death troops,” and his top deputy, Lassiter, who has recovered bodies throughout DC for more than two decades, will oversee the makeshift mortuary. By the time the spring surge is through, 404 Covid victims will have passed through the site.

Still, through it all, almost no one in the city will have any idea the Covid morgue exists. The work is carried out in strict secrecy; staffers are instructed not to disclose the site’s location or tell anyone what takes place there, not even their own family members. A mistake—such as a body being released to the wrong family—would be humiliating for the mayor and the city. News footage of workers moving the dead could upset victims’ families, opening new wounds, or lure gawkers to the site. As much as anything else, though, the silence reflects the professional ethos of those who perform this work for a living. While they’re dispatched to every hurricane and school shooting, their efforts take place entirely behind the scenes. They are the first responders you never see.

The District of Columbua invited an imam, a rabbi, and a minister to consecrate the morgue.

***

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys,” Harvin tells each new set of workers to arrive at the Covid morgue. “You’re not going to get discounts or big [thank-you] signs. The work we do, we do in silence. Not even the family members of the victims will know what we do. There’s a pride in that. There’s a silent pride in that,” he says. “You’re taking care of someone’s grandmother, grandfather, husband, daughter, son, and that’s a higher calling.” When it’s all over, they’ll return to their previous jobs or assignments and no one will ever know what they’ve done here. “It’s a heavy burden,” Harvin says. “It’s a very heavy burden.

“[But] the world is watching,” he assures them, “whether they see us or not.”

***

Donell Harvin is 48 years old, with a sturdy build and flecks of gray in his goatee. He’s married to a physician and has four daughters. He lives in Howard County and spends most of the year looking forward to his annual scuba-diving trip.

Over the last 30 years, Harvin has been an eyewitness to some of America’s darkest moments. As an EMT, he responded to the World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993; after joining the New York Fire Department, he was there when the towers were destroyed in 2001. As a deputy director in New York’s medical examiner’s office, he led the effort to identify victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in 2012, at the request of Connecticut officials, Harvin assisted with forensics after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

His path from first responder to frontline bureaucrat began in the Bronx, where he spent his teenage years. After dropping out of high school, he got a GED and then a college scholarship from the Children’s Aid Society, enlisting as a paramedic. Though he loved the work, as a young father he began to worry about his safety. He was caught in shootouts while tending to accident victims and lost colleagues in ambulance crashes. On 9/11, his wife and daughters saw him on TV, racing away from the rubble, and then didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. Upon seeing their faces when he finally got home, he knew it was time for a change.

Harvin went back to school and earned a master’s in emergency management. Landing a position with New York’s chief medical examiner, he became an expert in mass-fatality management—the grim business of identifying and processing victims of large-scale tragedies. He also came to know Mitchell, and the two worked together on Sandy Hook. Two years later, when Mitchell was hired as DC’s chief medical examiner, he recruited Harvin.

Donell Harvin, who was at Ground Zero on 9/11, helped devise DC’s Covid death-handling protocols.

***

Their immediate task in the District was to turn around an office plagued by mismanagement. But an equally important project loomed. The previous year, Washington had been shaken by tragedy when a mentally disturbed government contractor gunned down 12 people at the Navy Yard. Although the medical examiner’s office had properly managed those deaths, officials realized that a larger or more complex disaster would have overwhelmed its capabilities. The city needed a mass-fatality division robust enough to absorb the kind of tragedy that Harvin and Mitchell hoped Washington would never face. They went about building it—securing federal funds, adding staff, and running mass-casualty drills.

By early 2020, Harvin had been in Washington six years. He’d since left Mitchell’s office and finished a PhD in public health. He was teaching at Georgetown and had become chief of homeland security and intelligence at DC’s homeland-security agency. But the imminent arrival of Covid meant the District was facing the catastrophe he and Mitchell had trained for, the biggest mass-fatality event in the city’s history.

On March 2, Harvin went to DC’s Emergency Operations Center for the first day of formal briefings about how the city would navigate the pandemic. Halfway through the morning, he found a quiet spot in the hallway and placed a call to his mother. “This is going to be bad,” he said.

***

The city morgue is located at 401 E Street, Southwest. In any given year, only a fraction of the fatalities that occur in DC pass through the facility. When a person dies of natural causes at a hospital, nursing home, or hospice, a physician will typically sign the death certificate and release the body to a funeral home. It’s usually only those who die alone or in unnatural or suspicious circumstances whose bodies go to the morgue, where medical examiners determine the cause and manner of their death.

Initially, Harvin and Mitchell planned to use this same approach for the pandemic, relying on hospitals—where the bulk of virus-related deaths would take place—to serve as de facto Covid morgues. But they quickly revised their thinking. For one thing, little was known about how contagious the disease might be postmortem. Would storing victims at hospitals risk infecting staff? At the same time, Harvin learned from former colleagues in New York—which was being ravaged by the virus—that hospitals were too overwhelmed to manage the bodies properly. The result was an appalling spectacle: forklifts carrying pallet-loads of bodies outside hospitals, decedents stacked on top of one another in trailers. At one point, police discovered nearly 100 rotting corpses in unrefrigerated U-Hauls parked by a Brooklyn funeral home. As the funeral home’s owner told the New York Times, “I ran out of space.”

The city handles the body of every Covid fatality, a process meant to ensure victims don’t pile up at overwhelmed hospitals, as in New York. Above, an autopsy room and viewing area at the city morgue.

***

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for this type of disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up. “We saw that with Hurricane Katrina—bodies just left out there,” Harvin says. “And that’s a stain on our society.”

So Harvin and Mitchell made a decision that would set them apart from most coroners and medical examiners in the country. Instead of depending on the hospital system, the chief medical examiner’s office would assume responsibility. Every single person who dies of Covid in DC would be sent to Harvin and Mitchell’s team—a protocol that remains in place today.

By studying the mortality rate and projecting infection levels for the city, the men estimated that as many as 3,500 residents could perish in the pandemic. Or one in every 200. Putting aside the magnitude of the suffering, the math presented a serious logistical problem: The city morgue had an official capacity of only 205. The solution was apparent—they would have to build the Covid morgue.

Harvin immediately began acquiring the materials he’d need. He ordered six refrigerated trailers. He borrowed mobile light towers for nighttime work and generators for power. He acquired PPE, Porta-Potties, drinking water, 500 gallons of hand sanitizer, and heavy-duty body bags specially designed for mass tragedies, 4,000 in all. For families who couldn’t afford funerals, the District agreed to pay for cremations. And to prevent a backlog of fatalities, the city shortened the time it would hold unclaimed bodies before they could be cremated, from 30 to 15 days.

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up.

Meanwhile, Harvin combed the local and federal bureaucracy in search of an additional 30 workers—to volunteer. The Army agreed to detail members of its mortuary-affairs unit, which had operated similar morgues in combat zones. A trade association found out-of-state funeral directors who wanted to pitch in. DC’s Medical Reserve Corps, a group of volunteers willing to assist in health-related emergencies, provided workers. The DC Guard and the Air National Guard sent personnel.

As he rushed to get things in place, the virus was already spreading through Washington. Harvin felt the same sense of foreboding he’d experienced six years earlier when he was waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall. “It’s like a slow-moving train,” he says. “You know it’s coming and you can’t stop it.”

***

While Harvin was acquiring equipment and manpower, his top lieutenant, Kim Lassiter, spent two days driving around the District, scouting possible sites for the morgue. At her last stop, she got out of her car and peered through the fence. The property had everything. It was city-owned land—a parking lot for DC employees, empty because staffers were now working from home. It was large enough for the trailers, and it could be secured with tarps and guards. Most important, the site was inconspicuous: You could drive right past it and not realize it was there. “This is perfect,” Lassiter thought.

Lassiter, a 54-year-old grandmother with a soft smile, is the second-longest-tenured medical examiner’s employee, with nearly a quarter century on the job. In the 1990s, she lifted the victims of gang wars off street corners and washed the blood from their wounds at the morgue. In 2002, she used x-rays to identify the remains of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern whose murder had become the subject of national fascination when it was alleged she’d been dating a married congressman around the time of her disappearance. And in 2008, Lassiter carried the remains of four children—ages 5, 6, 11, and 17—from the house where they’d been decomposing for seven months, after their mother, Banita Jacks, became convinced they’d been possessed by demons and killed them.

Lassiter came to the work by way of her own personal tragedy. She grew up in a housing project in Prince George’s County, with five brothers and sisters. Her father wasn’t around, and her mother, who worked in healthcare, struggled to do it all on her own. She eventually fell victim to drug use. It was up to Lassiter—the eldest of the children—to run the household. She cut class three days a week to watch her siblings. At 12, she got a summer job to support the family. Even after she graduated from high school and entered the workforce, there were periods when she would drop everything to nurse her mother through the various chemical fogs and illnesses that encumber the life of an addict.

In 1987, when Lassiter was 21, her mother passed away. Lassiter was called to the hospital. A nurse escorted her to the elevator, and they rode down to the basement. There, in a frigid room, Lassiter found her mother lying motionless on a stretcher. Her eyes were still open. “I felt like,” Lassiter remembers, “she was waiting for me to show up.”

Kim Lassiter, a 25-year veteran of the medical examiner’s office, ran the Covid morgue day to day.

***

The nurse explained that her mother was being taken away for an autopsy. Lassiter didn’t know anything about the process, and the news frightened her. “If I could have gone with her through that,” she says, “I would have.”

Following the funeral, Lassiter obtained custody of her siblings, whom she supported through her job as a clerk at the US Department of Health and Human Services. A few years later, her life took an unexpected turn when she spotted an alarming story in the newspaper: The DC chief medical examiner’s office had released the wrong body to a grieving family. The incident sounded both outrageous and intriguing; more than anything, it reminded Lassiter—by then a mother herself—of when her mom had been sent to the morgue. She called the office, talked her way to a supervisor, and asked if she could help. She joined the office as a volunteer.

This was the late 1990s, and the agency was considerably smaller than it is today. Lassiter was quickly hired and eventually promoted, becoming one of seven technicians responsible for a full sweep of duties: fielding intake calls from police, snapping photographs at death scenes, transporting decedents to the morgue, and assisting with medical examinations and autopsies. She viewed the work not as some macabre responsibility but as an expression of love. While she hadn’t been able to care for her own mother after her death, she now looked after the deceased loved ones of others.

When arriving at a place of death, Lassiter is vigilant about wearing a blank facial expression, to acknowledge the gravity of the circumstances. She offers condolences, then completes her tasks—attaching the toe tag, placing the deceased into the body bag—at a diligent pace so as not to prolong the trauma of those looking on. Once an autopsy is complete, she uses tight, neat sutures to close the incisions. She then washes the stains from the body and wraps it in a crisp white sheet.

Occasionally, when working alone, Lassiter has found herself speaking out loud to the bodies. If she hits a pothole while driving someone to the morgue, she’ll apologize. I’m sorry. Upon entering the morgue’s cold-storage facility, she sometimes greets the people being kept there. Good morning. When examining a crime victim’s body—particularly when it’s a child’s—she often pledges to help get justice. I’ll do everything in my power to find the evidence needed to make whoever did this to you pay.

The hardest days are the ones when she finds herself face to face with someone she knows. One morning, as Lassiter was preparing for autopsies, she checked the manifest and saw a familiar name. It was an older woman, a friend of her mother’s who’d looked out for Lassiter as a child. She walked into the cold-storage room, slid the body out of its cabinet, and said goodbye. It was the only time she ever broke down crying at the morgue.

