#but it does sound tempting to not deal with shit landlords

[theantiproduct]

.

#my parents just offered me to rent out our old apartment from them for a lower price #it could be absolutely amazing tbh but I'm worried about them losing money #the place is really old but has so much space #and it'll probably be demolished in a year or two #but i feel like i should do it? #even if it'll be kinda temporary #if i could get a friend in there with me that'll be perfect cause they wont be losing money #and it's a big place too #idk i dont even know how it looks at this point it might be a dump #but it does sound tempting to not deal with shit landlords #and pay a bit less than what i was planning even tho it'll be pretty much the amount i was planning on #idk my mind is racing lol #and I'll be able to have people over and date oh man that sounds great #maybe i shouldn't fall in love with the idea yet i guess i need to think it over and i told my parents to consider the money thing too #personal #oops #yep this is me breaking my own heart lol the current tenant isn't SURE if he wants to leave #so stupid #shouldn't have gotten swept up in it i was looking at decor all day #guess we'll see but I'll try to get it out of my head for now and keep looking for apartments #sad

[hazbincalifornia]

Octavia

Chapter 9: Octavia has some choice words.

Likes, replies, and reblogs are all appreciated, both here and on ao3!

Warnings: Mpreg

Ao3 Link

“Are you kidding me?”

“Via-”

“We- you- I can’t believe this!” She shot a glare at Blitzo, who kept his hands up, feeling sweat drip from his pits down his sides in the process.

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea, kid.” If anything was going to get thrown, he’d rather it not be in his direction.

At that, the teenager rounded on Stolas. “You really wanted another kid? After you just told me you weren’t going to run off!”

“I’m not!” Stolas… holy shit, he actually looked like he hadn’t seen that reaction coming. Hadn’t he heard the kid bitching about how annoyed she was seeing him making goo-goo eyes at Blitzo that whole day? Was it really that much in one ear and out the other with him? “Via, I promise, I don’t intend to go anywhere.” He reached for her arm, but she tugged it away before she could get a good grip. A hiss of air whistled through Blitzo’s teeth at the tears starting to well in her eyes. Great, this was a great addition to today. Not the distraction he'd been hoping for.

“You have a funny way of showing it.” Her eyes narrowed.

“Look, he gushes about you a lot, so it’s not a-” Blitzo started.

“I don’t want to hear anything from you,” she hissed, and Blitzo slid off the chair.

“Can we talk? Man to man?” He paused. “Man to angry teenager?”

She folded her arms, raising an eyebrow with a glare that could melt steel. “And what makes you think I want to hear it?”

“Just give me two minutes.” He held up two fingers. “Look, you can hate your dad all you want, you seem like a good kid, but I’d rather not get stabbed through a misunderstanding here, fair enough?”

“Blitzy!” Stolas jolted at that, but that got Octavia to glance between the two of them before grabbing Blitzo’s arm and yanking him out the door. She closed it behind her, sweeping behind a plant big enough to hide them from view. Blitzo was pretty sure he heard it growl.

“Fine. You have two minutes. What’s going on here?”

“It’s just a business thing, got it? Your dad’s got a thing for me, I get whatever I need back." Plus the landlord was totally up his tail about the rent and the fire damage, he couldn't lose the building and he'd be damned if he told Stolas that. "I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn't have to.”

“A minute forty.” Her tone was cold steel, one eye twitching.

“No need to be weird with me, I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“Get rid of it, then.”

“He promised to pay off repairs to the office. I’ve been through a lotta shit before, Vi-”

“Octavia.” She snapped the name out before he even finished the word. “My name is Octavia. You don’t get to use Via.”

“Fine. Fair enough. Point is, this?” He jabbed a finger against his side. “This is a temporary thing. I don’t know what your dad wants to do with it, and I don’t really care, but I don’t want you thinking I’m trying to reel him in by trapping him with a baby or something. Being on-call for whenever he’s thirsty sucks enough, this baby thing is a one-time gig because he’s probably got a pregnancy fetish or something.”

“Don't... don't say that." She grimaced at the last sentence. "So he’s definitely the one that wants it, and he’s just dragging you along with him.” Her fingers tap-tap-tapped against her sleeve as she glanced back towards the room. 

“Pretty much.”

“And you don’t want to run off with him?”

Blitzo shook his head. “The idea of him crashing in my apartment forever is fucking terrifying. He wouldn’t even fit on anything and he’d break the couch with his giant bird ass the second he sat down. Whatever daddy issues you’ve got, they’re his problem, not mine, got it? Leaving things the way they are sounds great. Preferably with less of me having to haul my sorry ass up here when he wants to get his beak wet.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, well, so was upchucking on my own boots the other day. Life’s gross.” He straightened the skull around his neck- it had gotten twisted around at some point and was tugging too tight. Octavia looked him up and down, and he took a deep breath. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Is there anyone else?”

