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astudyincontrasts · 2 years

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Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie

Viktor x Fem!OC Reader - Western AU (NSFW)

Just a little gift fic for the kind and lovely @designfailure56 and their sweet, inspiring hee-haw Viktor art, and all their beautiful Arcane art. Thank you for blessing this fandom by being a part of it and sharing your wonderful talents and huge heart with us all.

Synopsis: Western AU set on a ranch in the 1800′s, just a romantic, slightly angsty, sometimes steamy little drabble I probably should have cut into three or four chapters. A young widow struggles to run a ranch in the midwest with the help of one skrunkly, adorable man we all love. No Y/N.

TW: mentions of death, mentions of sibling death and spouse death, angst, longing, possible allusions to non or dub con, minor bride typical for time period, domestic violence, off screen animal death, sex, oral sex, slight somnophilia.

“Viktor?!”

The heat of the day was sweltering, shimmers of it rising off the baked earth that wasn’t covered in the verge and scrubgrass of the rolling, open land. Summers out here were nothing like those back in the country you knew in your youth. No temperate, easy climate here. Winters were harsh and cold, dumping piles of snow across the land from the storms that came off the mountains, and summers were breathlessly hot.

It wasn’t the verdant green of your island motherland, but the prairies had a beauty of their own. It was just difficult to see it sometimes, when the sweat rolled stinging into your eyes and even your lightest cotton shift clung to your damp skin; prickly and cloying and trapping the heat in as it rose up under your feet from the baked earth.

But this was home, and it was your own.

Your parents, tired of no prospects and facing down starvation under the thumb of imperial rule, had packed you and all your siblings up and set sail for America, for hope and something new, only to be met with as much if not more derisive bigotry than they’d left behind. But at least here there were jobs, there was work, and money to be made for those willing to work themselves to the bone. Your father had joined the railroad teams, and your mother followed with all the kids in tow, moving town to town and work camp to work camp to help stitch this new land together with sutures of iron track and wood ties.

You were the eldest now, after your brother died of an illness borne in the contaminated drinking water in the crossing. And being a girl, it meant your hands were supposed to help raise and care for the other little ones, until you were old enough to be unloaded.

You supposed your parents had meant well by it; thought they had worked out the perfect way to offer you security and prosperity, things they never had. Still, you’d barely been 17 when they agreed to betroth you to the old man.

He owned a vast, sprawling tract of the prairie your father’s team was currently building the railway through, a parcel he’d snatched up back in his own youth during the land grabs. He used to love to tell that story over and over again, how they’d line up back in town and then when the gunshot rang out would ride or run like devils to snatch the stake or stakes driven into parcels of land. Him and his brothers had got the biggest stake claims all adjoining and now that he was the only one left alive and they’d had no kin, he had one of the largest tracts of land outside of the nearest town.

The town where he’d spotted you while you lived there with your family as the railroad work was done. Where he decided a pretty young thing with freckles across her nose was just the remedy for an old man’s lonesomeness in his big home.

He dowered you well, and you did your duty as you always had. Went and married him at the little steeple church in a borrowed, scratchy lace gown. Your family made richer for the loss of you.

They still wrote, from time to time, or at least your mother did. She was the only one of your parents with enough education to make letters and at least she’d taught you to read and write as well. But the mail out here came rarely, and you had no way of knowing if the letters you sent back ever reached them or if they had moved on to a new town or camp, well aware the very last you’d ever see them was when the railroad team packed up to move out to the next stop.

The old man hadn’t been unkind. He was gruff and quiet and set in his ways, but he never beat you or hurt you and he gave you a good home. He died only three years after you were married, unexpectedly. Took fever from a slight injury and went fast. Terrifyingly fast. It felt unkind to say you were grateful not to have to share his bed anymore, even if it was true… but it also thrust you into the unexpected position of land-rich widow, sole heir of the ranch and home and all the land.

Your late husband had been a frugal man, and left you a tidy sum. You could have sold the property and moved on, found a life of your own elsewhere, but you liked it here. It was wild and free and beautiful. And in the sweltering summer sun with not a single forgiving cloud in the sky, it was hot.

Many of the ranch hands had their doubts about the young immigrant widow inheriting the old man’s business. And you still had your accent from your home country, that pretty little lilt that gave you away every time, and inspired no end of sneering or snide comments. You were used to the precious little respect paid a woman, but you couldn’t understand why other native English speakers should hate people from your island so much, should make such terrible jokes and be so belittling. And weren’t you all immigrants here?

Most of the help had left the week after the old man was buried, believing you would sell the ranch or else run it into the ground. A few stuck around. Viktor had been one of them. He was young, just a little older than you, and had also been born elsewhere, a country with a language you didn’t know that gave him the most lovely soft accent. And when he got frustrated and cursed in his native tongue it never failed to make you laugh, though you tried to hide it.

He stayed, and you were grateful. He was gentle, quiet, good with the animals and so terribly smart. A keen intelligence that took the place of the physical prowess most ranch hands had to offer, because there was certain hard labor he could not do with the squeaking metallic brace that ran up the lean length of his bad leg.

It stunted his gait, and when he took it off or got tired he needed the support of a cane, but he could ride just fine, and never shirked in his work. Found smarter, better ways to do things.

You liked him very much.

He’d helped you, when you decided the cattle were too much trouble and too much of a risk for you to keep. Helped you sell them all off at a tidy profit and then purchase sheep instead. Easier to graze on the land, less work. Far nicer to keep to sell their wool and the lambs each spring, and less of a target for the cattle poachers.

Viktor was a natural with the animals. Gentle and quiet, they seemed naturally drawn to him. You’d gifted him your late husband’s appaloosa gelding when you saw how the horse practically followed him around like a puppy. How it nudged at his back or tried to steal his hat if he did not pay it enough attention with absent gentle petting. He tried to refuse but you wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d stayed when others left, he was kind when others felt callous, and he listened. The ranch flourished under you both. And you had freedom.

He made you feel like… you. Like your own you. Not someone’s daughter or someone’s sister or someone’s wife or someone’s widow. Just you, yourself.

He called you Miss where the others called you Ma’am. And never referred to you as the Widow Walker, which you heard in town more often than you’d like to and made you feel like an old hag at 22.

He’d smile and it lit the world up a little more. He’d watch you as you spoke with him, with those soft amber eyes under the heavy dark of his brows and you felt seen. A little too seen, sometimes, could feel a soft blush creep up under the freckles across your cheeks if his attention stayed on you too long, and hoped your perpetual slight sunburn was enough to hide the way he turned your skin pink.

It wasn’t difficult to admit to yourself that you wanted him, just difficult to admit to wanting anything at all for yourself. And you’d turned down multiple marriage proposals from men in town or the surrounding ranches, men looking at you as a ways to a means, a conduit to getting their hands on your land and money. Denied your hand to good prospects in your quiet longing to never be someone’s something again.

How could you then turn around and want instead to touch and be touched by a young man with no money, prospects, land or even a horse to his name until you’d gifted him one? It felt impractical, foolish and silly. Felt irresponsible and just a little selfish in a way that ignited all the quiet guilt both the church and your parents had always told you you ought to feel at wanting anything for yourself.

But god, you did. You did want him for yourself. A little more with each passing month since your husband died, and now two years in, it felt like a little more with every passing day.

There was not a ton of work to be done, outside of the usual everyday business of running the house and farm which was sufficient enough to fill a day, in the dead heat of late summer. And most heavy jobs were confined to the early morning or early evening hours when it was still cooler out or the worst of the sun had faded. Many of the ranch hands were seasonal, only showing up when it was time to cull or shear, or harvest or any number of the big jobs. Only a few lived out on the ranch itself at the distant outbuilding where they could oversee the flocks and rotate pasture easily.

Viktor, as your right hand, stayed closer. You’d given him the foreman’s rooms, just off the big house. An adjoining modest cluster of private rooms befitting the position of the person who helped run everything. He’d tried to turn that down too, but you’d been at such a loose end after the original foreman quit not one day after your husband had been lowered into the ground. And Viktor had stepped right in without needing to be asked or told, picked up the slack and kept you afloat when the rest of the world felt like rocks in your pockets, trying to sink you.

He refused to come into the big house and infringe on your domestic kingdom, though the large place was so quiet and felt so empty most of the time, you wished he would. Only the kitchen, for breakfast or dinner when offered, and it was always offered. Wouldn’t join you at the dining room table, too formal and fine a thing you supposed, for him. But would happily sit at the little rough hewn kitchen table and have his coffee and eggs with you. He’d come in at the end of the day and pull a colander full of green beans into his lap and start shucking the peas out of them without you having to ask, chatting away about the day and the plans for tomorrow.

And after dinner he’d go back to his rooms and you’d be left in the big house all to yourself. To sit before the fireplace or sink into a hot bath if you had the energy to boil and haul that much water, or to lay alone in the big bed and listen to the crickets outside, praying for a cool breeze to lift the heat and stop you sweating through your nightgown.

Left to think about him.

About elegantly long fingered hands with rough calluses and how gentle they seemed. About dark lashes over amber golden eyes and the shape of his mouth when he smiled. How all his smiles seemed either shy or sly and nothing in between. About the soft mess of his hair, the lean strength of bare forearms, the look of fierce concentration that he could get that made all the lovely angles of his face and jaw look like a work of art.

About what his skin might smell like when clean or taste like when sweated.

About how he’d feel between your legs or under your hands.

About him being tender. Or him being rough.

Thought about him enough that some days it was impossible to look him in the face without blushing hotly, so sure he could read your mind and knew all the horrible things that went on up there. Could hear you moan his name softly in your sleep at night when all the world was quiet save for the crickets and hoot owls and the distant howl of wolves out in the far foothills.

But if he could, he never let on. Treated you with the same respectable distance and friendly coolness he had when the old man had been alive. It made you certain he did not share your longing in the least, and in a way you were quietly grateful for it. Made keeping your shameful crush all the easier, and keeping those safe boundaries in place simple.

“Viktor?!”

He’d been out in the heat of the day, expanding the chicken coop. You’d been busy baking the week’s bread, and though the wood oven you were using was outside in the summer kitchen, it had no shade; designed and built by some man who would never have to make use of it himself, of course. And you were feeling half baked to a toasted golden brown yourself by the time the second round of loaves were in the oven.

You’d pulled some fresh, cold water from the pump and juiced four of the precious lemons from the crate you’d splurged on at market last week. Grated sugar into it from the hard pressed little paper wrapped cone you kept, and mixed it all until it was a deliciously cold, tart-sweet lemonade sweating in the pretty crockery pitcher.

You’d grabbed two glasses and made your way out toward the barn, calling his name.

Sat by the coop, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose and running rivulets down the dust on his cheeks, he looked up from where he was securing the wire fencing to fine posts to make a larger, longer run for the chicken flock.

His smile sweeter than the sugar you’d licked from your fingers a minute ago.

“I thought you’d like a drink and a rest?” You held the glasses aloft in offering.

“Oh, yes. Thank you Miss.” He rose, stiffly, always cognizant of that bad leg, and nodded toward the open breezeway doors of the hayloft and the shade within. You followed in his stilted footsteps.

It was slightly cooler within, and the heat made the sweet scent of the hay all the stronger. He eagerly accepted the glass you gave him and held it while you poured. Nearly gulped down the first one, exhaling a soft gasp of breath as he drained the glass that had you laugh a little as you poured him a second and sipped at your own.

“That is wonderful, thank you. This is why you wanted that bitter fruit?” He asked, savoring the second glass instead of chugging it down. Lemons were not a terribly common thing found out here, but you recalled little sweet cakes iced with them and served with tea from your youth and had bought the whole crate of them, much to Viktor’s dubious surprise. “This is not bitter at all. This is delicious.”

Skeptical of your purchase, he’d grabbed one of the lemons on the cart ride home and before you could stop him had sliced it like an orange and taken a bite. His puckered reaction and wide eyed stare at you had been priceless, nearly had you pitch off the cart bench in a fit of teary-eyed laughter that had him bashfully sullen the rest of the ride home, pride and tastebuds wounded. Grumbling occasionally under his breath in his native language in a way that you were sure was questioning your sanity. It only served to make you fight not to giggle more.

You grinned at him over the rim of your glass, feeling quite superior to have finally proved your point that you weren’t mad for spending so much on such silly bitter fruit, and plucked at the neckline of your dress. Thin cotton clung to skin sticky with sweat. You watched his gaze fall to it and then skim away quickly, glancing toward one of the hefty hay bales.

“Would you like to sit? You look overheated.” Kind words from someone far more sunstroked than yourself. You nodded, but the prospect of the blades of hay poking itchy through the thin cotton of your dress was not a pleasant one.

“Help me with my apron?”

You turned, and setting the pitcher down on another hay bale, scooped your hair up off your neck and piled it high, holding it atop your head as you stood facing away.

His fingers found the bow fixing it at your lower back first. Tugged slow until it gave, and then the one up at the nape of your neck. Fingertips a light graze as he pulled it open. You pinned the apron to your front with the hand still holding your glass and would have dropped your hair and turned back around, until you felt the soft skim of his fingertips gently tugging sweated fabric of the collar of your dress away from hot skin, and you froze. Heart climbing up into your throat to lodge like a comfortable beating stone as he inhaled, and softly, softly blew a cool little breeze across the back of your neck, sending every fine hair of your entire body lifting in a tickling, electric thrill.

Your own breath escaped past that pounding heart in your throat as a near silent little shuddering sigh.

He had to have heard it, but he did it again. Soft little blown breeze gently tickling behind one ear, along the path of your pulse, against the fine baby hairline and down the nape of your neck. You couldn’t keep eyes open, gaze shuttering as every ounce of focus bent upon the soft breath he blew against sweat-slick skin. You heard him shift slightly behind you and could only think of dropping the apron, of his hand coming round to pull open the string stays of your dress at the low front neckline, to peel damp cotton from skin and bare the shape of breasts, to graze fingers light as his breath over the aching stiffness he’d made of nipples with those little breezes.

Would he pinch? Tug? Tease little touches until you were begging for his mouth instead? You were shivering, terrified it was visible.

Instead he must have switched hands that held the glass of lemonade, and used the ones cooled by the drink to gently trace down the skin of your neck in slow strokes, dragging the cool touch out so that skin sang for him.

You spun to face him, dropping hair, unable to take the tease a second longer, certain he’d kiss you, fit to die with the need to kiss him. Only to find him smiling amicably at you, like he was the sole man on earth devoid of desire or want, and all he’d done was offer you a kind respite from the heat as you had done for him. Meanwhile all your hungry attention was fixed on the shape of his mouth, your own parted embarrassingly obviously, your breath coming in shallow little fits.

He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at your nose, then up over your forehead and one cheek. You watching in slow dawning horror at the white smudges of flour that came away on the dark blue cloth.

You’d wandered out to him straight from baking, covered in flour, looking like a silly mess. Like some kind of white-painted circus clown. Embarrassment turned your stomach over in a hard knot.

“Keep the pitcher. I’ll make more.” It all came out as one continuous word as you struggled to pull your loose apron into your free hand and beat a hasty retreat that was as close to running as the attempted nonchalance of absolutely full speed hurried walking away could manage, leaving him there with that handkerchief still hovering midair.

Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.

Back in the house, in the kitchen, you pitched up against the doorframe and clunked your head hard against the wood of it, repeatedly. So stupid. He probably thought you were a simple minded little fool, and who could blame him? Shivering like that, making those sighs, staring at his mouth like you wanted to be devoured and all the while painted white in erratic smudges of flour.

God, but his touch lingered on your skin though. Neck still a soft riot of cool fire where he’d grazed it.

What if he had kissed you? What if he’d let you push him back onto one of those hay bales and pull your skirts up to your hips, let you climb onto his lap. His hands gripping your waist as you rode him slowly, watching his sharp chin lift and back arch as you showed him just how well you could ride astride and not foolish side-saddle. The soft gold of eyes fixed on you as you came undone atop him, as you bounced on the delicious feel of him inside you.

Your hand had strayed down, pressed over your sex between your thighs as you shuddered, tried to compose yourself and failed, just leaning there, living in that daydream a long moment, unwilling to face the embarrassment that waited just outside the door to remind you what a silly idiot you’d been - were being.

You’d nearly dropped the glass you were holding before you finally came around again. And set to wearing yourself out with chores to keep from thinking of any of it again. You’d never had thoughts like this before, about anyone, and the intensity of them was a little frightening.

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He brought the pitcher back with him in the evening when he returned to share dinner, and thankfully did not speak of what had happened, or rather didn’t happen in the barn. Didn’t tease you or make light of it. Just complimented your dinner and shared the meal in relative silence.

Afterward, after the dishes were done and he’d scrubbed himself up in the sink as well, washing dust and dirt from face, neck, forearms and hands, you thought he’d retire to his rooms. Instead he headed off to them only to return with one of the books he’d borrowed from your late husband’s meager library. Viktor loved to read and he’d regularly borrowed a single book at a time from the old man while he was alive, a tradition you took pleasure in keeping up with him.

“May I choose another?” He offered his finished one back and you accepted it with a nod, turning to let him follow you into the big house and to the great room. You fitted the book back in its empty slot in the shelf and watched him browse. He had to have read nearly all of them by now, it was not a large collection and he was voracious in his reading. It pleased you to no end to watch him struggle to settle on a new title before you crossed to the little writing desk nearby and turned the brass key to lift its lid. Took a small paper-wrapped parcel from it and held it out, clearing your throat softly.

Golden gaze ticked from the bookshelf to you and dark brows lifted in surprise, his hand still gripping his chin thoughtfully now frozen there as he stared at the little parcel you held out.

“Something new?” You offered, the smile spreading on your face almost sly in its pleasure.

Lemons weren’t the only different thing you’d bought at market last week.

Viktor’s attention ticked from the package to your face and back again before he managed to unstick himself from the spot and walk over to accept the gift. He arched a dark brow at you questioningly as he pulled open the twine and unwrapped the paper. The book that lay within was gorgeous, leather a deep oxblood red and etched in gold gilt at its spine and front cover, the title gorgeously stylized.

Viktor sucked a breath of delight and turned the book over and over again in his hands.

“Frankenstein?”

“It's a novel about science and galvanization - or something like that. Whatever that means. The bookseller highly recommended it. I thought you might like something new. Perhaps to start your own library?” You offered shyly, taking the plain brown paper wrapping and twine from him so that he might enjoy the book unfettered.

As hungrily as he looked down at the book, the expression he turned up to you was more agonized than pleased.

“You should not have done this. You’re too generous as it is. This is… this is a luxury. I don’t -”

You stopped him there, your pleasure at being able to gift him something he liked so well being soured by his embarrassed attempt at refusal. Stepping forward and fighting against hesitation, you placed a hand gently on his bare wrist. Skin warm under your fingers, contact shooting a breathlessly wonderful static tingle straight up your arm.

“I’ll thank you however I please. You do much around here, and you’ve always helped me. If I want to make you a gift of something as simple as a book, that’s my right.”

He gazed down at you in quiet awe and nodded slowly.

“Do you like it?”

“Do I… Yes, very much.” He seemed to remember his manners the next moment, “Thank you.”

You smiled up at him and with no small effort managed to lift your touch off his wrist.

“You’re welcome, then.” You watched him go back to examining the fine cover of the book and thumb gently through its new, stiff pages. “Would you… that is, do you think you might read it to me a bit? Out on the porch?”

The night was nice enough, the temperature dropping from the heat of the day. And while you could read and write it was not as well as Viktor could. You’d tried some of the books he’d borrowed and returned only to stumble over more than half the words and struggle so hard it made you tired.

“Of course.” Again that lift of heavy brows in slight surprise at your request, but he acquiesced readily enough it left no room for you to feel guilty that you’d somehow imposed on his free time. “If you like.”

“I’ll meet you out there.” Another sweet offering of a little smile for him, one he seemed to puzzle over as he left the room.

Up the stairs you went to clean the dirt of the day off yourself at the wrought iron stand in your bedroom that held pitcher and ewer. Careful to check your reflection in the little glass mounted above it. No flour or smudges or unnoticed marks to make you look a fool. You shed the damp dress and left it to hang and air out by one of the open windows, changed out of underthings and pulled on the soft, thin white muslin of a nightdress that bared your arms. You brushed out your hair and braided it to one side for sleeping, grabbed the thin comfort of a finely crocheted shawl your mother had gifted you for your wedding and shrugged it on for modesty as you padded back downstairs in bare feet.

Outside, Viktor had settled into one of the rocking chairs on the large porch that wrapped three quarters of the house. He’d lit a little hurricane lamp to read by and sat thumbing through his new novel, waiting on you patiently.

You felt a little pang to see he’d chosen one of the rockers instead of the bench you might have shared together, and fought against the impulse to imagine climbing right into his lap instead of taking your own seat, and settling against his chest in a warm cuddle. The way your younger siblings used to clamber into your lap when you’d read them bedtime stories from the tatty old book of fairytales your mother had taught all of you to read from.

Viktor glanced up as you approached, and you could watch the sudden, unguarded look of shock pass over his features to see you in your nightthings. It gave you a momentary pause, to think perhaps you should have been more modest, waited to get ready for bed until after he was done reading, but the day’s heat still lingered a bit and it felt far more comfortable in a clean shift the air could move through. You simply gathered the thin crochet lace of the shawl a bit more around yourself and sank into the nearest rocking chair with a smile you hoped was more charming than apologetically embarrassed.

Viktor’s mouth parted as he watched you settle, like he was struggling with the impulse of observation or conversation, before he finally gave it up as lost and instead just opened the book and began without preamble.

“Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus.

A Letter to Mrs. Saville, England;

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight… ”

It was lovely, listening to him read. His voice gentle, warmly accented in a way that made the words feel fresh and soft. He never stumbled over the words like you might have done, or struggled with the larger ones. His pace picked up as he reached exciting portions, losing himself and his usual quiet reserve in the thrill of the story, letting that mask slip to reveal a bit of passion underneath.

The bookseller had been right, it was a good book, and you were glad you’d bought it, the tale nearly as enrapturing as the young man reading it to you. Still, the day had been a long one and the heat took much out of you both. It was all too soon you were yawning, struggling to keep eyes open but unwilling to ask Viktor to stop so that you might go to bed. Too greedy for his company and to keep listening to his voice. Small mercy he seemed to be able to tear himself away from the story enough to notice you fading out and closed the book gently.

“You should sleep.” As if he himself didn’t look utterly exhausted as well, dark shadows under luminous eyes and lids heavy even as he obviously craved more of the book held tenderly in his hands. You nodded, stifling yet another jaw-cracking yawn and rose, him following, pausing to blow out the lantern and follow you through the door.

He caught you inside, after he’d shut the door and turned the lock, your foot on the first of the stairs. The warm grasp of his hand on your bare upper arm where the shawl had slipped stopped you in your tracks, had you glance up questioningly even as you wanted to sink all focus into the feel of his skin on yours, the sweeping lift of goosebumps that ran straight down from elbow to wrist.

He was staring at the floor, at your bare feet and his own boots. Like he couldn’t bring himself to look you in the eyes for the very first time since you’d known him. His thumb pressed to the soft of your bicep, and slowly swept a little back and forth arc, and suddenly you understood very well why all the animals seemed to cave and gentle under his hands.

“Thank you again, Miss.”

Before you could speak or move or even finish forming a rational thought he leaned forward, brushed a peck of a kiss to the soft apple of your cheek. And your brain became nothing but the static soft sound of rain, entirely blank, an empty void where all that existed was the warm little press of his mouth, the radiant heat of his nearness as he lingered close enough for his nose to brush your cheekbone.

“Good night.”

And then he was gone. Touch was gone, mouth gone, the back of him retreating toward the kitchen and his adjoining rooms. Leaving you stood there blinking, swaying slightly as you clung to the banister with the white knuckle grip of one hand. Struggling to recall how air worked and lungs used it and what a heartbeat was for, if not to deafen you as it hammered away inside the empty hollow where your brain once lived.

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Things settled for the next few days, though that following morning he had just taken his coffee and headed out to chores without sitting down to breakfast across from you or while you puttered about the kitchen. You supposed it made you feel grateful, not to be subject to an awkward silence or the unspoken tension of what had happened the night before. As exhausted as you’d been, he’d robbed you of a good night's sleep with that kiss and this morning you were struggling through the fog of starting the day more bone-tired than you’d ended the previous one. Not a great space for keeping your head on straight and staying coolly collected.