***

April 22, 2020—The day after the religious leaders consecrate the site, the Covid morgue begins to stir with workers in face shields, gloves, and white protective suits. It’s been six weeks since DC recorded its first case of Covid, and the death toll has exceeded the city morgue’s capacity. Now the first wave of bodies is arriving.

The process begins with a phone call. A hospital official, or sometimes a police officer, contacts the medical examiner’s office. Lassiter, who is chief of the transport unit, dispatches her team to the scene. Two workers, in full PPE, arrive in a black, unmarked van. They present paperwork for the physician’s signature. In the hospital’s morgue, they take custody of the body. Opening the body bag, they attach identification. They zip the bag closed and spray the outside with disinfectant, then place it into a second, heavy-duty body bag. They disinfect it again. The workers lift the decedent onto a stretcher and paste an identification tag onto the bag. They slide the stretcher into the back of the unmarked van.

Every body arriving at the Covid morgue is first accounted for at the intake tent, then transferred to a refrigerated trailer.

***

At the Covid morgue, the workers move the decedent onto a table in the intake tent. Here, they weigh the body, to help confirm identification, and enter the victim’s name into a computer. They wheel the decedent across the blacktop and up into one of the refrigerated trailers. Next, the transfer. If the victim is heavy, the workers—at least two, sometimes four—lift the body onto one of the lower shelves. If the person is light, they place the body on a higher shelf. The staff use internal coding—6D, 2A—to record the exact location. They exit the trailer, remove their protective suits, and put on fresh ones.

A victim typically remains at the Covid morgue a few days, rarely longer than a week. During that time, a separate team calls family members to help them through the paperwork. Once burial arrangements are made, the funeral director schedules a pickup. The workers wheel the victim out of cold storage and into a second tented canopy—the release tent. They again wipe down the outside of the body bag. They again spray it with disinfectant. The funeral director pulls up. They load the dead into the hearse.

***

Though it was difficult to find volunteers, Harvin had assembled what he called “a coalition of the willing.” The active-duty Army morticians and military reservists, the citizen volunteers, the funeral directors, along with medical-examiner staffers and UDC students. While many had backgrounds in mortuary services, others did not. “We had people,” Harvin says, “who had never touched a dead body before—never seen a dead body.”

When each new group of volunteers arrived, Harvin—“the general in charge of the death troops”—brought them together to discuss the effort. The victims had come to the Covid morgue after suffering lonely and terrifying deaths—hooked up to breathing tubes, surrounded by masked doctors and nurses. “These people often were dropped off at the hospital, and they couldn’t see their loved ones for two or three or four weeks,” he continued. “They expired around complete strangers.” The staff’s goal, Harvin told the troops, was to provide each person with a dignity in death that they didn’t experience during their last days of life.

The operation has depended on volunteers—students, funeral directors, military reservists with no prior training.

***

Then he turned it over to Lassiter, who ran the day-to-day operations. She instructed new volunteers how to implement the values Harvin had espoused. When carrying the deceased, move deliberately and with caution. Keep the body as horizontal as possible. Do not, under any circumstances, stack one on top of another. Check, double-check, and triple-check the manifest to make sure each victim is in the correct rack. And pay respect through your words. Lassiter never refers to the deceased as “corpses” or “cadavers” or “cases.” Instead, she calls them “my people.”

“That’s the only way I can get [the workers] to treat them the way they would treat someone that they love,” Lassiter says. “Because it makes them see how special these people are to me.”

***

Gerald Slater, 86, was a television executive at PBS and WETA.

Richard Paul Thornell, 83, was a Howard law-school professor who helped establish the Peace Corps’s first-ever program, in Ghana.

Jose Mardoqueo Reyes, 54, was a refugee of El Salvador’s civil war and a beloved internet-radio broadcaster.

Luevella Jackson, 87, was among the first female bus drivers in DC’s public-school system.

Samuel Shumaker III, 90, was an Army colonel who also taught English and creative writing at UDC.

Florence Gilkes, 97, was a loving wife and aunt, as well as a dedicated fan of the Washington Football Team.

Iraj Askarinam, 76, owned a restaurant in Adams Morgan, where he regularly provided free meals to the homeless. They called him “Mr. Spaghetti.”

***

By May, the pandemic’s bleakest days had arrived at the morgue. The daily influx of new decedents fluctuated—eight one day, 19 the next. As the volume swelled, the workers came face to face with the breadth of the city’s suffering. They began recognizing the last names of victims they’d been dispatched to retrieve, and it dawned on them that these were additional members of already devastated families. Payton McFadden, a UDC premed grad, describes the crushing duty of traveling to a DC hospital to collect the body of a Covid-positive baby: “We had went and gotten one of the [baby’s] family members one week prior. [Covid] was slowly but surely matriculating through the whole house.” In a searing example of the District’s racial inequality, 74 percent of the fatalities were Black. “I will never forget this as long as I live, ever,” Lassiter says. “It just took so many people at one time, so suddenly.”

A Chicago-area funeral director who asked to be identified only by her first name, Stacey, came to Washington to volunteer. She served in the medical examiner’s main office, calling families and guiding them through the process of finalizing death certificates and retrieving loved ones. On one occasion, she spoke with a man whose father was in the Covid morgue, and he dissolved into tears. The man explained that they’d been estranged for years. It was only recently that they’d finally begun speaking again. “We do help carry that burden of grief,” she says. “And it’s hard.” On another day, she had a series of conversations with a police officer whose mother was at the disaster morgue. When the officer suddenly stopped returning her calls, Stacey got hold of his wife, who told her he’d been hospitalized with Covid himself. Nearly a year later, she still wonders about him. “It is always in the back of my head,” she says. “I don’t know [if] he made it through.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. A worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend.

As the morgue’s lead official, Harvin was spending up to 12 hours a day at the site. “Everyone’s talking about Covid and fatalities, and it’s just numbers to them. We’re actually dealing with them,” he says. “I have a PhD and I’m in there putting on gloves and a [protective] suit and I’m helping the crews move bodies in and out of trailers. It’s visceral for us.”

The staff feared for their own safety. “The scariest thing was [potentially being] exposed ourselves,” says Denise Lyles, supervisor of the investigation unit. Lassiter grew terrified that she’d infect her family. “I have a husband that goes out and he works. I was concerned about him,” she says. “Grandchildren that are asthmatic, concerned about them.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. While checking the manifest, a worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend. Harvin and Lassiter did what they could to look out for their staff’s mental health. At the end of each day, Lassiter pulled people aside to see if anyone was experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, connecting them with counselors or chaplains. Over time, even veterans of the medical examiner’s office began struggling with the weight of their mission.

After several weeks at the site, Harvin found that when he returned home from work, he would drift into a haze. He had no appetite. He stopped engaging his wife in conversation. He passed entire evenings staring blankly into the television. “I don’t even know what I’m watching,” he recalls. “I had no motivation.”

Harvin, of course, had worked mass tragedy before. After hijackers flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, he approached the South Tower on foot. From two blocks away, he saw bodies falling from the sky and his entire body froze. He couldn’t take another step forward. Minutes later, there was a deafening sound and the tower disappeared into a cloud of gray debris. Out of the rubble came a speeding ambulance. Harvin jumped into the back along with dozens of other firefighters and cops. As they neared the North Tower, Harvin turned to one of them. “Doesn’t it look like this one’s leaning?” he said.

He spent the next two days at Ground Zero searching for survivors and recovering the dead. The experience was so traumatizing that he vowed never to return to the site. But he found the work at the Covid morgue even more emotionally taxing. “I survived September 11,” he says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive this.”

“There were so many women. So many mothers there.”

While he was able to walk away from Ground Zero after the attack,the pandemic was taking new victims each day. Every time Harvin arrived at the Covid morgue, he confronted a fresh supply of misery, and there was no end in sight. “Your mind and your soul get worn down far long before you body [does],” he says. Recognizing that he was experiencing depression, he turned to colleagues at the homeland-security department and found solace in chatting with them virtually.

For Lassiter, the pain manifested not as psychological trauma but as profound sadness. The heartache was always there, growing more intense over time. May 9—Mother’s Day—was the hardest. It had always been a tough one, the day her own mother’s death was most painful. But there was an additional heaviness now; she couldn’t stop thinking about everyone at the Covid morgue. “There were so many women,” she says. “So many mothers there.”

Though she was scheduled to be off, Lassiter didn’t feel right staying home on that particular day. She left her house in Prince George’s County and made the 25-minute drive to the site. Arriving at the morgue, she put on a protective suit and greeted the workers. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “It’s Mother’s Day,”

“I know,” she replied, “but I came down because I wanted to really thank you for what you’re doing.” She understood that some of them were mothers themselves, and she appreciated them for spending the day at the site.

Lassiter walked over to the cold-storage trailers and turned to face her people. “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms,” she said. As she returned to the car, she noticed a lightness of spirit.

“It felt kind of like a sign of relief,” she says. “Just to speak out. To let them know that someone cares.”

***

June 2020—As summer approaches, the pace at the Covid morgue begins to slow. Fewer victims are arriving; the number of bodies in the trailers is declining. By the end of the month, the volume is thin enough that it can be handled at the city morgue. Washington’s first wave of Covid has reached its conclusion.

It’s time for Harvin to shut down the disaster morgue, at least for now. But before doing so, he organizes a final ritual. On July 7, 2020, Rabbi Herzfeld, Reverend Towner, and Imam Shareef return to the site. They were present at the beginning, and Harvin wants them here today, too.

The faith leaders gather by the intake tent as a group of three dozen workers form concentric circles around them. They offer prayers of thanksgiving that the work is coming to an end. “It is at death that the earth receives its treasures,” says Imam Shareef. “And we want to honor the facility that now has allowed for individuals to be returned back to the earth.”

After the ceremony, Lassiter assembles the men and women on her team to thank them for their two and a half months of service. When she finishes, a soldier who was assigned to the site pulls a patch off his flak jacket and approaches her. “This patch has been around the world,” he tells Lassiter, “and I want you to have it.”

Though the pandemic rages on, Harvin and Lassiter can’t help but feel a certain triumph. They haven’t misidentified any bodies. None of their team has contracted Covid. They know they may be back. But in a dark and painful year, this is a good day.

Months later, Lassiter will remember it, the special pride she felt that despite dozens of workers toiling and thousands of pounds of equipment rumbling, despite 404 fatalities passing through, word of the Covid morgue never reached the public. Her colleagues hadn’t enlisted for accolades. They’d pressed through the fear and the grief in order to care for the innocent victims of a historic pandemic.

“It felt good,” Lassiter says. “Even if no one would ever know about it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the pandemic struck Washington. In the first four months of lockdown, the city lost three times as many jobs as it did during the 2008 recession. By July, small business revenue had been cut in half. Metrorail ridership has plunged by as much as 90 percent. Over the coming four years, the District is anticipating a budget gap of roughly $800 million. All told, more than 933,514 people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia have contracted the virus, and 15,148 have died.

Today, Covid fatalities are being processed at the city morgue in Southwest DC; although the number of deaths is once again elevated, it’s well below the peaks of last spring. At the disaster morgue, the light towers have been hauled away and the generators have gone silent. The trailers are resting on a deserted blacktop. Each day, thousands of cars pass right by the site, oblivious to what happened there. If they knew where to look, though, the drivers could see something that Harvin made sure to leave in place. The DC and US flags, rising above the fence.

***

This article appears in the March 2021 issue of Washingtonian.

