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king-star · 3 years

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hii! can you please make a natasha x reader fic where they both have been dating for a while and it's natasha's birthday and the reader surprises her with a brand new suit that she made herself and nat cries bc she never got a meaningful gift and the reader also surprises her with cake and more romantic gifts. you could make the reader tony's sister so it would make more sense that she's good at making suits but you don't have to!! thank you sm i need sum cute natty 😫

Birthday Suit

Warning: Use of the pet name Sunflower,

Match: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Genre: Fluff

A/N: So this one was fun. I hate my birthday but this actually was cute. I’m trying a new way of presenting the dialogue. aesthetically it looks better but I’m not sure how it reads. I've seen other authors do the dialogue on completely seperate lines so just lmk if this is good.

Word Count: ~2.5 k

Summary: It’s Natasha's birthday, and despite her acting like she hates it you shower her with love.

The smell of cooking cake fills the compound. Even from the workshop, where you are, the sweet scent permeates the air. You have been baking for long enough to know what that smell means, the cake is almost done.

You check the clock on the wall. 2:44. Nat would be home at 5.

“Shit. I need to get this done,”

You shake your head and set down your wire cutters. The list of everything you need to get done before she arrives rolls through your mind.

It was her birthday. She didn’t know her actual birthday so years ago she made one up. The chosen date was a closely guarded secret she only shared with those she trusted most. For the most part the assassin didn’t even celebrate. When you had asked a week prior what she wanted to do she had brushed you off claiming,

“I don’t really care. As long as I get to be with my love.”

She had kissed you, hoping the kiss would fog your mind from any further planning. Unfortunately for her you were a big schemer, always going as big as you could for your friend’s birthdays.

You walked out of the workshop, making one last longing look at her unfinished gift on your messy work table. No one was around today. The one Saturday everyone had off a month. Natasha had gone shopping with Wanda, a plan conncocted to give you plenty of time to get everything ready.

“Friday do you mind turing the oven off?”

you asked the A.I. as you headed down the hallway.

“Of course Agent Y/L/N,”

entering the kitchen you picked up a discarded list of everything that needed to be done. Two items were crossed off “Bake the cake, movie fort.” The unmarked items looked at you teasingly and you felt anxiety rise in your chest. What if you didn’t get everything done and this birthday made Natasha hate birthdays even more? You shook your head trying to chase off the thoughts and went to the oven.

“One perfectly baked chocolate cake coming up,”

grabbing an oven mitt you pulled the cake out of the oven and placed it on the counter. Carefully you coerced the cake from the pan and set it on the cooling rack.

Back when Wanda and you ventured into the baking realm you had begged Tony to put in a floor to ceiling blast chiller. The kind that was always on baking competitions. He reluctantly agreed, with the price of always having to give him a taste of your creations. The freezer was immensely helpful in tight circumstances. You were more than grateful for it now.

You set your cake into the freezer and went to the pantry to pull out all the ingredients you needed for icing. You poured the powdered sugar and placed the butter into the bowl. When you turned on the mixer a cloud of sugary powder exploded in the kitchen. You blinked and licked your lips. Bringing a hand up to wipe your face, you laughed hard. Sugar covered the entire counter and floor beneath you, not to mention your already grease stained clothes.

“Wow, is my little sibling doing coke in here? And without me!”

a snarky voice sounded from across the room. You opened your eyes and squinted at your older brother with a scrunched nose.

“Can it Tony,”

You growled, grabbing a towel and wiping yourself off the counter. Tony laughed at you and opened the freezer to look at what sweet treats awaited him tonight.

“A cake? Are we celebrating?”

He laughed and made a teasing face. You rolled your eyes and called out to Friday.

“Can you order me four containers of icing from the store to be delivered?”

“You got it!”

her chipper accented voice came over the audio. You threw the towel in the sink and landed a punch in Tony’s arm as you left to go change.

“You better not eat any of that cake until Nat has had at least one slice. I know where you keep those rare magic cards you think no one knows about and I will not hesitate to cut them all in half,”

He looked at you in shock. Whether it was because you knew about the secret stash or because you would dare cut them you weren’t sure. The only way to get Tony mad was to go for something he couldn’t replace with money.

