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carewyncromwell · 3 years

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“I think that somehow, somewhere inside of us, We must be similar, if not the same, So I continue to be wanting you, Left of center, against the grain... And if you want me, you can find me Left of center, off of the strip, In the outskirts and in the fringes, In the corner, out of the grip...” ~“Left of Center,” by Suzanne Vega

x~x~x~x

I BLAME THAT OTP AU ASK FOR THIS COMPLETELY. Once I got the image of Hipster!Barista!Orion in my head, I just had to slap it down on paper to get it out of my head.

A few notes on his tattoos: on his neck, you might just barely make out a hamsa, or Hand of Fatima, which can protect against the evil eye and bring good fortune; on the outside of Orion’s arm closest to us, we have a magpie surrounding by flowing ocean waves, and finally, on the inside of his other arm that you can’t see as well is the Orion constellation. And he has multiple piercings because of course he does.

So yes. Orion Amari is a senior barista at a coffee shop called the Jam City Cafe (LOL) who’s best known for his wonderfully chill attitude and for his tendency to dispense oddly wise advice to his more regular patrons. It wouldn’t be unlikely to see him in a supporting role in some Hollywood hopeful’s screenplay as this odd sage that helps the leading lady with her romantic turmoil in the third act and then disappears into the void, never to be seen again. And honestly, as much of a fixture as Orion is at the coffee shop and therefore in many people’s day-to-day existence, not a lot of people know him very well. Most people don’t know that he was a philosophy major in college, or that he was the captain and second striker of his high school football team, or that he was raised exclusively in foster care, with no permanent home to call his own. But Orion isn’t troubled by this -- he’s always been sort of on the outside looking in and he’s more than used to people not understanding his thought process. As long as his life remains interesting and he’s able to eventually get where he wants to go, that’s all that really matters. And in the meantime, he’ll keep on making orders for his regular customers -- “Doppio with extra foam,” “Iced White Caffe Mocha,” “Cafe au Lait spiked with Kahlua” -- he knows them by their orders more than their names.

One regular customer in particular, who Orion is rather fond of, is the one he calls “Salted Caramel Macchiato,” or just “Caramel,” casually. She’s always the first customer to pick up a cup of coffee every morning when the shop opens at 4:00, and she almost always sweeps back in the evening so as to work on her laptop for a few hours while sipping another. She’ll often have music playing in her earbuds while she’s working at her laptop, meaning Orion wasn’t able to talk to her for the longest time for fear of disrupting her focus -- so instead he would merely watch her curiously. From watching, Orion sussed out that she worked in a law office -- he noticed a logo letterhead featuring a set of scales on one of the documents she was editing on her laptop one day. And admittedly, she did dress the part too: every time he saw Caramel, she always wore sharp tailored jackets, colorful blouses, and vintage A-line skirts or wide-leg trousers, her ginger hair was always combed into a neat bob, and her lips were painted a daring red. Despite her conservative and very put-together look and the meticulous regularity of her schedule, however, Caramel did possess some interesting quirks. For one, her music didn’t match her look at all -- there were times Orion could hear the faintest sounds of rock and roll blaring out of her earbuds. Other times she actually would absently sing some of the songs aloud, and her half-hearted voice actually sounded kind of pretty. Her laptop wallpaper was a family picture with her standing with what looked like an older brother and her mother outside their lit-up house at Christmas with snow in their hair and trying desperately not to laugh while the older brother dances about, wearing his Christmas scarf like a feather boa. Whenever she’d turn on her laptop, Caramel would always take a minute to look over the picture and smile fondly before getting to work. Then there was the fact that she wasn’t the least bit stuck-up -- even if she didn’t really have time to socialize, she always looked every employee, from the baristas to the cleaning staff, straight in the eye and thanked them, rather than just treat them like automatons like a lot of the other customers that would stroll through. She also always tipped.

And so, the one evening that Orion was closing and he saw Caramel not wearing her earbuds, he approached her. Apparently someone snatched the earbuds out of her desk at work that day, and so she decided not to play any music while she worked, so as not to disrupt anyone. Since Orion and Caramel were the only ones in the shop that night, Orion said he wouldn’t mind if she wanted to play something.