You stuck to the work you could do in and around the house, gave you both some space. Decided it was a fair day to tackle the laundry and spent hours filling the massive tubs outside, heating water, scrubbing and wringing and rinsing and wringing until your forearms ached and your wrists burned and fingers trembled weakly as you pinned everything to the lines stretched between the sapling trees in the sun of the side yard.

Glad that he’d been busy down at the barn with the coop and caring for the hogs so that you could sneak shoving your face into one of his worn shirts before you washed it, inhaling the scent of him, spice sweat and sharp musk, fresh air and sunshine and him .

So tired after you were done with the washing that you went inside and sprawled out on the couch in the great room, windows flung open, begging for a cool breeze, the scent of the cold, unused fireplace filling the space with the ghost of woodsmoke from autumn and winter fires gone by. A little nap in the quiet space couldn’t hurt. So tired your eyes were closed before your head even hit the stiff, overstuffed and tufted cushion.

Your husband slapped you awake. You jolted upright, startled. He’d never raised a hand to you before. The old man stood glowering over you, fists clenched like he was ready to beat you senseless. Shouting. Something about betrayal, about being a filthy hussy, an embarrassment, a whore. The room behind him was crowded, you noticed, to your horror. Your parents, the preacher, your siblings, the ranch hands, half the town it seemed. All watching in disgust at you. The old man had you by the shoulders, was shaking you until your teeth rattled, heaping abuse upon you as the others shouted agreement.

You woke with a start, bolt upright, a scream choked in your throat and tears wet on your cheeks. The room empty. No one, nothing, not even the wisp of a phantom dissipating into the stagnant afternoon heat. The door to the kitchen banged open and closed.

“Miss? I brought the eggs up.”

Viktor. Oh no. Scrambling up off the couch you panicked. Not enough time to make it to the stairs and up them, nowhere in the open great room to hide. Eyes landed on the little door to the understair cupboard and you flew to it, wrenched it open and ducked inside, shutting it behind you and clinging with all your weight to the little knob within.

“Miss?” Viktor’s voice in the room just outside a second later.

You balled up your apron and shoved it into your mouth, willing the choking sobs left from the dream to subside, struggling mightily to regain calm or at least not cry audibly. One ragged breath, two, before you trusted your voice.

“...Yes?” It still cracked slightly, and you winced.

“What are you -” Puzzled, just outside the little door, you felt him give the knob a tug only to find it immovable with all your weight thrown behind it. A long moment’s pause and you could practically hear him trying to figure out just how to ask what the living hells you were doing in a cramped dark cupboard with the door shut. Trying to figure out if you’d gone mad and how, if you had, he ought to proceed.

“I brought the eggs up. And a pail of milk. I’ll… I’ll leave them in the kitchen?”

“Yes ok. Thank you.” You managed to get out, and strained to hear the footfalls of his boots as he at last turned hesitantly away and made his way back to the kitchen. Unwilling, unable to relax until the kitchen door banged again on his way out.

Releasing the doorknob, you collapsed on the cramped floor of the cupboard, pushed your whole face into your apron and screamed soundlessly.

You could not stop your hands shaking the rest of the day. And it was your turn to not be able to look him in the face when he joined you for dinner in the evening, picking at your plate only to finish early and head up to bed with a mumbled good night before he’d even finished his meal. Convinced your face was still splotchy and eyes still puffy from the tears earlier. The dream confused you, sickened you and set you on edge.

How could something that felt so good bring on so much guilt?

But that’s how you were brought up, wasn’t it? Don’t want, don’t need, don’t ask for anything. How dare you have desires, you who were made to be daughter, wife, mother, worker, caregiver.

The following two days were better, more normal, full of so much work that there could be no distractions, no lingering or fantasizing or dreaming. From sunup to sundown nothing but the daily toil, falling bonelessly into bed each night exhausted into a blissfully dreamless slumber.

But the heat had increased each day until by the third it was positively baking.

Too hot to move, to think. Even the animals refused to come out of the shade. All you could do was offer cool water, give them their feed and then hike it back to the house to sit on the porch and fan yourself as sweat rolled down and stung your eyes. Viktor sat sprawled uncomfortably in one of the rocking chairs, fanning himself with the broad brim of his hat, unable to even open his new beloved book for fear sweat-damp fingers would smudge and ruin delicate ink and pages.

“Enough of this.”

You turned to blink at him. It was possibly the most declaratory statement you’d ever heard out of him. Heat had a way of raising tempers, not that he sounded mad, just agitated and exhausted with sweltering away into dust.

“There is a watering hole by the stream. I am going swimming, do you wish to come?” He rose, slipped his hat on and stepped off the porch, waiting for an answer before he headed to the barn to get the appaloosa saddled.

Swimming, god yes. The stream that cut through your lands, which by rights was more like a small river in places, came down from the snowpack high in the mountains. Always cold, always fresh and clear. You nodded absolutely elated agreement and jumped up, hurried into the house as he made his way for the barn.

Grabbing a basket, you packed sandwiches, fruit, two cold bottles of beer left in the root cellar from the fall brewing, and then ran upstairs to pull on the best approximation to a swimming costume you owned; a pair of muslin bloomers that came to just above your knees and a thin muslin underbodice, a sleeveless shirt made to go under the frippery of a corset, an item of clothing you’d stopped wearing except on trips to town when you had to look a proper lady. It laced with fine thin ribbon in the front, gathered at the bosom and fitted neatly from ribs to waist, matched perfectly to the white thin fabric of the bloomers, both cool and soft against skin as you pulled your dress back on, shoved two towels and a blanket for sitting on into the top of the basket and headed out the door.

Viktor waited by the porch on the appaloosa, the horse blinking unhappily in the searing midday sun, its tail flicking flies from its flanks restlessly. He hadn’t saddled it, just tossed on a bridle and lead and sat waiting bareback. He rode up to the stairs, offered you a hand and helped pull you on behind himself. Silly side-saddle of course. You balanced as best you could, kept the basket clutched tight in your lap and one arm snaked round his chest.

He kept the pace sedate, probably as much for the horse’s sake as for you own, and the appaloosa, surely part quarter horse mingled with the wild ponies of the plains, had a sufficiently broad backside and rump that the ride, whilst swaying, was comfortable enough.

Out into the open fields, past some of the older grazing herd of sheep kept close to the property and not further out in the grasslands with the ranch hands, he picked a meandering path toward the river and its watering hole, a half hour’s ride at this slow saunter. Were it not for the hot sun beating down, blinding you, turning the very surface of skin to sizzling pink, you might have enjoyed the distracting nearness of him, of your side pressed to his back and arm round him, your hand splayed on his chest. Instead the heat made every point of contact a sweaty, sticky nightmare. Increased heat to unbearable levels so that by the time you drew up to the watering hole and its shady bower of leafy trees you felt like you could drink the entire stream and still not regain all the water you’d lost on the ride over.

Viktor swung his good leg over before himself and slid down off the horse to reach up and take the basket from you, then offered you a hand as you slid off yourself. You took the basket back and Viktor had just about enough time to relieve the appaloosa of its bridle, leaving just the halter and lead rope looped round its neck, before the horse had left you both to go drink deeply from the water. Once sated, it waded to the other side of the stream and lowered itself unceremoniously onto its side to roll in the lush, tall grass that grew in the shade.

You found a rock by one of the trees and left the basket in the shade there to sit down and fuss with the button hook closures of your boots, prizing them open carefully before kicking feet free joyfully. Viktor had settled a little distance away and was undoing his brace. You both struggled not to watch the other undress, no cover or shrubs to duck behind in order to preserve modesty. Thankfully all you had to do was lift your dress off and be done with it, left in your pretty, frilly white underthings and bare feet, you bent to gather your hair and pin it up in a messy little twist, then picked your way toward the little waterfall that tumbled down into the basin of the watering hole and took a seat on the slippery rocks to dangle your feet into the cool waters.

The hole was large enough to almost qualify as a small pond, shallow at its edges and deep in the center and near the waterfall. The banks were soft, sandy loam scattered with pebbles rounded by their trip down the stream, marks of animal prints here and there told of the sheep and deer and cattle and coyotes come to slake their thirst.

Viktor pulled off boots, and you struggled not to be too terribly noticeable about how you watched him undo his shirt buttons, about how you memorized the hunch of broad shoulders as he focused on the lower ones and worked upward, straightened and shrugged out of it and then pulled loose his belt. Eyes darted down hard into the pools of water below you as he remembered his audience and glanced up before turning his back to open his pants and shuffle out of them. Left you struggling not to laugh at the hop he did on one leg as he got caught on removing the other.

He heard you though, and shot a heatless glare over one shoulder that had you jerk eyes up to the sky in feigned innocence. Clearly too preoccupied with watching the cloudless sky to have possibly been laughing at his undressing antics.

Free at last of his pants and left only in his drawers he hobbled carefully to the waters’ edge and gradually minced his way into the chill pool. Hands up by his shoulders, arms bent outward like folded wings, teeth bared as he bit by agonizing bit inched into the cool depths in the most hilariously fastidious manner you’d ever witnessed. It had you rolling, snickering unabashedly at his suffering as he tried to acclimate to the cold water. And at last when you couldn’t take it any more you scooped one dangling foot into the pool and kicked an enormous, soaking splash at him that left him frozen in place, drenched and dripping and glaring balefully off into the distance before he rounded on you with mock-irritation.

“Aya!” He shook dripping hands like a cat who’d gotten its paws wet, only earning him another heavy splash from you that left him more drenched. He glowered, and without another word dove deep into the pond, leaving nothing but a ripple behind in the dark waters.

You waited, watched. Time stretched, cicadas buzzing, the birds singing overhead and the appaloosa noisily munching lush grass while it lay lazily on the bank.

The hand from the depths closed on your ankle with a yank and you toppled into the pool of water with a delighted shriek.

Laughing hard as you surfaced, you splashed furiously at the water-blurred shape of him, only to feel him grab hold of your wrist and drag you under, a dunking in retaliation. Once more a gasp of laughter as you broke surface again, treading water messily, feeling a foot kick his shin and his hands close on your waist as you blindly found purchase with your hands on his bare shoulders.

The world stilled, laughter dying, trailing from a quiet giggle to nothingness as you floated against him, nose to nose. Watched a bead of water run down over the freckle of a beauty mark under his one eye and reached with your thumb to dab it away in a light stroke. Felt the fine long fingers of his hands slide to span your ribs as the two of you just stared at the other, watching water roll off skin and drip from noses and chins, watched how it made a gloss of lips and clumped dark eyelashes.

Your legs rose automatically and hooked round his lean hips to keep afloat, keep from kicking him again. His skin warm against your own in the cool water. You could feel his hands tighten and release on your sides, and by some small mercy kept from shivering as his thumbs grazed the outer curve of breasts over soaked fabric, a touch that had you winding arms slow around his shoulders.

Kiss me, please kiss me.

The pleading played refrain over and over again in your brain as you watched his gaze fall toward your mouth, only to feel him lift a hand to reach up and tug loose your hair pin, letting the wet of your hair down, letting it fan out in the water over your shoulders as you bobbed against him, tightened the grip of your thighs ever so slightly. Fully incapable this time of repressing that soft shiver at the little friction and pressure of being pressed against him, sex bare save for that thin, wet cotton between you.

Kiss me, please.

Your hand cradled his face, shaped to the hollow of cheek, and once more you wiped away a little shivering drop of water, this one clinging to the underside of his lower lip. You could have licked it away, if only he’d just tilt his face forward a little bit, part his mouth and take yours.

His gaze ticked up to catch your own again and you couldn’t stand it one more second, couldn’t keep staring into his face and not do something foolish. Instead, you wrapped arms all the tighter around his shoulders and leaned your head past his in an embrace. Held the warmth of him close in the cold water as you laid your cheek against his damp hair.

You felt his ribcage expand and contract in the huff of a silent sigh as he wrapped arms around you as well, the slow stroke of his hands along your back a soothing caress nearly as good as having tasted his mouth would have felt. The point of his chin came to rest in the hollow between your neck and shoulder, and the pair of you floated. Suspended, silent, entwined.

It felt a little bit like heaven, a little like purgatory. So close.

Even from the safety of this you felt tempted. And after a while, rocked your head lightly against his, turned ever so slightly to nudge the shell of his ear with the tip of your nose. Felt him exhale again hard as his hands fell, scooped under your bottom and brought you hard and tight against him in a way that had you gasp a little breath.

That seemed to break him out of it and he disentangled slowly, mumbling something that sounded apologetic in his native tongue. You let him go, unwound your arms and swam away, under the hard pound of the cold waterfall to let it wash your hair back and drum away the feeling of his hands, his skin, his heart beating up against your own. Not that it did any good. They were branded on you now, and you’d feel them in your sleep, you knew it.

Back into the water you dove, paddling about as Viktor climbed to the shore, shook out the blanket and laid it down in the grass, setting the basket on it and stretching out as he dug in its depths to pull out an apple and take a bite. He was all long, lean lines. A whip thin shape even with the benefit of clothes. Clad only in dark drawers, he made a taut, tall slice of a figure. Skin pale save for face and throat, hands and forearms where the sun had kissed it more golden. The soft dark trail of hair from navel down into drawers was distracting, enticing, had you keep your attention fixed on the water before you as you swam about, reveling in the cool wash that sucked the heat right out of skin and bone.

“You swim like a fish.” He called from the shore, had you cast a smile in his direction and paddle toward him. Sandy loam squelched under your feet as you set them down and rose, walked out of the watering hole and toward him, watched something in his face flicker before he carefully schooled it to stillness and turned his focus on the apple in his hand as you took a towel and wrapped it around yourself to sink down beside him, the basket between you.

“Did you learn how to, where you came from?” He asked, taking another bite of the fruit before glancing toward you again.

“Mmhm. You?” You dabbed at your chin and face with the towel, knees drawn up to your chest and the dry cloth wrapped round you as the summer heat slowly sunk back into chilled skin.

“No, I learned here. I was quite young when we left the old country. I don’t remember much of it.”

“We lived in a city near the sea. It was always cold water and never very hot like it gets here, but when you are a child, all you want to do is play in the waves.” You could still taste the bitter salt spray, hear your siblings laughing and begging you to toss them in the water, as your elder brother had tossed you. Airborne in flight for a breathless second then a plunge into the pinching cold. Prizing mussels and cockles off the slippery rocks and taking them home in baskets for mother. Lips blue, teeth chattering. Sand in your hair for a week until bathtime next.

“Do you miss it? Your home?” He asked, watching you caught in the reverie of distant childhood.

You offered him a little smile and took a sandwich wrapped in brown paper from the basket. Pulled the two halves of it apart and held one out to him.

“No. This is my home now.”

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You had realized later what it was that had earned you that slightly wide-eyed look of his as you had walked up the bank. When you rose at last to finish drying off and put your dress back on you realized the white muslin cloth of your underthings had gone completely transparent in the water. Even slightly dried as they were now they still clung close and obvious to skin, translucent where they touched you. It had you pulling your dress on quickly and struggling to repress the heat of embarrassment that you’d paraded your practically naked self up out of the water toward him.

You gave up putting your boots back on, incapable of rebuttoning them without the button loop, and tossed them in the basket instead. Dressed and back astride the appaloosa, Viktor took the basket in one hand and offered you a hand up with the other.

This time when you climbed up you sat astride, bloomers and the lack of saddle keeping it from being uncomfortable, though your dress did bunch and ride up a bit. You took the basket back in one hand and looped the other arm around him as the horse set off for home.

The sun was sinking lower, the worst of the heat passed, and the water and shade had done the trick to suck the swelter out of you both, leaving behind only a warm sleepiness that always seemed to follow swimming. You settled against Viktor’s back and let your cheek rest between the broad span of his shoulderblades.

Against his chest your hand stretched wide, and you could feel that slow pound of his heart again in it. You felt him shift the grip of reins to one hand and then the trail of his fingers along the underside of your arm, a soft and stray drag until his palm pressed over your own, kept it tight to his chest. The pair of you swayed with the horse’s gait, moving a bit faster in its walk, eager to get home to its evening ration of grain.

Back home he helped you off the horse again, letting you slide to your feet behind him with a hand, and rode back to the stables to finish the evening chores and put the appaloosa away.

The heat of the day lingered inside the big house, and you left the basket in the kitchen to head upstairs, strip out of damp underthings and rinse off with a cloth dipped in the ewer of water. Redressed, and headed down to start dinner.

He joined you just as you were finishing setting the table, and the surprise of his hand on the small of your back stopped you in place. For a heart stopping moment you were flooded with the notion he might gently push you down onto the table top. Hitch your skirt up and slide those lovely calloused long fingers of his between your legs. That he might speak in that language you didn’t know, lavish you with quiet praise you couldn’t understand as he stroked tenderly through slick folds. That he might take you there, rattle the dishes off the table as he thrust into you, hand gripping your hip, the other pressed to your back, pinning you down as he fucked you into the table, its rough hewn edge cutting along the tops of thighs with each thrust, listening to you moan his name like a litany and only beg to have it harder.

Instead you felt his hand lift, and he caught up the spill of your nearly dry hair, twisted it gently and pinned it atop your head with the hairpin he’d pulled from it earlier. You’d forgotten all about the little trinket, forgot your hair was down like you were a child, drying in soft waves and curls. He pulled one of those curls free behind your ear, and for a moment the warmth of his hand rested tenderly across the nape of your bared neck.

Made you feel ashamed for what you’d just imagined, for the heavy weight in the pit of you and the hard throb between your legs.

Then his touch was gone and he was scrubbing up for dinner at the sink, leaving you to try to scrape yourself together and get the meal on the table. You had an appetite after the day, but you couldn’t do much more than pick at your food as you sat wondering in silence if there was something truly wrong with you. If you had some kind of brain fever, or something. Maybe… maybe it was just the heat, the lonesomeness of the open land, the big quiet house.

You glanced up and found Viktor watching you, saw the way his mouth curved in a shy half a smile, the pretty cupid bow shape of his upper lip made all the more lovely with the softness of that smile, the distracting little beauty mark just over its curled edge stealing all your focus.

“Should I read again tonight?” He asked lightly.

Another evening of listening to his voice? That soothing gentle timbre and soft lilt that tickled just as well as his errant touches did?

“Oh yes.” You offered him as sweet a smile as you could manage, feeling like a terrible, disgusting snake in the grass. He was kind, and lovely, and you were consumed with nothing but the most wicked thoughts for him. If he knew, he’d leave, and rightly so.

Once more you left him to finish the cleaning up after dinner, went upstairs to change. You wanted to brush your hair out and braid it, but it looked so pretty the way he’d pinned it up, you left it instead. Grabbed a shawl to cover your thin nightgown and padded downstairs in bare feet. You could see him through the windows, sitting out on the porch, the hurricane lamp already lit, glowing warmly in the darkness beside him. You hesitated in the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of the cherry wine, uncorked it, and chose two tumblers before heading outside.

You found him sitting on the bench settee instead of the rocker, and it would have given you pause had he not glanced up with another of those darling tilted smiles the second he heard your bare feet on the floorboards, and you had no choice but to come, sit down right beside him and smile in return.

He accepted the glass you offered, though with a bit of a puzzled look.

“You shouldn’t waste wine on me.” He protested as you poured, and you shook your head, totting out a glass for yourself as well before setting the bottle aside on the floor.

“I don’t like to drink alone, Viktor. And I have no dinner guests or parties to throw. Besides, cherry wine tastes best in summer.” You clinked your glass gently against his and took a long sip, watched him do the same and lift those heavy brows as the tart sweetness of it hit his tongue. He laughed softly with a little cough as he lowered the tilt of the glass, surprised by the thick sweet of it, but he still took another draught.

You settled in beside him, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh as he opened the book and found the place you’d last left off. In the far distance, over the mountains, lightning lit the sky in lazy, slow bursts of light behind deep purple clouds.

“When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery. ”

He read and read as the storm rolled in slowly over the plains, unhurried. His hand that held the glass of wine came to rest it upon your knee, and he stole swallows between paragraphs as you sipped yours slow. Had time to refill both your cups three times before the cool, rushing winds preceding the storm reached you both.

They blew in sudden gusts, cool off the mountains, but you were both warm sat together, and feeling deliciously moreso with bellies full of wine. You’d be feeling pleasantly heady if it weren’t for how the horror of the story was picking up. Grave robbing, crimes against man and nature, a man gone mad with the power of his own mind. You pulled the shawl tighter about yourself and huddled a little closer as a hard clap of thunder shook the porch under you both. It did not help that the man in the story was readying himself to reanimate the dead in a thunderstorm of his own. Your skin crawled with the notion, hazy slightly drunken thoughts creeping toward your long buried husband, climbing and clawing his way out of the grave, stitched together with a horrifying mess of other body parts.

Another blindingly brilliant streak of lightning kissed the plains and the deafening clap of thunder had you jump. Viktor laughed softly at your side but you wound a hand tight around his upper arm and held close. It was just a story, just a story and just a storm. You willed the hard hammer of your heart to stop its erratic, frantic rhythm but it refused to obey. Another clap of thunder and another reflexive little jump. You shoved your face into Viktor’s shoulder with a soft cry and he stopped reading.

“Miss? Are you… maybe we should stop for now. Get the windows shut before the rain begins?”

You nodded and practically jumped up, leaving the empty dregs of the wine bottle behind to hurry inside as the rain began to patter down on the dry earth, the scent of petrichor strong and heavy in the cooling air.

Viktor helped, once inside, closing the open windows to small slats to still allow the cool air in but keep the rain from ruining the sill or floor within. You ran to the second floor while he managed the first, and found no comfort in the darkness up there broken by jagged flashes of lightning.

He found you once you were both done, huddled on the steps, shawl wrapped tight, trying not to shiver or look like the frightened rabbit you felt like, jumpy and tipsy and convinced there were monsters in every shadow. Not since the dark fairy stories your father used to tell around the fireplace late winter evenings had you been so terrified by a simple tale.

Instead of tsk over your silliness Viktor sank down beside you and had an arm around you, both arms around you, drawing you in tight. You caved to it, shoved face into the crook of his shoulder and caught a tight hold of his shirt. The thunder outside shook the beams of the house. You were convinced the next strike would take the roof, or hit the chimney and bury you both in stone and rubble.

“I don’t want to be alone. Don’t leave me alone.” You heard yourself pleading. You hadn’t meant to say it out loud, just another of those little mantras, little silent prayers running chorus through your brain. This one had found its way out while you weren’t paying enough attention.

“Okay.” Viktor helped you to your feet, slowly.

So grateful he didn’t try to take you upstairs, but instead walked you through the kitchen to his rooms. Left you standing alone just long enough to light a lamp and dim it, and then to pull back the covers on his narrow bed to let you climb in.

You’d been in his sparsely furnished rooms before, to clean or collect laundry or change the bedsheets, but never stayed long or poked around. It felt too much like an invasion of his privacy. The writing desk was littered with papers, more tacked to the wall above and around it. Sketches, drafts that looked like engineering or architectural work, endless lists and scribbles you didn’t understand. A small collection of his own second hand books piled on the nightstand.

You climbed into the bed only to have him tuck the covers over you and you realized with a start that he meant to let you have his bed and sleep himself in one of the uncomfortable straight backed wooden chairs, or else slumped over the desk. Watched as he toed off boots and reached to take a folded throw off the foot of the bed.

It was a tatty thing, one of your mismatched yarn crochet jobs - never as skilled at it as your mother. It was uneven, only generously to be called square in shape, and with gaped holes where you’d dropped stitches or packed others too tightly. You thought you’d thrown it into the basket of scrap fabrics and yarns to be unraveled and redone when you had nothing better to do. Never realized it had gone missing, that he had it.

Something about it clenched your heart tight in your chest.

He reached for the lamp on the nightstand and you caught his hand by two long fingers, stilled it, stilled him as you gazed upward and he looked down at you, expression unreadable. His thumb grazed your knuckles and you gave his hand a silent little tug.

He hesitated a single, heartrending second before he relented, took a moment to undo his leg brace before he climbed in over you to settle behind you, between you and the wall. Slid one outstretched arm to pillow under your head and wrapped the other around you, let you tuck it under your arm and pull his hand tight to your chest as he fitted close to you, over the sheets.

“I’m sorry if the story scared you.” He murmured and you shook your head, mumbling back reassurances even though you knew he could feel how you still shivered slightly. He only gathered you a little tighter, hummed a tuneless, quiet little song.