“YOU WOULDN'T FUCKING DARE,”

You run away as he climbs out of his chair and chases after you. You run into your room and lay on the door to push back a Tony who was only a few steps behind you. When you finally force the door into the frame you turn the lock and fall to the floor laughing.

Angry mumbling came from the other side. Tony pounded on the door twice before, defeated. walking away. After catching your breath you pulled your sugar stained clothes off and changed into the outfit you’d set aside that morning.

“Y/N the man just arrived with the icing,”

Friday called out to your room and you nodded.

“Thank you Friday. Have him set the bags in the kitchen,”

Friday hummed in agreement. You stood up and looked in the mirror checking yourself out. When you were satisfied with the look you unlocked the door and turned to the right. You really needed to finish Natasha’s present. You wouldn’t even have time to test it properly. You really hoped the phrase “it’s the thought that counts,” was true. Her gift could be something that got you endless kisses or a real crash and burn.

Making it to the lab you set your hand on your head and groaned. You really hoped it worked. It was so pretty. You grabbed the wrapping paper and box and set it in with a kiss.

“Natty, I hope you like it,”

The gift finished the fort built, and cake baked, there was only one thing left to do, ice the damn cake. You could bake sure, but only Wanda ever mastered the art of making it look beautiful.

When you made it to the kitchen Tony was nowhere in sight and a plastic bag with what you assumed was icing was set on the counter. You pulled out a butter knife and dug in, hoping this looked somewhat edible. Wanda was the one who was skilled at decorating. You could make the elaborate pastry chef treats, but you could never handle the finer details of making it look pretty.

You were in the workshop when Friday alerted you that Wanda and Natasha were home. A feeling similar to anxiety or excitement fluttered in your chest. This was the first time you’d celebrated her birthday with your girlfriend. You wanted her to like birthdays again. To feel as special and loved as you can pour out for her.

“Thank you Friday. Please tell them I’m in the workshop and will be heading to the game room shortly,”

You set down the gauntlet you’d been fixing while waiting for them and brushed off your outfit. Your eyes searched over the shirt for stains, and when you were satisfied you were clean you headed to your “party”.

Wanda was the first to come in. She threw her hands to her face and “oood” and “aweeed” over the spread you had out.

“Y/N your cake! it’s…. adorable,”

you punched her in the shoulder with a frown. She fell over laughing.

“I TRIED! and I’m sure it tastes amazing.”

you crossed your arms and pouted. She sat back up still laughing and patted your back.

“She’ll love it Y/N. Even if it had ‘fuck you Nat’ written on top she’d love it,”

you smiled at the complement and stopped pouting. You were explaining the technology behind Nat’s present when the woman of the hour finally walked in.

“What is all this? Are y’all having a party? and didn’t invite me,”

she sat down next to you intertwining your fingers with hers and kissing your shoulder. You smiled as the excitement anxiety mix returned.

“Actually…. it’s for you,”

You smiled and kissed her hands. She looked genuinely surprised. You really hoped the feeling was happy excitement.

“oh- Y/N y-you remembered? and you didn’t have to do any of this. I thought I told you i didn’t care to celebrate,”

you felt Wanda stand up to leave with a pat on your shoulder. You smiled up at her and turned back to Natasha.

“I know I know, but I wanted to do something special. You love me so well and work so hard all the time. You deserve a day that’s unapologetically about you,”

You knew if Natasha didn’t have such complete control of her emotions she would be crying. The agape mouth gave that away. You smiled and leaned forward pulling her into a deep, intimate kiss. Feeling her smile against your lips you pulled away and leaned your forehead against hers.

“I love you Natashka. I will do anything to make you feel like Queen of the world,”

with that she started crying. You frowned and wiped away the tears.

“I really hope those are happy tears,”

she nodded quickly and smiled, sniffling a little.

“Very very happy tears. happy ‘I don’t know what on Earth i did to deserve you’ tears,”

“It is I who does not deserve you. The Great Black Widow. I’m just here to make you smile, it’s my life goal,”

you bowed as much as you could sitting down. Placing a peck on her lips you turned back to the presents and pointed.

“Which one should we open first?”

she pondered and then picked up a small box. Nimble fingers unwrapped the box and pulled out a Ring. You had managed to get her size weeks earlier fitting one of your own on her finger when hanging out. She looked at the little silver band with a carved sunflower at the head. A smile bloomed across her face and she hugged you.