#death #long reads #washington DC #covid-19 pandemic #luke mullins

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cyclopstm · 3 years

Text

DISABILITY && MENTAL HEALTH

This post will cover items such as disabilities, mental health, PTSD and trauma in relation to Scott. These are things which are either canon for him, or headcanons I want to pay more attention to on my blog.

I do not have any personal experience with any of the items I will address in this post, which means that most (if not all) of my information is gained through reading and research online. If there are items I missed out on or have described incorrectly, you may contact me about this to kindly help me figure out a new/better way to put things into words. It’s in no way my intention to upset anyone, or bring forth wrong information.

To me, it just feels like Scott is a good opportunity to improve the representation of characters and people who deal with visual impairment because the narrative that disability is binary caused that most blind characters in popular media have no vision at all. Blind characters in heroic roles like Daredevil, have powers that completely compensate for their blindness while blind people who don’t have these compensations are usually portrayed as helpless.

As a team leader and a superhero, Scott offers a good opportunity to include people who are visually impaired, yet often ignored or left out of the heroic narrative.

Needless to say, do NOT reblog this post && don’t interact with it if you’re not a RP blog.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS : 1. Scott’s brain trauma and injury 2. Scott’s PTSD during his youth 3. Symptoms and signs of PTSD for Scott 4. Scott is (legally) blind 5. Scott cannot distinguish colours 6. How Scott deals with his visual impairment 7. The X-Mansion and dealing with trauma 8. Additional notes

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1. SCOTT’S BRAIN TRAUMA AND INJURY When Scott was a young boy, he went on a travel with his parents and his little brother Alex. The family’s private jet was ambushed by an alien Shi’ar scouting ship. The boys lost their parents on that unfortunate day and in the crash, Scott took a hit to the head after his mutant powers manifested for the first time and allowed Scott to break his fall and allow him and Alex to survive. The head injury Scott suffered on that day would permanently disable the part of Scott’s brain which would have enabled him to control his optic blasts. Additionally, Scott (as well as Alex) suffered traumatic amnesia regarding the accident. Unlike his brother, Scott was forced to remain hospitalized for up to a year.

As a teenager, Scott began to suffer from severe headaches and he was sent to a specialist (Mr. Sinister in disguise) who provided him with lenses made of ruby-quartz. Scott’s mutant power erupted from his eyes as an uncontrollable blast of optic force and the only means to control it ever since have been the ruby-quartz lenses Sinister gave him. Sinister knew the lenses would help due to experiments and research he had been doing on the boy while Scott lived at the orphanage where Sinister had feigned being the owner.

2. SCOTT’S POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER DURING HIS YOUTH After losing his parents and waking up alone at the hospital after the plane crash, Scott was placed in the State Home for Foundlings, an orphanage in Omaha (Nebraska) where he was subjected to batteries of tests and experiments by the orphanage’s owner, Mr. Milbury (alias, Mr. Sinister). He placed mental blocks on Scott and took on the role of ‘Lefty’, who was Scott’s roommate and bully at the orphanage. During his time spent at the orphanage, Scott was subjected to several occasions which would leave him traumatized — such as the attempt of one of the other orphaned boys at taking his own life, and Scott’s failed attempt at saving him. Any time anyone came close to adopting Scott, Sinister intervened.

At some point, Scott demolished a crane with his optic blast, by accident. He had saved a crowd of people by using his blast again to destroy the crane before it would crush the people, but they believed he was out to kill them and chased the young mutant boy. Scott woke the attention of a mutant criminal who sought to use Scott’s powers in his crimes, but abused the kid when Summers refused. At that time, he had also attracted the attention of Charles Xavier who tracked down Scott and took him in as the first of his team of X-Men...

3. SYMPTOMS OF SCOTT’S PTSD — Reliving the traumatic event (during his childhood) :: as a boy, Scott was fond of airplanes and dreamed of becoming a pilot himself one day. But when he was taken to an air show by one of the orphanage’s nurses, he had a violent traumatic reaction in the middle of the show, reciting things he otherwise doesn’t consciously remember. — Negative Thoughts and Feelings :: Scott often deals with feelings of anger, guilt, fear or numbness. He’s prone to blame himself for things going wrong on missions with the X-Men. When someone comes to pass, he’s quick to take up responsibility and the blame for it, and occasionally even deals with survivor’s guilt. Scott also feels cut off from his friends and family and hardly keeps much interest for day-to-day activities. He hardly does them to relax, but rather only when they become necessary. — Avoidance :: Scott feels like he has to keep busy at all times, he doesn’t want to think or talk about anything in relation to his past, feels emotionally cut off from his feelings, struggles to express his emotions or affection towards others and thus comes across as numb and cold and very serious and occasionally does risky things which could be self-destructive or reckless. He’s often the first in line to sacrifice himself for the X-Men not only because he’s their leader, but also because he has little to no value for his own life. — Disturbed sleep and lack of sleep. — Taking risks and hypervigilance. — Intrusive thoughts. — Nightmares. — Trust issues. — “No one understands.”-mentality. — The sense of never being at peace.

4. SCOTT IS (LEGALLY) BLIND While Scott was born with perfectly normal eyesight, and perfect vision, he no longer has the ability to see without his ruby-quartz lenses ever since his optic blasts came to manifest. Only ruby-quartz can keep the optic blasts under control, meaning that any other means of vision such as regular glasses or lenses would not be of help for Scott. Scott literally can’t see without his ruby-quartz shades. Opening his eyes would prove incredibly destructive to his nearest surroundings.

Someone who is completely blind can’t see any light or form. Of the people with eye disorders, only about 15% can see nothing at all. If you’re legally blind, you can still see, just not that clearly. Normal vision is 20/20. That means you can clearly see an object 20 feet away. If you’re legally blind, your vision is 20/200 or less in your beter eye or your field of vision is less than 20 degrees.

In addition to being unable to distinguish colors due to the red tint in his glasses, they also reduce his low-light vision, which means Scott deals with low vision.

5. SCOTT CANNOT DISTINGUISH COLOURS I’m not using the term colorblindless in this post for the main reason that Google gives me too many search results in relation to racism, and I do not intend to use a term that has a double meaning that could be taken the wrong way.

Scott’s ruby-quartz lenses cause him to see the world through a veil of red. The lenses are tinted in red which alters Scott’s general, every day perception of the world. He sees the world in shades of grey, white, black and red and can no longer distinguish any other colours. Maybe rather than ‘colourblindness’, Scott deals with something alike to monochromacy. Though, Scott’s monochromacy is perhaps not of a kind that has been officially diagnosed in real life cases before.

The comics and movies rarely acknowledge Scott’s eyesight aside from him claiming to have an ‘eye condition’ as an excuse for him to wear sunglasses all the time. Scott’s adaptations to being unable to distinguish different colours would be mostly rather subtle and maybe it doesn’t inherently add onto the story a comic book or movie wants to tell, but they shouldn’t be ignored in how I wish to bring Scott in my writing...

6. HOW SCOTT DEALS WITH HIS VISUAL IMPAIRMENT — High contrast text and browser extensions for reading. — Color coding his outfits. He labels them with what color they are and organizes his closet by items that go together. — As a prodigy at billiards, Scott has a special billiards set adjusted to his specific needs. — Large prints for letters, books, digital fonts, etc. — Increased brightness on any of his devices’ screens. — Assistance from ‘self-driving’ tech when flying the Blackbird or riding his motorcycle. He knows the majority of controls through muscle memory by now. — Assistive technology to improve contrast, especially at night. — Scott owns a touch-based Rubik’s Cube. — Help from his closest friends.

7. THE X-MANSION AND DEALING WITH TRAUMA Scott and Ororo both (among others), are hyper aware of the traumas some of their students have experienced. They recognize behaviours and reactions in trauma survivors because they have been in such a position themselves as well. They made sure the school has a clear set of rules and policies on the safety and comfort of students. The school faculty received training in mental health first aid, there’s places students can retreat to when they feel anxious or suffer from power meltdown.

People like Scott, Jean and Rogue would know how to handle students who have gone through different types of abuse. As trauma survivors themselves, they’d take extra steps to reassure students who have every reason to distrust adults. They would announce themselves when approaching students from behind, maintain wide personal space bubbles and refrain from initiating physical contact such as hugs or touching students without asking them first. They see there’s no use in raising your voice to the kids, and won’t tollerate any kind of jokes about trauma. Scott is rumoured to be very strict on the rules of the house concerning mental health.

8. ADDITIONAL NOTES While Scott is aware that there is no shame in any of what he deals with every day, he still keeps it under wraps a lot. He doesn’t ever want for his visual impairment or his trauma to become his only and main personality trait other people associate with him. This is why a lot of people may not even know that he is dealing with these things on the daily. He’s very subtle about everything and only those who get to know him better may begin to see and notice things which indicate that he’s disabled. Scott has grown so adjusted to living with his disabilities that they commonly no longer cause him trouble.

The only people who know Scott is visually impaired because he told them himself are Charles (confidant and father-figure), Jean (lover, the person he maybe trusts more than anyone else), Hank (as the resident scientist), Ororo (as his fellow team leader) and Emma Frost (as his therapist).

Scott has been able to take therapy sessions with Charles during his early years, and later on with Emma Frost. Jean has also helped him an incredibly great deal on coping with his trauma and PTSD, lack of self-esteem and dealing with his emotions and expressing them more openly.

To this day, Scott still suffers from migraines and occasional moments of memory loss. His brain injury does not always allow him to maintain or store knowledge accurately. His migraines are a result of his optic blast building up surplus energy. When Scott can’t use his optic blast regularly, he will build up a surplus energy which manifests into migraines.

#( META. )#( SAVED. )#tw ptsd #tw mental health #tw disability #tw trauma #tw abuse

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aminatamansaray · 3 years

Photo

introducing....

𝗔𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗔 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗬

queen of sierra leone

MORE LINKS : wikipedia , pinterest

&&. announcing her majesty, ( aminata kaday mansaray ), the ( 37 ) year old ( queen ) of ( sierra leone ). she is often confused with ( kylie bunbury ). some say that she is ( imprudent & brazen ), but she is actually ( adaptable & resilient ). - penned by FERB .