The rain pounded against windows and walls, the winds buffeting the house and thunder echoing outside in loud rolling booms that rollicked across the open sky overhead. Sleep closed in slowly, had to slide its interminable fingers in under the door of your irrational panic to get the latch open and come creeping on silent feet. But it did come.

Still, you woke in the middle of the night, most likely at another all too close clap of thunder, the storm still lingering outside, rain having eased from a downpour to a steady fall that beat gently against the windowpanes. Viktor had at some point gotten cold and climbed under the covers, still spooned you closely even if his grip was not as tight. His broad hand a gentle flat splay over the soft, vulnerable stretch of your stomach.

You stroked fingertips over his knuckles lightly and heard him murmur. Felt him press his hand tighter to your softness and start a slow caress lower that closed your throat in terrified excitement. Fingers paused just above your sex. All it would take would just be a little nudge, a guiding push to ease touch lower and he’d have a light grip of you. It felt so terribly wrong to lay there and think of doing that to him in his sleep, to have his fingers pressed over you as you suffered the throbbing ache redoubling under his touch.

Instead he shifted and mumbled again in his sleep, hand skimming back up to settle a cupping cradle to one breast that did nothing to stop how your head spun and breath hitched. His palm big enough to fit the entire curve within neatly, touch warm. Against the nape of your neck the press of his face nestled in and you swore you felt the graze of his mouth on your skin.

And then his thumb moved. Little, erratic metronome, just a tender back and forth, right over the stiff, eager little nub of your nipple. A moaned, low whine escaped you like a prisoner making a jailbreak, eeking out as you shivered sweetly, struggled not to arch.

He squeezed the softness in his palm and stroked again, still speaking nonsense in his sleep, killing you by inches and completely unaware. And then his thumb caught that sensitive little bud between it and the edge of his hand, tender pinch, as his hips shifted a slight roll, pressing him to your backside.

You were huffing breath, struggling to not moan again, not to writhe back into him or shove your own hand down between your thighs to press against that glorious, painful ache between them. Not to tug the ribbon of the neck of your gown open and let his hand find its way in. Not to wake him and beg, beg him to touch you, taste you, let you have him.

Hot little tears traced slow, silent tracks down your cheek, dampening the pillow under you as you lay there, suffering, drowning in want, dizzy with how good he felt holding you. Why had you asked for this? Wouldn’t it have been easier to have just gone up to your room and been a little scared for the night instead?

He mumbled again behind you and his nose tickled behind your ear.

Your chest felt tight enough to collapse, like your heart was determined to crush itself to dust instead of suffer one more second of longing for him.

So much harder to sink back to sleep after that.

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He was not in bed in the morning, and you had a bad feeling he’d woken and discovered how he’d groped you in his sleep and leapt from the bed in mortification at his transgression. Then you had an even worse feeling that he’d let you oversleep, too embarrassed to come back and wake you. You rose, made the bed, folded that pilfered throw of yours at the foot of the bed and headed out to the kitchen.

Coffee in the pot, kept warm and waiting on the stove.

A cup could wait while you went upstairs to dress for the day, comb out your hair and fix yourself so that you looked less sleep deprived, make the faintly bruised purple shadows under your eyes look less obvious. Only then did you go back down, get yourself some coffee and head out to the porch to survey any damage done by the storm.

Viktor was on his way back up to the house from the barn, smiling up from under his hat when he saw you leaning on the porch post, mug steaming in your hand. In one fist he held a riot of color, a thick bouquet of wildflowers in a mad array of violent, beautiful hues from chill cornflower to deep bloody poppy.

Swaying pace took him up the steps and he held the bouquet out in offering, practically shy about it, as you set down the mug on the railing and accepted them in silent shock. They smelled heavenly, petals still wet from the rains.

“T-thank you.” Gaze ticked from the flowers to him in utter confusion. “But… why?”

He’d never so much as picked you a daisy before.

Viktor tugged at the brim of his hat, attention fixed on his boots until those luminous amber eyes glanced up at you from under the broad brim that had been obscuring them. Shoulders lifted tensely as he reached forward, caught your free hand in his, the leather of his work glove rough against your skin as he gathered up your fingers.

“I believe it's called… courting?”

Mouth open, head empty, you stood there. Felt your eyelids flickering, felt your heart a hard, steady pound in the hand he held. Felt the world turn under your feet. Unable to think, speak, to answer him. Lost in the gold of those eyes under the shade of his broad brimmed hat, in all the softness in them as they looked down at you.

You drew breath to speak. The hard pounding thunder of hooves and shouted cry of greeting stopped the words in your throat. Hands held between you and Viktor jerked apart as you both turned to watch the two riders incoming.

Ranch hands of yours, ones that lived out in the far pastures with the roving herds of sheep, watching the flocks and ensuring they kept their grazing confined to your lands. Their horses looked winded, breathing hard and nostrils wide as they wheeled up and dismounted. The riders didn’t look much better. It could take days to ride from the backlands in to the ranch and the men had precious little kit on them, had been sleeping rough and traveling hard.

You and Viktor both came down off the porch to meet them, you hesitating a moment before setting your bouquet of flowers aside on the seat of a rocking chair.

“What’s wrong?” Viktor got the question out before you could.

“There’s a pack ‘a wolves come down the foothills.” The less breathless man explained to you both, pulling his hat off to wipe at sweat beaded brow. “Three big’uns. The dogs can’t seem to scare ‘em off, especially now that the buggers kilt one of ‘em.”

“They’re gettin the herd in a panic.” The other man filled in, handing off the reins of both horses to you. “With only three of ‘em they can’t take too many but they’se sneaky as the devil and it seems they get another each night. We can’t spare a hand to hunt ‘em down, it’s all we can manage keepin’ them chasin the herd up into the foothills. Two nights ago they managed to cut half’a the herd and chased ‘em out toward the slopes. Half’a us gotta go find the missin’ and then we gotta bring em all down closer to the inner fields for a time an get rid’a the wolves.”

Viktor’s gaze cut towards you the same instant you glanced to him. There was a silent, tense second before you watched him nod, eyes still on you.

“I’ll get the gun, and my things.”

Your heart sank, even though you understood very well there was no other option. His determination snapped you into action. No time to wallow, to worry. Not that it stopped the hot bile of it rising in the back of your throat.

You gathered the reins you held and turned back to your men, forcing the no-nonsense tone of authority you’d perfected when corralling your younger siblings, and only refined as the sole woman running a large ranch. It didn’t matter how much your knees felt like water or your stomach like lead, if you could sound in charge, then you were.

“Boys, get yourselves some water at the pump. Refill your canteens. I’ll get you fresh horses. Ask Viktor to show you the pantry and help you restock for the ride back out. Go on, now. And don’t let him forget the extra box of shells for that gun.”

The men split for the house and pump respectively as you turned to walk the huffing, winded horses to the barn. You pulled saddles from them both, then bridles, and turned them out in the small paddock in the shade, giving each a small bucket of water to suck thirstily. They could have all they wanted to drink from the wellspring trough in the big paddock once they were cooled down. Too much water now might colic them or worse.

You grabbed the appaloosa and two fresh horses, bridled and saddled all three and led them up to the house as Viktor and the two ranch hands were headed back out with full packs and canteens. Viktor had a bedroll tied to his pack and your husband’s big shotgun in its soft leather holster slung against his shoulder. The gun was a monster with a kick like a mule but its double barrels could and, legend had it, did once take out a bull moose at full charge.

The men took the reins of their fresh mounts from you and slung up into saddles as you held the appaloosa, standing close to its neck, fingers tugging, toying nervously with its mane as Viktor tied the gun to the back of his saddle along with bedroll, shouldered his pack and slung canteen over saddlehorn. One careful hop on his good leg and he was up into the saddle.

Your heart was in your throat, eyes stinging for some reason.

“Viktor…”

You put the reins in his hands, felt him grab hold of your fingers in a little squeeze. You couldn’t stand to turn eyes upward, to look up at him.

“Be safe.” His voice was low, quiet, strained. You stepped back as he dug heels into the horse’s sides, felt the large animal shift hard back on its haunches and then thunder past.

Nothing to do but stand there as you watched the three men ride off.

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Days stretched into a week.

The time crawled, minutes passing as hours.

The flowers he gave you withered in the grey crockery pitcher you’d used as a vase, no matter how frequently you changed the water. You’d chosen a select few of them, the prettiest ones, and pressed them in one of the thick books of the library, between sheets of brown paper, before they could wilt.

The silence in the big house was deafening.

You found yourself waking earlier and earlier, up far before the sun. Laying in bed, waiting until the pale grey licks of dawn to started to touch the sky, sitting alone on the porch with your coffee, watching the thick mists that enclosed the ranch, gauzy walls of obscuring nothingness that cut you off from the entire outside world, as it slowly burned off and evaporated with the rising sun.

Like a ghost lifting, taking flight with the morning sun, only to return night after night to stretch cold fingers toward the house again.

Be safe.

It's what you should have said to him. You should have told him; be safe, be careful, don’t go, I love you. You’d realized that last one with a jolt at the end of the fourth day alone. You loved him, loved him terribly, and it filled you with fear. You’d sat alone over dinner and sobbed into your napkin so hard it felt your ribs would break and eyes would leak out over your cheeks with how much the tears came and how bitterly hot. What if he never came home? Accidents happened every day. It didn’t have to be a wolf that took him out, it could have been any number of things, small things. His horse taking a misstep into a prairie dog hole and toppling over on top of him, crushing, thrashing. Getting turned around in the endless stretch of grasslands and running out of water. The gun misfiring. Bandits or livestock thieves. A simple wound turned septic.

The possibilities played out over and over and over in your head until you felt you’d go mad with them.

Be safe.

You threw yourself into both your chores, filling the time with his work and your own, and more. So that you did not lay awake at night but rather had to drag yourself up the steps and collapse into bed, every muscle aching, every joint crying out for mercy. Still, you felt him there, warm against the back of you, your heart beating in his hand, skin singing soft songs of his name on every fingertip, his breath a cool breeze on the nape of your neck.

The work didn’t stop your mind either, only focused those thoughts, gave them outlet.

Courting. You hadn’t had a chance to get a word out. To say yes, or anything at all. To ask him why. The initial thrill of it so spoiled by the almost immediate looming threat of danger and need for action that you still hadn’t truly had time to process it. What if… what if he was only asking because he felt obligated? Because you’d forced him to share his bed and now he felt beholden to maintain your honor by asking for your hand? Or because you were so obviously lonesome and Viktor, so sensitive and kind, felt there was nothing else he could do that might help save you from yourself besides this. So many reasons he might not have meant it, or why it might be disingenuous in spite of his good natured, serious, quiet kindness.

But what if he did want you, the way you wanted him?

That felt like the most terrifying thing of all.

You tended the animals, slopped the hogs, fed the chickens, collected the eggs, cared for the horses, baked the bread, milked the cow, tended the vegetable garden, mended the fences, cleaned the house, did the laundry… the list went on and on ad nauseam. Always something to do, more to clean, to fix, to keep hands busy. And the days stretched.

One week started to reach toward two and you lapsed into a silent fugue. Numb, empty.

When would the riders come back and tell you something terrible had happened?

How long did you have to wait to find out this quiet hell was permanent?

Instead of putting it through the laundry, you took one of his shirts upstairs with you one night. Draped it over your pillow and pushed your face into it.

Took a book out on the porch with you and struggled to read it, to hear it in his voice.

Two weeks had just about passed when you began debating riding out toward the distant ranch house. It was foolish in the extreme, you could not leave the animals here alone or the big house unguarded and empty. The not knowing was killing you though. But you’d never make it out there and back and not have something go horribly wrong back home. No matter how many crazy ways your brain tried to come up with a way to make it feasible, make it safe, you couldn’t go.

And the last thing he told you was to be safe.

The light was starting to stretch toward evening as you plodded up toward the house from the barn, shadow long behind you, pail of eggs in one hand. Knees and back a dull ache from the day’s mucking out. You’d made it up the steps of the porch and had your hand on the doorknob when you heard the unmistakable thud of hooves in the distance pounding closer. Nearly dropping the pail, you whipped around, went running down the long stretch of the side porch out toward the front.

Yes. Yes! Yes, it was him! Tall lean figure on the black and white dappled appaloosa, leaning over its whipping mane as they cantered up. You practically flung yourself off the porch as he drew up, and hopped down, albeit stiffly.

Caution, modesty, manners, doubts, all of it forgotten as you careened into him hard enough to knock the breath from him audibly and have the horse beside you both shy away with an unhappy whickering. You did not care. Face pushed to his chest tight enough to suffocate yourself, arms iron bands around him, squeezing. Real, real and here and back and alive and safe and solid.

“Viktor-” You began as he prized you off of himself stiffly, turning your face up. Only to have him catch the shape of your jaw in both hands and bend to kiss you. Kiss you hard enough to knock his hat to the ground, to mash the tip of his nose into the apple of your cheek and nearly split your lip against his own.

He did not stop. Did not let you go as you both opened mouths against each other’s, as he tried each lip in slow, hard sucks, caved to the invitation of your tongue and slipped his own against it in eager taste. As he suffered your gentle bite and tug and caught you up all the tighter until you were both breathless, panting, his forehead pressed to yours as you dared to open eyes to find that precious amber gaze an inch away.

The callus of his dust covered thumb stroked slow along your cheek, tracing the spangling constellation of freckles.

“I should have done that before I left. I should have done that a long time ago, too.”

His words raised a tight lump in your throat. Two simple, quiet sentences that washed away all the grit of horrible doubt that had nearly worn your heart to a smooth, cold stone. The hot tears that shivered on lashes and streaked down cheeks betrayed you. Had his brows knitted and hands cupping your face, wiping them away as he fussed and you tried to wave it off only to have him catch your mouth up again and you melted into it, into him. Fists closed tight at his sides in the fabric of his shirt, humming a soft moan against his mouth.

Even covered with the dust and dirt of the fields he tasted better than you had ever imagined.

He shifted uncomfortably in a little hop on his bad leg and you broke away from the intoxication of that kiss to look him over worriedly.

“Are you hurt?!”

“No, no. Just stiff, and tired. It was a long ride back. I brought you a gift, though.”

Something large wrapped in his bedroll tied to the back of his saddle, if his glance was any indication. You bent to pick up his hat for him, beat the dust out of it but kept in in your hands, loving too much the wild mess of his chestnut hair, wanting very badly to run your fingers through it, to see what he did when you tugged, or if he’d sigh when your ran nails ofer his scalp.

He was smiling down at you, that precious half tilt curve, and you went up on tip toe before you could stop yourself to kiss the little beauty mark at the zenith of it. It made him blush, fiercely, and you couldn’t stop your smile.

“Take yourself and your things inside. I’ll see to the horse. A bath’s what you need after that ride. Go get a drink of something cool and sit down. I’ll be in.”

He collected his pack and roll and the gun off the back of the saddle, accepted his hat back, and limped up toward the house without argument, though his hand did trail long down your arm, caught your hand and let fingers slide away lingering under his own as you stepped away. It was no fuss to unsaddle the appaloosa and turn him out with an extra handful of grain in its bucket and a kiss on its forehead, for whatever part it may have played in bringing him home safe again to you.

Back up at the house you pumped full the largest galvanized tub that sat up on wrought iron grating and shoved tinder under it, lit a fire to heat and fed it until it was glowing hot coals and licking flames. Back inside the house you pulled the big copper tub out and pushed it before the fireplace. Lit a small fire in the hearth, just enough to keep any chill off from the bath, though the heat of the day still lingered.

It took a few trips to get the tub partway filled with cool water, the rest would come after the tub outside had heated through and the water was nice and steaming.

You lit the two hurricane lamps in the room, offering a dim glow to the quickly fading dusk, and gathered soap and towels before heading to find Viktor in the kitchen, bad leg stretched long and brace off, a glass of cool water in one hand as he slumped back against the wall in his seat, looking exhausted. He sat up the second you came in the room though, that lovely smile back in place.

You fixed him a plate, just something quick and cold for the time being, but most likely more filling than anything he’d had out in the plains. He caught your wrist as you set the plate before him, looking like he had a great deal to say but no idea where to start saying it. You gave him a gracious out, stroking free hand back through the thick tangle of chestnut hair as you gently pulled your captured wrist up, freed it from his grasp and brushed a kiss to the heel of his palm.

He watched you in a kind of silent awe that made your heart stutter against your ribcage.

“Eat. The bath will be ready soon.”

Bucket after bucket of now hot water hauled up the porch steps and into the great room until the tub by the fireplace was full and steam rising up off it thickly. You turned to find Viktor standing in the doorway, watching you dump the last bucket in. You straightened and huffed a little laugh as you wiped the sweat off your brow with the back of a forearm, the steam curling the loose tendrils of your hair in soft, slightly frizzy spirals.

“I’ll… I’ll give you the room.” You tried to back toward the door, give him privacy to soak sore muscles and wash off the dirt of the road.

“No, wait.” He hobbled in, that bedroll under one arm, and set it in your arms.

You put the pail down to unwrap the roll curiously. Three massive wolf pelts lay within. Fur soft and gorgeous, white as driven snow in patches and ticked with ash grey in others. You opened the bound roll of them in awe and Viktor helped you lay them out over the couch. They were massive, almost terrifyingly so. Gave an awe-inspiring glimpse into just how large the creatures were up close, and made you very grateful indeed you hadn’t had the opportunity to ever meet one in the wild.

You ran your hand up through the thick lush of the fur, savoring the soft tickle of it through spread fingers. Not nearly as soft as the back of Viktor’s finger as it stroked down your cheek, had you turning face toward him where he stood alongside you.

“G-go, uhm. Go ahead and get your bath.” You insisted, unable to focus on coherent thought with the way he was looking down at you, and backed away again to grab the pail and hustle out of the room. Sucked deep breath of air outside on the porch, and another but still couldn’t stop your heart from hammering. You wanted to feel foolish for all the time you spent worrying and fretting but were too elated to feel anything but the sweet rush of joy that hadn’t ended since he’d hopped off that horse.

You waited a sufficient amount of time and even peeked through one of the windows to make sure he had disrobed and settled into the tub. Then snuck back inside and hovered in the doorway nervously.

He glanced up from scrubbing one long arm with the soap.

“Is the water hot enough?”

He laughed a little.

“Yes, I think I might be cooking, actually. If you wish to make me into soup, I won’t complain. I think you’ll want salt instead of soap though.”

Your cheeks burned with his gentle teasing and you turned to go back to the kitchen, to leave him in peace.

“No, please. Come sit. I spent all these days thinking of you…” He trailed off, like he was unsure how to finish that sentence or if he’d said too much already.

You came in, tucked the skirt of your dress under yourself and took a seat on the couch beside the wolf pelts.

“Thank you for these.” You said, petting one again softly, “And for coming back.”

He sat back in the tub and smiled shyly to himself, continued scrubbing for a while before he shared the story of his time out there. You sat rapt, listening to the wild ride back out to the far fields, the terrifying stalking and hunt, the hard and long search for the lost half of the flock. And how they almost realized too late it was not three wolves but four. How one of the lads had been quick and sharp enough to grab the gun as Viktor was struggling to free a lamb stuck between two rocks, unaware of the final wolf rushing up behind him. Took it down a scarce pace away, jaws open. He’d left that pelt, and rightly so, with the lad, as bragging rights for life.

Your knuckles had gone white on the wolf pelt under your hand, head a slow, dizzy spin to think how close it had been. How close you’d come to the worst.

He rinsed himself and you shook off the reverie to reach for the towels, handing them over before excusing yourself back to the kitchen to let him dry off in privacy.

Fingertips trembled on the tabletop as you stood there staring at his empty plate.

So close to loss you could taste it, bitter on the back of your tongue.

You crossed yourself, a helpless ingrained custom at this point, and totted out a saucer of milk, left it on the windowsill over the sink, a gift for the fae or brownie or pooka that had kept him safe from mischief.

No sooner had you set it down then you felt the heat of gentle hands on your waist. The warmth of a mouth on your ear, your cheek. You spun and Viktor caught your mouth again in a kiss much softer and slower than the mad rush of the one he’d given you outside. Hands found his skin bare, still damp from the bath, towel tucked around the narrow of his hips. Arms wound up over his shoulders as he steered you with that grip on your waist, until your backside hit the kitchen table.

You broke the soft, sweet suckle of his upper lip to clamber eagerly back upon the table, only to watch him stall as he took your face in both hands. Watched him release a heavy breath, those dark brows drawn tight over the soft fire of eyes.

“I’ve wanted you since you first came here.” He admitted it like a confession, and it had to have been a stone around his heart if he’d carried it for nearly five years now in silence, watching you be another man’s wife for three of them. “Wanted to kiss you for so long. Wanted you as my own. But… are you sure, miláčku?”

His gaze cast aside as he frowned slightly.

“A poor cripple, from a country you don’t know? I will always be an outsider here. I don’t have a name, or prospects. I simply have my work… and I believe in myself.” He glanced up, leveling you with that gaze once more, fingers tracing your jaw. “Are you sure I’m what you want?”

You were nodding emphatically before he even finished the question, sucking the taste of him off your own lower lip as you pulled him close, stole another kiss before your hands fell, tugged open the ribbon at the scooped neckline of your dress and tugged the three buttons below it open before turning pleading eyes back to him, to find him breathless, face flooded with want.

Those fine hands of his came down off your jaw, slid into the part of fabric and cradled the shape of the outside of each breast, his breath a soft fan over your skin as thumbs you could see trembling teased gently over the proud little push of both pale nipples.

“Do you have any idea how badly I wanted you, the day we went swimming? You looked like a mermaid, and that - your clothes. Wanted to lay you on the blanket and peel them off you, let me actually see this pretty pink with nothing in the way.”

His hands cupped, thumbs making a teasing, squeezing little pinch of sensitive, singing little buds. Left you unable to help the way your head rocked back and legs hooked round him where he stood between the spread of thighs, unable to stop the soft noise of want that climbed up, deep out of the core of you and up your throat.

He pushed you back onto the table, the fall of his hair a tickle against skin as his mouth traced warm tracks over one rising curve and then the other. When he finally caught a slow, sweet suck of one sweet nub you bucked against him, hand slapping to the table top and all the years of polish upon it peeling up under the bite of the curling dig of your fingernails. He licked, flicked tongue in a way that had you cursing in the old language you never used, arching under him as he paid the same lovely attentions to the greedy eagerness of the other nipple.

God, and it was sweet. The electric rush of it heady, sensation pouring out like soft fire lit under skin, a pink flush creeping across your bare chest and up your throat as you sunk fingers into his soft mess of hair and listened to him groan with his mouth full of you.

And then both your hands were sliding between the pair of you in a frantic struggle, him to get your skirts up and you to tug his towel loose. You each got what you wanted, but he won out, getting his bared hips clear of the grab of your hands as he got a hand under one of your thighs and lifted till the heel of your shoe hooked the edge of the table, forced a wider splay of legs as he braced an arm on the table and gazed down at your bare skin.

Fingers stroked you slow, gentle sweep over soft skin under navel, over the soft V inward from hips, slow caress over lips before your gasp had him parting you, stroking tenderly through the slick wet of silk soft skin. It had you lifting into each caress, practically ready to beg before he dipped down. You were stuttering, startled, ready to ask him just what he thought he was doing when he spread you wide and you felt the warm, ticklish flick of his tongue hit some sweet part of you that you’d only felt when you pressed the agony of your hungry throbbing against your own fingers.

You arched hard against the table top and heard the empty plate go clattering, to smash upon the floor as you pushed up into the soft circling flick of his tongue. Nothing, nothing in your life had ever felt so good. You caught a fitful grip of his hair again, not wanting to tear at it but struggling to be gentle as he licked at you and that wanting ache within just doubled and doubled and doubled until your core clenched tight, hot little flutters that felt like heaven had exploded within you, every muscle strung taut as a bow and sweet stars in your veins as you gasped his name.

He rose over you, wiping the gloss of you off his chin as he gathered you to him with a grip on your hips, leaning over, watching you suffer sweetly for panted breath, eyes glassy and unfocused as you tried to offer him a sweet smile.

“Are you certain?” He asked, voice hoarse, and you could feel the hard length of him slide through the wet parting of your sex as the backs of his fingers traced the shape of your jaw from chin back to ear, to slide a cradle to the back of your head against the hard surface of the table.

“Yes, Viktor, please. Yes.”

In spite of your begging agreement he kept that little tease up, sliding himself along you, taking a grasp of your bent up leg in a one armed, tight hug.