“Oh my goodness Y/N, it’s so pretty…,”

she slid it onto her fingers, finding the one it fit best and stared at it. You hugged her shoulder and kissed her cheek.

“Well, you are my sunflower. It’s just a reminder when we are away,”

Her eyes lit up at the nickname. It wasn’t as common for you to use it as baby or sweetheart, but sunflower had always been her favourite.

She looked at the other boxes realising they were also for her. You picked up the next box, a medium sized one and handed it to her. You were saving the biggest for last.

She was just in awe and set it down before unwrapping it. Her hands snaked around your waist and pulled you flush to her. Her soft lips pressed kisses to your jaw and she set her head on your shoulder.

“Thank you so much Y/N, I- no one has done something like this for me ever,”

She hugged you tight again and then let go picking back up the present. You nodded and kissed her head. Pushing some hair out of her face you stroked her hair softly. Her hands once again unwrapped the gift. She squeaked at the sight of the book underneath the paper.

Natasha never got to read much on her own accord growing up. The red room picked out books for her education but never anything she would actually enjoy. Long ago Natasha had told you the first book she read after getting out of the red room was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and since then she adored the book. You had found, and paid for with Tony’s credit card, a first edition of the book. The auction was rough but you needed that book for Natasha.

Natasha stared at the book once, again jaw hanging open. She wiped her hands on her pants before handingly the book with utmost care. She flipped it over and ran her fingertips over the indented letters and gold illustration on the front.

“Y-you like it? I know you said you like Alice in Wonderland. It’s uh… actually a first edition copy. Tony was about ready to kill me when he saw me pay for the bid,”

You laughed nervously. She turned the book around again and then set it on the coffee table. She tackled you and pushed you back on the couch kissing all over your face. You yelped in surprise then grabbed her hips, catching her lips and kissing her roughly. She melted into the kiss but you pulled away.

“As much as I love this Natty, let’s open your last gift and eat some cake,”

You sat up and pulled her so she was in your lap. You placed a soft kiss to the back of her neck as she reached for the last gift. It was heavy but the assassin had no trouble lifting it.

“After that we can makeout in the fort I made. yeah?”

You wrapped your arms around her waist and pulled her close to you, rubbing circles on her thigh. She laughed and nodded, blushing profusely.

“I like that idea Y/N,”

She opened the box and pulled out the gift you put months of effort into. This time her reaction wasn’t as instantaneous. You helped her pull all the pieces out and set it on the coffee table. She looked at it slightly perplexed.

“I’m sorry… I’m not exactly sure what it is,”

She pouted and looked at you. You smiled and nodded knowing she wouldn’t. You set it out so she could see all the parts.

“Well… uh it’s a new suit. You always say that you don’t like how tight and revealing your other ones are so I kinda beefed this one up so it focuses on functionality,”

She nodded along as you explained. A look of understanding crossed her face as she pulled at the sleeves.

“ohhhhhhhh. That makes so much sense. I- Y/N what the fuck. I can’t express it enough. You are the best, you listened to me and used it to give me the best gifts i’ve ever gotten. You are the most thoughtful partner,”

You beamed. The feeling you knew she was struggling to express, it was exactly what you’d wanted her to feel. Loved, heard, appreciated, and cared for.

“I’m glad sunflower. That’s what I wanted. To make you feel as good as you deserve. D-do you mind if I tell you a bit about the features? I didn’t have time to test some of them so I will need to do that before you take it into combat,”

She nodded and slid off your lap to look at you. You patted her legs and squeezed then held at the sleeve first.

“Well of course it wouldn’t be a suit for the Black widow without gauntlets. These can change through three different modes for different levels and types of stuns also a laser if you need that for aiming,”

You flipped on the laser and pointed it at a pot then turned it back off.

“Also I made it so the suit can suction to your body but be limp to put it on. a lot easier to slip on ya know. And there is mobile but thick padding on all major points of contact for falling. Shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, the like.”

Natasha ran her hands over the surprisingly thin padding and smiled.

“Wow baby that’s… amazing,”

You nodded and picked up the bag attached to the back.