“Preferably something softer than what you were playing yesterday, however,” he added with a wry smile.

Caramel had to laugh behind her hand, her almond-shaped blue eyes creasing slightly. “Oh -- I’m sorry, did it bother you?”

“Not at all,” said Orion. “But it did make for an entertaining image, seeing someone so poised fighting back the urge to headbang to the beat in her ears.”

Caramel smiled. “What can I say? Queen is iconic.”

Turning her focus back to her laptop, she then proceeded to turn on some slightly quieter soft rock, including a song about butterflies that she said was by Michael Jackson. She couldn’t help but sing along to the chorus once or twice under her breath -- the second time when she caught herself, Caramel quickly glanced up at Orion as if to apologize, only to meet his eyes.

“You have a lovely voice,” he complimented her.

Caramel glanced away, smiling modestly. “...Thank you.”

“I liked the song you were singing last Tuesday,” he pressed on, as he brought his cleaning rag along the espresso machine behind the counter. “I would’ve said so at the time, but you looked to be in no state to have a conversation.”

Carewyn gave something of a grimace. “Mm...yeah, Tuesday was a bit rough.”

Orion placed his arms on the counter and leaned forward, clearly ready to listen. Caramel, however, shook her head dismissively.

“Work drama. Nothing that exciting, just exhausting enough that you want an escape from it, when the workday is done...”

She typed away at her laptop as the next song in her playlist started.

“Which artist sings this?” asked Orion, as he shifted himself back up off the counter so he could continue cleaning.

“Suzanne Vega.”

Orion listened for a moment, closing his eyes absently. “...This is her, I think. The musician you were singing along to on Tuesday. There is a similar aura, to the lyrics -- detached and understated, and yet rhythmic in its poetry.”

Caramel’s almond-shaped blue eyes lit up. “Oh, I know which song you mean now...hold on...”

She opened her music directory and browsed the songs until she found what she was looking for and double-clicked on it. Once it started, Orion’s mouth spread into a full smile.

“That’s the one,” he said.

He spritzed the counter with some cleaner and started to wipe it down.

“Sing as loud as you’d like,” he added without looking up. “Calming music can be very helpful in finding one’s center of balance.”

Caramel cocked an eyebrow. “‘Finding one’s center of balance?’”

“Certainly. One always does their best work when one’s mind is at peace, their spirit focused, and their aura balanced, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so. I just don’t know if I would’ve phrased it that way.”

“As to be expected,” said Orion. “You seem like the sort of person who never is at a loss for how to phrase things in your own way.”

Caramel blinked. Then her lips spread into a full, wry white smile of her own.

“And you seem like the sort of person who anyone would be foolish to underestimate.”

Orion’s black eyes glittered with something oddly like mischief as Caramel once again returned to typing away on her laptop. Not long after, he caught her singing along to the song in a fuller voice: the perfect accompaniment for him while he finished bussing the counter.

Caramel’s voice was really quite pretty -- like a robin’s.

From that day on, Caramel would take out her earbuds if she and Orion were the only ones in the cafe during closing hours. Sometimes they’d chat about philosophy, or animals, or the Olympic games -- once they even had a deep, meandering conversation about the movie Labyrinth being a metaphor for a young woman coming of age and the importance of fantasy stories to a child’s developing mind. And on those nights that were more crowded and Caramel had her earbuds in her ears, Orion couldn’t help but “reach out” anyway by drawing little custom designs in the foam of her Salted Caramel Macchiatos. One of his very first was a Michael-Jackson-worthy butterfly.

#'football' meaning soccer to us americans XD;#because really could you see orion playing american football?? uh no #I think this'll just be a one-shot guys #I actually know nothing about coffee shops I don't drink coffee LMAO #but I did think the image was cute #<3 #hphm #hogwarts mystery #my art #au #coffee shop au #orion amari #carewyn cromwell #my writing

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madfatty · 4 years

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the finn nelson agenda - an mmfd fic #27

Long time, no see. I come bearing gift. Consider this my woefully inadequate attempt to distract you for a few moments from the shit-show that is now.