“Do you want me so badly?” He asked, sly teasing nearly ruined by how breathless he was, by the burn of hot flush over his pale cheeks as he gazed down at his cock sliding over your eager little sex. You moaned softly for him, reaching to grip either edge of the table as you rocked hips invitingly. How could he doubt it?

“Speak to me, miláčku.” He murmured, gaze ticking up once to offer you the wicked tilt of that smile of his before eyes fell again to watch as he pressed to your entrance, pushed slow.

“Hnn, Viktor, please. I want you in-!” Ah, it stung at first. Ready as you were, as much as you wanted him, it had been so long, and what had passed between your husband and you had not been like this, not in the least. The stretch hurt, but so good. Had you humming, moaning soft encouragement, though he refused to do anything but take his time.

“Ah… yes…” He wanted words but you were too gone to find any save the ones to beg him to keep going.

He kept the hold he had on your bent leg pressed to one side of his chest as he settled deep and began a slow, small rock with his hips, a deliciously tormenting see-saw that had you writhing as he stroked one broad hand down and back the open splay of your other thigh laid out on the table’s edge.

You’d wanted, in your wild little daydreams, for him to watch you come undone for him. But none of it compared to how wonderfully wicked you felt actually watching him gaze down at you, watching his mouth drop open slightly as he felt your walls clench eagerly around him, at how he thumbed over that amazing little bundle of nerves he’d licked so well at, making your hips jump again and stomach tighten.

“Please tell me this is mine, you are mine. Tell me, miláčku. ” He was hoarse, voice seductively thick and dripping his own want that had you smiling blissfully.

“Yes, yours. Just yours, Viktor.” However he wanted, whenever he liked.

It earned you the first hard, deep thrust, sent eyes rolling back in your head and mouth open in a strangled, ecstatic little gasp as he did it again. Doubtless that the pair of you both wanted to keep this dirty little tease going, draw it all out and pour every ounce of those years of waiting and wanting into it, but it proved too much for the both of you after a moment, and instead became a mad rush. Wonderful, jarring hard thrusts of his hips that had you eager to meet him, had you gasping out mewling little sounds each time he filled you up.

He was no better, the soft sounds that escaped the clench of his teeth delicious, something you wanted to commit to memory and find further ways to drag more out of him.

More, you wanted more, the both of you, and he dragged you to the end of the table till your bottom was near hanging off of it, let your leg unfold to wrap around him as he gathered up your hands, fingers laced pinching tight between his own desperate ones, pinning them up beside your head and just barely catching your mouth with his as his pace staggered, went erratic and stalled, your nails digging little biting furrows between his knuckles.

He spilled hot inside you as you claimed the prize of his kiss, sweet treasure yours to keep at last. His. Yours.

No more ghosts, no more silence.

#Viktor #arcane #viktor arcane x reader #viktor arcane #viktor western au #arcane western au #viktor fic #arcane fic #viktor x reader #viktor x oc #arcane viktor

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writing-havoc · 1 year

Text

A Moments Pain

♡ Summary: Kaz thinks you get shot with him while running from the Stadwatch. Imagine his surprise when you're fine

♡ Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Reader

♡ Fandom: Six of Crows, Grishaverse

♡ Warning(s): Blood, Guns, Drugs, Alcohol, Gunshot wound, Self-harming behaviour (only mentioned)

♡ WC: 4.7k

Soulmate au time! Pain sharing <3

This is a pain sharing soulmate au where your soulmate can feel your pain and they can feel yours.

Reader is a Squaller in this and as usual, gender neutral

Hope you enjoy <3

Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors

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Soulmates have a very particular place in Kerch conversation.

There's those that believe soulmates are a concept and reality directly bestowed upon humans by Ghezen himself as an ultimate act of trade. That there is nothing more holy than finding your soulmate and sharing your life together, because the pain you trade daily is a piece of Ghezen permanently part of your being and can be offered back as a sign of your faith.

These people share pain every day, purposefully pricking their fingers and smiling when their other feels it too, thanking their Saint for their life and the opportunity they got to trade this pain directly and receive it in full.

Then there are others that see it as a slight against him, that it's an easy way out and that soulmates were fabricated long ago before the time of Ghezen. That in order to be seen and heard by him you must put in the work to do so, to volunteer and offer your time till you're covered in sweat, tears, and even blood, and only then will you be worthy of the pay and recognition you're earned and deserved.

These people see using your soulmate as an offering as cowardly and lazy, and not as a true sign of faith, but more like a mockery.

It's a conversation you can't escape if you live in Kerch, especially Ketterdam.

Kaz can count on two hands the amount of times soulmates have come up in conversation under a different light than that. And it's almost always brought up by Jesper trying to poke fun at Kaz for not finding his, or Nina who talks about how Ravkan culture handles it much differently (Matthias tags along on said discussion to butt in about Fjerdan soulmate rituals but its only ever on the tail end of the conversation).

It doesn't concern him, not finding his soulmate. He doesn't think he even wants to meet them, to see the face he's caused to have suffered so much pain over the last decade and will continue to cause them for as long as he resides in the Barrel.

Their anger would be understandable, but he hates that he feels any guilt about it at all.

He had to do it to survive. The pain he's been through and the scars left behind are reminders that he's still alive and breathing, that he still has fight left in him. He will not be made to feel sorry for that.

So, perhaps its not that he feels guilty, but that he hates the concept of being forced to feel guilty for something that he's proud of, for something that's necessary.

Now matter how many times he has this conversation with himself, he always comes to the same conclusion and never feels any less guilty than he did before.

"Eat my arse, Jesper!"

"I will!"

He sighed, opening the door to the Crow Club and allowing it to shut behind him. A cacophony of sound assaulted his ears, people talking amongst themselves and dice and cards slapping against velvet covered tables. A bar towards the back brandished in dark wood and brightly glowing lights was at the focal point of his attention. It was like his ears had some horrible ability for picking up his crows voices. It was both a blessing and a curse.

Jesper, Wylan, and you were huddled together, chairs pulled away from their evenly distributed spots in front of the bar. You were talking animatedly, your hands flying in directions that he's not sure made the story clearer or more confusing the more you went on, but the two men in front of you seemed to be following just fine.

"... coming out the building, smoke blows in my face and I swear I met Ghezen himself." You leaned into the dark wood, resting your head on your hand.

"As if he'd want to meet you personally." Jesper snickered at the way your jaw fell open, Wylan laughing when you lunged out and swatted at Jesper.

"Not the point!" You hollered, giving a good shove to his arm before pulling back.

Kaz clicked his cane against the ground, standing not three steps to the left of your chair. "If Jesper has to take sick leave its coming out of your paycheck."

You turned to face him, a wide grin adorning your face. "Ill make sure to only beat him to the brink of qualifying for sick leave."

"Bold move discussing your plans in front of the boss like that." Wylan chimed, hooking his pinky to Jespers.

"Kaz doesn't care so long as the job gets done." You turned to the man behind the bar and held up a finger, ordering your regular.

He clenched his jaw, giving you a hard glare. Yet he felt his heart twist. "I would still prefer to have Jesper in optimal working order, Y/n."

"Fine, I won't touch him anymore." You said as your drink was handed to you. You inclined your head at the bar man, giving a silent thanks as you downed half of it in one go.

There was another thing about soulmates that's more unknown. Not really unheard of, but it's not discussed.

Fatal attacks don't have the same physical affects on your soulmates, neither do life altering diseases, bone breaks, or limb losses. But they aren't unfelt. It'll be a long lasting piercing pain in some cases or nerve damage depending on the placement, but nothing ever as extreme as what your partner experiences.

In cases of poison, the effects are similar but not a direct match.

If the poison makes you tired, your soulmate will also tire. If the poison chokes you alive on your own spit, your soulmates mouth will salivate uncontrollably. If the poison makes you bleed from every orifice and your skin melt off your body, your partner will ache all over, maybe even bleed from scabs, cuts, and scars that should have no reason to be bleeding.

Alcohol is technically a poison of sorts. Toxic. Once your partner drinks, you'll feel it too. But it's entirely dependent on your own tolerance.

Kaz's tolerance isn't excellent, but he's certainly not a lightweight. You, however? Huge lightweight. With the portion of the drink you just downed you'll be inebriated within fifteen minutes tops, stumbling on your own feet and apologizing to light posts upon running into them. He only hopes your soulmate has a higher tolerance than you do.

He has seen you become such a way at the hands of your soulmate twice. Both times you had thought you were dying.

"Tomorrow we've got a job." Kaz pipes up. "Be ready at seven bells. Pack very light."

You groaned. "I wish you had told me that before I downed half of this."

"Im telling you now before the whole of it is gone."

You put the glass to your lips, staring at him as you drank the rest.

There's no way you'll be up in time tomorrow.

-----

He was kind of right.

After very faintly stumbling back to the Slat because of his soulmate feeling the need to get inebriated, he sat at his desk and finished whatever paperwork he could before preparing for the next day's mission.

Somewhere while doing so he fell asleep, and when he awoke the next morning at six bells he immediately went about making sure everyone was ready.

Inej had her knives and was actively packing any other essentials on her person, Nina and Matthias were still sleeping, but the latter was stirring as Kaz cracked the door open, Wylan was in the process of waking himself up while Jesper snored under a pile of blankets, and you were... kind of awake.

When he checked on you, you were sitting on the edge of your bed, sleeping pants rolled down to just above your knees while you stared with glassy eyes at the wall opposite of you. The window was open, streetlights barely making their way through the glass, your face glowing in the soft light.

He stepped fully into your room, walking closer to inspect your figure. He's not sure you're even blinking until you do so, eyes moving separately from eachother in a way that's oddly frog-like.

"Y/n." He called firm and gentle, waving a gloved hand in front of your face.

You hummed, moving your head slow like syrup to look up at him, eyes syncing up. "Morn'n, Kaz."

He ignored the way his name sounded on your sleepy tongue, afraid of the palpitations punching his heart. "Just making sure you're getting ready."

"'m good. Changin' righ' now." You put a hand on your bare thigh, looking to your left at the clothes you laid out for yourself.

Dark, natural, and earthy colors made up your shirt and pants aside from a bright white pouch which held stimulant capsules. You would need one later. A pair of lace up boots was at the foot of your bed, along with a jacket and belt that sheathed a knife Kaz had gifted you a few weeks into your time with the Dregs.

"It's half past six bells," he said, voice softer than he was intending. "Hurry it up."

You hummed, pushing your thumb under the waistline and pushing them down, pooling them around your ankles. Kaz took that as his cue to leave, closing your door softly behind him.

For a moment he allowed himself to pause, thinking with his hand gripping the creaky knob. Your morning voice, bed hair, soft eyes- it made his head /spin/. If you weren't hungover and running on four hours of sleep you would have cared more and that knowledge was sobering enough that he could let go of the handle, cane clicking on the ground as he walked back towards his office.

While the Kerch had plenty of different opinions about how to utilize your destined partner, there is a long standing opinion that most natives held above all else: you do not deviate from your soulmate.

Because while there are those who believe using your soulmate as a way to trade is simply lazy, they're also the ones that tend to believe that deviating from them is a form of cheating and you'd be robbing someone else from a happiness they deserve to achieve.

The only exception to this would be if you found out your soulmate is dead. But who's to say your soulmate isn't already dead and you're searching for someone that no longer exists? It's a trap. No matter what you'll either be shunned or disappointed.

He's never heard your opinion about soulmates. He knows you have one, as you're often complaining about how much they get hurt, but you never participate in the talk. You either excuse yourself or sit back in your chair, promptly passing out before a question can be thrown at you about it.

The only one that's ever been able to get you to answer a question about it was Inej. And your answer was incredibly vague- or rather, simple.

She had asked your thoughts on the Kerch interpretation of soulmates and their usage. Your answer was, "I guess it makes sense" and following a shrug, that was the end of it.

Kaz never thinks about it. Except for when he does, which seems to be a lot recently.

He stepped forward, and cursed his leg when a flash of pain soared up his shin and into his thigh. He stepped down the stairs wrong perusing his thoughts.

The sound of a door opening and slamming shut caught his ears. "Fuck my soulmate." You came storming out of your room, fully dressed and considerably less tired than before. He wasn't that distracted, was he? "Doesn't know when to stop fucking around." You stormed past him, making extra careful to keep a distance as you walked down the stairs.

There was something a little off about your gait, but you were faster correcting it than he was at putting the pieces together for once, so there's not much he could infer.

Walking down the stairs, everyone emerged from their respective rooms and gathered at the center of the Slat. Like magic, the bell clock chimed seven bells.

Kaz looked at his team, scanning them over with a faint nod. "Right on time."

"Don't want to be at the receiving end of that cane of yours this early in the morning." Jesper commented. You snickered, Nina and Inej smirking at him while Wylan and Matthias took it upon themselves to school their expressions into fond smiles.

Kaz checked his watch. "We have half a bell to get to the Zelver District, let's move."

------

"I cannot believe that you thought seventy-seven and thirty-three made a hundred." Wylan states incredulously. "It's appalling, actually."

You snort. "Easy there with the fancy words, Mister Dictionary. In my little fourteen year old mind it made sense."

Jesper barks out a laugh. "Who taught you to do math? Even I know it's a hundred and ten."

"Bugger off why don't you!" You give him a lighthearted slap with the back of your hand to his arm, to which he hardly flinches and ruffles your hair.

His own head itches. He takes off his hat and fixes his hair, ignoring it.

The job had gone off without a hitch, which was good for everyone's spirit considering the last few weren't as lucky. Spirits were lower than he would have liked, so the twenty thousand kruge in his pocket and diamond necklace in your pouch were perfect for raising everyone's morals.

You did, in fact, end up needing to take a stimulant capsule soon after they left. Even with the added aggravation from your soulmate, you just couldn't stay awake.

He makes a mental note to watch you more closely. He's seen what those stimulant capsules can do to your impulse control, and he would like for you to cut down on how much you're taking them if you could help it.

He has every bit of confidence in you that you wouldn't take more than necessary, but the tired mind is an enemy that which he never likes to take chances with. The last thing he needs is for you to accidentally grab two instead of one and be so jittery that you end up getting them all caught.

Actually, the more likely scenario would probably be you realizing your mistake soon after you've made it, and taking yourself out of the mission, leaving your spot empty as Kaz tries to reconfigure everything on the spot to accommodate for a lost asset. And, on top of that, worry to Fjerda and back about if you'll make it to the Slat safe and with minimal damage.

It's exhausting. He doesn't want to take them away, because today goes to show that they're incredibly helpful if taken properly.

But everytime you do his skin feels like it's on fire and his heart pounds just a little bit harder. It feels like something is trying to claw its way out of his skin, right between his shoulder blades.

A little something clicks in his mind, then.

A gunshot rings out into the night. The group flinches for a moment, and then they're all taking off in a sprint.

"Who's shooting at us?!" Jesper calls out.

"No idea and I don't want to find out!" You yell, overtaking nearly everyone just behind Jesper.

The both of you split into separate alleys, everyone else scattering as well given Kaz's signal. He follows behind you, intending on splitting up even further up the passageway, but doesn't get to when it comes to his attention the route he was going to take has since been blocked up.

He needs to get newer intel, very, very quick when he gets back to the Slat.

"Do not shoot to kill!" A member of the Stadwatch comes into sight on the opposite end of the alley. "We need information!"

Apparently they needed intel as well.

"Up!" Kaz hooks his cane to your pants, yanking you back and around the back of a house with a very thin walk space between its walls and the canal.

Steel bars jut out of the back, leading up to a balcony. You climb first, nearly slipping a few times in your haste to get up. Dirt falls into his eyes, but he blinks them away as he climbs just behind you, his cane now clipped to his belt.

You waste no time picking a direction and run, leaping over wobbly shingles and skating around metal smoke shafts in a movement that Kaz can only call dancing.

Kaz damn near falls in love all over again, and actually does so when he hears your delighted giggles under the shine of the moonlight. He's right behind you, just barely keeping up with his bad leg, and the sound makes his chest... /bubble/.

Several other gunshots ring out, the sound of bullets hitting metal like notes on a piano.

Kaz moves to the far side of the house, away from the sight of the Stadwatch and leaps to another building, his good leg coming in contact with the slick roof. His boot squeaks as it slips off, his leather gloves grabbing desperately at the shingles.

"Let go!" He heard from below.

Without a second thought, he went limp.

A gust of wind hit his back, knocking the air out of his lungs for a moment. And just as quickly he was on the ground, your face staring over him.

You chuckled. "Rather fucked up trust fall, I'd say."

"I trust no one." He spits without venom, hauling himself up. He unclips his cane, leaning on it.

"Okay Kaz." He can hear the sarcasm in your voice, but he diverts his attention in favor to the gunshot wound that splits through the meat of his arm.

You jolt too, yelling in pain. In a fit of anger, you slam the Stadwatch into the wall with your wind, the air pressure shifting and making his ears pop.

He doesn't bother to check if they're still moving, running unevenly to the nearest crow owned business and slipping inside and through to the backdoor.

He has to get you back. Who knows what kind of bullets they were using or what kind of damage it did. Healing isn't Nina's strong suit, so the least amount of damage and less time wasted the better.

The moment Kaz is in the Slat he's ushering you into the medical room, cursing you for your stunned state. He only had so much ability to maneuver you lacking an arm and using a glorified stick.

"We need to wait until Nina gets here." He hissed as he closed the door behind him, shucking off his coat and placing it on the chair next to the table.

"Kaz." You say, voice small.

He quickly whipped his head around, mind going through every possibility.

Too much blood has drained from your body. You're too weak to hold yourself up. Your body functions were shutting down one by one in favor of your heart and brain.

Before his mind could launch into a plan of how to keep you alive, tourniquet above the wound perhaps, he saw you weren't in any pain at all.

Not even a speck of blood on your shoulder.

He limped over to you, wondering if he was beginning to hallucinate an oddly terrifying yet comforting fantasy where you were fine. Maybe he was the one dying. But the throbbing pain in his shoulder and the pounding of his heart told him that he probably wasn't.

"You're fine." It was meant as a question but came out as a statement.

"I'm fine." You whispered in the same stunned silence. "Although I am a bit sore."

It's you. It's you it's you it's /you/.

The door bursts open, making you jump back. Nina begins to rustle around the room, instructing Kaz onto the table, but he just cannot look anywhere but you.

How fucking insane is that?

Out of the potentially millions of people that exist just within the distance between the southern colonies and Fjerda, you're here.

He didn't stop looking at you, because you're fucking /here/, even as you left out the door, tripping on your way out.

He needed to talk to you.

Soon.

Now.

The moment Nina began to give him the go ahead he was hopping off the table and into the crowd of the Slat, doorknob hitting the wall.

Where were you?

He brought his hand up to his mouth, pinching his skin between his teeth just below his glove. A stunned yelp sounded over the crowd, heads turning up the stairs. Kaz felt his entire stomach tumble.

The steps groaned beneath his steps as he walked up them, doing his best to keep them even with some semblance of normal despite normal being thrown out minutes ago.

He was trudging through the Slat without his coat or cane, shirt torn at the shoulder, and a throbbing wrist that he just bit with little to no care about who seen or felt it besides you, and everyone found it weird.

But this entire situation was weird.

His arm ached as he pulled himself up the last few stairs by the railing, limping to the next set of stairs to his attic office.

And there you were, rubbing the inside of your wrist with your eyebrows knit, looking every bit as stunned as you were when you came face to face with reality.

"You bit me." You whined.

He took a moment to get his breath back into his weeping lungs. "I didnt bite you. I bit myself."

"But you may as well have bit me." You stood up, moving to the side.

And there really wasn't any arguing with that logic was there? You felt it just the same as he did.

Fuck.

/Fuck./

His heart continued to pound and pound on his chest as he, much slower this time, walked up the stairs, keeping tabs on his leg as he did so. There was no complaint from you as you followed close behind.

The door was unlocked when he got to it.

He turned to you, raising a brow.

The floorboards creaked as you rocked on your heels, looking away from his prying eyes. "I thought better of it only after I unlocked it."

"Usually makes no difference to you whether it's locked or not." He swung the door open, heading for his desk chair. "You walk in and sleep in my chair as much as you please."

It took you a moment to respond, the door clicking quietly. "It didn't feel right this time."

Ironic, considering you're literally destined to be with him if the universe has any say.

He stood beside his chair, remembering the last time he caught you fast asleep in it, legs dangling off the arm. Did you not want that ease with him?

It isn't unheard of for a person to reject their soulmate. Usually it's done when they have found a chosen partner rather than a destined one, or when they simply don't believe in that way of life.

Maybe that's why you don't say anything when the topic comes up.

His body feels heavy, utterly exhausted at the thought. The thought to beg comes to mind briefly before he puts it back on its leash and ties it to a pole.

Perhaps you don't want him, even if the universe or whatever it is dictates that you do.

"I can see that mind of yours working," you say, "and it's not what you think."

He grinds his teeth for a moment. "It would help rule some stuff out if you'd have been more open about the topic in the past."

Fuck the universe, he's allowed to be petty.

Your voice is tired and almost disappointed when you say his name next, and it makes him completely regret his words.

You sit on his desk, body angled towards the open window he loves and hates so much.

It's too drafty. Reflects too much light. Opens awkwardly. But it's warm and coats your skin like honey in the evening and tickles your face with your baby hairs in the early morning. It let's you slip in at the most awkward times when he's changing but also let's you in when he needs you most, even if you don't know it.

The window is always locked.

He taught you how to pick it.

"My parents are soulmates." You begin, Kaz lowering himself into his chair. "But they don't like eachother."

That does well to get his attention.

"Everytime the tie between them was activated, it was always on purpose to hurt the other." Your temple moved, teeth grinding. "When one would threaten to leave, the other would beat themself senseless. And when they really got angry at eachother, they'd almost kill themselves and then turn on eachother with knives and bottles.

I've heard stories of how it is to lose your soulmate back where I grew up. It's described as a nothingness. What was once there when the connection was really, really made disappears like it was never there, and leaves a dark, heavy feeling in its place."

You sighed, hand rubbing your chest. "I think that's the only reason they never actually killed eachother. They didn't want whatever they had, no matter how fucked up it was, to disappear."

He thought for a moment.

"You never spoke about it because you don't want to end up like them."

Your eyes squinted, lips pursing. "Yes and no." A rhythm came to life from your boot, legs swaying and hitting his desk. "You're right, but I also don't want to feel that feeling, that nothing. I don't know if it's true, if the grief takes that much of a hold on you, but I don't want to find out. Not now. Not ever." You looked at him then, eyes like glass and tears barely pooling on your lower lashes. "Not if it's you."

It hits him all at once.

The obvious realization that is that you /want/ him.

And the even more breathtaking realization that you really, really love him, and have loved him long before you knew.

Isn't that perfect?

You looked back to the window, and everywhere else, hand swiping underneath your eyes.

He tapped the table next to you, gathering your attention.

"I don't..." He licked his lips. "I don't want that either... if it's you."

He fucking hopes you get it. That he has loved you too. Before now. Before the lockpicking. Before the chair. Before the window. Before the bullet. Before the biting. Before. And has for a long time since.

Your mouth hangs open, lips shuttering just a little before you close it, biting the pink skin. "Okay." You whisper, head bobbing up and down. "Okay."

"One question, though."

"Um..." You clear your throat. "Shoot."

"How did you manage to go this long without knowing it was me considering my one true constant of pain?" He props his bad leg out, wiggling his foot a bit.

You laugh, a stark contrast from the pervious mood. "If you want me to be honest, I... completely forgot what leg is your bad leg?"

It's the truth, he can tell, yet the fact that it sounds more like a question gets a half chuckle out of him. "I assume you don't know how a cane works?"

"Well I wouldn't say /that/." You try to defend yourself. "I know it helps you walk I just... never knew what side it was supposed to go on."

He can't stop himself from smiling, then. Small and private. "Cane goes on the stronger side to aid the injured side when you step with it. It becomes a third leg."

You snort immediately, and he sighs. "Childish."

"Oh come on! You did that to yourself!"

"Y/n." He said.

"Yes?"

"You're insufferable."

You hopped off the desk, slipping the diamond necklace from your pouch and around his neck. "At yet you're stuck with me."

He touched one of the diamonds, watching you fall into the chair in front of his desk. "Not as much of a problem as you hope it is."

All tears gone, you get settled into the chair, perfectly warm and content in his company.

He loves that he feels the same.