BASICS:

Full Name: aminata kaday mansaray

Nicknames: ami

Title: queen of sierra leone

Age: 37

Date of Birth: 12 january 1987

Zodiac: sagittarius

Gender: cis female

Pronouns: she/her

Sexuality: bisexual

Languages Spoken: krio, english, bulgarian, russian & swahili

INTRO: (tw: terrorism, gun mention, death, attack)

aminata was born to crown princess georgietta mansaray of sierra leone and prince simeon krasimirov of bulgaria just three years into their marriage. she was the pride of her country from a very young age, as georgietta always believed in being close with her people - even though her husband didn’t share that enthusiasm for the common people. ami grew up in the public eye and was constantly visible to the public through all of her major milestones.

that’s where it began - ami constantly wanted to be a little bit more than what she was presented to the world as. she became competitive, when she’d spend vacations with her cousins in sofia. she pushed back against the “perfect princess” image, taking up hobbies that didn’t always make sense for a young crown princess, simply because she didn’t want to be the same as everyone around her.

rebellion became her entire life, even if it wasn’t wild teenager rebellion in the traditional sense. her father would insist on something, and she would go against it as much as she possibly could without crossing the line. she would do anything just to be different than everyone else, to just be aminata, and not aminata mansaray, crown princess of sierra leone.

this led to her rejecting oxford, not wanting to be the follower after her cousin headed there to start his college career. the university of st. petersburg was a completely surprise to her family, but aminata had decided it’s what she wanted - so it was what she was going to do. somewhere along the way, she’d grown into a very stubborn young woman.

at just nineteen years old, aminata would arrive on campus at st. petersburg university without any real friends or connections - but she’d make the most important one within just a few weeks. alexei romanov shared a course with her - and they had something pretty big in common.

honestly, he was a godsend. for a bit, aminata had considered returning home to freetown to finish school, or even joining andrei at oxford. her own loneliness had almost overpowered the spark inside her. and then she’d made a friend, and she could handle it.

she would drown herself in her studies, only emerging to attend study groups and occasionally go out on the weekends, when she could manage to tear herself away from her homework. and in just under four years, ami had a degree and had forged her own path - without the influence of her father..

she would fall in love and get her heart broken for the first time two summers after her graduation - sangcheol kwon of gyeongsang. they had a whirlwind romance, and ami was over the moon, definitely prepared to settle down. but maksim didn’t want the same things as her - he didn’t want to settle down, and as unfortunate as it was aminata knew there was an expiration date on them. they parted ways, and ami was surprised to hear of maksim’s marriage to areum just a few years later - but the bitterness has since been quelled by her own marriage.

she’d return from an awful summit in the middle of nowhere to find out that her brother had been sent off to a brand new boarding school, after being kicked out of his previous one. more importantly, her father was acting strangely. something had happened, while she was away that weekend - but she couldn't put her finger on what.

the morning was like any other, and ami went about her normal routine. her father pushed her out of the palace just before lunch, scheduling a meeting between her and one of the parliamentary groups at the last second. ami would attend, smiling for the photos and shaking hands, as she’d been trained to do. she could put on the front of the perfect crown princess for the cameras with a practiced ease.

she’s in the car to return to the palace when things go south - an explosion rings out ahead of them, and ami’s motorcade is suddenly overcome with an anti-monarchist cell. terrified, her driver floors it, trying to escape the several motorcycles that follow. by some miracle, they manage to shake them - but not for long. in the chaos, she ended up halfway across the city, away from the rest of her security. in a moment of panic at the sound of a motorcycle, her driver crashes the town car, and aminata stumbles out into the alleyway, attempting to find a place to hide, unaware of how hurt she really is.

there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and as she stumbles down the alley she meets someone who’ll change her life. they drag her into their apartment just moments before the motorcycle turns down the alleyway, and ami is finally safe, hidden in the bedroom of an exchange student’s shitty apartment.

she spends a full week there, hiding away as the authorities track down each living member of the terrorist cell. in the moments after the sound of motorcycles disappeared, she’d collapsed in shock. she’d be nursed back to health by the exchange student. ami would linger in the doorway, when she was finally well enough to leave and it was safe enough to call someone to come and collect her. she didn’t want to go, the second she walked out of the little apartment she felt so much less safe. but she had to - her country needed a bit of hope.

she’d been assumed dead in the crash for multiple days, and media had gone insane about the fact that no one had identified aminata’s body from the car accident. when she resurfaced, seemingly unscathed, it was hailed as miracle.

five people died in the heavily coordinated attack. the palace, aminata’s motorcade and the school her younger brother had been expelled from were each hit nearly simultaneously, in the biggest attack against a ruling monarch in sierra leone’s history.

one of the victims, the now-deceased king consort of sierra leone, would be heavily implicated in the yearlong trial of each of the attackers that were arrested. after months of investigation, the police would find that their king had initially contacted and eventually helped to coordinate the group on how to carry out the attack successfully.

the only motive they could determine was the way their marriage was souring. their marriage was entirely the product of a political arrangement, tying sierra leone and bulgaria together. simeon had gotten the bad news just four days before he contacted the group: queen georgietta had found someone else - someone she actually loved. and that had enraged simeon, who knew he was about to lose all of his power in sierra leone. the letters and communication recovered by authorities painted a picture that devastated the entire family: their father had betrayed them, all out of jealousy and selfishness.

the queen of sierra leone was heavily injured, and after the attack she ended up confined to a wheelchair, needing several surgeries to repair her injuries. the international presas declared aminata “the luckiest princess alive” when she was discovered - bruised up and exhausted, but alive. (the country had started to panic that her little brother might actually become their king, one day.)

ami was devastated by the trial, and spent several months brooding in the palace, ignoring everything and everyone around her. it would be a rough weekend when she’d ask her driver to take her back to the alleyway where she’d hidden. a knock on the door would find the exchange student packing up - and aminata would beg for them to stay. it was completely irrational, but she still let herself be a little selfish, for once.

of course the answer was no - they couldn’t stay. but ami could at least call them, after everything they’d been through together. their daily calls began, and the amount of hours wasted on the phone grew quickly, the two finding comfort in each other’s voice and the menial discussion of their daily lives. ami helped her family through their recovery, and cheered her best friend on as they finished their medical degree.

they would meet for the again a year later in sofia, and after so much time spent discussing their lives and feelings - something was entirely different between them. they fell in love over a weekend spent there - or maybe they fell in love during the year when they never missed a call. ami wasn’t entirely sure, but she knew she was asking a lot, when she wondered aloud, ‘what are we?’

they were married just ten months later, in a small ceremony overlooking a beach in the heart of sierra leone. their marriage would be announced when they returned from their honeymoon: with a spread in the royal times magazine, a surprise to the entire world.

just a week after her thirty-first birthday, ami would take the throne of sierra leone, and allow her mother to retire. it was a difficult decision, but one ultimately driven by her mother’s declining health - aminata insisted that she could handle the pressure, and felt that her mother deserved to take a break more than anyone else in the world. georgietta would move to their estate in the north, alongside the man she’d fallen in love with.

her first two years of rule would be quiet, easy. perhaps too easy. she let her guard down sometime along the way - thinking everything would be fine. and things were fine - aminata was even something close to happy, and got back to shirking the things she was “supposed to do” in favor of doing things her own way. she no longer had to be the steadfast rock that her country relied on, instead she was allowed to just be aminata, for the first time in years. .

she got complacent, excited to finally be able to rule without issue - but a small group of never-located members of the original group would change that. they had a plan, and it wouldn’t be something the royal guards saw coming.

ami returned to st. petersburg - spending a few days of vacation with their spouse in an old apartment she hadn’t visited in way too long. upon her return, she disembarked her plane and a gunshot rang out. in a stroke of luck, one of her security guards would take the bullet for her. aminata was safe, but her entire sense of security was destroyed.

yet again, the mansaray’s had been publicly attacked. suddenly, even the heavily guarded palace didn’t feel like a place they could stay - until the rest of the cell was hunted down and put into jail.

the next morning, as news of an earthquake in south america broke, she would commiserate the dangers of the world on the phone with alexei, and decide to follow him and the protection program. arriving that morning in tokyo, she finally felt safe.

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

THE SPOUSE : aminata has been married for nearly five years to a regular person, who just so happened to be in sierra leone during the terrorist attack on the royal family. they bonded during the two weeks that they hid in their apartment, and eventually fell in love and got married. everything else can be worked out - those are the basics!

( aminata mansaray ), the ( kylie bunbury ) fc would like a ( consort 30 -40 ) with ( karen gillan, fahriye evcen, daniel kaluuya, riz ahmed, olivia munn, rami malek, any fc that fits the age range ). the mun ( requires ) you to contact them before applying. [ queen consort of sierra leone ]

THE BROTHER : aminata might be a bit of a spitfire, but her brother is even worse. if nothing else, the mansaray children always wanted to be individuals, and that’s exactly what he became. her brother was expelled from leone preparatory, that’s the only point that is non negotiable - everything else can be discussed!

( aminata mansaray ), the ( kylie bunbury ) fc would like a ( brother 20-25 ) with ( justice smith, any fitting fc! ). the mun ( requires ) you to contact them before applying. [ prince of sierra leone ]

friends, allies, people who like her for some reason??

a few enemies would be nice!!! she’s very much a polarizing figure i think - you either love her or you fucking hate her there’s no in between.

someone she knew when she went on a little “soul searching” journey in 2014, maybe?

#hshqintro #intro #terrorism tw #attack tw #gun mention tw

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fangirlyah · 4 years

Text

✦ a friendship by letters - Edmund Pevensie x Reader

summary: a friendship formed in childhood, a friendship that survived the riskiest adventures ... what will happen when they separate and their only contact is letters? word counter: 2,674

warnings: abandoned parents

according to the books the ages of the characters should be different, but in this one-shot their ages will be those agreed by wikipedia reasoning with the actors’ age in the year of recording of the second film (it is an approximation):

Peter - 20

Susan - 17

Edmund - 15/16

Lucy - 12

Prince Caspian - 26

digory kirke had raised you after being abandoned by your family. when world war II came to england, food was scarce. you were barely three when your parents took you to have a tea afternoon with your favorite uncle, but they never came back to pick you up. at first you didn’t understand, why had they abandoned you? people should not leave the people they love, that's what your fairytales said; but this wasn't a story, it was reality.

digory took care to keep you safe and with everything you needed. the years went by and your parents had become a vague memory, you no longer had remorse for them; a three-year-old girl had seemed a nuisance to them at the time.

when you turned eight, you got the first letter from them; they had started a new family, they had a pair of twins with blue heavenly eyes, they looked a lot like you. your little person wondered if they would see the resemblance and leave them too. despite the confusing news, that birthday was the best of your entire childhood, because an even better news had arrived. after all these years, you’d have some kids to be with. kirke had taken care of your education so you’d never had another friend than your uncle and the people who worked for him. the day the pevensies arrived was cloudy, a typical english day, with a small drizzle that would get wet from time to time.

they were well-dressed and with dubious faces, they were more confused to see a sweet girl waiting for them at the door of the cottage.

"hi, it’s nice to meet you!" you shook hands with them politely, despite your enthusiasm.

"we didn’t know there would be more children" one of the children, with freckles on his pale cheeks, looked at you from top to bottom, it didn’t seem much older than you but he seemed to judge you with just a few words.

"don’t be rude, edmund!" the other boy gently pushed his head, he looked like the oldest of them all.

the four of them were very nice, some more than others but they treated you well. you used to play in the big courtyards and take classes together. you had discovered each other’s personality shortly after your arrival; you were very observant. peter was the loudest talker, if it was a sports team he’d be the leader. but susan was not left behind, she was very smart and knew a lot about all the topics they talked about during meals. edmund didn’t talk much but he wasn’t quiet, of the four he was the most serious and acid but he wasn’t a bad kid. and finally lucy, she was a walking ray of sunshine, with that no further description was needed.

"why can’t we see the old man?" edmund was at your side as the two of you walked down the dirt road. the cook had ordered you to go in search of bread and milk.

"his name isn't old man, his name is digory kirke…” as they moved on and crossed people, edmund was surprised as every redneck seemed to know you.

"you said he raised you, how did he raise you if you never saw him?"

"yes I saw him, we spent all our time together...but now he’s busier than before"

"but...where are your parents?" edmund’s childish mind thought she was there for the same reason as them; perhaps, he wanted to think that her mother was a nurse and her father a soldier, that would be to have heroic parents. but your look got lost in the trees on your side as you didn’t answer, instead you said,

"race to the store!"

that was your first interaction. thanks to that race your friendship was forged, after two weeks of them living in your house.

your last interaction was the day they returned to finchley. the chaos continued, but was not enough to keep them away from home, so they had to leave. the four of them were on the cart thrown by a horse, ready to go to the train station; lucy greeted you, already sitting, fluttering her little hand. peter left you a kiss on the forehead and susan hugged you tight.

when edmund’s turn came, your eyes watered down, provoking ed to shed a tear. you had become best friends, everything that had happened in narnia had brought you together more than ever; you had grown up together, even though you then returned to your little child body.