The plan is for this to be one of eight or nine stories about Finn falling for Rae, as told by the people who watched it happened. The collection is tentatively titled, ‘Why Are You So Blind?” and this one is from Finn’s POV.

What I’ve learned is that I can’t write it in the order that it ought to be read, so they’ll go up as they’re finished (if they’re finished). This is probably third or fourth from the end, so for the time being, we’ll pretend it’s a stand alone.

My thanks to the most lovely and much missed @bitchy-broken for planting the seed and my dearest @slitherouter for listening to me read it in many of it’s various forms and for the words that inspired both me and the title

.. my secret agenda is actually just to sit in your room and show you my favorite songs while you explain different things you have on your wall or your desk to me

Things Finn Nelson says

(a thing that Shiri said. I mean, *GAH* right. I love her SO much.)

Ta very much to @late-to-the-sexy-party for her thoughts and enthusiasm. Big love and thanks to the wondrous @endemictoearth for giving it a twice-over and the benefit of her talent and experience. She made it infinitely better. Thank you, my gorgeous.

And finally, thank you dear reader, for giving this a go.

the finn nelson agenda

It’s one of those lazy, late summer days he’d spent all term daydreaming about, slouched in the back corner of some classroom, tapping out bass lines on his desk or scribbling band names and song lyrics all over his binder. Staring out the window while elaborate fantasies built of music, football and girls, all vividly drawn, played out against the white noise of his reality. He feels the waste of it; counting down the seconds to the end of the hour, the end of the day, the end of school.

None of that matters now. There are still weeks left of the holidays and each day is filled with even more promise now that Rae’s around. Days like today. While there are thousands of elsewheres he imagines himself being between nine and three during term, today Rutlands will do just fine.

All his mates are here, there’s tunes and booze and a sense of time being stretched out and suspended in the liquid amber of the golden afternoon. It’s almost perfect. The only thing missing is the girl. And fingers crossed, she’ll be here soon too, because Finn’s beginning to realise things are just better when she’s there.

Where was she though? He’s been a twitching mess the whole time they’ve been here, checking his watch every few seconds, never registering the time, but still feeling the drag of it. Not toward the end of something now, but the start.

Ever since the party, he’s tried to find time every day to get her on own, but it isn’t easy. She’s quickly become the centre around which they all revolve, so competition for her attention is huge. This means he spends a lot of his time waiting to share hers. He prowls an invisible periphery, ever watchful for his chance. They don’t come up nearly as often as he’d like so he’s had to get creative.

Now, depending on how late he gets in from a long day of almost being together, there’s a new nightly ritual he follows; home, a quick shower and something to eat, then he makes a mug of tea and a cosy nest and dials her number with shaking hands. The last of his preparations is pressing ‘play’ on the carefully curated backing tracking for their conversation while he listens nervously for her to pick up.

Even then, he has to share her with her family. The sniping and the bickering between her and her mum, the deep warm tones of a hesitant male voice, a rumble in the background.

He can hear the life she complains about going on behind her, crowded and noisy and messy; the chaos and the lack of privacy, he can’t help feel how much he wants to be in the middle of it.

What he’d really like is to show up at her door with a bag full of music and a couple of sneaky cans of lager. He’d happily listen to her mum bitch about the ladies she works with at the hospital and watch football with Karim or help out with the birds if it means that eventually, they can escape upstairs to her room, because even though Finn’s only really been to her house the once, (if you didn’t count the apology), he likes it there. Finn’s got a secret wish; to sit in her room, sharing his favourite songs while she talks about her books, and her posters and all those weird little toy things that cover her desk. He wants to find out about all of it. To know everything about her.

However, despite his best -obvious, desperate - efforts, she hasn’t taken any of the heavy hints he’s dropped to ask him over again, so he’s going to invite her ‘round to his. He’s going to ask her today because he wants so badly for her to come and fill his house with her smile and her smell and her stories and yeah, to make some stories of their own.