∘₊✧──────────────────✧₊∘

Tags:

@b3kk3r-by-br3kk3r @a-candle-maker

#kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x y/n #kaz brekker x you #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker imagine #six of crows x reader #six of crows x y/n #six of crows x you #six of crows fanfic #fanfic #blood tw #gun tw #sh tw #drugs tw #alcohol tw

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five-bi-five-mind · 1 year

Text

Hell or High Water (Pt. 3)

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: JJ x fem!Reader

Words: 6.4k+

Summary: JJ is dealing with the aftermath of the attack. Will she ever heal?

Warnings: Descriptions of hospital rooms, mention of stitches, honestly a pretty traumatized/depressed JJ. Some brief smut, fingering (r receiving). Let me know if I forgot something!

A/N: I know this took forever. The amount of rewrites this went through, and even then I’m iffy on the ending. But here we are at the final part of this series. Also I highly recommend listening to Hell or High Water by Billy Raffoul while reading this chapter. I mean the whole fic has the vibe but especially this chapter. Anyways, enjoy!

Series masterlist

Part 3: For the Living Touch and Go. Those words rang through JJ’s mind on a constant loop. Your condition was touch and go. She was stuck in this in between of not knowing if her wife will ever wake again. With each rhythmic beep of your heart monitor she felt a little more at ease, but then she’d look at you lying in the hospital bed. You didn’t look like you. Your skin lost its color, your body was still as can be, and you had tubes and wires hooked to just about every inch of you. It killed JJ to look at you, yet she felt like every time she took her eyes off you, you’d slip through her fingers.

JJ hadn’t slept. It’s been 3 days since you last opened your eyes and when she wasn’t thinking about what the doctors said, she was thinking about those last moments before help arrived. You, broken and bleeding in her arms. JJ only left your side once since then, with the promise that Emily would stay behind and keep an eye on your state while she grabbed some of her things and yours in preparation for your stay in the hospital. She wanted you to wake up to your favorite things. Fuzzy socks and a soft blanket. Not that those were on you now, but for when you did wake up. But there was another reason why she didn’t want to go home. When she did she saw the blood stains on the floor, she would have to deal with that at some point. The minute she went home to gather the things she wanted, she stopped in her tracks when she saw it. Her stomach twisted in disgust and rage. Disgust for the man who did that to you. Even though he was dead now, she wished she could’ve watched him rot in prison instead. And rage at herself, for putting you in that position. For failing you, for letting you get harmed because of her job, for putting you in the hospital in critical condition, not knowing if you’d ever wake up again.

Her fists clenched so hard she felt her nails dig into her palms as she sat across from you. How could she let you end up here? You were so fucking stubborn. If only she had pushed more, insisted more that you leave. Maybe she should’ve given in and gone with you. That was the only way you would’ve ever agreed to leave. She’s never run from an unsub, she’s never left her team like that and it wasn’t in her nature to change that now. But here you both are now because of it. JJ wasn’t one to pray, but she prayed to any higher being who’d listen for you to wake up soon.

You were minutes from death when they rushed you in, you lost so much blood you slipped into a coma despite their efforts to help you. “Blood loss is the second major cause of comas,” the doctor’s said, “it’s to be expected.” That didn’t make JJ feel any better in the slightest. She waited, blood soaked, in the waiting room until she was allowed to go back to see you. She waited hours upon hours. Luckily, Emily brought her clean clothes before wrapping up the crime scene that was once your home.

JJ wasn’t always alone with you. Sometimes that felt like a blessing, to be surrounded by the team. All of them came after the case was wrapped up, then as the hours stretched into days they rotated. When they were there, sometimes JJ felt less alone and afraid. But then sometimes it was a curse. She couldn’t look them in the eyes after she first watched their expressions. They’d all look at you with such concern, such sadness and she’d feel that overwhelming sense of failure all over again. Of course, each member of the team knew you and cared for you deeply. You came to social gatherings with JJ, seen all of them and their partners. You were a ray of sunshine and everyone who met you instantly loved you. So it only made sense that seeing you the way you were now would break their hearts too. JJ didn’t know if she would ever get over this guilt.

“How is she?” Emily broke the silence of the room. JJ was currently hunched over in a chair she pulled up next to your bed, her head hanging low. Emily had just gotten there with food, knowing that her friend wasn’t going to leave your side easily, even to take care of herself.

“No change,” JJ mumbled, her eyes locked on the linoleum floor, refusing to look up at Emily. She knew she’d find a look of sadness and pity, she couldn’t stomach that right now.

“She’s a fighter,” Emily said, coming up to JJ and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

JJ just mumbled a response and looked back up to where you lay. That you were, JJ was sure of it. You’d wake up, you’d pull through. The question was when. JJ hoped you wouldn’t make her wait long. Each passing moment was agony to her.

——————————————-

Fortunately for JJ, you did finally open your eyes. In total you had been lying unconscious in that hospital bed for five days. Each one filled with an unbearable anxiety that made JJ feel like the bland white walls of your hospital room were closing in on her. But still, you woke up and that’s what mattered. JJ’s whole world felt like it suddenly resumed from a long pause in the moment your eyes finally met hers. Her heart felt like it was beating again.

From the moment you opened your eyes though, JJ could tell you were ready to get the hell up and out of there. It was like a switch flipped. One minute you were clinging to life and barely breathing, the next you were arguing to get up and get moving.

It took way longer than you would’ve liked to remain in the hospital once you woke up. Your body needed to regain strength, your wound was still healing, and your vitals needed to be monitored. That didn’t help your overwhelming desire to go home. Then everything could finally go back to normal or at least it would feel a little more familiar, but even then you knew that “normal” would take some time. For the days you were awake and stuck in your hospital bed, you could tell JJ was struggling to hide the guilt behind her eyes. It was glaringly obvious to you that she blamed herself for everything that happened. When you caught her staring with that painful expression she seemed to perpetually wear these days she would immediately look away from you. You didn’t know what broke your heart more, the way she avoided you or the way you knew she was drowning in her inner turmoil.

The only time she really talked to you during your stay at the hospital was to tell you to stop being so stubborn. It was getting tiresome to hear the same lecture over and over again about the healing process. Your body went through a trauma. It was a close call. It takes time to come back from these things. You heard all of that way too much now.

Luckily for you, whether it was the doctors finally giving in or your amazing determination to heal yourself with sheer willpower, you were promised to go home early. While you might have been over the moon to be able to be in your own bed, surrounded by your own things, and not staring at the bland white walls of the hospital room anymore, JJ was feeling the opposite.

The minute the doctor gave you the okay to prepare to go back home, all the color drained from JJ’s face. She didn’t even bother hiding her reaction. Her feet planted in that defensive stance she got whenever she was preparing for a verbal fight, her arms crossed over her chest and her jaw clenched as she listened to you eagerly thank your doctor for the permission to finally leave. You thought an argument was beginning to brew between the two of you, but instead she snapped at the doctor, questioning everything that was just said. In the end, unfortunately for her, it was your decision and despite her wishes, you were going back home.

The transition from the hospital to your apartment building was tenser than you anticipated. JJ treated you with care and hesitation, insisting on being the one to wheel you out of the hospital even when you promised you could walk (albeit very slowly) on your own. When you reached the car she helped you in and buckled you up with the utmost care, but you didn’t miss the way her hands trembled as they fumbled to secure you in. The rest of the car ride consisted of the continuous habit your wife has now picked up of refusing to even glance at you when you talked. Instead, she listed off all the things she didn’t want you to do until you were fully recovered and all the things she would be doing to ensure you were safe and comfortable when you got home.

It killed you to see her like this. In a way, you did feel guilty for this. That you didn’t listen to her and stayed behind when you knew you could be in danger. However, you didn’t completely regret that decision. Deep down, you thought that if you weren’t there it would’ve been her who got hurt and if you were miles and miles away, who would’ve been there to come to her rescue? The thought of you two switching places made your stomach twist. This outcome wasn’t ideal, but you’d heal eventually and be good as new. You’d take this outcome over any chance of losing your wife for good any day. What mattered was that you would be okay. You understood it was iffy for a while but now you’re on the path to recover and you will heal in time. But what you also understood is that you weren’t the only one who needed time to heal now.

Watching JJ as she drove with clenched fists on the steering wheel and body tense with stress, you knew she needed to heal just as much as you. The problem was, you weren’t sure how to best help support her, when she didn’t even look you in the eye anymore.

When she helped you into the apartment, you already felt overwhelmed by her. Not once in your relationship did you ever feel like you needed JJ to take a step back, but the way she hovered over you every single second since you walked through the door and sat down on your bed was driving you crazy. What’s worse was, even though she seemed like she was everywhere all at once, she also seemed so distant from you. Like a shell of a person. And she still wouldn’t meet your eyes.

It wasn’t hard to miss the growing guilt that showed on her face as she watched you walk a little slower than normal through your apartment halls. And when the two of you passed the fateful spot where it all went down, regardless of how spotless it now was, you both still flinched when your eyes fell on it. Then there was a brief pause as both of you turned your gaze away, the pain of the memory washing over you, before you both moved on to your bedroom.

When JJ had finished putting your things away you had expected her to at least spend a few moments to appreciate that you actually made it home and you’re both safe. However, she just continued to be equally too protective and too absent all at once. A skill, you thought, only Jennifer Jareau could master.

You patted the bed next to where you sat propped up once you saw that JJ had finally run out of things to unpack. She didn’t make a sound as she stood before you, just staring at the empty spot next to you. Then, after a moment, she blinked and began to turn and busy herself with god knows what else. That was the boiling point.

“Why won’t you look at me?” Your voice was soft, yet sounded way too loud in the uncomfortable silence of the room.

“What are you talking about?” JJ let out a humorless laugh and turned to leave. You caught her wrist before she could step too far away from the bed.

“Please, Jennifer.” You rarely called her by her full name but in that moment she knew it was serious, you were serious, and suddenly the defenses she’d been holding up for days started to lower.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her arms going limp at her sides, with your hand still wrapped around her wrist. “I’m not used to you being home.”

That might have been half true but even she knew you could see through that.

You gave her an exhausted look, not offering a word, your hand still holding onto her, as you waited for a better answer.

“It’s just been hard,” JJ finally spoke again, her voice even quieter.

“What has?”

“Seeing you like this.” Her eyes dropped to the floor and her head hung low. You knew she was trying, yet again, to build up more walls.

“JJ, it’s not your fault.”

She didn’t move a muscle. You knew she refused to let those words sink in, but you just had to get them through.

“It’s not…” your hand slid down her wrist to take hers in your own, “…your fault.”

She still didn’t say a word, but you felt her fist clench in the palm of your hand and you knew she was fighting off whatever her inner demons were telling her right now.

“If anything it’s mine. I mean, I-“

“Don’t.” Her voice echoed through the room as she interrupted you. You didn’t let go of her hand but you were taken aback at her reaction all the same. “Don’t blame yourself.” You could tell her body was trembling now as she stood before you. All you wanted was to pull her into your arms and take away this pain she was putting herself through.

Tugging on her arm, you tried to get her to budge even a little. “JJ…” you breathed, trying to calm down the storm you could tell was brewing. “You’re not to blame either, though.”

“Yes I am!” JJ yanked her hand out of yours suddenly and your eyes widened at her outburst. “I couldn’t keep you safe here. I can’t keep you safe but you insisted on coming back here.”

“We had to go home eventually…”

JJ paused, her shoulders heaving up and down as anger seethed through her. You knew this anger wasn’t towards you, but herself. While many would be terrified of an angry Jennifer Jareau, your heart just broke for her.

She started to turn from you, her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to calm herself but you didn’t want her to walk out that door. You had no plan to stop her though and in your current state you couldn’t just fling yourself forward.

“I need a minute,” JJ muttered before reaching the door to your shared bedroom. You watched in defeat as she walked out the door, walls back up to shut you out, and you knew this conversation wasn’t over. What you feared, though, was that it was going to be a long and painful process to finally get through to your wife.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few more weeks went by and you were getting better with each passing day. Of course, you still had to take it easy. Your external stitches were out but you were still in the middle of the healing process. The good news was that your mobility was a lot better. You were up and moving around the house with every chance you got, which unfortunately usually meant any moment JJ wasn’t home. It was hard to take the glare of disapproval she’d shoot your way when she saw you doing anything other than sitting and resting. Honestly, you were getting tired of it.

It seemed like the more you healed and were getting some of your independence back from that, the more her mood worsened. You knew, deep down, that it was just her fear and guilt that was affecting her mood. After that conversation you had when you both got home you kept trying, but JJ would just storm off. Unwilling to hear any sort of reason or let you alleviate any of her blame. It constantly pulled at your heart to see her so guarded with you of all people.

What was even worse was she stopped touching you and you craved her so badly. And not in a sexual way even, you just wanted her to hold your hand, kiss your cheek, or just anything really. She only touched you when she helped you out of bed the first week you were home or when she helped you bathe, but you were long past needing help with either of those things. Plus, you didn’t much care for her helping you with things like that. Wife or not, you really didn’t love help with showering when you insisted you could shower alone. Now, though, you honestly missed the help, especially when it was the only time you felt her gentle touch on you.

Things were reaching their breaking point with you quickly. There was only so much more of the distanced looks and avoidance you could take from JJ before you were going to snap. She barely left home too, which somehow made it even worse. At least if she was going to work or leaving the house for more than just groceries and the occasional take out, you could say she was just busy or tired. But no, she was home most of the time, so that just left you with a shell of your wife walking around the house, holding you at arms length, obviously traumatized by the events you both experienced, and yet refusing any help or to even hear you out. It was hurting your heart, but worse it was hurting your relationship.

It couldn’t go on like this, not for much longer. You had to get your wife to look at you, really look at you, and then talk. And fuck if you didn’t hope it would at least end in her kissing you again. If not, you didn’t know how much more of this situation you could take. What killed you even more, was the nightmares you had and the overwhelming desire for JJ to throw her arms around you at night and kiss your tears away. But you also knew, if she knew of any of your lingering fears it would just make it worse for her guilt. So when you did wake from them, from the nightmare of that fateful night repeating itself, you just wrapped your arms tight to your chest and let silent tears fall as you tried to fall back asleep. All the while, being extremely careful not to wake your sleeping wife. What you didn’t know yet was that you weren’t the only one with nightmares.

But that realization came one night when you, yourself woke from the terrible recurring dream. Your chest was heaving, your body was in a cold sweat, and your heart was racing, but you had a method to calm this storm. Taking deep breaths and counting down from one hundred always helped. It must’ve affected you more tonight though, you could feel the mattress shake with your body. After a few more minutes of deep breathing, however, you realized you weren’t the one shaking. Pressed with her back to yours, you could just barely feel the tremble of her shoulders as she lay next to you. She was silent, except for a few shaky sighs that came from her side of the bed, but you knew the signs and you knew JJ. She was crying. Something she actively tried to hide from you since the whole ordeal.

You laid there totally frozen for a minute. This was a moment that JJ obviously didn’t want you to be aware of, but this was also a moment where her walls were possibly down. She was also your wife and you ached to comfort her. So, there were options: Either you ask her about it in the morning and risk her walls coming back up before then or you listen to your heart and comfort her now like you so desperately wanted to. Of course, you picked the second option.

“Hey…” you whispered into the dark room as you rolled over to your other side so that you could face JJ’s back. For a moment, you thought maybe she didn’t hear you, so with caution you slowly raised a hand to run your fingers gently down her back. “JJ…” you tried again. “What’s wrong?” But with the mixture of your touch and your voice a little louder, suddenly you felt her whole body freeze underneath your fingertips. It was like she was holding her breath and her shoulders had stopped trembling, but you still knew she was awake.

“JJ, talk to me.” You were more firm this time, your palm pressing to her shoulder, barely tugging but still motioning for her to turn her over. She refused.

“I’m okay, (Y/N). Go back to sleep.” Her voice was low. It sounded tired, sure, but almost as if she was trying to pass it off like you woke her up. You weren’t buying any of it.

“JJ,” you sighed in disappointment. “Turn over.” At your request, you felt JJ’s entire body tense next to you, but you weren’t going to give in. “Please, Jennifer.”

After a moment, JJ let out a long sigh and then finally did what you asked. You made no move to scoot back, wanting to be close to your wife and to try to make out her facial expressions in the moonlight that peered through your bedroom window. When she was finally facing you, that’s when you realized just how close you two were laying. You could feel her steady breathing as she lay next to you and you tried to remember the last time you two were this close. Your hand immediately reached out to her cheek to wipe her tears. It was half a gesture to confirm what you already knew, that she had indeed been crying, and half to comfort her. Either way, it was a bold move on your part, considering the way JJ has been avoiding you like the plague for so long. Yet, she let you do it. She didn’t pull away, didn’t dodge your touch, she let you continue to brush your thumb over her cheek and catch the tears that you could feel were still falling.

“What’s wrong?” You whispered again. JJ’s hand moved up to yours and for a moment you feared she was going to push you away, but she surprised you when she pressed her palm to the back of your hand and held it there.

After a moment of silence and stillness she finally spoke. “I thought I lost you,” her voice sounded hesitant yet raw as she finally started to let you in. “In the dream and when you… when that-”

“I know,” You interrupted. It only made sense to you that she was having the same recurring dream as you, but you also knew those dreams were bringing up fears of the very real events that happened. You moved closer to her. Close enough to press your forehead to hers and you stayed like that for a moment. You tried to take in every single second, because you feared it would be awhile before you could feel her this close again. Even if your wife was feeling scared and you had both woken from a terrible dream, you didn’t much care what brought you this opportunity, you were just glad you were getting it. “But I’m still here.”

You felt her head nod and the hand still pressed to yours, in a surprising move, slipped down to press against your chest. She was feeling your heartbeat, you realized immediately, trying to find comfort and confirmation in it that what you said was true. That you were still here to live another day, that she hadn’t lost the love of her life because her biggest fears came true and her job jeopardized the safety of her wife.

“JJ I-” your voice broke before you could catch it. It was obvious this moment was overwhelming you, but you couldn’t hold back anymore. “I miss you so much.”

With those words, JJ’s heart broke as she took in just how much you were hurting. You didn’t have to say a lot for her to read you. She knew you and deep down she knew she was hurting you. It killed her, but she was so wrapped up in her own head that she couldn’t stop herself. Convinced she was going to put you in any more danger or that you would disappear in the blink of an eye if she so much as lingered on you for one moment. But then she heard the anguish in your voice and she didn’t need to see your eyes to know the pain she’d see in them. She felt the slight tremble of your fingers as they remained against her cheek. Another tear fell for you as she fully came to understand the damage she had caused in the past few weeks with her behavior.

Without a word, she shifted so that she could reach your forehead and pressed a kiss to it. The first time you felt her lips upon her skin in so long and in that moment it absolutely broke you. Your hand slipped from her cheek and before you could really stop yourself you were grabbing onto her shirt with both your hands and pulling yourself closer to her body, tears falling freely as you laid there holding onto JJ for dear life.

“I’m so sorry,” JJ poured every ounce of emotion she had into those words, trying her best to convey to you that, yes, finally she did realize what she was doing. She realized in that moment all of a sudden that she needed to change, that she needed to be there for you. Through distance, she convinced herself she could keep you safer, that she wouldn’t break you, but she didn’t take into consideration what it was doing to you emotionally or even what it was doing to her. She missed you as much as you missed her, she craved you, craved to hold you. She knew every time you woke up from a nightmare, yet didn’t move a muscle and wouldn’t tell a soul that she was awake, waiting for you to fall back asleep too. She convinced herself she didn’t deserve your love, your touch, your comfort, not when she was the reason it was almost gone for good. She was punishing herself, but now she realized she was punishing you too and you didn’t deserve that, neither of you did. “Shh, please, stop crying,” She cooed, her arms coming around to pull you into her body.

Finally. Finally, you were in her arms. You knew you missed this feeling, but you didn’t realize how much until your senses were surrounded by her. You missed the feeling of her heartbeat, you missed the smell of her shampoo, you missed the gentle brush of her fingers through your hair when she would try to calm you down. And she was giving you all of the things you missed, but in the moment it felt like it could never be enough. Still you were so scared she’d go back to being cold as ice in the morning. So you kept trying to take in this moment.

Trying to calm your tears, your hands released their grip from her shirt only to cup her face and pull her down so your lips could meet hers. Your kiss wasn’t gentle, like you thought the first kiss would be once you both had healed. No, this was a tearfilled attempt to have more closeness with your wife. Your lips pressed to hers hard, and she was taken by surprise at your bold move, yet she didn’t pull away. Not right away at least.

You kept kissing her for a moment, your grip on the sides of her face a little too hard, yet it didn’t seem like either of you cared. In the back of JJ’s mind, she knew it would be best to stop this soon, but she also missed the feeling of you and the taste of your lips, so she indulged for just a moment.

When she felt your tongue start to run along her lips is when she finally pulled away. “Woah,” her voice was a whispered warning to slow down. You were still healing, fragile, you didn’t need to be this worked up right now. She needed to calm you down, to get you to rest again so you could properly heal. You didn’t want to rest though, fears of the morning after keeping you from calming down. “(Y/N)... you should try to sleep.”

“I don’t want to.” It sounded more like you pleading than a statement. “I don’t want things to go back to how they were in the morning. I can’t handle it anymore JJ, I just can’t. It’s too much. It’s-”

“They won’t.” JJ cut off your desperate rambling. The arms that were around you gently squeezed you as she held you. “I know I’ve been hurting you, I won’t anymore.”

Your body relaxed a little at her words, but still you kept both your hands on her face. Terrified to let go of her for even a second, worried she would leave your bed and never come back. She leaned back in for a gentle kiss, this time it was her guiding it. You felt yourself melt into her even more and with each press of her lips to yours it was like all your pain the past few weeks was washing away. How you missed your wife’s touch so much. With a simple kiss it felt like your heart was finally mending. You believed her words, you knew she was still healing from this trauma just as much as you were and it wouldn’t just go back to normal after one night, but finally you knew there would be a change. Finally, you knew the old JJ was coming back to you. Still, you didn’t want to sleep. Still you wanted more of your wife. Blame it on the long wait, blame it on greed, or the desperate need to be reassured that she still loved and wanted you after weeks of the cold shoulder. Who knows, but once you felt her lips on you again you couldn’t stop yourself from needing more.

“I don’t want to sleep yet…” you mumbled against her lips, your hands slipping from her face to run down her chest and stomach. You, yet again, tried to deepen the kiss, your tongue peaking out to trace her bottom lip. This time, JJ didn’t pull away as quickly as before, her lips parting so you could hesitantly brush your tongue against hers. But when JJ started to feel your hands dip under her shirt and press to her bare stomach, that’s when she pulled away again.

“(Y/N)...” She warned, her lips still so close they were brushing against yours as she spoke. “We can’t do this tonight. I could hurt you.”

“You won’t,” you mumbled as your lips fell to her jaw, kissing along it as slowly as possible. JJ’s arms moved from around your body to still the hands that were slowly creeping up her shirt. Her grip was loose though, hesitant even. You could tell her resolve was weak. Truthfully, she didn’t want to stop you either. The moment she kissed you it felt like a fire reawakened in her and she didn’t want the feeling to go away. She wanted to feel you close. Feel your skin on her skin. For some reason, she felt like it was the only way to ensure that this all wasn’t a dream. But she also knew you were still healing, still fragile and breakable, and if she did anything to hurt you again she didn’t think she could live through that.

But then your lips were trailing down to her neck and she could tell that this meant more to you than she could ever possibly realize. She could tell that you needed to feel wanted, comforted, and close to her. To deny you felt impossible. “I need you,” you whispered against her skin and that’s when every ounce of willpower went out the window. “Just be gentle.”

JJ’s hands finally slipped from your wrists. With the utmost care, she pushed you to lie on your back. “If anything hurts,” JJ began as her hands began to pull at the elastic of your pajama pants. “You need to tell me immediately.” You just nodded in response, your hands moving to brush hair from her face as she looked down at you in the moonlight.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her heart was racing and so was yours. It felt almost as if it was the first time between you two all over again. Every time JJ touched you she did it with so much control and gentleness. Her hands caressed every inch of your body and it almost felt as if she was trying to pour every ounce of love she withheld from you the past few weeks into this one moment.

With her lips traveling all over your body and your hands roaming hers with every chance you got, it didn’t take long for you to become a dripping wet mess for her. When she finally sunk her hand down between your legs to where you wanted her most you both groaned at the contact. It had been too long and never had you wanted to feel her like this as badly as you did in this very moment.