"I packed you a book I found in the library, it’s about narnia," you whispered when you hugged him. "take good care of him"

"with my life" so you saw them leave, as they greeted you waving their arms as you did the same.

time went by and years flew away. years when the only contact between you and the pevensies, especially edmund, was letters. letters that came and went every week, so they grew together but apart.

when you turned 13, you started high school. your joy was so immense that the first thing you did was write to your great friend.

‘my dearest edmund

I have great news. this year I will start high school in a school. a real school! uncle took me yesterday to buy my supplies and uniform. is unreal!

how are you, lucy, peter and susan? I miss them too, I miss you and narnia. how's school? is it tiring to live there? I hope not because my school is a boarding school too. I hope to see you soon

y/n"

the letter arrived two days later in edmund’s school room. his heart exploded because of the great happiness it gave him, you would have other friends and you could live a normal teenage life. he immediately wrote you a letter expressing his joy.

my dear y / n,

I also miss you more than you imagine and reading you so happy about your new school makes me want to run to hug you. I know I can't, I imagine it and I enjoy it just the same.

we are all fine, school is always the same. boring. but in the boarding school, I know that you will have fun and will make many friends.

i care about you

yours, edmund.

when you started school, the sending of letters began to be less frequent. the correspondence between the secondary schools was slow, which made it difficult to communicate. the letters took weeks to arrive, between two and three. on a saturday afternoon, he got his first letter of yours after weeks.

‘dear ed,

the mail sucks! all the letters I was sending you didn’t reach your school, I know because they were all returned to my address. I’m tired of this, I want to see you and go to narnia again...

in other news, you remember I made two friends? well, they introduced me to roger. he’s very friendly and he always accompanies me to all the classes, but well...I’m happy to make friends.

In a few days it’s the christmas ball and I’d like us to go together...i mean, the five of us. I know it’s not possible, but it’s a nice idea.

tell me about yourself.

with love, y/n!’

edmund still did not know why but, after reading the letter, an anger invaded him, he even thought he would explode. who was roger? would you go to the ball with roger?

"I had it sorted" said peter, looking at him, while waiting for the train, edmund just rolled his eyes.

"since when do you get into fights, edmund?" lucy looked at him from across the bench. "since he received the letter from y/n the other day" said his bigger sister moving her eyebrows coquettishly.

"why don’t you shut up, susan?!"

"both of you shut up!" peter screamed when everything around him started to disappear.

out of nowhere, the four were inside a cave with access to the sea. an immense joy filled them, they were in narnia. at that time, while everyone was taking off their clothes, to dive into the transparent water, edmund just wanted to grab a paper and quill to tell you, but it was impossible. in fact, they were in a narnia 1300 years older. their kingdom had been invaded and the magic of it was dying faster and faster. edmund wanted you there, while he walked the meadows looking at the ruins of what was cair paravel. but you were in england.

"y/n are you ready for the ball tonight?" one of your friends was walking beside you on the streets of london. the teachers had let all the students go in search of their garments for the feast, the very day of the celebration.

"not really, I have never been to a party so I’m a little nervous"

"it’s easier than it looks" you were turning the corner when you thought you saw a shiny fur. "are you okay, y/n?” the girl next to you asked as she saw you looking for something with intensity. what you saw it looked like a lion, but it was impossible. lions in london? will be aslan?

"is that...I remembered that I must call my uncle to wish him a good christmas eve, yes that!... emm, you go ahead, I’ll go talk on the phone and catch you" so you retire at a fast pace, to see the lion enter a phone booth. of a push you entered the red booth, finding a small golden paper on the machine.

'You know what numbers to dial’

it would be lying to say you were confused, the number 338 appeared in your mind immediately; it was your room number inside of cair paravel. when your fingers moved through the numbers, the machine began to tremble slightly, making all your surroundings become blurry. in the blink of an eye, you were standing in a meadow full of daisies. you were alone but far away you could see what seemed like a how, a shelter.

without the need to ask anyone, you knew it. you were in Narnia, you felt it in your bones. It was different, but the aroma and familiarity did not go unnoticed.

the trees were not as you remembered them, they used to dance around you every time you made an appearance in the gardens but this time they stood still; they seemed asleep. your school uniform started to heat you up so as you moved along the green lawn you left your clothes in the way, until you were left with your blue skirt, which reached a little above the knee, your shoes and the white shirt. you felt at home, you had returned to your home; among your thoughts, the idea of the pevensie being there also reached your head and you wished that aslan would appear back to show you the way to them. but instead of aslan, a horse being ridden by a men appeared before you.

"I’m sorry, miss, but may I ask who you are?" a dark-haired boy got off his horse to stand in front of you, curiously. he had never seen you before, but he knew you weren’t a telmarine, or you would have bowed to him, and you weren’t a narnian because the sons of adam and eve who belonged to narnia, were the kings and queens and he already knew them.

"my name is y/n, gentleman...and you are?"

"prince caspian, future telmarine king" telmarine? it sounded familiar to your ear, perhaps you had read it in some book of prophecies in your stay in narnia years ago; but it had been so long that no memory came to your mind. "you’re a daughter of eve, right?"

"I don’t have horse legs so I’m not a centaur" you said in a comedy voice that wasn’t funny enough for the prince to smile, so you stopped your laugh and continued to say "yes, I’m a daughter of eve."

"come with me then" the situation that edmund had gone through came to your mind, you didn’t know whether to trust the boy who claimed to be future king. despite your doubts, you didn’t have the courage to ask where he would take you and you decided to trust him, asking aslan to give you back your fighting skills if necessary; it’s been a long time since you’ve practiced, sword fighting was not a common hobby in finchley.

you skillfully climbed, to caspian’s surprise, to the white horse where he had come to you. the said prince took the reins and began to ride. they went up a high meadow, from there you could see the transparent waters several meters down. if the situation had been different, you would have run down to the sand to enjoy the water, but the uncertainty of where you were going did not leave you. surprisingly, you arrived very quickly at the place you had seen before. now from close up you could see that it was, aslan’s how. caspian didn’t kidnap you, he was a good man. so, thanking him you got off your horse and looked around as the prince walked into the how. edmund was busy looking at a map, but someone’s footsteps from behind distracted him.

"yes you take your time, we don’t need you to make war plans" the sarcastic voice, that so characterized ed, echoed through the shelter as it reached the outside causing you to freeze. it was a voice you were unfamiliar with but you had heard it before. your mind traveled to the last time you spoke on a pay phone with your best friend and recognized the voice. it was edmund, but he had grown up. he had obviously grown up, like you had.

"I’m sorry, I found someone on the way..."

"with whom you could possibly have met in the middle of the wood-" edmund’s gaze moved towards the entrance of the place when he saw a delicate figure enter. those sweet traits that he remembered so much from his childhood were refined, elegant, but they kept that shred of innocence that he liked so much. that face that was so much expected to be found casually on the streets of london or finchley was in front of him, dressed in what looked like the remains of a school uniform and the astonished eyes absorbing all around her.

"y/n..." it was a whisper, but the echo of the how made it sound loud enough for you to hear.

so you looked up meeting the person who had occupied your head since you were eight. the boy you used to create scenarios with at night. the boy who was a little kid and now was a man in armor looking at you from the other side of the room. the boy you were afraid to see holding someone else’s hand. your mind failed to form a word because you were already running towards him, to wrap yourself in his body. his arms traveled to your waist swiftly as he lifted you from the ground and shoved his face up your neck, smelling your scent that he had so missed. one of your hands traveled to his hair caressing that darkness that you used to braid when you were just a kid.

"hello ed" you whispered giving yourself permission to shed a tear. edmund felt that drop of water fall on his shirt, so he took you off his body to start leaving kisses all over your face, causing laughter in both. by that time, caspian had already retired, leaving you two alone.

"what are you doing here?" said edmund when he stopped kissing your face, but leaving his hands on your waist while you stroked his cheeks.

"I have no idea, but I’m here! and I missed you so much that I don’t care!"

"I missed you too, with all my heart" the boy’s eyes turned to your mouth and an urge to taste your soft lips flooded him.

"do it" and he did it. what he was waiting for so long. at that time nothing didn’t matter, no war or anything. just the two of you. neither of you could put into words what you felt, but you two wanted to find out together. between kisses and caresses, you could decipher when that passionate love was born, that passion that was sealed with a reunion kiss.

#edmund pevensie #edmund pevensie x reader #edmund pevensie fanfic #edmund pevensie x y/n #the chronics of narnia #narnia fanfiction #narnia #fanfic #fanfiction #imagine #one shots #prince caspian

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syntheticpoetry · 4 years

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The Ghosts That We Knew

See my original post on the origins of this story here!

Summary: Blaine Anderson is no stranger to hospitals and has been volunteering on the pediatric unit of Lima General Hospital for years when Kurt Hummel comes along. After Blaine is attacked at his school's Sadie Hawkins Dance, he has his best friend Kurt to help him deal with the aftermath. And when Kurt becomes the target of the McKinley football team's bullying campaign, he can count on Blaine to have his back.

AU where Blaine transfers to McKinley instead of Dalton. Set during season 1.A story of two best friends finding courage to face their bullies and discovering love along the way.

Author’s Note: Blaine has a reason he has been in an out of the hospital since childhood that will be revealed, but if you are overly cautious of the level of angst surrounding it I can assure you it's nothing heartbreaking/super serious. It's actually quite common. I cannot thank @esperantoauthor enough for beta reading this for me and really helping me whip it into shape!

AO3 Link || FFN Link

Chapter 1: Of Viral Videos and Disney Princes

The last time that Kurt Hummel remembers being in a hospital, he told his mother that he loved her for the last time.

That was six years ago.

As he walks through the lobby, towards the directory by the elevators, he keeps his gaze fixed forward, careful not to spare a glance at the waiting area to his right. He spent so many months in that waiting room. Entire seasons, multiple holidays spent watching people receive good news and bad news, with his father stoic and silent beside him as his mother underwent procedure after procedure. Until it was their turn to be the family that received bad news. The doctor sounded sincere as he said a lot of big words Kurt could not quite understand at the time, but he understood the look on his father’s face. He took to studying the ugly designs on the carpet to distract from the tight clench in his father’s jaw, the way he kept himself so still and barely blinked through the entire explanation— Kurt knew, even at eight years old, what it was like to use up all of your willpower to hold yourself together for the sake of someone else. To this day, he cannot look at paisley print without thinking back to that awful day.

Kurt scans the directory before punching the up button to call the elevator and folds his arms across his chest, tapping his foot as he awaits its arrival. When he first heard about the volunteer program on the pediatric unit he was naturally hesitant to return to the place that held some of his worst memories. He had been on the fence about it all summer, torn between the desire to give back to the hospital staff that had gone above and beyond in their attempts to cure his mother’s cancer and wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the place where they finally had to say goodbye to each other.

Until he saw that YouTube video.

A curly-haired boy with big doe eyes and an unwavering grin, guitar in hand, leading a Disney themed sing-along with a group of elementary school age kids. The warmth that spread through Kurt’s chest was almost overwhelming as he watched the boy march around the room performing Hakuna Matata with the parade of children trailing behind, mimicking him raucously and off-key. It was the first time Kurt had really smiled in a long time.