“Huh?”

She poked at his stomach. “I said, is there anyone else? You’re sure it’s Dad’s?”

“Unfortunately, no one constant.” Blitzo stretched. “I’ve slept around plenty, but I don't hand out access between my legs easy, and the way the dates line up mean it’s definitely his.”

Her arms crossed again. “Oh. Great.”

“Yeah, it’d be easier if it had been some random dipshit I met while drunk, but at least this way I’m getting something out of it.” Blitzo glanced back at the door. “For the record, though... he adores you. Any time isn’t spent telling me how tight my ass is, he’s talking about how much he wants you to be happy.”

Octavia’s fingers tightened around her arm again. “He does a lousy job of it,” she murmured, and Blitzo patted her shoulder.

“Yeah, well, that’s just Stolas for you.”

She brushed her hair out from her eyes. Feathers? Blitzo wasn’t entirely sure if it was feathers or hair, it kinda looked like a weird mix of both. He was weirdly tempted to touch it but didn’t only because she might have her mom’s razor-sharp nails. “You’re still an asshole.”

Blitzo shrugged. “Eh. I can live with that.”

Octavia crossed the hallway and pushed the door back open, Blitzo on her heels. Stolas had been pacing in the center of the room, gnawing on his nails.

“That was four and a half minutes.”

“What the heck were you thinking?” She asked, eyes narrowed.

“I thought it might be fun!” Stolas looked between them before sighing. “Via, can we discuss this later? I thought you’d like the chance to have a little sibling.”

“Mom’s not going to like this.” Her tone was flat, a statement of fact.

Stolas ran a hand over his head. “I’m aware. I’ll find a way to break it to her.”

“Tell me when you are so I can steer clear.”

He sighed again. “Deal. But really, sweetie-”

“Did you even think about how I’d feel?” The word ‘think’ came out strangled, and the rest after it were on the verge of collapse, raw and bloody. Blitzo took a step back as she took one forward. “You can’t tell me that you care and then do something like.. like... like this!”

Stolas’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he pulled Octavia against his chest. “I never meant for this to hurt you, I swear.”

“Swear you’re not going to just… just…” She choked on her words again, and Stolas knelt down in front of her.

“I promise, this won’t make me love you any less and I’m not going anywhere. Just because we’re making something new-”

“Something new was making Mom hate you before you got a baby involved,” Octavia muttered, voice still wavering. “She’s going to flip.”

“I know how to handle your mother. I’ve been doing it since before you were born.” He brushed a tear from her eye, squeezing her arms reassuringly. “It’ll all be alright, I promise.” She didn’t reply to that, but stared down as if trying to pry the truth about the future out of him by sight alone.

Blitzo cleared his throat. This was… exceptionally weird to have to watch and more than he was prepared to deal with today. “So, about the money for the gun?”

“I’ll get it for you,” Stolas said offhandedly. “And some extra for whatever you need in the next few weeks.”

“Got it.”

Octavia’s eyes followed him after Stolas stood up, and kept watching as they exited the little side-room and headed all the way down the hall, the pink and white burning holes in the back of his suit.

#one time #shadow writes stuff #I have to manually re-add all the italics I hope it's worth it #helluva mpreg #helluva boss #daddy blitzo

[haloud]

into the corners of the evening

-- ao3 --

Michael comes over on Fridays. It’s a standing arrangement, an inch of solid ground they’ve managed to carve out for themselves. Sometimes he cooks dinner. Sometimes Alex orders in. They play music or play cards or watch movies or make out, hands over clothes, Michael making sure to bump his knuckles across whatever bare skin he can find anyway, just like they might have if they were ever allowed to be just seventeen.

So Fridays start being the best day of the week. Even Buffy looks forward to them—the second the sun starts going down, she sits in the entryway with her ears cocked and her tail beating slowly against the floor until she hears footsteps on the stairs and picks herself up to corral Michael home. When it’s just Alex and Buffy, Alex even lets himself be eager too, smile at nothing, daydream.

Of course, then it just so happens that a Friday turns into one of the worst days in recent memory. He wakes up in stiff agony from a shitty, awful dream, early enough to be stuck staring at the pitch-black ceiling, late enough that he can’t fall back asleep. He keeps his phone and headphones on his nightstand and an array of playlists—angry, sad, happy, wistful, the works—to drive thoughts out of his head and mask noise that makes it hard to sleep, but no matter how high he turns up the volume, the dream persists, the sound of screaming, the sound of crushing bone. His stump is fucking swollen, which just fucking happens sometimes no matter how he fucking tries to take care of it, and it hurts so goddamn bad he should just stay in bed, but he goes to work anyway just to spite his own body and the universe that thinks it can tell him what to do.