When two fingers slid into you, she did it at an infuriatingly slow pace. It was partially driving you crazy, how slow and gentle she was being, but you also knew that this is how JJ needed to feel you, how she needed to love you. So, you tried to be patient, tried to take her in slowly, even if your body felt as if it was on fire the moment her hands began to roam.

She made love to you gently. Perhaps more gentle than she had ever been. Not that JJ was always one to be rough, but before the incident she had a hunger for you that was very clear in the way she touched you. She took what she wanted from you and you tried to keep up. Now, however, she was careful. In every moment, every stroke of her finger, she took her time, but she was also taking you in. Every sigh you made when her fingers pressed down in a spot you particularly liked, every twitch of your hips as her fingers slid out only to push back in, every quiet moan you let out when you felt her thumb brush against your clit with just the right amount of pressure.

JJ didn’t want to hurt you, and that’s partially why she was going so slow, but another part of it was that she didn’t want this moment to end. In the morning, she meant it, things wouldn’t go back to how they were, but she knew that in the morning there would be more talk, more tears, more pain to work through. So for now, she just wanted to be with you. To be with her wife who she almost lost, who she almost pushed away, who she absolutely couldn’t live without.

With your shirt pushed up your chest and her lips latched onto your nipple, she relished in the taste of your skin and the feeling of you almost completely bare beneath her. It only took a few more strokes of her fingers inside of you before you were falling apart, and the way your body moved as she drove you closer to an orgasm had her mesmerized. Everything felt so much more intense after everything that had transpired. She didn’t realize just how much she needed this too, until she felt you tighten around her fingers as you came to your release.

When you finally came down from your orgasm all JJ wanted to do was keep going. She wanted to touch you more, wanted you to touch her and you wanted the same. But she still worried for your health and didn’t want to push it. The way your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath gave her the indication that perhaps even this was a little too much for one night. But she pushed that fear down for now, deciding instead to hold you and make sure you fall back asleep.

JJ rolled to your side again, pulling you with her this time into a close embrace. You began to protest, not wanting to stop, wanting to return the favor, but JJ was quick to shush you. She explained that there would always be tomorrow night if you felt rested and well enough after what you both had just done tonight. With the mention of there being a tomorrow like that, it was all you needed to hear to give in. In all honesty, you were tired too. Still not having the same stamina as you once did. You knew it would come back, that you would heal, that your relationship would too. All in good time.

JJ stroked your hair as she held you, feeling your breathing calm as you fell asleep. Her eyes closed slowly as she pulled you closer and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. In the darkness of the room, before drifting to sleep too she whispered, “I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.”

A/N: Well, there you have it! The end of the series. Hope you enjoyed <3

taglist: @desperate-gay @melatonindaydreamz @high--power @mmmmokdok @comebackbehere23 @pintsizedshawty @daddy-jareau @mychemicalimagines @7thavenger @throwawayfanfics @leecravesdeath @olliethedonut @zoomdeathknight @storiesofsvu

#jennifer jareau #jennifer jareau x you #jennifer jareau x reader #jj #jj x reader #criminal minds #wlw #fanfic #hell or high water series #five-bi-five-mind

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karahalloway · 5 months

Text

Thanksgiving - Part 4

Fandom: TRR - (Un)Common Attraction universe

Pairing: Drake Walker x F!OC (Harper Gale)

Series: Thanksgiving

Synopsis: Harper and Drake fly to Bozeman, MT to spend their first Thanksgiving together with Harper’s family.

Word count: 5,400

Warnings: E (swearing, fluff, religion, references to smut, aggro, violence no human casulaties)

A/N1: So, this installment was supposed to wrap up Thanksgiving night at the Gales', but (as per usual), it ended up running away from me, so there will be at least one more part (I know I said that last time as well, but I don't control these characters)

A/N2: Once again, apologies in advance for any errors or misinterpretations in relation to the American football. I sliced and diced the Broncos vs. Cowboys game together based on real life comments I transcribed from my husband over the course of a few games we watched together, so pretty much all of the reactions in the fic are genuine yes, hubby is a very opinionated spectator 😆

A/N3: This is also my second submission for @choicesholidays' 2023 Winter Holidays Prompt Event, and the prompt that this installment fits with is Week 1: I’m thankful for you and Week 3: This is definitely going to land me/you/us on the naughty list!

"Oh, look who decided to show up..." grouses Tyler as Drake and I descend the stairs.

"Sorry," I say, pulling my cardigan over my shoulders. "We—"

"Used up all the hot water?" my brother offers dryly. "And then some?"

Justin gives him a shove.

"What?" Tyler objects offendedly. "They were in there for almost two hours!"

"I pulled 36 rose thorns outta her," Drake tells him.

Tyler visibly blanches. "Shit."

"You okay, Harp?" asks Brody, stepping up to me.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I assure him with a wan smile. "Just —"

"Oh, honey!" cries Mom, flying out of the kitchen with outstretched arms. "That's terrible! Do you—?"

"Ouch!" I hiss as her concerned arms fly around me... pressing inevitably into my wounds.

"Oh! Sorry, sweetie!" she exclaims, yanking her hands back. "I didn't mean to hurt you! I just wanted to give you a hug!"

"Yeah, those are going to have to wait a while..." I mutter sourly, rubbing a particularly tender spot on my shoulder.

"Such rotten luck..." she bemoans with a sigh. "Especially on Thanksgiving!"

"Trust me, I know..." I assure her, glancing wryly at Drake. "It was definitely not part of the plan!"

He shakes his head with a smirk as he helps himself to the twelve-pack of Busch that Brody had already opened up.

"Do you need anything?" my mom presses. "Ice pack? Hot water bottle? Painkillers?"

"Something stronger?" quips Nana as she puts the finishing touches on the apple pies.

"I'm fine," I tell her. "Drake already loaded me up with Advil upstairs. They should be kicking in any minute."

"Let's get you fed, then," declares Dad, hoisting the steaming turkey out of the oven. "Everything should still be hot."

"Sorry for making you wait," I say as we all make our way to the dining table. "Anything we can do to help?"

"Nothing — apart from digging in!" he replies, placing the oversized bird into the middle of the table.

"Not before we say grace!" Nana reminds us imperiously, arriving as well after having loaded the pies into the oven.

Groans rise up from my brothers.

"Can't we just eat?" asks Tyler. "We'll miss the start of the game!"

Nana whips him with her kitchen towel. "Not on your life, buster! You may not go to church like you should on Sundays, but you can still take two minutes out of your day to think about something other than yourself! Especially on Thanksgiving!"

"I think about stuff!" Tyler objects, rubbing his arm.

"Like that pistol at the gun range?" smirks Brody. "Who's more likely to shoot you than date you?"

"No..." snips Tyler, looking studiously away.

"Suuuure," grins Justin, elbowing his brother meaningfully.

Tyler reddens further.

"I quite like the tradition," interjects Mom with a smile. "Helps remind us of all our little blessings in life. Like the fact that we have food on the table... A roof over our heads..." She reaches out to clasp my hand under the table. "Things to celebrate..."

I return her smile as I give her fingers a squeeze.

"Okay, fine," accedes Tyler. "But can we skip the hand-holding? I'd like to keep my fingers— Ow! The hell was that—!"

"Language!" warns Dad.

"We're doing this properly," decrees Nana, snapping the kitchen towel back onto her shoulder. "Without any goofing around!"

She offers her hands with a decisive note of finality.

Tyler stares at it for a long moment before taking it with a beleaguered sigh.

"Now your brother," she prompts.

Tyler holds his hand out grumpily.

Justin takes it with an equally crabby expression.

I hold my free hand out to Drake, who laces his fingers through mine with a warm smile as the rest of my family link up as well.

"Right," declares Nana. "Who wants to do the honours?"

Awkward silence descends on the table.

I heave a breath. Guess I'll just—

"I'll do it."

My head snaps to my left. "Really?"

Drake responds to my surprised outburst with a shrug. "Someone's gotta. Plus, like your mom said — we got things to celebrate."

My heart swells with emotion as I feel him run his thumb over the engagement ring sitting on my finger.

He meets my gaze with that molten mocha look that always gives me butterflies before turning back to the rest of the table.

My family's eyes swivel onto him expectantly.

Drake clears his throat. "I'd like to say thanks. To everyone at this table. Not just for inviting me to share Thanksgiving with y'all, but for welcoming me into your family. I know we didn't exactly meet under the best circumstances — the first, the second, or hell... even the third time!"

Chuckles rise up from around the table.

Tyler leans into Justin accusatorially. "How come he gets a free pass for cussing?"

Brody punts him under the table.

"So, I'm grateful for the trust you placed in me — continue to place in me — when it comes to your daughter... your sister... your granddaughter," Drake continues, meeting everyone's eyes in turn. "It goes without saying that she's smart, beautiful, got more grit than a gravel road, and obviously banged her head at some point—"

More chuckles float into the air.

"—because I still have no clue what the hell she's doing with me," he adds with a wry smirk, glancing over at me. "But I know that I love her, and will go to the ends of the Earth for her, come hell or high water. And I know we're not quite married yet, but I truly am grateful for every day, every minute, every second I get to spend with her, because life is too damn short, and I honestly don't deserve her."

I squeeze his hand as my vision becomes blurred with feeling.

"And I know that the past six months have been tough — for everyone at this table — but I don't regret the outcome. Because each hurdle, each hardship led to this little moment right here — all of us 'round this table, sharing a Thanksgiving meal together."

I feel my mouth curve into a small smile of agreement.

Drake takes a breath. "So thank you, Lord, for blessing us with this bounty — not just the food that we are about to eat, but the bonds of love and family that we get to share and strengthen each and every day. Amen."

There is more than one hoarse voice as my family reciprocates the traditional affirmation.

"Oh, Drake," croons Mom, wiping the heartfelt tears from her eyes. "That was beautiful!"

"Yeah, seriously," grunts Tyler 'round a sniffle. "What gives, man?"

"Are you actually crying?" asks Justin in bewilderment.

"No..." mutters Tyler, blinking rapidly. "Just... just got a stupid eyelash..."

"Uh-huh..." comments Brody... though Drake's speech must've touched him as well, because he sidelines his usual ribbing in order to reach up to flick a wayward drop of wetness out of the corner of his own eye.

"At least now you know how to do it for next year," declares Nana. Reaching across the table she adds, "That was lovely, dear. Thank you."

Drake accepts the gesture with a soft smile. "Just spoke from the heart, ma'am."

"As you should," she affirms wisely, settling back into her seat.

I lean into Drake with a wry smirk. "Now the rest of us will never measure up..."

"Not everything's a competition, Gale," he murmurs, lifting my hand to his lips to drop a kiss on my knuckles, his mocha eyes dancing.

I flick my foot against his as I stifle a snort.

"Yes, thank you, Drake," acknowledges Dad with a nod. "And now, for the main event."

Brody shunts the turkey closer to the edge of the table as Dad pushes himself up and reaches for the carving knife and meat fork.

"What piece do you want?" I ask Drake as my dad sets to work dissecting the steaming bird.

"Y'all take first dibs," he replies. "I'm easy."

"You sure?" I press. "There's usually a fight for the wings and the legs. So, if you want in on that, you'll need to jump on it."

"I'm good," he assures me. "You just pick what you want."

"Drake?" asks Dad, as if on cue. "Breast, wing, or leg?"

"Please don't say wing..." prays Tyler. "Please don't say wing..."

Brody elbows his brother in the side, eliciting an annoyed grunt.

"I'm good with anything," Drake replies.

"Nah, son," Dad insists. "You were kind enough to say grace, so you get first pick. So, what'll it be?"

Drake glances 'round the table like it's a high-stakes poker game.

My family eye him in turn, waiting for his decision.

Looking back up at my dad, he says, "Breast is good."

There is a collective exhale from my brothers.

"You sure?" Dad asks, repeating my own question from earlier. "There's plenty of—"

"I'm good," Drake confirms, holding his plate out.

"Okay," shrugs Dad, slicing a decent chunk of meat off. "Just don't be shy about seconds."

"Learnt my lesson yesterday," Drake assures him with a grin.

Knowing laughter bubbles up around the table.

"Harper?" asks Dad, turning to me.

"Hey!" objects Tyler. "Why is she next?"

"Because she's the only one of the four of you not living here anymore," Dad replies. "Which means she's a guest, and guests get first cut."

Tyler slumps back into his chair with a dejected huff. "Never gonna get any wings at this rate..."

"Leg for me, please, Dad," I say. "And a wing."

Tyler throws his hands up in the air. "See!"

Dad ignores him as he proceeds to dole out the request onto my plate.

"Thanks," I say, placing the food back in front of me.

"You're welcome, honey," Dad says with a smile before turning back to take orders from the rest of the table.

I reach for my fork and knife.

Drake leans in again. "Shouldn't we—?"

He goes mute as I dump half the turkey leg onto his plate. "Here."

His eyes snap up to mine. "Gale, I said I—"

"You can thank me later," I tell him, giving him the wing as well while nabbing some breast from him in exchange.

Drake stares at his plate for a moment before reaching over to give my knee a squeeze.

I pat his hand under the table.

I know he'd been trying to be polite, opting for his third choice instead of his first or second, so he wouldn't cause any upset. But I also know that he loves wings — I mean, who doesn't? — and the darker meat always tastes juicer than the white. So, I'm not going to let his Southern sensibilities cheat him out of genuinely being able to enjoy his Thanksgiving meal. Especially after everything he's done for us today — fixing the oven, prepping the food, and spending thirty minutes with a needle and tweezers plucking thorns out of me with infinite patience and precision.

"Help yourselves," Mom urges, shoving the mash towards us. "You know you don't have to stand on ceremony with us."

"Thanks, Mom," I say, taking the dish from her.

While the various sides and garnishes get passed around, Dad finishes carving up the turkey, and we settle into easy conversation in front of loaded plates.

"So, I hear you're flying down to Texas tomorrow?" Nana asks as she spears an asparagus.

"That's right, ma'am," nods Drake, swallowing down the bite he's just taken. "Need to make a quick detour for my Aunt Lee."

"She forgot something?" queries Nana.

"No," I correct 'round a mouthful of mash. "We need to get her."

"She's never flown before," Drake clarifies. "Or been out of the country. But my sister wants her to come to the wedding, so..."

"We're her VIP escort," I finish wryly.

"VIP or not," notes my Mom, "I'm sure she'll appreciate the company. Airports can be very bewildering!"

"You just need to follow the signs," I say.

"Hey," interjects Tyler, jabbing a forkful of turkey at Mom. "You're talking to the parent who got lost in Costco."

"They put the petunias in the wrong place!" objects Mom.

"You mean outside...?" deadpans Justin.

Mom huffs wearily in reply.

"Have you decided where the two of you want to get hitched?" asks Dad, strategically changing the subject.

"No," I admit. "We've been so involved with Savannah and Bertrand's wedding that we haven't really had time to think about ours..."

"Well, I know it's nothing fancy, but you're more than welcome to have it here," he offers. "The yard's plenty big enough.. Or there's the church down the road, if you were thinking something more traditional..."

"Thanks, Dad," I say graciously. "We'll definitely—"

"And I can make the cake!" adds Mom with gusto. "With those little sugar flowers, and—"

"Stop trying to plan their wedding!" chides Nana. "They might want to get married in Texas! Or New York! Or Hawaii!"

"Well, like I said," I interject diplomatically. "We haven't quite decided..."

"But if not," accedes Dad, "you know we're more than happy to chip in. In whatever way you need."

"Including helping you elope," winks Justin.

Mom throws her bread roll at him. "Don't you dare! If I find out my one and only daughter got married without me, I'll... I'll..."

"Well, there goes Plan A..." mutters Drake as my mom heaves a shuddering breath.

"Told ya..." I whisper back with a grin.

He leans in closer. "Fine. But I expect you to make it up to me on the honeymoon."

I smack his arm.

His hot gaze bores into me. "You think I'm joking..."

Despite our earlier escapades in the shower, I feel the heat flare between my legs in response to the intensity in his eyes.

Especially as he adds in a low voice, "We'll be doing nothing but each other for two weeks, baby."

"Okay, enough wedding talk!" declares Tyler. "It's game time!"

"No, it's not!" objects Justin. "I'm still eating!"

"Well, eat faster then!" urges Brody, wiping the gravy from his plate. "The kickoff waits for no man!"

"What about dessert?" asks Mom. "Don't you want to—?"

"I think the pie will have to wait," I note dryly as my brothers push their chairs back.

"Drake?" she asks hopefully. "Do you want—?"

"Thanks, but J was right," he replies, leaning back in his chair. "I'm stuffed fuller than the poor bird sitting on the table."

"There's always room for dessert!" Nana counters. "Especially when your missus made it!"

"It wasn't just me," I tell her. "You helped too!"

"It's yours in all the ways that matter, dear," she insists with a proud smile. "I just helped you put it together."

"Well, if it's anything like the pancakes, I'm sure it'll be worth the wait," Drake assures her.

"Ha! Your boy's got more silver on his tongue than I have teeth in my mouth!" exclaims Nana. But I can tell that she's pleased with Drake's response.

"What about some apple pie moonshine?" asks Dad conspiratorially. "Got any room for that?"

Drake considers the offer. "I can be tempted..."

"Good," approves Dad with a grin, slapping Drake on the shoulder as he gets up. "I'll grab the bottle."

"Yo! Texas!" calls Tyler from the living room. "You comin', or what?"

"Go," I tell him. "I'll help with the clean up."

"You sure?" he asks, running his gaze over me concernedly.

"Yes," I assure him. "It's not like I broke an arm or anything."

His mouth twitches. "Opinions may vary...."

I give him a shove. "Want to rethink that prognosis, Doctor?"

He leans in to drop a kiss on my cheek with a chuckle. "Fine. But you better holler if you need help."

"I'll be fine," I tell him, turning my head to peck him on the lips. "I need to work all this food down somehow first, anyway."

His breath tickles my mouth. "Well, if you want suggestions..."

"Oh, my God!" I cry in exasperation, snacking his chest. "Just go already!"

"You sure they're not married already?" asks Nana prosaically. "They act like they've been together fifteen years!"

"Oh, not you too!" deplores Mom, dropping her head into her hands.

"What?" objects Nana. "It was just an observation!"

"Well, don't give them ideas!" exhorts Mom. "I'll walk at least one of my children down the aisle, if it's the last thing I do!"

My head snaps 'round. "Isn't that Dad's—?"

"He can have the first dance," declares Mom with a dismissive wave of her hand.

I stare at her in bewilderment.

"What did I do now?" queries Dad, reappearing with the jar of moonshine.

"Nothing!" Mom assures him with an angelic smile. "Just wedding talk!"

"More like wedding sabotage," mutters Nana around the rim of her gin and tonic.

"Umm..." is all I can manage as Drake tries and fails not to choke on his own snort of laughter.

"They're kicking off!" hollers Justin from the living room.

"Better excuse yourself quick, son," advises Dad, grabbing a pair of glasses out. "Otherwise you'll be stuck at this table for the rest of the night, wondering what possessed you to propose in the first place!"

"Robert!" exclaims Mom in outrage.

"Go," I urge Drake as my dad disappears into the living room. "We'll join you in a minute."

"Okay," he accedes. Turning back to the table, he adds, "Thank you for dinner. Y'all really went all out."

"Oh, you're welcome, sweetie," Mom tells him with a beaming smile. "But are you sure you had enough?"

"I'm sure," he assures her, patting his belly. "But I'll be back for some of that pie at halftime!"

"We'll keep it warm for you," Nana assures him.

"Appreciate it," Drake grins in reply.

"Oh, that reminds me!" Mom exclaims as Drake turns to follow my dad. "I should get the ice cream out of the freezer — let it warm up a little."

"I can do it," I offer, pushing my chair back. "Seeing as I did nothing earlier."

"Don't you want to watch as well?" asks Mom in surprise.

"With that much testosterone crammed into one room?" I quip. "I need some apple pie first!"

"Good thing we made two, then!" agrees Nana.

"I'll get some plates out," Mom declares, getting up as well.

Dispersing from the table, the three of us set about our designated tasks while the sounds of the game float through the house to the accompaniment of various exclamations coming from the sofa.

"Boom!" yells Drake. "That's how you sack!"

"What the shit, ref!" erupts Brody at the same time. "He was over first down!"

"Yeah, right!" scoffs Drake. "He was—"

"Shut up, Texas!" shouts Tyler. "Your opinion doesn't count!"

"Actually, he's right," steps in Justin. "He got pushed off before—"

"Whose side are you on?!" Brody and Tyler yell back.

"Sounds like an exciting game," observes Nana as she pulls the pies out of the oven.

"A little too exciting," I reply dryly, grabbing a spoon out for the ice cream.

"Oh, they're just having fun," Mom assures me, popping a bottle of caramel Bailey's open. "You know how boys get when they're together..."

"Yeah," I mutter. "That's what I'm worried about..."

The last thing I need right now, on top of everything else that's gone sideways today, is Drake and my brothers falling out over a stupid game when they've been getting along so well with each other. Especially when there is actually money — and pride — on the line.

Maybe this had been a bad idea...

Peeking 'round the corner, I catch sight of the guys on the sofa, eyes glued to the TV.

"Stop him!" urges Drake as the Broncos receiver makes a dash down the field. "Flatten the bastard!"

"Keep going, Patrick!" counters Brody.

"Sweet fuckin' Jesus!" groans Drake as the Cowboys defence finally manage to push the Denver player out of bounds. "How many of y'all do you need to stop a runner!"

"The whole team," laughs Dad from the other side of the room.

"Seriously?" objects Tyler. "You're not gonna call him out on the f-word?"

"Oh, just let it go, T!" groans Brody.

"Maybe if you learn to drink 'shine like a man, Dad'll give you a free pass too!" Justin tells his younger brother.

"I make no promises," comes the deadpan response.

I feel a smile quirk at my lips. Okay. Maybe it's not so bad.

Picking my plate and glass up, I make my way over to the sofa as well...

...and nearly spill everything onto the carpet as Drake erupts into a fit of rage just as I'm about to sit down next to him.

"What the hell, Diggs!" he bellows, throwing his hand out at the TV. "How could you let that go!"

Brody jumps up from the couch with a celebratory fist-pump as the Broncos’ offence snaps the ball out of the air and tumbles across the line. "Ha! In your face, Texas!"

"One job! One fuckin' job..." growls Drake under his breath as he stares daggers at the screen.

The Broncos quickly line up for their field goal, adding a one-point conversion to their score.

"How's the game going?" asks Mom, coming over with Nana to join us.

"Depends who you ask," I tell her dryly, spooning up a forkful of pie while Drake continues to fume next to me.

"Broncos are winning," Brody declares proudly.

"Not for long," Drake mutters as the Cowboys line up for their first snap.

Dak Prescott gets the ball and launches it down the field.

"Catch it, Lamb, catch it...!" urges Drake.

Yellow flags fly into the field as the ref's whistle blows.

"What the fuck?" comes the outraged exclamation from next to me. "There was nothing—!"

"Personal foul," advises Justin. "Cowboys offence."

Sure enough, one of the Dallas linemen gets called out for holding.

"Oh, fuck you, ref!" objects Drake as the slow-mo replay is shown. "That's a bullshit call!"

"Not really," counters Justin. "That Cowboy all but ripped Browning's jersey off!"

"It didn't interfere with the damn play!" insists Drake heatedly. "We're owed that yardage!"

"Not according to the refs," shrugs Brody.

"Putain de bordel de merde..." cusses Drake under his breath.

"Jesus!" exclaims Mom as the teams reset. "Things must really be bad if we're swearing in Spanish now!"

"It's French," I correct wearily.

The ball is snapped again and the Cowboys manage to gain some ground, despite stiff opposition from the Broncos’ defence.

"The fuck, Darby! That was an easy pass!" exclaims Drake as the Cowboys fumble the ball.

"Cowboys are choking!" sniggers Tyler gleefully. "It's what they do best!"

"Shut up!" snaps Drake in response.

I lay a comforting hand on his knee, but he's too engrossed in the game to notice...

...especially when the Broncos take advantage of the turnover to score another touchdown.

"That's why you don't tackle like that!" yells Drake, springing to his feet in a fit of rage as the ball crosses the end zone.

"Ha!" gloats Brody victoriously as the Broncos convert the down. "16-0 against the number one offence in the league! We'll have you beat by the third quarter, easy!"

"Fuck you, man..." Drake grits, downing the remainder of his moonshine angrily.

"Top up?" offers Dad.

"I'm not sure that's—"

But my feeble protest gets very viscerally overruled as Drake thrusts his glass out in front of me.