So he had decided to look into the program. Mostly because witnessing the boundless energy of pure joy from each child singing along in that video elicited memories of countless nights of living room performances with his own father, both of them puffy-eyed and exhausted but still managing to find the stamina to sing at the top of their lungs, using the furniture as stage props. They were two lost souls attempting to cling to each other through tidal waves of insurmountable grief, and those nights together— well, those nights wereeverything to Kurt. He had never felt closer to his father than when they were both breathless and laughing their way through the most eclectic collection of songs imaginable, hugging each other tightly at the end of each performance.

And if Kurt happened to run into the boy from the video along the way, well, that would certainly just be an added bonus. Kurt did have eyes after all. And there was no denying the boy’s natural charm or the air of confidence with which he carried himself.

Truth be told, entering yet another school year with no friends was beginning to take its toll on Kurt and the possibility of finding camaraderie with a cute boy who seemingly shared similar interests was certainly enticing.

Ding!

The doors slide open before him revealing an empty elevator. Kurt steps in and presses the button for the fourth floor. He thinks about that video and jumping on armchairs and couches in his living room with his father for the entire ride up.

***

He has to be buzzed in to enter the unit, which he thinks is strange. But the woman who greets him, a young nurse with bright green eyes and deep auburn hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, explains it is the protocol for all pediatric units in order to prevent children from wandering away or being kidnapped. There are security bracelets around each patient’s ankle that trigger an alarm if they are taken past a bright yellow line painted on the floor.

“Who would kidnap sick kids from a hospital?” Kurt asks, looking absolutely horrified.

“You would be surprised at how common it is. Parents fighting over custody, usually.”

He nods and guesses that makes sense, but the thought is still deeply unsettling.

The hallways are empty as she leads him to a room behind the nurse’s station. The unit is certainly much different from the one his mother had been on. The walls are covered in murals of different cartoon characters and scenes from popular storybooks. While the nurse punches in a code, Kurt studies a painting of Rapunzel in a high stone tower, golden plaited hair strung over the edge of the window for a handsome prince at the bottom. The door buzzes and she holds it open for him. “I’ll let my supervisor know you’re here.”

Kurt thanks her and takes a seat at one of the tables to wait. On the far wall he spots a bulletin board covered in an overabundance of overlapping photos, hand-drawn pictures and a variety of cards both homemade and store-bought. He casts a quick glance towards the door before crossing the room to investigate. He cannot help but smile as he scans over the collection of memories, reminiscing back to his own pile of hand drawn cards for the staff on the oncology unit.

Then something catches his eye.

It’s the curly haired boy from the video. He’s standing, guitar in hand with the strap over his shoulder, in the center of a group photo, surrounded by children of varying ages and the unit staff. His outfit is different from the one in the video though. He’s wearing baggy sweatpants and a printed T-shirt, only the edges of the otherwise obscured design visible from behind the guitar over his torso. In the video he had certainly seemed more, well, put together, to say the least. He had worn light grey slacks and a navy polo shirt accented with a white bow tie, which Kurt could not help but notice because he could count on one hand the amount of teenage boys he had ever seen wearing bow ties in the state of Ohio, himself included.

Kurt wonders how often he comes by to visit and volunteer. Maybe there is a chance they will be able to meet after all.

The faint beeping of the key code and jiggling of the door handle to his left draws his attention and he turns in time to see an older woman with ashy blonde hair and huge round glasses that take up half of her face walk in. Her scrub top is printed with different Winnie the Pooh characters. She smiles and approaches him, extending her hand. “Hi, you must be Kurt. I’m Jeannie; we spoke on the phone last week.”

“Oh! Yes,” Kurt shakes her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Shall we?” She gestures to a table and Kurt takes a seat opposite her. “So we just have to get some paperwork in order and then we can take a little tour around the unit so you can meet the kids.”

“Okay.”

“This is your first time volunteering, right?” She opens a Manila folder and begins rifling through a large stack of papers.

“Yes.”

“What drew you to it?”

Kurt steals a glance towards the bulletin board, lips curling up into a half-smile. “I heard about it through my school a few months back, but honestly? I spent a lot of time visiting my mom in this hospital when I was a kid and when me and my dad would get home he would always try to cheer me up. We put on a lot of concerts for my stuffed animals in our living room. And I mean… like a lot .”

Her eyes are soft as she listens, a piece of paper held loosely between both hands just inches off of the table, almost forgotten, and gives him an empathetic smile.

“I saw that video of the Disney sing-along online and I just really wanted to be a part of it, helping kids, especially with music, because it’s really helped me through some tough times.”

“Well,” She straightens up and slides the paper across the table towards him, “I think the kids will really love having you around. Do you play any instruments?”

“Never missed a piano lesson,” Kurt says, grinning. “But mostly, I love to sing.”

The paperwork consists of a lot of signatures. Kurt is not to discuss any of the patients or their health conditions with others in order to maintain privacy regulations, not to post anything to social media without permission, and just a lot of general information about the hospital’s protocols such as what to do in the event of emergency scenarios (of which there are many ). By the end of it, Kurt has a pretty sizable stack of papers to take home with him and a dull cramp in his wrist.

“I know it seems like a lot of information, but nothing you have to memorise. You’ll always be with other staff members who will guide you through every step of the way.”

Kurt releases a nervous laugh, “Okay, good. I can save my highlighters for school work then.”

***

Jeannie leads the way to the playroom which, she explains, is a safe space for all the children on the unit that remains open every day until 7 p.m. No medications or treatments are allowed to be administered to a child in the playroom, they must be brought out first. There are about ten kids inside, ranging from toddlers to older teens, all of whom have seemingly gravitated towards splitting into their own little cliques based on ages. As soon as they enter the room two of the younger kids, a boy and girl no older than three or four, look up from a mountain of blocks and start crying. Kurt casts an alarmed glance at Jeannie.

“It’s okay, you can keep playing.” Jeannie kneels down and stacks a loose block onto their small tower. “Everyone, this is Kurt, he’s going to be coming by to help out and spend some time with all of you.” She stands up and backs away from the two toddlers with the blocks to stand beside Kurt again.

“It’s the uniform,” she says quietly to him. “Some get scared when they see us come into a room cause it usually means it’s time for medicine or treatments.”

“Hi, Kurt!” A small girl with bronze skin, a round face, and long thick black hair comes over and takes his hand. “I’m Melanie! You wanna come draw with me?”

She does not wait for an answer before she starts tugging on his hand and walking back towards a small rectangular table covered with construction paper and crayons. She climbs into one of two plastic blue chairs which are far too tiny for Kurt to fit in, so he sits on the floor beside the table, crossing his legs. Melanie slides a piece of yellow construction paper towards him and pushes a pile of crayons into the middle for them to share.

“Did you draw all of these?” Kurt picks up a red crayon and starts sketching.

“Yes! My daddy brought my big brother to visit and we draw together,” she says, shading in what looks like a sunflower with a purple crayon.

“They’re very beautiful; I like that one a lot.” Kurt taps the one she is currently working on. “I’ve never seen a purple sunflower before.”

“I’m gonna invent them one day,” she says matter-of-factly. Kurt smiles and returns to his sketch of a new outfit design that has been floating around his mind for the past week.

“Woah!”

Kurt begins to lift his head up to locate where the voice has come from when he spots movement beside his left elbow. To say the boy is small would be an understatement. He is tiny . A pale, skinny little thing dressed in Batman pajamas that look two sizes too big on him. He has wide, bright blue eyes and is wearing a charcoal grey beanie. Clutched between his toothpick arms is a stuffed rabbit with drooping ears the size of its entire body.

“Hello,” Kurt says as the boy leans forward to peer at his drawing.

“You can draw,” the boy says, clutching his rabbit closer.

“Would you like to draw with us?”

“Can’t draw,” he says.

“Oh, I bet that’s not true,” Kurt says and holds out the crayon to him. “Everyone can draw.”

The boy looks at the crayon then up to Kurt and shakes his head shyly before raising the bunny up to his chin, hugging it tightly.

“What’s your name?” Kurt asks.

“Jason,” he says quietly.

“Well, would you like to watch me and Melanie draw?”

“I’m really good.” Melanie looks up at him. “You can sit next to me, I’ll show you.”

Kurt spends the next hour drawing with Melanie while Jason continues to peek curiously between them. The other kids begin to trickle out of the room, some led by nurses, some by visiting family members. Pretty soon, only the three of them are left until Jason’s mother comes in to collect him. Before he leaves, Kurt holds out a piece of paper to him.

“Something tells me you like Batman,” Kurt says as Jason’s eyes widen at the image of a child-sized Batman with bright blue eyes. “How about next time you can draw me?”

“Okay.” Jason grins, slipping the picture between his stuffed bunny and his chest to hold it there safely. “But you’re gonna look like a potato. I really can’t draw.”

It is the most Kurt has heard him speak all afternoon. Something about the way he talks contradicts the way he looks. Kurt wonders how old he actually is; the boy looks smaller than most five year olds he’s seen but definitely talks like an older child. Kurt makes a mental note to find out next time. “Deal. I can’t wait to see it.”

Jason’s mom gives Kurt a parting smile before she shepherds her son away. Soon after, Melanie’s nurse comes to collect her as well, leaving only Kurt and Jeannie in the empty playroom.

“That went well,” she says. “You’re a natural with them.”

Kurt beams back at her, a sense of pride swelling in his chest.

After his dad comes to pick him up, Kurt spends the entire car ride home filling him in on the events of the day, excluding Jason and Melanie’s names. He goes to bed that night with his mind already buzzing with activities for the next visit.

***

Kurt starts volunteering two days a week after school and over the course of the next month, he becomes very familiar with some of the regular kids on the unit. Jason, he discovers, is actually nine years old, has leukemia and is in his final round of chemotherapy by the first week in October. Melanie has sickle cell anemia and had been hospitalized for something called ‘sickle cell crisis’— she had gone home two weeks after they first met, but Kurt learns that she usually returns frequently for the same problem. There’s a teenage boy not much older than Kurt is, but taller and skinnier with jet black hair and sad eyes, named Julian who has cystic fibrosis— he usually keeps to himself, oftentimes choosing to sit in the back corner of the playroom and silently watch everyone else.

The rest have been a whirlwind of faces and names with a variety of issues such as pneumonia, appendicitis, broken bones and asthma attacks. There have also been quite a few cases of children who have come in with injuries as a result of abuse at home, more so than Kurt would have imagined actually occurred. He finds trying to interact and engage with those kids to be the most heartbreaking.

Some of the kids are not as keen to warm up to him as others, keeping to themselves or staying with their families while Kurt leads sing-alongs, painting lessons, hosts movie nights, and reads aloud during story time. He has developed a steady routine in the five weeks since he began volunteering. So on the Tuesday during the second week of October he waves hello to the security personnel by the front entrance like he usually does. He rides up the same elevator and is buzzed into the unit by Rosie, the first nurse he met with the auburn hair. And with his usual wide smile in place, he strolls into the playroom with a new four-pack of Disney themed puzzles under his arm.

But when he walks in, the kids are already sitting in a circle, staring up at a boy with loosely gelled curls coiffed into a fluffy side part, bright hazel eyes, and a sapphire acoustic guitar perched on his lap. Kurt is caught completely off guard as he realises, Oh god, it’s him! It’s the guy from the video!

He looks shorter in person than Kurt assumed. In both the photo on the bulletin board and the video his hair was ungelled and wild. Kurt vividly remembers his dark curls bouncing as he bopped his head along to the music while impersonating Timon and Pumba for the younger kids. He’s dressed in another carefully selected outfit though— bright red pants, a black polo and a white bow tie with black polka dots on it.

“Kurt!” A few of them yell excitedly.

“Ah, so you’re the famous Kurt I’ve been hearing so much about,” The boy with the guitar says, that same unwavering grin already in place. “Nice to finally meet you, I’m Blaine.”