Icing on the cake? When he finally grits his teeth and puts weight on his leg (with his crutch—he might be a being of pure spite, but he’s not stupid), he steps hard on Buffy’s foot, making her shriek and scramble under the bed.

By the time Alex has made himself coffee and is ready to leave she’s crawled out to follow him around licking at his hands, but he still spends the whole drive to base with a death-grip on the wheel and aching at the back of his throat.

And that’s just how his morning goes.

When he pulls back into his driveway that evening, he’s so bone-tired he has to close his eyes and breathe and breathe like he breathed his way through physical therapy just to muster the strength to open the door and put his feet on the ground.

He fumbles his keys. Drops them. And before he knows it he’s slammed his fist into the doorframe, a fast and hot expulsion of fury from his brain to his arm to his knuckles at the point of contact.

He’s shaking when he picks them up. Unlocks the door. Lets it fall shut behind him.

Anger is the easy answer. It’s served him well damn near all his life. It lives inside him, less a tenant to his landlord, more a symbiosis. But when he collapses on his couch, shakes his hand out before cradling his head in it, he just—he just—

He should tell Michael not to come. He should ignore that little voice whispering he only loves you because you’re here, tell him no and he’ll be gone, gone against all evidence and faith.

He loves his anger. Keeps it, nurtures it. But still, is he—he is—he’s Manes enough to fear what that anger is capable of.

Buffy pads over, her claws making little clicking noises on the floor. Michael loves that sound, has been known to lay on the floor cooing to her so she walks over to him and he can mess with her paws while she sits all prim and patient and indulging. She lays her head on Alex’s knee and blinks up at him, and he looks through his fingers back at her. Her tongue slowly peeks out—then she’s licking his jeans, soothing him the best way a dog knows how, and Alex is inches from goddamn losing it.

Footsteps on the stairs. Buffy’s ears perk up, but she doesn’t move, just lets out a quiet boof as Alex strokes her velvety ears.

“It’s open,” he calls out. Almost hoping he’s too quiet for Michael to hear and he’ll just…leave. Tomorrow Alex can deal with the fallout.

But no. The door swings open, and a grinning Michael, the whole mass of him, filling the doorway, taking all the air in the room with him, he steps inside and shakes out his curls like he often does when he sees Alex, like he knows, like he knows what it does to him.

“Where’s the welcoming committee—”

He cuts himself off when he sees Alex and Buffy. His grin slides off his face; his eyes go all big; his head tilts to the side. It’s not a bad Buffy impression.

“Hey,” Michael says, so softly Alex wants to scream.

He isn’t. A person who responds to softness well. Never had it before—why should he need it now? For just a second, he misses, with a vicious, spiteful nostalgia, the jagged, rattling Guerin who’d take him on no matter what they did or said the last time, the bite and bark, they’d fuck and that would be that, that could be that, he had a place within himself to put the soft things, deep in the back of his skull.

He keeps the soft things inside Michael, mostly, now. But sometimes he wishes he could snatch them back. Run and hide. Even if it meant drawing more blood.

“Hey,” Alex responds, voice carefully flat.

Michael hesitates before going to take his boots off, eyes flicking up, then down to fidget with the laces, then up again, then down, just waiting for Alex to tell him to go. Alex hates that too. Hates the echo calling him pathetic in the back of his mind, needy and clinging and weak, and god, Alex is just so fucking tired. Of all of it. Of the job where he’s surrounded by people he can’t stand, constantly reminded of his father, of war, of grief and murder. Of the brain that won’t let him get a good night’s sleep and tortures him with words he’d never say out loud. Of every inch of his body that hurts, of what’s been taken from him, of the fight to get it to function on days like today, clawing his bloody way up the slope.

Michael straightens back up. Rolls up onto the balls of his feet, like he might into a kiss. Nods to himself, then Alex blinks his heavy eyes, and Michael is there, inches from him, eyes green and gold and warm. Alex imagines he can already feel the bathwater body heat Michael always supplies, sinking into his skin better than any heating pad or hot soak.

“Bad day?”

“You could say that.”

Buffy shifts her head on Alex’s knee; she stands, sits, licks Alex a couple more times, her eyes staring soulfully up at Michael. Michael ducks his head on a little laugh and pats her head with a good girl.

Michael sits on the arm of the couch and slowly, so slowly, giving Alex all the time in the world to pull away, reaches over to stroke the back of his fingers against Alex’s temple. “Hey. What can I do? Anything, I’m yours.”