I sink back into the sofa. This is going to be a long game...

The rest of the first half ticks down, with Dallas managing to squeeze a touchdown in just before the whistle blows.

"Fucking finally...!" grumbles Drake as the game cuts to ads.

"Someone suck the juice out of Cowboys?" asks Nana. "They're all over the place tonight!"

"I thought they were supposed to be one of the top teams in the league," adds Mom, chewing thoughtfully on a bite of pie.

"Just... Just don't..." says Drake with a shake of his head as he flops back onto the couch.

"Who wants pie!" I ask, trying to lighten the mood a bit — and change the subject — before Drake has a total meltdown.

"I'm good," says Brody, reaching for another can of Busch instead.

Tyler and Justin shake their heads as well.

"Drake?" I ask hopefully.

He tips the remainder of his drink back by way of reply.

"All the more for me, then!" I declare with excessive chirpiness as I tramp back into the kitchen.

But if Drake picks up on my heavy dose of sarcasm, he doesn't react to it.

Arriving at the centre island, I reach for the serving spoon.

I know he got like this sometimes — way too engrossed and overtly involved. Especially when his team failed to live up to expectations and he was left watching helplessly from the sidelines.

Which grates on him all the more, given that he played for a college team during his first two years at the University of North Texas, and knows first-hand the difference between a good play and a bad one.

So, I can empathise with his outbursts. Even if I don't agree with them. Because, at the end of the day, it's just a stupid game played by a bunch of belligerent jocks who get paid way too much money to run up and down a field for a couple of hours.

And that's part of the reason why I never really caught the football bug despite growing up in a house with four brothers and a dad who live and breathe the game.

Dumping another serving of pie onto my plate, I dress it with a liberal dollop of ice cream before making my way back to the living room...

...but not before I grab a fresh glass from the cupboard as well.

Dropping my plate on the coffee table, I nab the bottle of moonshine and pour myself a couple of fingers. Because the way this game is going, Bailey’s isn’t really going to cut it.

"You're drinking too?" asks Tyler in bewilderment.

"You used to hate that stuff," adds Justin with wide eyes.

"Drake's a bad influence," I reply dryly, screwing the mason jar closed again.

"Has good taste, though!" quips Nana as she reaches for the amber-coloured liquor as well. "You really outdid yourself with this batch, Rob!"

Dad raises his own glass cordially in reply as the TSN commentators wrap up their predictions for the second half and the game resumes.

Downing my drink in one, grimace-inducing swig (Nana's right — it is good... just very strong), I take my seat again with some trepidation as the Broncos kick the ball across the field to the Cowboys.

As regardless of the outcome, beer cans and f-bombs are guaranteed to go flying as soon as the final whistle blows. It's just a question of who will be the perpetrator — Drake, or Brody.

"Run it! Run it! You're wide op—!" Drake emits a pained groan. "Oh, got the love of—!"

Brody claps his hands together in victory as the Bronco's defence tackles the Cowboys runner to the ground. "Suck it, Texas!"

"We still got possession," Drake reminds him as the Cowboys line up for a snap.

I continue to chip away at my pie in tense silence as Dak Prescott gets his hands on the ball and looks for a receiver.

"Throw it, dammit!" urges Drake. "You're gonna get—"

Prescott launches the ball at the last second before he gets sacked, but it goes wide, hitting the ground even though Lamb makes a desperate run for it.

"27 yards, man!" groans Drake. "How the fuck did you miss?"

"Broncos gonna win!" sing-songs Justin as he does a little shimmy on the couch. "Broncos gonna win!"

"Shut up!" snaps Drake.

Ten tense minutes later, Drake's mood only fouls further.

"What?!" he berates the screen as the ref denies the Cowboys some much-needed points. "What the hell do you mean 'he wasn't in control'! That was a goddamn touchdown!"

"Sucks to be you, Texas!" Brody chimes in gleefully as Dallas is forced to rerun the play.

Drake shoots daggers across the room even as the Cowboys fullback manages to throw himself over the top of the double line of blockers and land the ball in the end zone.

But the touchdown, and the subsequent field goal, seems to galvanise the Cowboys, especially since they know they're quickly running out of time to make up for all the points they conceded to the Broncos in the first half.

Possession switches to Denver, but the defensive coordinator must have been screaming at the linesmen while they had been sat on the bench, because the Broncos have to fight tooth and nail to make any headway down the field.

"58-yard field goal...?" asks Justin in disbelief as the Broncos’ kicker is brought on.

"He'll need more than a prayer to pull that off," agrees Tyler.

"He'll make it," Brody assures himself, hands clasped in front of his face in apparent prayer. "He'll make it."

Even McManus looks like he's seeking divine assistance as he prepares himself for the kick on the field.

The kicker's foot pulls back, and the ball goes sailing through the air. The Cowboys scramble to catch it...

...but the football sails decisively through the bars of the goal.

"Fuck yes!" screams Brody, shooting up from the couch with his arms in the air.

"I can't believe he made it..." gasps Mom.

"Boy's got some thighs on him," affirms Nana.

Tyler and Justin are staring at the screen in awe.

Even Drake looks moderately impressed.

The rest of the third quarter winds down, and after yet another ad break, the final fifteen minutes of game time rolls around.

"Now or nothing, guys," murmurs Drake fervently as the last quarter kicks off.

I finished my second helping of pie ages ago, so I have nothing left to keep me distracted from the almost choking anticipation in the room.

The teams battle it out on the screen as the clock ticks slowly down.

"Run it, run it!" yells Drake as the Broncos close off Prescott's options.

"He's behiiiiind you!" mocks Tyler 'round a pre-celebratory slice of apple pie.

"Oh, for the love of—!"

My eyes suddenly widen as I see the Dallas QB pull his arm back. "He's going for a Hail Mary!"

Drake rounds on me. "To who? There's no one fuck—!"

Prescott must've sensed the Broncos' linebacker bearing down on him because he launches the ball into the air at the last possible second. The football hurtles through the air as players scramble on both sides...

...and Cooper manages to snatch it from the air!

"Where the hell was that during the first half!" deplores Drake as Cooper lands on his feet and pegs it down the field, leaving the Broncos' defence to dust.

"Run, you piece of crap!" yells Brody at his team. "Run!"

But it's too little, too late, and Cooper somersaults the ball into the Denver end zone with a massive grin on his face as the crowd in the stadium goes ballistic.

"Fucking finally!" gripes Drake, slumping back into the couch in relief as the Cowboys gain their hard-fought six points.

"Not gonna help you, Texas," Justin reminds him. "You're 22 points down with two minutes to go."

"Two minutes is a long time, man," Drake counters as the Cowboys line up to attempt a two-point conversion.

And I don't blame them — they desperately need the points, even though it's a risky play.

"Not if we sack you first!" exults Brody as the Broncos take their revenge and the Cowboys' gamble backfires.

"Asshole!" cries Drake, shooting to his feet in anger. "Why the fuck did y—!"

Tyler's laughing on the floor. "Should've taken the kick, Texas!"

Something inside of Drake snaps. "Fils de pute!" he roars aiming a kick at the coffee table and sending it flying...

...right into the TV stand.

The 50’’ flatscreen teeters precariously, as if trying to decide its fate, before opting to crash unceremoniously to the floor.

Silence drops on the room as everyone stares at the carnage, the garbled sound of the TSN commentators' voices crackling feebly out of the busted speakers.

Even Nana is speechless.

Dad is the first to recover his faculties. "Well," he observes prosaically. "That's a new one..."

I finally manage to tear my gaze away from the scene of destruction to look up at Drake...

...only to find a blank space beside me.

"Dra—?"

Pissed-off footsteps echo down the foyer before the front door slams shut with a loud bang.

I heave a breath. "Great."

Thanksgiving continues in Part 5 - Coming Soon!

A/N: Before anyone asks, yes, I HC that Drake had a Christian — specifically Catholic — upbringing. Both his parents hail from areas where church attendance, Sunday school, baptisms, etc. would’ve been prevalent when they were growing up (Texas for Jackson and rural Cordonia for Bianca — if you recall, I switched their nationalities around for my rewrites), so it would make sense for the Walkers to have continued this tradition with their kids, especially when they were younger. I know a lot of people write Drake as an atheist (or even downright aversive to the concept of God and organised religion), and I can understand why people make this choice, but this is not the route that my Drake decided to take. And while in my fics he is not ‘actively’ religious (he doesn’t go to church, he’s not particularly insistent on having a church wedding, etc.), that religious upbringing is still part of his character (readers may have noticed this in some of the expressions and turns of phrase that he uses; the concept of prayer is also something that I’m planning to explore towards the end of (Less Than) Noble Intentions), so he would know, and not balk at the thought of, saying grace at the dinner table.

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Thanksgiving Only

@burnsoslow

#harper gale #drake walker #the royal romance #thanksgiving #choices holiday prompts #trr au fanfic

32 notes · View notes

inkedroplets · 23 days

Text

tagged by @sideguitars Thank you for the tag!

1. What sort of content do you create, and what is the thing you’ve made that you’re most proud of?

I guess I've mostly focused on offramps from canon and expanding the scope of the world that I'm playing around in

2. What fandom(s) do you create for?

Supergirl for the most part but I have a few other fandoms I'm dabbling in: Warrior Nun, MCU and Killing Eve

3. What is your current favourite ship (or brotp if you prefer), and how controversial is it?

Supercorp. I guess it's more controversial than I ever realized? I've somehow been able to avoid or outright not see any of the discourse online which is probably for the best.

4. For your answer to question 3, are they canon?

No but what is canon?

5. What was your first fandom, and how old were you?

I would say either Xena or The X-Files. I think I'd have to give the win to the X-Files because I was much more certain that I would be abducted by aliens

6. What is your most unhinged fandom creation to date?

Unhinged... Probably the MCU/Supergirl crossover I'm writing now. Lena gets yeeted to Earth-616. Not many days you get to see Matt Murdock and Kara Danvers having a conversation or Lena dancing with Peggy...

7. Do you remember what started you off creating fandom content, and if so, what was it?

Funnily enough, I was quite ignorant about the existence of fandom content. I've always liked writing so it was a very short hop to start making stories that I wanted to see inbetween the bad poetry and short stories.

8. Do you let people you know in real life see your fandom creations?

My gf reads my stuff but beyond that I'm quiet private when it comes to my fandom creations.

9. How do you feel about fanworks of fanworks? Has anyone ever made something based on a thing you made?

I feel like at its core that's what fandom is essentially. So to see these offshoots of someone's own work it's for the most part flattering. But I do see the other side of the coin where someone might feel protective of their work and find it difficult to give their blessing to it.

10. What feeling do you most often try to evoke with your creations?

I don't know if there would be a feeling above any of the others that I'm trying to evoke with my writing. I guess if I had to pick I might say I hope that it makes you cry. Angsty angsty tears

11. Has someone ever paid your work a compliment (in any form) that has stuck with you, and what was it?

I've been very blessed to have a handful of people create art for some of my fics and that's maybe the biggest compliment I could ever hope to get. To see it come to life in a different way is really magical. But I would say that every compliment has really meant so much to me.

12. What’s your favourite thing someone else has made that you’ve seen in the last 24 hours (and link it if you can find it again!)

I've been very blessed to get to see snippets from @sideguitars about fics they have in progress and those have all just been so deliciously angsty.

13. Give a small sneak preview of something you’re working on right now (eg a couple of sentences of fic from a WIP, a gif set theme, a small piece of a larger picture, whatever you feel happy to share)

I'll give a grab bag of things in various states of chaos

Snippet from my Lena learns magic from Johanna Constantine fic

“Where the fuck is it?” the woman asked. She advanced on Lena, looming over her. Not content to simply tower over Lena she leaned over her and seized her by the shoulders, hard as if she meant to shake her if she didn’t get a favorable answer. Whatever anger she might have felt at being spoken to in such a way or to have this stranger lay hands on her was nothing compared to the fear that still held her in place. It had robbed her of not only her strength but it had stolen whatever scathing remark she would have normally had at the ready in response to the woman’s question. “Where’s what?” Lena managed to ask in a voice that at least sounded mostly like her own. “The grimoire or scroll or whatever magical thing you’ve decided to fuck around with that lured a demon here.” The woman examined Lena carefully, a flicker of dull recognition coming alight in her eyes. “Fuck me,” she grumbled. “You’re Lena Luthor, aren’t you? Yeah, it’s you. I’d recognize that jawline anywhere.” The woman ran her hand along her own face in what Lena had to assume was a mocking gesture. “Why is it you rich people always want to muck around with the occult? You can’t be that bloody bored.”

The Lucifer Crossover that I don't feel is good enough to share

"Yes, I remember," Lena said sourly. "When I asked the devil for a favor I was under the assumption that the eventual repayment would come much later and be far less annoying.” "As did I,” Lucifer said, making a hard right that sent a bolt of pain through Lena’s temple. “Usually when I call in favors they’re a lot more fun for me. I’m the devil, not some wish-granting fairy-godmother.” He appeared to shudder at the thought and focused his attention back on the road. “I can assure you that Linda is the best of the best. She’s been my therapist for years now…” “So,” Lena said slowly, rattling the pill caddy before tossing it back into his lap. “This is you after years of therapy?”

and a peek at the MCU/Supergirl crossover brain rot

“You got my message,” Lena said, relieved to have an excuse to put her pen down. “I got your message,” Lillian said. “I also saw the news.” A flicker of annoyance passed over her face and Lena instinctively braced herself for whatever venom would come spilling out of her mouth. “Why?” she asked. She tilted her head at an insouciant angle as if trying to suss out Lena’s reasoning before she could answer. “I didn’t think people would sleep very well at night if they learned that out of nowhere that the sky ripped open and aliens from another Earth destroyed half the city.”

14. Have you ever seen/read anything made by the person who tagged you? If so, what was it and what was your favourite thing about it? (pick a favourite if there are several)

I really really love(d) Aftermath I just love how you brought Andrea into the fold (and called out that stupid nickname they gave her in the show)

15. Do you leave comments on fandom works, and if so how would you describe your comment style?

I'm getting a lot better at it, just as I stopped reading so many fics. I like to pick out certain passages that really resonated with me or just thought were really well-written and tell the author why.

16. How many works in progress do you currently have? Will you finish them all?

I have about 15 WIP's that I really want to finish and a handful more that I'm more iffy on. The plan is to finish them all but if I'll ever actually do it... I hope so though.

17. what’s the longest it’s ever taken you to finish a fandom project?

I'm too embarrassed to look at the last time I updated rich girl. Years. Or Year. Anyway, too fucking long. But I'm just about done. Sorry. Life was kind of kicking my ass majorly for a while.

18. Describe the thing you made most recently in a way that is technically true, but also completely misleading. Link the thing if it’s published!

Define recently. All I See is You Lena's magic derails game night

19. Do you ever engage with fanworks for a fandom you’re not in? Which one(s) and how did you get into it?

I'm quite lucky to get a wide variety of fanart that crosses my dash so I'll engage to the point of gushing about it in the tags.

20. Recommend a fan work from your fandom to your followers

This very recent fic, To Want and to Have and to Hold that's caught my full attention by @eqt-95 Really can't say enough nice things about it and am eagerly awaiting an update

Suggested tag list, but there are no rules here, follow your heart.

I hate tagging people. i feel like I'm bothering them but I will poke @rustingcat since I always want to hear more about what they're working on

#ask game #So this didn't take me like two weeks to actually finish responding to #I am as prompt about tumblr asks as I am about my work email

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bokettochild · 1 year

Text

I'm back.

This was for Mother's Day, but I had another thing out that day and couldn't finish this one in time. Then rewrote this one. then merged the drafts, then had to adjust things, but here it is and now Violet's Mother has a name :)

I hope you enjoy!

(Full fic below the cut if you want to read it here and not on Ao3)

Violet's Mother

There are incidents and then there are Violet Incidents.

There are other kinds as well, Four supposes, but those are limited in their types and usually just fall under the bigger category of ‘incidents’, since most of those situations only happen once.

One could debate that the Violet Incident has only happened twice, others might agree that the thing in the bar that hasn’t let Warriors and Legend look each other in the face since was something else entirely. Four, however, finds it easier to classify it under the umbrella of ‘Violet Incidents’ which he and Wind have agreed are any incidents that involve Legend pretending to be a woman in order to save someone’s ass.

In hindsight, they’re kind of funny.

They’re even more funny when he doesn’t have to do anything except stand there. Legend does most of the work honestly, and they follow along. Wind has played a part of course, always backing up Legend’s stories or feeding the vet what information he needs to make a believable performance, but Four has been blessed with only having to perform two simple tasks, and between Vio and Red, they’re quite easy: cry, and cling to Legend the moment the vet comes within his view.

Okay, so maybe the first time they hadn’t been planning on that, but they were genuinely overwhelmed, tired, and fighting a migraine, so clinging to the vet had been the most wonderful thought in the world at the moment because he was warm and safe and they could hide their eyes for a bit in his shoulder and just breath for a moment while he held them. The second time was definitely acting though, although Red still enjoyed it. Red always enjoys when they can trick someone into hugging them.

Not that it’s tricking if Legend did it of his own accord, but still, Red likes feeling like he’s had something to do with it, so they let him.

There are side effects too, in Violet Incidents. Legend and Warriors are always so tired looking when it’s over, and the vet more often than not spends hours afterwards just staring at nothing for a while, looking done with the world in general until he eventually passes out and curls up against whomever he’s sharing a bed with that night.

Not Warriors though. Never Warriors. Warriors and the vet avoid each other when these things happen.

They have good reason to. Twilight, once he knows what these incidents are (aka, after the second one) has taken to teasing them incessantly, and encouraging the rest of them to do the same. The rancher seems to take extreme pleasure in being able to make the knight flush and sigh and Legend brighten like a tomato and start snapping at him with only a few simple words. And Time never stops the rancher. If anything, he leaves the situation alone. Well, after asking Warriors in a teasing manner if the vet was going to be his step-mother, which earned their leader a twisted ear and granted them the beautiful sight of their old man getting scolded.

Other than that particular time though, most of them know better than to push those particular buttons. Sure, Hyrule grins and giggles and Wild laughs his fair share in the moment, but the lot of them have the good sense to not tease the quartet involved. After all, Nayru only knows when the day may come when they may be the one in need of the vet’s acting skills to save their ass, and none of them want to give the other any reason to think saving them would be a mistake.

Except Twilight, but Twilight's already had his turn, the whole thing being born from Legend trying to cover their asses and draw attention away from the feral rancher. For that reason, Twilight seems to not worry about needing another save, and it’s only Legend’s frequent threats to muzzle him that keeps the rancher in any ways at bay.

Honestly, he didn’t think the man was such a tease!

As for themselves, Four doesn’t tease the vet. No, goodness knows if the others all knew how many times he’s been in a market or village trying to handle something and got mistaken for a child, they’d never let him live it down. Legend’s covered his ass countless times in those incidents, assuring that he won’t tell if Four doesn’t about how many times Violet and her mother have had to make appearances throughout time so that Four doesn’t get dragged off by some worried adult who thought they found an abandoned or lost kid.

By now, they can’t even count on both hands how many times they’ve had to call Legend “mom” to get out of some sort of trouble. A random village in an era they couldn’t place, a street at night heading back to their inn, a forest lane outside of a town while they were scouting ahead. Legend’s saved their ass so, so many times by pulling out the mother act since that first time in the captain’s era.

The era they are now in. Still.

The incident at the bar was only a week or so ago. After it had been over, the captain and veteran had been only too eager to leave the town, find the stalfos encampment and take it out. Not that it had actually been that simple; fighting stalfos is more dangerous, arguably, than fighting the average monster. First of all, stalfos have no blood, so there’s no way to guess if they’re infected. Secondly, stalfos screams have the capacity to temporarily stun most living beings, which had meant that all of them, minus Wild, had been at a disadvantage. Hyrule and Legend had poured every ounce of their magic into holding temporary shields around the rest of the heroes, and that had negated some of the damage, but only so much. Fortunately, their being in a forest meant that the chances of fairies lurking about was greatly increased, and most of their injuries had been healed within moments, only light bruising and some muscle soreness remaining.

Unfortunately, fairies can’t do much of anything for magical exhaustion.

Their magical users have been dragging since as a result, and although Hyrule has recovered somewhat, their vet has not, and according to the traveler, that would be due to the fact that Legend’s magic stores are uncommonly low, and he’s been drawing more on his magical core than is healthy.

That’s probably why, after they got the letter asking them to come to castle town, Warriors insisted on all of them stopping to rest at an inn before he went to see his princess.

That’s where they are now anyway. It’s their first morning back in Castletown and Warriors is already fussing with his clothes, hair, and armor, pulling himself together while simultaneously looking like death warmed over (those stalfos really got a lot of damage on the man) as he struggles to both drink his coffee for the morning and get ready.

Time, sighing, crosses over to help him. “Her highness will understand if you can’t be there first thing, captain, don’t push yourself.”

Warriors makes some noncommittal noise into his mug before settling it down and returning to attempting to buckle on his pauldron with hands that shake far more than usual.

Their leader bats said hand to the side, buckling the thing on himself. “Warriors, breathe.”

“I’m breathing, Sprout.”

“While not doing anything else.”

One perfect brow arches as royal blue eyes fix their leader in place. “So, no sitting, standing, laying, moving, shifting-”

“You know what I mean.” Comes the returning sigh, Time looking entirely done.

Wind, sitting beside Four on one of the beds, giggles, leaning over to whisper to them, “Time did this all the time to him during the war.”

“Time?” They can’t exactly believe that, but Wind nods, smirking as Wars does the same at the leader who cuffs him over the head for his impudence.

“Yep. The things Mask would get up to,” the sailor giggles, “they make Violet Incidents look tame.”

The room as a whole pauses, and the eight heroes within turn to stare at the sailor.

Legend, blessedly, is still asleep in their second room, and according to Hyrule, shows no sign of waking for at least another couple of hours. Magical exhaustion, the traveler had assured all of them, nothing to be too worried about, although the sooner they could find a potion to help restore the vet’s magic, the better.

“A what incident?” Twilight, because of course it’s Twilight, asks, grinning that troublesome smile that usually only gets turned on their captain but now focuses its full strength on Wind, even as Warriors drops his head into his hands and sighs.

The sailor chuckles, well aware, Four thinks, of what he’s doing. “A ‘Violet Incident’.” He explains. “An incident where Four has to pretend to be Legend’s and Wars’ daughter.” Their definition is different, but Wind spares them that. Or tries too anyway. It doesn’t work.

“So, the one earlier this week…” Hyrule’s eyes flit to Warriors, smile apologetic but eyes glinting.

“Four wasn’t involved in that.” Sky points out, not exactly helpfully.

Warriors’ head hits the wall.

Twilight snickers. “Yeah, that was all our vet and the captain.”

“Well aware!”

Even they can’t help but smile at the man’s misery. Warriors hasn’t looked at or talked to Legend since it happened, with the sole exception of checking in on him after the battle was over, when Legend had nearly collapsed the minute the last monster had fallen. Even then though, Warriors was a flushing and awkward mess and Legend himself was all too eager to assure the man he was fine, just tired, no the blood wasn’t his so please for the love of Hylia go bother someone else!

Four can’t say they’ve ever seen Warriors move so quickly.

“That,” Wind proclaims, folding his hands in front of him like Dot does when she’s trying to look dignified, “also qualifies.”

“How?” Comes the responding question, but of course Wind already has an answer because the true definition is based on the vet’s suffering and not Four's own.

“Because all ‘Violet Incidents’ require Legend. If Legend saves your ass by pretending to be someone’s mother and or wife, it qualifies.” And there’s the real definition.

There’s a short pause, during which most of them exchange glances, but then Sky asks what seems to be on the minds of all of them. “Then if the deciding factor is Legend, why are the incident’s named after Four?”

They glare.

“Four’s fake name?” The skyloftian corrects.

“Because,” Wind answers, shrugging, “Legend doesn’t exactly have a fake name. I mean,” and yes, the sailor’s grinning at Warriors, but the captain can’t see so it’s not like Wind is going to be held accountable for it, “other than Missus Taylor.”

“I regret telling you my last name,” Warriors groans, dragging a hand over his face as though he no longer gives a crap how he looks. Honestly, they’d be shocked if that was the first thing in his mind right now.

“You have a last name?” Hyrule breathes, startled.