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fleckcmscott · 4 years

Text

Bewitching Hour

Summary: October has been a blissfully busy month. With Halloween around the corner, Arthur and Y/N have some planning to do.

Warnings: Swearing

Words: 4,665

A/N: Special thanks to @hhandley80 for this request! You've been so supportive and sweet. I truly appreciate you and hope you enjoy it!

On a side note, my oneshots will be more sporadic. I'm still writing but life has been life. Also, I've finished the first draft of another multi-chapter featuring Arthur and Y/N. It's going to take time to rewrite the subsequent drafts and edit, edit, edit. The chapters will go up once the story is ready. Thanks for your patience and support! 🙂 I heart you all!

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask!

Arthur's suggestion that they make plans to celebrate Halloween should not have been a surprise. He loved starting traditions with Y/N, and she prized adopting them with him. "It's been awhile," he'd said as they'd walked arm-in-arm to the laundromat. "I think it'd be nice."

Holidays had been a source of merriment most of her life. The beauty of red and green decorations at Christmas. Turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. An egg hunt and chocolate rabbit at Easter. The togetherness of family during them all.

Halloween, though, wasn't a favorite.

As a child, she'd had fun trick-or-treating, riding her bike from house to far-flung house. And she hadn't minded escorting her little sister as a teenager. Y/N's homemade witch costume had been passed down. She could still recall the sleekness of the ribbon between her fingers as she'd secured the pointed hat under Mabel's chin.

But the magic had fallen away. When married to Jeff, she'd had to attend his boss's annual party. After receiving an apologetic shrug and kiss, she'd be relegated to hanging out with the other wives. They'd included her in their recipe swaps, in their exchanges of mild gossip. Her natural friendliness made chit-chat easy, far easier than having a good time. Those evenings had been spent nursing a glass of wine and willing the clock to go faster.

During the period she'd cared for her father, she'd tried to hand out candy. She liked being a good neighbor and imparting kindness in the form of bite-sized sweets. As his health had declined, the porch light had gone dark. Random rings of the doorbell would result in shouting and swearing. Repeated attempts to explain the door's lock wasn't broken. Festivity would transform into drudgery. It hadn't been worth the trouble. Instead, she'd watched terrible TV specials while her thoughts wandered to a future far from Boonville. A future she'd doubted would ever be.

"I don't know if it's your thing," Arthur had continued, bringing her back to the present. "But you might enjoy it with me." The response he longed for was evident in the worrying of his pocket, outlines of his knuckles visible through the tan cloth.

Everything they'd experienced together had soothed the sting of those wasted years. The hesitancy lurking in her was silly. Unwelcome. Less than either of them deserved. She'd met his keen eyes and half-smile. The sudden mental image of him dressed as a cowboy or pirate, eyepatch and all, prompted a laugh. Convinced her as she dug out her dry-cleaning stub. "It isn't my thing," she'd said. "But you are."

Relief had relaxed his wrinkles, save for his crows feet, which had deepened as he'd returned her happy expression. A slender arm wrapped around her waist, drew her against his solid frame. Once the clerk disappeared through the swinging doors to retrieve their clothes, Arthur grasped her chin and kissed her. The tender explorations were soon sloppy, and she'd giggled, his enthusiasm becoming her own. Their noses had met, his lashes resting on his wide cheekbones. "I think you're the sweetest treat, Mrs. Fleck."

Currently, Donahue's Department Store, Gotham's number one retail emporium (if the ads were to be believed), was bustling with last-minute shoppers. Weary mothers escorted their babbling children through the aisles. Clerks swapped out displays for the changing blue light specials. Lines went for yards. Patricia and Y/N sought refuge at a corner table in the café on the top floor. The warm glow from the pendant lamps provided a relaxed ambience, one that matched the hot cider and pumpkin spice cake they were savoring.

"I've got my grandson on Sunday," Patricia said between bites. "My daughter's going to a party with a medical records tech from Gotham General. Met him when she missed the bus. They split a cab and hit it off." Chuckling, she lifted her mug. "Speaking of, how's married life been so far?"

Memories of the past week quickened Y/N's heart, until she thought it might stop. How Arthur had gripped her replacement Social Security card, just to read her new name. The way he'd grab her for a twirl whenever they were in the kitchen. The reverence in his gaze when they'd lay together after sex, a look that both thrilled and made her blush. "The bills for his medication and appointments will no longer make us cringe," she deadpanned. She lowered her fork. "When we met, I was kind of blindsided - I'm not the type to fall in love quickly." The corners of her lips tugged up. "Being married to Arthur feels like a habit. A habit I should have learned twenty years ago."

"I'm glad you found each other." Patricia reached across the light brown table and covered Y/N's hand, gave it a squeeze. Then she wiped frosting from her mouth and nodded in the direction of the escalator. "Now let's find a costume that'll drive him nuts."

Beyond the colorful cosmetics and pungent perfume counters, they sorted through racks of vinyl smocks and plastic masks. Pop culture icons and princesses. Vampires and spooks. Knockoffs of classic movie monsters. Most were poorly made and decidedly uninteresting. Y/N pawed through accessories in a nearby basket, a cigar here, a patched hat there. "How about a hobo? I could steal Arthur's tie."

"This was his idea. Give him something a little exciting." After a roll of Y/N's eyes, Patricia held out a plastic display bag. "Found it."

The white font on its blue label declared she should "Create a unique look!" A woman in a leopard-print leotard and bow-tie wore black cat ears and a tail, the only two items included in the set. Y/N's nose wrinkled. "I don't think so, Patricia." She rummaged through another bin and examined a hockey mask. "I don't show a lot of skin."

"You show Arthur." Patricia ignored Y/N's glare, continuing to shove it at her. "Every man loves a woman dressed as a cat. Our next lunch is on me if I'm wrong."

Patricia could be relentless, but Y/N had to admit she was usually right. She arched a brow as she eyed the costume. Maybe she could find a solid body suit instead of animal print. The kit was only $2.98. And her friend had made it a challenge. "You're on. But I'm not wearing a bow-tie." She crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her mouth. "Your turn. Would Robert like you as a French maid or a go-go dancer?"

~~~~~

It was a busy season for performers. Arthur remembered HaHa's talent agency being booked solid for October by the end of August. Myriad functions at nursing homes, parties, and children's organizations took place throughout the city. Amusement Mile had a series of special events, allowing Arthur to work extra hours before the slowness of winter dragged in. Once the holiday was over, he'd buy make-up and props on clearance.

He'd always assumed he would like Halloween - if he'd had the chance to celebrate it properly. It was about connection, something he'd never managed. The customs gave him a pretense, a template to meet people, rather than leaving him wondering how to go about it. Provided a hiding place for his seeming inability to act normal.

Recollections of the day were few but vivid. When he'd been around eight, there'd been a party at school. The teacher had made brownies and given the students a half-hour respite from lessons. (A welcome relief, since he wasn't very good at most of them.) But he hadn't had a costume. Hadn't known how to reply when the other kids asked where it was. Not wanting to be left out, he'd pocketed a watercolor pallet and sneaked to the bathroom.

The teacher (he wished he could remember her name) had walked in as he'd smeared green and blue on his face, a pathetic attempt at a turtle. Fear of punishment had caused his laughter. But her kindness as she knelt, wiped away tears and pigment with a scratchy, brown paper towel, had calmed him. "Wait here," she'd instructed. It had taken all his courage not to run home.

After some minutes, she'd returned, an old white sheet in one hand, black marker and pair of scissors in the other. "The nurse won't miss this." She'd traced eyeholes, helped him cut them out. She'd asked questions. About his mother and what it was like at home. Questions he was at a loss for how to answer. Finally, she'd draped the cloth over his head. "There," she'd declared. "Gotham Elementary has its own ghost."

Even as he'd gotten taller and the sheet no longer went beyond his knees, that costume had remained his go-to. He'd venture out to the rest of his building, knocking on paint-chipped doors and pushing broken buzzers. Having learned to stay away from doors that yelling or funny smells emanated from, he hadn't gotten a lot of candy. What he had collected he'd shared with Penny. The wax lips became a free toy. He wasn't sure his memory of startling his mother and being tickled until he couldn't breathe was real or imagined.

At twelve, he was told he was too old to go trick-or-treating. He'd starting scrounging for change to buy hard candies at Helm's Pharmacy. They weren't particularly appetizing, but they'd been what he could afford. Only a few kids rang, a number that dwindled further every year. Most neighbors kept their distance, likely aware he was troubled. Cinnamon discs and butterscotch drops had loitered around the apartment for months. He'd sucked on them in an attempt to cut down on his smoking, just to save money. It hadn't worked.

Y/N hadn't spoken about the holiday, not the way she had other special occasions. At first, he'd thought it had slipped her mind. Work, planning their honeymoon, completing the red tape required to meld all aspects of their lives had taken up much of their time. But, given her reluctance to talk in detail about her past heartache, he'd come to assume her Halloweens had been unpleasant. He was certain he could change that.

Sitting on the dingy, dark green plastic seat of the train car, he giggled to himself, chest puffing up as he straightened. They'd been man and wife for eight whole days. Movies and songs said love was supposed to be somewhere between serendipitous and fated. A happy accident that was meant to be. Lying awake at night, he would find himself wondering where they were on that scale. If the emotions swirling through him - the excitement of belonging, the fear of fucking up - were what every newlywed felt. Then Y/N would snuggle closer in her sleep, murmur nonsense into his skin, and for a few minutes he'd be at peace.

Years had been spent trying to figure out who he was. Trying to find an identity, his role within the world. While he was still searching, it had been far easier to become accustomed to the role of "husband" than he'd dreamed.

Teaching his wife about events across the city had been a delight. Gotham Village's Annual Costume Extravaganza was a parade that went all the way to Gotham Square. He'd participated a couple of times, never formally registering but slipping into the clown section. It had been exhilarating. Had allowed him to pretend, for a little while, that he was being seen. That the crowds lining the sidewalks were cheering for him. Signs for extravagant balls were plastered on billboards and lampposts throughout the streets; he'd have gladly attended and shown her off. A haunted house was being held in a building in his old neighborhood, a fundraiser for the orphanage. He hadn't brought that up.

In the end, once he'd explained trick-or-treaters went from apartment to apartment, they'd decided on a cozy evening at home. The details had been left to her. Whatever she'd plan, he'd love it. He wondered what she'd disguise herself as. Would she be a sexy devil or nurse, like he'd seen on a sit-com? The notion sparked a fire in his cheeks.

Given how busy he'd be, he'd stay dressed as plain, old Carnival. Part of him regretted accepting two gigs, especially on a Sunday. He would have preferred her company. But he wanted to put the money towards the wedding band he'd put on layaway. (Even though they had one account, he wasn't going to let her chip in for it.) He should already be wearing it for all of Gotham to see.

The lurch of the subway prompted him to rise and grasp the pole grip. His stance widened as it came to a halt, knees bending with the instinct of a man who'd ridden public transportation since he was a boy. As soon as the graffiti-covered doors parted, he stepped out onto the platform and ascended the stairs, eager to share his new insurance information with Dr. Ludlow.

~~~~~

Scratchy violins and the hum of a theremin. Shrill shrieks and cracks of thunder. A cackle resounded, then a pipe organ, playing a melody in a minor key.

There was no doubt about it. Halloween spirit had saturated 4A.