“Just.” Alex takes a deep breath. Can’t look at him. “I’m sorry. For whatever I do tonight. You probably shouldn’t have come. I’m going to be shit company.”

“We’re both here. I think we can make something out of that no matter the circumstances, yeah?”

How can Michael just say things like that, every time? It isn’t fair. Especially when there are so many ways he could be proven wrong. So many ways Alex knows how to hurt him, to tear down everything they’re building.

“I’m gone if you want me gone; I’ll give you the space, but you’ve gotta say it. And it’s okay if you do. It’s not like before.”

Michael’s fingers make another slow pass, lingering this time, his thumb gentle on the shell of Alex’s ear, making him shiver at that delicate touch.

Selfish. It’s selfish to want Michael here  even though he’s bound to end up snapping at him, but—would it be so bad? To be selfish? Michael is a caretaker; it’s plain in the way he is with Isobel, even when he takes it too far. It’s plain in the way he keeps candy and coloring books stashed in his Airstream for the occasional kid dragged along by a parent getting their car fixed. And it’s never been more obvious than it is right now, with him practically vibrating to be allowed to take care of Alex.

Hell, maybe this is something Alex can, in some twisted way, do for Michael, too. Make something out of this shitty day.

“I want you to stay,” he manages, voice still flat, but it makes Michael light up regardless, and hell if it isn’t worth it.

“Thank you,” Michael says, and he nuzzles in to peck their lips together. Alex doesn’t let him get away, though, and weaves his fingers into those curls to hold him close for a longer, searching kiss that has Michael humming with joy by the time he pulls away. Alex could hold him tighter. Keep him in place longer. Pull him this way or that, and Michael would go. Something in Alex just settles and purrs at that knowledge.

“I’ll make dinner and bring it to you. Couch or bed?”

“Hmm.” Alex twists a curl around his finger as he considers the question. It’s tempting to just go to bed, get through his nightly routine, and try and forget this day ever happened. But if he stays here on the couch, he has a clear line of sight into the tiny kitchen, where he can watch Michael cooking, hyperactive and hectic, bouncing from counter to cabinet to fridge to stove and back again, Buffy alert and bobbing and weaving at his feet for any scraps. “Couch,” he says, “but I’m not really hungry. Just…sit for a while.”

Michael obeys easily, sliding himself onto the couch beside Alex, urging him to sit back and relax with his broad, warm hand rubbing across Alex’s shoulders and back, taking the tension there with him.

“Go ahead and take your leg off,” he says, eyes shining, “I’ll take care of it. You. Everything.”

So Alex does, and by the time he’s done, a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers has arrived on the side table. Alex takes two, and then Michael coaxes him into laying his legs over his lap, his one hand gently stroking the remainder leg, mindful of its sensitivity and swelling, and the other massaging his sore foot. So talented with his hands Alex tips his head back, lets his eyes shut, and groans his approval.

Minutes later, he opens his eyes again, and he sees—

Michael in profile, his curls messy across his forehead, his eyes hooded as he looks down to watch himself work, soothing a pain Alex hadn’t even realized he was carrying. So content he’s almost smug. A little smile on his face. It’s so simple, a tiny act of love, of service, but it makes a change in Michael. Makes him softer. And this time, anger left sated and silent within him, Alex can be happy about that.

The electric kettle goes off in the kitchen, sudden and hissing, and Alex jumps at the sound.

“Just me,” Michael murmurs, stroking his hand up to Alex’s hip, looking up at him through his lashes with that same contented smile. A couple moments later, a mug floats out of the kitchen and into Alex’s hands. His favorite tea. His favorite mug—one Maria made for him at one of those paint your own dish birthday parties when they were eight. And Michael, bending over to kiss the back of his hand, not even asking for a thank you.

“I.” Alex has to cough, take a swallow of tea, or else he might get choked up. “Had a really bad day.”

It’s stupid—Alex feels a little stupid for repeating himself. Like it’s not obvious. Like he’s some little kid begging for reassurance.

But Michael just says, “Yeah.” And leans over to mush a kiss to Alex’s shoulder, still cradling his legs so carefully in his lap so Alex doesn’t get jostled by his movement. “Thank you for letting me share this part of it. And maybe do a little bit to make the night less shit.”

And Alex strokes his hair, pets him ‘til he’s purring, sleepy eyes still alert enough to watch Alex with fond focus.

“You have,” he says, “you already have.”

#malex #alex manes #michael guerin #hurt/comfort #alex isnt in a great brainspace for part of ths fic fw #intrusive thoughts cw #is appropriate i think