He’d tried again, last night at the pub. Just as they were all getting ready to leave, with his heart in his mouth - ‘cause that’s always where it is when Rae’s around, when it’s not in his eyes or on his sleeve, - he’d stuttered out an offer to collect her this morning. His plan was to get there super early so they could just hang out on their own. He’d been prepared for her ‘no’ but it didn’t stop the curl of disappointment when she gave it.

Sometimes he worries that that night at hers didn’t mean as much to Rae as it did (hell, still DOES) to him, that it was just a random kindness, not the revelation that he’d felt, and to her he was just a guy having a bad night that she’d taken pity on. Other times, he believes she can feel this thread between them too. A delicate thing but he thinks it’s getting stronger, can feel it getting tighter somewhere around his ribs. No longer nothing, but not quite the something he’s hoping for.

Finn doesn’t want to test that thread, in case he tugs too hard and it snaps. He can’t help feeling that he needs to do something though, because it doesn’t matter what Archie says about it, there’s this niggle inside him that says all it would take would be for Archie to finally decide that he really did want her, and with the crook of his finger, Rae would come running.

He’s separated himself slightly from the others, coiled up tight in the shade of a nearby tree, his back to the bark, the pinch and bite of it through his t-shirt not enough to distract him from his vigil.

Cigarette butts lie in an untidy circle around his feet. His ears are straining past the drone of the radio and the fat buzzing noise of insects, tuning out the prattle of the others for the first sign of her. Her name caught up in the pulse behind his eyes. Everything is so loud inside his head.

He’s about to risk asking Izzy for a third time if she’s sure Rae knew exactly where they’d be when Rae appears. The anxiety of her absence is replaced with the relief of her proximity. The physical response is exactly the same. The next breath he takes is easier than the one before.

He doesn’t care what it looks like. It’s not enough to be near her anymore; he can’t bear any distance between them. It makes him brave. Or crazy.

Without consultation, his body moves with deliberate intent. He turns the music up, up, and reaches for another can, trying to fill his belly with something other than butterflies, hoping that his counterfeit swagger hides the jelly of his knees. Finn lets himself fall – continue to fall, he’s been falling for a week, pushed from a plane without a parachute – to land beside to her.

He must have lost his mind. It’s the only way to explain his behaviour. He’s got her pinned to the ground from shoulder to ankle like some sort of lunatic but that’s not the insane part. No, the insane part is his brain trying to convince him that if he doesn’t grab hold of her hand like he so desperately wants to, she won’t notice that he has her pinned to the ground from shoulder to ankle like some sort of lunatic. For fuck’s sake, it’s screaming, don’t hold her hand because then she’ll know. Like that’s where all his subtlety would disappear. He holds fast to his wrist, pinning the would-be offending hand to his chest; a single idiotic attempt at self-restraint.

It’s all he can do to lie here, outwardly calm while inside he’s vibrating so hard his teeth are rattling, his heart bouncing so fiercely off his ribs any minute now he’ll come loose from the ground. His tongue lies thick and useless in his mouth, dry despite the beer.

He hopes his deafening silence reads like casual confidence to her.

The weight of the sun and the heat from the ground beneath him, simultaneously seeps in and rises up to meet in the middle of him. Yet neither burns him like the length of her body under the press of his arm and the cage of his legs. A sheen of sweat covers his body, caught between his skin and his clothes. It tickles along his hairline, behind his ears and slides down the sides of his neck.

Everything inside the moment is sharp and highly defined. He can feel each breath that fills her lungs. Everything outside of a three foot radius blurs in his field of vision. It’s coming in waves, all at once and he doesn’t know which bits to savour, which bits to focus on and what to put away for later. He has to keep sneaking looks at her just to make sure this is really happening. Rae on the other hand, has her face turned skyward, barely acknowledging his presence, unmoved by the miracle that’s changing his life.

He’s filling up with her. His head, his heart, his bones. Every nerve is exposed. It’s all stinging nettles and ants itching under his skin.

He couldn’t have stood if you paid him. Dizzy from the blood roaring in his ears before it raced south.

She hasn’t pushed him away.

What would she do, if he just stopped thinking and did what his body was screaming out to do; if he rolled over and covered her body with his own. What would she say? If he gave in to the impulse and kissed those maddening pink lips, lush and full, and coaxed her sharp acid tongue into his own mouth, to taste the sweetness he’s seen her gift to others?