NCB's Movie Marathon Mayhem had begun at 10:00 AM. Y/N had had it on since getting out of the shower, hoping to catch a horror classic while she decorated the apartment and prepared Bloody Mary mix. As she hung cotton batting between the television's rabbit ears, creating a long, narrow spider-web, she realized they were only playing cheesy B-movies. Giant insects threatening buildings. Science experiments gone wrong. Alien invasions. Oh well. At least she wouldn't have to pay much attention to get the gist of the plots.

The orange plastic platter, black bats along its edges, had been an impulse buy. She thought its array of sugary skeletons, candy bracelets, and Jolly Jack chocolate bars would be well received. But having seen only one or two kids in the lobby, she had no idea how many children lived in their building. She hoped she'd bought enough.

The cardstock window decorations she'd found were festive and matched Arthur's sweet nature. One portrayed a warted, green witch flying on a broom past a full moon. On the other, a ghost and mouse shared a pillowcase of candy and wished a "Happy Halloween." She held the tape dispenser between her teeth as she stuck them to their white front door.

Just then, the elevator dinged. Glancing to her left, she saw Arthur stroll down the cheerfully lit hallway. Buoyant expression on him, despite his white, blue, and red make-up being streaked from sweat. Striped prop bag on his shoulder and carved pumpkin cradled in his arms. "The store owner was going to throw it out," he explained with a half hug. "But he let me have it as a tip."

Classic, triangular eyes evoked the annual carving contest her parents had taken part of back home. Her father had been well-known in the community, being the town's only doctor. Entering the competition had been expected. They'd never won but enjoyed it all the same. Y/N had picked out the patterns and scooped out the squash's slimy innards. Her mother had baked the seeds. Peals of their laughter echoed in her ears, and a lump formed in her throat.

She swallowed hard against it. Dammit, Y/N. Get it together. This was supposed to be a special night for Arthur and her. She needed to distract herself. One of his curls peeked out from under his bald-cap and green wig. She twirled a strand around her finger. "With that toothy grin, it just might be your twin," she said. He pecked her temple, the kiss sticky from greasepaint. She lit the half-melted candles using his red lighter and put the jack-o-lantern just outside their door.

While he freshened his paint in the bedroom, she slinked into the bathroom to change. Arthur's and her routines were closely aligned; keeping her costume hidden had not been easy. The headband holding the furry cat ears was quite stiff, its teeth a tad sharp on her scalp. Once it was in place, she hid it under her hair. The lint on her form-fitting stretch top and leggings reminded her why she rarely wore all black. She retrieved her brown eyeliner from the nearby shelf and started in on her whiskers.

Arthur's footsteps neared, heavy due to his clown shoes, and Y/N turned to lean back on the sink. His thin lips parted as he scanned her body, forehead furrowed in pleasant surprise. His reaction planted a seed of bliss in her belly, one that bloomed every second they regarded each other. The lunch she'd have to spring for was well worth the pink shells of his ears. Eventually, she held out the fluffy, wired tail and a safety pin. "Would you pin this just below my waistband?"

Fingers grazing hers, he took it and sat on the toilet lid. He cupped her hips and pulled her closer, positioned her until the dampness of his breath hit a bare sliver of her back. "Hold still," he murmured, his voice sending a tingle through her. At his gentle ministrations, the spandex of her leggings felt snugger. "Did you- Did you read my journal?"

A faint click of metal as the pin closed. "No." She colored the tip of her nose, frowned at how lackluster the shade was. "I'd never do that. Even if I'm dying for a preview of your material. Why?"

"No reason." A soft huff, his shy smile clear in his answer. "I have an idea." He handed her a washcloth and hurried out of the room. She was patting her face dry when he returned, a fine tipped brush and pot of black greasepaint in his hand. "This'll look better."

Her brow arched. She'd only had her make-up done once; Patricia had invited her when they'd first met. Such an outing was not her preference, but Y/N had accepted, being new in town and wanting to learn about her colleague. There'd been champagne at the counter, which she'd sipped until she'd spent too much on eyeshadow and apricot scrub. The next morning, she'd put the products and a note on Patricia's desk: "I'll never forgive you. Thanks!"

The heat radiating from Arthur prompted her to close the gap between them. She craned her neck towards him, slid her palms to his yellow vest until she held him just below his ribs. His forefinger curled under her chin, lifted it slightly and angled it to the right. The cool, wet brush met her fevered skin. The dusty smell of the greasepaint blended with a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and traces of his sweat. She licked her lips.

The vibration of his chuckle was felt before heard. "I really like your costume," he said lowly. Two more ticklish caresses of the bristles on the apple of her cheek. "If you're not careful, I might werewolf and go wild."

She stretched closer to him, the fervor in his tone going straight to her center. Though he'd been growing bolder, his cocky side wasn't often revealed. She wanted it, thirsted to see more of the wild horse kicking inside him. Her touch ran over his chest, until she dipped under his black suspenders and pulled. "Are you going to gobble me up?"

Teasing strokes on her nose. "Maybe." Then his thumb whispered along her jaw and guided her face upwards. His kiss was supple, slow, a drag of his mouth as his tongue sought entry. She yielded, the simmer of anticipation bringing her to her toes. He groaned deeply and palmed her thigh, then fondled the curve of her rear-

The ding-dong of the doorbell halted them. He lifted his head and laughed, gaze sparkling. "I got paint on you."

She twisted in his arms and looked in the mirror. The whiskers caught her eye, embellished at the ends with dainty curlicues - his skill never ceased to impress her. Red brightened her lips and streaks of white were on her cheek. "It's all right. They'll just know I've been necking with a clown."

~~~~~

The sound of the bell continued. Over and over and over. More than it ever had in Otisburg. There were mummies, ghosts, a couple of skeletons. A superhero proudly displayed his red cape and blue tights, and a kid in her karate robe went on about her yellow belt. A tiny clown, too young to walk, was brought by her sister. As Arthur made funny faces, the baby cooed and tried to take his red, foam nose. Arthur parted with it gladly.

Only one member of the Wayne family appeared, slicked back hair and pompous pout making the disguise complete. The man accompanying the boy introduced himself as their upstairs neighbor and shook their hands. After one look at Y/N, he nudged Arthur's bicep. "So, she's the one keeping half the building up at night. Good on you, pal." Arthur blinked in confusion as she ushered the guy away, red-faced and muttering about his nerve.

Arthur was overly generous, giving out fistfuls of sweets while taking a few extra seconds to gather his nerves and compliment the costumes he liked best. It felt good to interact with strangers without constantly second guessing himself. Y/N would rub his arm or kiss his shoulder and tell him what a great job he was doing. "Kids are easy," he said, refilling the candy dish. But he reveled in her praises, anyway. And the knowledge that meeting the neighbors was going well.

Clean-up required little effort. The jack-o-lantern sat on their kitchen table, flames flickering as the wicks burned away. The door decor was packed safely for use next year. His plaid blazer was slung over the back of a dining chair and his wig was off. Y/N's decision to leave her whiskers on pleased him - she made a damn sexy cat. He pocketed the last few pieces of candy to snack on during the remainder of the evening.

The Sunday Night Special Presentation she'd picked out, a made-for-TV horror movie, began at 9:00 PM on GBC. Most of its airtime was punctuated by her tipsy snickers and legal wisecracks, which was typical when they watched something stupid. Yet, as the show went on, she grew quieter, barely speaking between sips of her third cocktail. As they sat on the sofa, her posture stiffened. Forearms crossed over her breasts. Her nails dug into her upper arm.

The change started two-thirds of the way into the show, when the plot about a doll running amok twisted into a story about a professional woman trying to assert herself against the demands of her mother. Against the expectations of availability. To fight for the simplicity of having dinner and peace and quiet. It resonated with him, which felt weird. Especially when the film cut to black, the implication being the mother would meet a violent end at the hands of her possessed daughter.

A cheerful jingle came on. Puerto Rico was a direct flight from Gotham Airport, it advertised, a flight that lasted "two hours and fifteen tropical minutes." They should get out while the weather was still good. The juxtaposition of mood broke him out of his ponderings. He flicked off the blaring television with the remote. Then he heard Y/N sniffling.

She set her glass on the coffee table, a slight tremble in her hand. "I need some air," she whispered as she rose, then went out onto the fire escape.

Arthur rubbed his thigh and pressed his lips together. He wasn't used to seeing her cry. Not from sadness. Should he follow her? Give her time? Both had worked previously, depending on the situation. But he wasn't sure what had upset her, what situation they were in now.

Exhaling sharply, he grabbed her glass and dumped the rest of the drink down the kitchen sink. Rinsed their dinner plates and put the slow cooker in the fridge. When he'd finished making decaf coffee ten minutes later, she still hadn't returned. He ambled towards the ajar glass door and stepped out.

Moonlight outlined her shapely figure and reflected off her hair, the silver a contrast to the orange glow of the streetlamps illuminating her face. Her stare seemed fixated on the street below. He followed it to see a group of ghouls and goblins spraying shaving cream on a shop window. A couple, one he'd see occasionally when out for a cigarette, walked down the sidewalk. A woman was half-carrying a drunk man towards a bus stop.

Upon clearing her throat, Y/N spoke. "I may not look like it, but I had a great time with you tonight. The movie just got to me." Relieved, Arthur sidled next to her, wrapped his arm about her back. Her head fell to his shoulder and she smoothed her hand over his stomach. "I don't mean to hide from you. Someday you'll know the details of my earlier life." She scoffed. "When I'm ready to think about them." He entwined their fingers and kissed her hairline, avoiding the wired tips of her cat ears.

Shivering, she took a shaky breath. "There are no skeletons in my closet. Only disappointments." Her voice cracked as she beamed at him, cupped his cheek, and pressed her face to his. "Knowing I'd get to have you would have made those years so much easier."

He held her tightly, massaging between her shoulders. She'd been speaking about herself, but he couldn't help thinking it was about him, too. His years with Penny. His stints in Arkham. The loneliness, the isolation, the endless anger and yearning to be more than a speck of dirt no one cared for. His journal was full of questions about where the hell his one and only was. If he'd known she'd be real, tangible instead of a figment, would existence have hurt less?

Wincing, he tried to push through those thoughts. To focus on her instead of himself. What mattered was that Y/N needed him. Perhaps a joke would cheer her. "I was thinking the other night of how easy it is to smile around you," he said. "You tickle my funny bone." Amusement bubbled in her throat, music to his ears. She released a contented sigh and nuzzled the crook of his neck.

Peaceful stillness ensued as the minutes passed. Though the breeze was chill, goosebumps forming on his pale skin, her affection kept his heart warm. His fingertips rubbed circles into her lower back, and she offered a pleasured hum. Across the way, footsteps pounded. He glanced to see a kid darting up the street, plastic pumpkin pail in tow. The boy's scream was filled with boundless energy: "Happy Halloween, Gotham!"

Snorting, Y/N took Arthur's hand and led him inside. The cheap tail she wore bounced with every exaggerated swivel of her hips. "I've behaved all evening, which your werewolf comment made extraordinarily difficult." She looped her arms around him and flashed a come-hither stare. "May I have a goodie?"

The scrape of her nails on his scalp coiled a knot in his abdomen. "Aren't you supposed to say 'trick-or-treat?'" he asked huskily.

"Your pussycat needs a petting or two." She closed the bedroom door behind them. "Maybe even a mauling."

His brows shot up on a hitched giggle. Then he palmed her hip while she started in on his buttons. Before she got too far, he traced a whisker with the pad of his thumb. Let their foreheads meet and pecked her eyelids. "Only if you give me something good to eat." He pressed into her, his enjoyment relentless, not waiting for her reply before devouring her mouth.

~~~~~

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