“Everyone in my era does,” the captain explains, “there’s too many people to not. It gets confusing without. Now,” he claps his hands and turn to the rest of them, eyes dead and face almost Time’s disapproving glare, “we have other things to be doing today than speculating on what Legend’s ‘fake name’ should be.” The man stumbles just a bit while saying that, and Twilight chortles just a bit at the sound, earning him the full force of the captain’s stare, which, for once, actually does nothing. Still, the man continues. “Her highness has asked that I report to Hyrule Castle to explain… recent developments-”

“Meaning the news story about his marriage.” Hyrule whispers to Sky, just loud enough that the rest of them can hear.

Except Wars. Either the captain doesn’t hear, or he chooses to ignore it, because he just keeps speaking. “-and give her a progress report on our investigation. Time,” he turns to the man in question, “if you could come with me?”

“Of course.” As leader, the old man will need to be there to act as Warriors’ back-up and fill in anything the captain may or may not miss. Wars is good, but his focus is more analytical. Time may have noticed something outside of the captain’s report that he thinks will be important, and even if he hasn’t, having someone there to back Wars up is probably for the best.

“Twilight too,” their captain adds, turning to said rancher with a look that borders very closely on ‘open your mouth I dare you’. Their rivalry, or whatever they have between them, has always been interesting to watch, and while they’re closer to Twilight than the captain, in this case, they would take Warriors’ side, no questions asked.

After all, they suffer too when Twilight brings up ‘Violet Incidents’, and he’s been doing it frequently.

Still, that doesn’t exactly explain why the rancher needs to come. “Me?”” he asks, “why?”

“Because there’s a stack of paperwork sitting on my desk that is entirely existent because you can’t keep your teeth to yourself,” the captain growls. “If I have to suffer because of you, I’m dragging you down with me.”

“Sounds fair to me!” Sky chirps, pausing in doling out the breakfast Wild had made them. “What about the rest of us?”

Warriors’ face lightens dramatically as he turns from the rancher to Sky, smiling just a bit, still tired but genuine, at the younger knight. “You six are free to do what you want. I’d like to ask for as little chaos as possible, but knowing you lot, that’s out of the question. Still, maybe with the farmers out of the picture, civilized behavior has a better chance of prevailing.”

“I’m right here,” Hyrule teases, kicking his legs lazily as he perches on the other bed in the room.

“You,” Warriors grins, close enough to reach over and ruffle the traveler’s hair, which he does, “aren’t a farmer. You’re a feral little gremlin, but you also know how to not draw attention to yourself, which is really all I’m asking here.”

“So, we can do whatever we want,” the traveler surmises, “as long as we’re not caught?” His eyes glint wildly.

“And as long as you don’t break any major laws,” Warriors agrees, which seems to be a very loose request, but they can only imagine what Time and Wind have done to Wars in the past for his standards to be so low now, “then yes.”

They’re not even sure how to feel about the fact that Sky smiles at that. They don’t have time to figure it out though, because Warriors turns from musing Hyrule’s hair to stare at them and Wind, hand dropping to the bag at his belt for a moment before pulling out a smaller rupee pouch, not unlike their own. “As for you two,” the captain announces, “I have a request.”

Oh? What could the captain want?

The pouch is handed to them. Not tossed, handed; Warriors watching that it reaches Four’s hands carefully before he continues speaking. “Take this, and when Legend wakes up, because Nayru knows he’ll refuse to sit still until I get back, go out on the town and have some fun.” And then, to follow up while looking Wind dead in the eye “tame fun. Remember, vet’s still exhausted.”

They blink up at him. “Are you asking us to babysit Legend?”

The mere thought is laughable quite honestly. Legend, out of all of them, is the one least in need of someone to make sure he’s taken care of or behaving. Wild and Hyrule may be survivors, and Time and Warriors may be leaders, but Legend is a veteran, and he’s been doing this longer than any of them can imagine. Trying to tell anyone that the vet needs someone to keep him out of trouble is like… well honestly, they can’t think of anything more absurd than that.

Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be what Warriors means, the man shaking his head at them with a small smile. A real, tired, but fond smile.

It’s the realest kind of Warriors smile, Red thinks.

“No, of course not. This is,” the man pauses, considering his words, “this is me trying to pay Legend back, in a way. I can’t do it by myself, but I know you two probably feel the same way, so I’m asking you two to handle it while I take care of things at the castle. Does that make sense? Take him by the market, grab lunch together. Tell him it’s on me.”

That’s... Pretty generous. More so when they open the bag and see how much is inside.

“Holy shit!” Wind starts, whipping up to stare at the captain. “I thought you were broke!”

The man laughs, reaching over to ruffle blonde curls. “I was, in Legend’s Hyrule, because I hadn’t been paid in months. Arty sent this with her summons though.”

“This is your paycheck?”

“A fraction of it,” the captain smiles, lopsided and warm. “I get paid pretty well, being a soldier and a hero and all.”

“I wish we got paid,” someone sighs, playfully dramatic.

They kind of wish they did too, but they’re pretty sure the only reason Warriors is, is because he joined them by assignment of his princess, unlike the rest of them who kind of just went through the portals of their own accord when they appeared in their eras. They’re not complaining though. Since Warriors is technically on assignment, when he’s paid, he’s often been the one to foot the bill for things like inn rooms, potions, and supplies, citing it as “mission expenses” which he’ll be paid back for later.

It works for them.

“So, will you do it?” They forgot he’s still waiting for an answer.

Wind, however, has not. “Sure thing, cap’n.” A playful salute joins the words, and they mimic it because, why not? “We’ll do our best to give the vet a great time!”

“Good,” another hair ruffle, and then one for them too, “I knew I could count on you two,” the captain beams.

They’re not sure how they feel about the warmth that blossoms up inside them at the sight.

“What about us four?” Wild protests, playfully offended.

“Us Four,” they correct, pointing to themselves. Time is the only one to chuckle.

Ah well, one day they’ll get the joke.

“The rest of you,” Warriors answers, straightening up, and goddesses does he look regal when he’s standing at his full height, all made up to go to the castle, “are to stay out of this.” The man’s brow furrows, disapproval and judgment clear and making Green want to smile. “I don’t trust you to not tease the vet about why I’m thanking him.”

Which is fair, all things considered, what with all the teasing from Twilight. Again, most of the others know better, but only when it comes to Legend, and Warriors can’t escape it, so it would make sense he’s wary about what it’s like when he’s not around.

No one contests it though, the three eldest depart without a hitch later that morning. Shortly after, Sky and Hyrule decide to head off into town to pick up some more potions and explore the area. To their surprise, Wild seems more interested in staying here at the inn, organizing his inventory and taking up nearly all of one of their two inn rooms to do so.

That’s okay though. They head to the other room, Wind on their tail, and sit and discuss where to go until Legend eventually blinks awake.

The vet, true to the captain’s prediction, has no intention of staying in. In fact, he seems pretty ticked that he’d not been included in planning the day with the rest of them and that he has to be filled in after nearly everyone else has left. He’s also ticked at himself for sleeping in, but Wind doesn’t let that last long.

Wind, bright, sunshiny Wind who everyone knows Legend has a soft spot for, quickly diverts Legend’s attention by telling him that they want to go to the market and could he please, please come with them? All the other adult heroes are busy and while Four can, no one will believe that Four’s not a kid.

Once upon a time, they would have had some words on that topic, but in the wake of the Violet Incidents, there is now overwhelming proof that Wind is, tragically, correct.

“Fine,” Legend agrees, looking away from Wind’s pleading gaze (which can out match even Red’s somehow, quite amazingly). “Let me get dressed first at least, kiddo, yeesh.”

Wind waits exactly as long as it takes for the vet to throw on the rest of his clothes before grabbing ahold of the man’s hand, and then Four’s own, and all but dragging them to the door.

They laugh, and Legend chuckles just a bit, holding onto his hat as he lets the youngest of their group direct him out of the door and towards some street or another.

They have to remind themselves that Wind used to live in this world, for a short while, and does, in fact, know where he’s going. They’re not going to get lost.

And they don’t. Wind leads them to the market, and while Legend seems skeptical at first about spending a day “just shopping and having fun” he accepts it eventually, mostly after they convince him that Warriors is paying and there’s not anything else for them to do.

They do have fun too. Legend apparently has never tried doing this before, but between their own efforts and Wind’s, they manage to take the elder hero about the town to a few shops and stalls. The bookshop is their favorite, and Legend’s too, or so they had thought, but once Wind takes them to an odds-and-ends store they know in an instant, and are quite right, that it has the vet’s full attention faster than anything off the battlefield.

Somehow, from there, it becomes a contest. They don’t exactly say as much to each other, but Wind and Four are competitive, and it’s only natural that they begin to make a game out of who can find a place that will make Legend’s eyes blow the widest or smile tilt just a little more towards genuine.

It’s fun. Not just the competition, but just… spending time with Wind and Legend.

They play a few games (learning in the process that Legend’s a crack shot at the archery booth), visit more than just a few shops, which, surprisingly allow them to mess around a bit. It’s Legend who suggests they pop into a costume shop, “for fun” and though they don’t buy anything (well, they don’t, but Legend certainly does), the three of them do have a lot of fun trying things on.

Honestly, they’ve never seen Legend smile as wide as when they were in there. Messing around, playing, being silly. For someone who can’t meet Warriors eyes after pretending to be his wife, Legend is surprisingly open to dressing in even the most ridiculous of outfits.

“You should see the ones I have at home,” the vet chuckles, wriggling back out of a pumpkin costume that Wind had dared him to try on. Four has no clue why the thing exists, but Wind had begged to take a photo to tease Twilight with and the vet had happily obliged.

Wind eyes sparkle as his picture prints out and he looks it over, but more so as they look up to their older brother. “Really? What’s the craziest one you have?”

The fact that Legend has to pause and think, and then checks himself each time he tries to answer, definitely says something. In the end though, the vet shrugs, smiling as he accepts the next ridiculous costume that Four hands him. “Quite frankly, I don’t think I could name just one. They’re all pretty bizarre.” And he promises, when they ask, to let them see sometime. “Probably not until we’re at the ranch though, or my house.”

Still, that’s better than nothing.

“Can I take photos of those ones too?” Wind asks, readying his picto-box for another picture, this time with Four as the smithy finishes pulling on the silly hat he’d found in one of the boxes around the shop.

Legend laughs, bright and clear and hilariously squeaky. “Sure, sailor. Whatever makes you happy.”

“Well in that case-” and whatever dastardly thought the teen has is cut off by the sound of his stomach, making the younger flush slightly.

Legend’s face softens just the slightest bit, smile more a smirk now, but the usual one, not the mean one. It’s Legend’s normal playful-face. “Shall we get lunch next then?”

“I think,” Four corrects, “that would be ‘brunch’. I know you haven’t eaten anything yet at least.”

“Two gremlins pulled me out of the inn before I had the chance.” The words are delivered with a tweak to their ears that makes Four squeak.

They leave the shop shortly after. Legend had found a bunny themed outfit that he claimed was “too Ravio not to buy for him” and so they’d visited the counter briefly. The man there, an elderly fellow, smiles at them as he rings them up, handing over the outfit with a wink. “It’s so nice to see a lovely family like yours in here. Do come again!”

They don’t think anything about the fact that he gives them a discount either, a bargain is a bargain as Legend always says, but then they reach the restaurant that Wind’s been insisting is “the best in all Castletown!” and they’re met with a similar sentiment, although this time in far more familiar phrasing.

“How lovely,” the lady at the front greets as the two smaller heroes drag Legend inside, the vet still smiling just a bit, “welcome in, folks!” And then she does the most infuriating thing and leans over to look him and Wind in the eyes, smiling condescendingly at them. “Have you two brought your mum in for our Mother’s Day special?”

And, well… they kind of have. They didn’t know there was a special of course, but once again, a deal is a deal and while Legend isn’t exactly their mom…

It doesn’t really matter. Especially not when someone at another table looks around and spies them, and immediately starts waving. “Hello there, Missus Taylor! Hello Violet!”

Green, internally, groans as they are recognized. Fortunately, Red takes the forefront and waves back, smiling shyly to the lady at the table and earning a soft coo in return.

“Missus Taylor?” The greeter starts slightly, standing up straight and looking Legend in the face, all surprise and chipperness even as the vet flushes a bit and tries to offer a smile. “Why, it’s an honour, madame! Your husband has done so much for all of us! Please, wait just a moment and I’ll get you a table as soon as possible!”

As soon as possible, it would seem, turns out to be within a few minutes, during which Wind and Four share a look and agree as one to apologize once there aren’t so many eyes on them.

This was supposed to be a day to make up for Legend having to play this role, not another Incident. It would seem, however, there’s not much chance of escaping these sorts of things.

“Should we go somewhere else?” Wind asks, glancing up at the vet as the lady from the front comes to lead them towards the back.

The veteran looks exhausted, but he shakes his head. “It’s not the end of the world. You said the foods good, right?”

It’s telling that he doesn’t complain more.

They make a note to make sure and pick up some magic potions before leaving- No, to stock up on potions to keep on hand. Maybe if Legend’s magical core is in better shape he will be too, and they owe him at least that much after what he does for them. And since apparently paying him back means taking up the role again, they kind of owe him even more now.

The place is nice at least. It’s rustic and charming, and checkerboard tablecloths are spread over little wooden tables throughout the room, stools set around and flowers sitting in centerpieces all around. They’re all made up of roses right now, with little decorated place cards that say “Happy Mother’s Day”.

The place is stuffed full, and there’s not much room between the tables, but they’re given one in the back, out of the worst of the bustle and shouting between patrons. They’d guess the table is probably kept aside for special guests, and for once, thank the fact that they’ve been mistaken for Warriors’ wife and kids because apparently the man has enough celebrity status to be given VIP treatment without a second thought.

“You’re right, this place is pretty nice,” Legend observes, still smiling that tired, but real smile as they settle down and the server assures them she’ll be right back to get their orders. Legend’s smile and Warriors’ have the same qualities these days, warm and weary, but genuine, and they’re glad to see it even if they do wish it was the bright and playful thing from the costume shop.

“Wars used to bring us here when the war was over,” Wind informs them, glancing over the carefully hand-written menu that’s been left on the table.

“He did?”

“Yeah,” the sailor glances around absently. “They were still trying to figure out how to send us all home, so in the meantime he took Time and I, and a few other friends, here to have dinner. The food is the best.”

“Any recommendations?” And there’s the playfulness they were hoping to see.

Wind grins right back, cocking his head on one side as he considers. “I know I’m always partial to the sea food dishes, but knowing your taste…” they’re not sure if Wind closes his eyes in thought as a conscious action or not, but it’s really kind of cute, “I think, this will please you.” And the sailor points to the listing for some sort of rich stew and savory bread that’s on the menu.

They take a look for themselves and when the server comes back they all have their orders, although Legend is the one who makes them, since apparently he is, once more, their mother today.

On Mother's Day.

The irony is sort of killing them, and Vio is having trouble not making them smile.

It gets harder still when the lady taking their order smiles and tells them that their current Mother’s Day special includes a half-off meal for mother’s and a free dessert. “Kids under ten eat free as well!”

And well, a deal is a deal, right? And Wind did say it first!

“I’m eight!” Red pipes up, “does that mean I count?”

“Yes, of course.” The woman beams at them, and then glances up to Wind expectantly.

The sailor flushes, mouth opening-

“My big brother is fourteen!” Red continues. Because yes, this is, in a way, a slight vengeance against the sailor for getting them involved at the market in his world. To cover a theft no less. By pirates, as Blue was only too frustrated to hear.

Their whole thing before being known as a hero was that they handled pirates, and knowing they aided in a raid, in any small way, triggers just the slightest bit of frustration with the most outspoken of their facets.

“Alright then!” The server chirps, and then recounts their order, offers Four another adoring and extremely condescending smile, and then heads off to the kitchen.

Legend chuckles. “Really F-”

“Violet,” Wind corrects softly, glancing around warily.

The vet pauses, checking himself before nodding and repeating, now corrected, with what he was going to say. “Really, Violet, you aren’t going to let your brother eat free?”

Dang, if Legend slipped form his role, he really must be tired! They’ve seen him play their mother half-asleep and with his eyes shut!

They, however, are perfectly capable of staying in character, which is definitely why they stick their tongue out at the sailor. Definitely.

Legend laughs, soft and warm, and shakes his head. “You two. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

It’s honestly such a mom thing to say that they’re not sure if the vet is acting or being serious.

And hey, they weren’t exactly planning on acting during their meal, but also, they aren’t exactly? Red is sort of just taking the lead and rather than being reserved as they normally would be, they just sort of… let themselves be silly. They let themselves drop the mature adult facade and be a kid because, hey, Violet is supposed to be eight, right? They can act like a kid and no one, not even the vet or Wind, will think twice of it!

And Wind is doing the same thing. The sailor isn’t trying to act like an adult either, or prove himself, and, even though they’re sort of supposed to be here to help the vet relax, it kind of feels like they’re the ones getting a break too here.

Well, until some kid starts insulting the vet.

“Who are you?” It’s some child from the table next to theirs, watching them with wide eyes and a little pout of thought on their face. The boy would almost be cute, they think, if not for the haughty look he keeps shooting at them.

“I’m Violet.” Red answers back, and barely contains a giggle because, hey, that’s what Blue used to call Vio when he was mad at him!

The other boy glances over at the vet and sailor, who are currently looking up at the wall decor around them and exchanging thoughts on it.

Artists. They’re not sure what they expected.

“Who are they?”

“That’s my momma and my big brother.” They’re almost tempted to complete the nonsense and name Wind as their big sister, but apparently the sailor is about as well known in this time as its own hero is.

The other child smirks. “That’s your mom? She’s tiny!”

Considering the child’s own mother- or who they presume to be his mother considering she’s sitting with him- is a very tall and muscular looking woman, the kid does have a bit of a point. Still, as someone with a height problem themselves, they’re not about to accept someone mocking their mother- er- brother. “She is not!”

“Is so.”

Are they really arguing with a child?

Yes, Blue declares, yes they are.

“Well,” they cross their arms as they stare down the distance between their two tables at the other child, “that’s just because she’s compact awesome.” An excuse that their father has murmured many a time in teasing tones to them, usually while tugging their hair, but which they’ve grown sort of attached to.

The vet spares them a short, very confused, glance.

The other child, the boy, glances at the vet again, staring for a very long while before shaking his head. “No.”

“She is.” They tilt their chin up just a bit, flashing a grin.

“My mom is cooler.”

Excuse?

“Not possible,” they smirk, “my mom can fight a lynel.”

“My mom’s a soldier.”

“My mom fought Ganon.”

“My mom fought Cia.”

Okay, now this kid is really getting on their nerves. It’s not even that they have anything against the woman seated at the other table and happily chattering with some other adults. They’re sure she might be an amazing person, all told, but something inside them is insisting- nay, demanding, that they not allow this slander to stand.

“Well, my mom can do magic.”

The other child’s eyes widen just a bit, glancing at the vet who is subtly watching them with a look of confusion on his face. Heck, even Wind is staring, mouthing a silent “what are you doing?” to them. But they’ve taken the steps and they’re not exactly about to let a child best them. Or insult the vet.

Said child, however, seems to hold similar convictions, looking back at them with a scowl on their little face. “Nuh uh.”

“She can,” they grin. “She can make plants bloom and die and she can talk to animals.” They have seen the vet do stuff like that after all. “And,” they continue, smirking as they look down their nose at the kid (and should they really be feeling so satisfied they can look down on a child?) “my momma can use holy magic.”

“Prove it!” Comes the little terror’s squeaking reply.

They scowl back. “Why, can’t your mama do magic?”

The pout on the child’s face would imply that no, their mother is not, in fact, capable of that.

Four grins. “Oh. Well, that’s okay. Can your mama sing like a bird? Mine can.”

The kid glances up at their mother, who’s deep laughter rings over the restaurant as she continues talking with another woman. He very much doubts the woman sings very sweetly. Oh, she may have a nice voice, but it’s not siren song quality.

“My momma can.” They continue, sitting back on their stool and grinning wider. “She sings like an angel to help us all sleep. And my momma gives the best hugs.” A little boney, to be sure, but the few times the vet has hugged them, usually while acting, it came with the overwhelming weight of his magic settling over them in a protective barrier. That was one of the two reasons they’d so eagerly climbed into his arms during the first ‘Incident’. The second was exhaustion and a migraine, but the magic had helped that too. They’re being honest though. In this group, it’s rare to get a hug from the others. Except Wind, but Wind is a kid and they feel responsibility when hugging him. Legend’s hugs don’t make them feel responsible for someone, they make them feel like it’s okay to not be responsible for a little bit.

“She really does,” Wind pipes up, apparently deciding he’s getting in on this now. “It feels like all scary stuff just melts away when our mom hugs us.”

They’re not sure if they’re imagining the flush on the vet’s face or not as Wind beams at the man. Regardless, though, the vet coughs softly, a silent request for them to leave the situation alone.

As proved in the past, many, many times, they are not good at following orders.

“Our mama makes stuff for us too. She fixes all our broken things and shows us how to do it too, so we can know stuff.”

“And she-” and well, they kind of just wrack their brain for every single thing they can think of that they like about Legend, or things that he can do or has done, and they watch the other kid’s pout turn more and more prominent even as Legend’s face turns progressively more and more red. It’s almost a game, again. Wind is grinning and they’re smiling back, and while there’s a third competitor here, that competitor is clearly losing as the two young heroes go back and forth trying to see who can make the vet flush the darkest with their praises of him.

And maybe, this isn’t exactly what Wars meant about showing Legend their appreciation and thanks, but it’s the thought that counts, right? And maybe the soft little smile the man hides behind his hand means that the vet does appreciate it, even if he’s all flustered by how they express their thanks.

There’s no audience this time, which makes things easier. There’s no crowd of people watching and judging. In the moment, there’s only a mere child to stand against and speak to, but it feels like the best performance they’ve ever given. Well, other than their treachery, but that was all Vio and this one is more Blue and Red.

It’s a pity, they mourn to themselves, that more people aren’t witness to this particular act. That they can’t share the flushing face of their big brother and the pout of the child and the grins on the faces of Wind and themself with all of the others. They think Warriors at the very least would enjoy seeing it. And Hyrule too, Hyrule loves to praise the vet. And Sky, Sky would love nudging Legend with one of those grins as he watches the other hero flush, teasing softly and telling him that it was all true and he shouldn’t get embarrassed, only to earn a kick under the table or some such response from a most likely wordless hero.

The only audience they have, instead, is the mother of the other child, who looks up after a moment, smiling at them and then turning to Legend with something warm and kind. “Somebody’s been making an impression on her little ones,” she compliments, warm and rich and sweet and so kind as the vet starts to look at her. Her smile is bright and even for her size she exudes a sense of warmth and safety as she winks at their vet. “Sounds like you're doing a great job there. Your kids love you very much, don’t they?”

The vet, somehow, flushes deeper, even as Four and Wind make a point of loudly agreeing with her that “yes, she’s the best mom ever!” and “she’s awesome!” even as the vet reaches a hand to rub at the back of his neck in that familiar nervous tick that they all have.

“I try.”

“You’re doing great.” The woman laughs, “Miss?”

The vet starts a bit, and they’re not sure how he somehow pulls a name out on the spot, but he did that for them too. “Kit.”

“You’re doing great, Kit,” the other mother praises, winking, and then turns back to her own child and reminds him to turn around and eat his meal.

Their own meal arrives shortly after, but Legend’s face is so busy hiding in his hands, ears burning red, that he doesn’t seem to notice until the younger heroes are very nearly through with their food.

He denies it all later. Won’t talk about it, won’t hear a word about being “touched” except to roll his eyes and call them touched in the head, all while another flush settles over him at the mere thought.

When Warriors asks how it went though, they tell him. They may or may not take especial pleasure in recounting the compliments and the flushing and the “other mom’s” encouragement, but it draws another of those real smiles to the captain’s face, earns some rich laughter and trembling shoulders as blue eyes lift for the first time in forever to settle on the figure of their vet, sitting across the room and working over his sword.

When they glance back though, following the captain's gaze, they’re greeted with the sight of Legend smiling softly to himself, flushed, but they can tell somehow that he’s pleased.

All in all, they’d call their mission successful.

And on Mother’s Day of all days too. Even Warriors can’t deny the humor of that.

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #the violet incident #lu legend #lu warriors #lu wind #lu four #four and wind like to make prolems #and solve them #but you can't make an omlet without breaking a few legs #er- eggs #right?#yeah #ketto writes #linked universe fanfic

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