What she must feel like under the long cotton sleeves of her shirt, and what might that do to him; finally touching her skin. He’s never fantasised about forearms before, or calves or even feet. Her pale wrist under his thick fingers, or the crook of her elbow beneath his lips. The curve of her shoulder, the tip of her ear, the back of her knee. To see and touch and memorize. To know if his hands have guessed the way of her correctly.

Lying here, so close to everything he longs for, his thoughts slide inevitably to those most recently taken up residence in his brain, a divine carnal loop he indulges in almost hourly, the heavy press of her breasts against him, the torment of that smug mouth around his cock, the taste of her cunt, should he ever be blessed enough to be invited.

He has to stop that line of thought before his body gives him away. Before he can’t help himself anymore and he takes hold of her hand and places it on his hardening cock – do you see now? This is what being near you does to me. This is me, all the time, thinking about the back of your neck and the length of your leg and what sort of knickers you’re wearing or if you’re wearing any knickers at all. Look at me Rae, I’m trying to tell you that I … that I’m a mess about you. My head and my sheets and my record collection. The smell of green apple makes me hard, costs my dad a fortune at the green grocers. I can’t sleep, can’t leave myself alone, imagining your hand down my pants, your tongue in my mouth, the sounds that you’d make with my fingers inside you. I… I… Even in his own head he can’t say the word. Even he knows it’s too soon, but… Like is not enough, although he does like her. Desire is a stupid overused word, a song lyric that rhymes with ‘fire’. Want. He definitely wants her.

Can you see, Rae?

He can’t tell which one of them is trembling.

She still hasn’t pushed him away.

She’s quiet. He doesn’t like it as much when she’s quiet; it makes him nervous. Everything about her makes him nervous but at least when she’s talking, he has some idea of what she’s thinking and right now he needs to know what’s going on in her head. So he asks.

Her answer makes him laugh. It’s not exactly what he was hoping for until she laughs too. It’s treacle over his jangled nerves. They take the same breath and he feels her relax beneath him, which is when his brain detonates.

With the shittest timing in the world, Chop’s hissing Kendo’s name.

Kendo’s a mate of Chop’s older brother Robbie and a wannabe hard man. He’s also a prize dickhead but that doesn’t stop Chop trying too hard to look cool in front of him, although Finn can see he’s shitting himself in case Kendo makes him look like a twat. Right now, Finn thinks Chop’s doing okay on his own on that score.

Rae stiffens. She sits up and Finn can’t help but follow, caught up as he is in her gravitational pull. All the ease from a few seconds before is gone. Everything that’s said in the next two minutes sounds like it’s being spoken underwater because Finn can’t focus on anything but the distance she’s trying to put between them without physically moving.

The damage is done by the time Kendo finally slithers off, dragging the corpse of the mood he’s killed behind him.

Finn’s still up in his head about how he’s going to get Rae to lay back down with him or if that moment’s gone for good, so he’s not really listening when Chloe asks her question. He says ‘yeah, course’ two seconds before his brain catches up with his mouth and just as he’s trying to scramble back from his offer, Rae’s telling them she can’t go. The ground drops out from under him and his heart is flailing, doing a Wile E. Coyote over his gut.

Wait, wait, a minute ago we were on our way to perfect. Fucking Chop. Fucking Kendo. Fucking fuck.

He’s reeling but before he can find a way to get them back to where they were, a shadow falls over them and Chloe’s voice, brittle and insistent.

“Rae, can I speak with you? Privately.”

Fucking Chloe.

For a moment hope soars because he can feel Rae’s reluctance to move but it’s only for a moment; she’s pulling away now and she’s taking all the warm and the hope with her. He sits there among the shattered bits of the beautiful bubble they’d been floating in, with his unasked question filling up his throat and his eyes closed because he can’t stand to watch her walk away.

#madfatty spouts off #mmfd fanfic #the finn nelson agenda #a part of the 'why are you so blind?' collection #if and when it eventuates #i made this #27 #i'll fix any fuckups tomorrow #now i gotta sleep

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