“And uh there’s a parachute built in as well as pockets up the legs, arms and boots so you don’t have to have the belts. They are sorta magnetic so you can like open them easily but when they are closed everything stays in. OH AND THE BOOTS,”

You started to ramble on about the energy absorbing boots you worked with Shuri on that would allow Nat to drop from double the height of a normal human with no damage to her knees or feet. Nat just stared at you hungirly.

“Hey baby, I seriously appreciate the gift. It’s honestly the best thing I've ever gotten. Why don’t we try it out tomorrow and you can show me EVERYTHING. For now we can… sit in the fort like you said,”

She had a cocky smile and you blushed at her antics. You nodded quickly, cutting off your rambling. Her hands found your waist and she pulled you off the couch and into the pillow fort you had built.

“I uh- got a movie for us to watch. Do you want to?”

She nodded and smiled. A look that very much meant “Yes. That's sweet, but I doubt we will be watching it.” You pulled her into your lap, setting your hands on her waist. She draped hers over your shoulders and rubbed light circles on the back of your neck. You leaned forward and trapped her lips in a kiss. Soft but full of passion.

The rest of that night was spent watching the movie and kissing. When you finally remembered the cake a slice had been taken out of it, with

“You were busy with Romanoff so I took what I was owed. The package has been moved, try getting me now little sibling.”

On a sticky note beside it. Natasha had laughed, unsure exactly what had happened but sure it was a story she would much enjoy hearing.

She had moaned over how good the cake was after laughing at how “Adorably” it was decorated.

“So Nat… did I make this birthday worth celebrating?”

She smiled wide and nodded.

“Yes Y/N, if every birthday was like this I would never want to stop celebrating.”

Tag List:

@xburningbluex @zoeyserpentluck @iamgaiiiuwu @natasharomanoffswife @fleurlovesbucky @fayhar @ymzki-haruki @lostandsearching

Natasha Tag list:

@basiclesbianbitch @stephanieromanoff @sapphicshots @madamevirgo @choni-trimberly@wlwlovesreading @i-just-like-storage @screamsin-gay @ymzki-haruki

#black widow x reader #black widow x y/n #black widow fluff #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha romanoff fluff #black widow #natasha romanoff #black widow fanfic #natasha romanoff fanfic #avengers #mcu #marvel #my fic #king-star

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elriell · 3 years

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The Seer of Shadows

Chapter One— A Fateful Return

It came once more, cold and forceful as it so often did, ripping open her thoughts and bleeding through her unconscious mind. It surged like a powerful river, the running rapids numbed her hearing completely, the soft dreamworld fading to a dark loveless expanse. The terror would only continue to grow inside her, though asleep her whole body seizing with dread, spilling over into reality and it would end how it inevitably always did.

Feyre had thought to comfort her throughout many months, speaking of how the nightmares would get easier and with time the dark clouds that settled over her during sleep would slowly grow weaker and would eventually go away all together. However what she had not told her sister, nor anyone for that matter was that the opposite was true. For her nightmares where only growing stronger, and her sleep shorter each day.

Elain’s scream clawed itself out her throat violently, weaved its way through the night settling in the air, chilling her own blood.

As she attempted to calm her racing heart which could be heard pounding in her ear like war drums, she knew she could not go on like this for much longer the short bursts of sleep scarcely got her through the day and she grew paler and frailer by the day. It was infinitely frustrating feeling powerless, the backpeddling of her recovery since that terrifying day at the Cauldron, but try as she might she was wilting away like one of her favorite flowers during the winter season.

Disturbing her from her musings a sharp crisp knock sounded at the door. It was during these moments she became most afraid, because the truth was, she never quite knew whether she was dreaming whilst asleep or drifting whilst awake, her visions felt so real, so true, it confused even her own mind. As dread heighten once again, she tugged at the sheets, submerging herself beneath them willing the horrible images that flickered in front of her eyes though her lids remained closed.

Gentle but firm, the voice called out, “Elain?” At first it was dulled by the ringing in her ears until it came again, louder, clearer, finally breaching her murky thoughts.

At that her heart felt like it came to a stop momentarily, though it made her feel better to hear his comforting voice, the male on the other side of the door did little to slow the rhythm of her heart.

Taking a deep breath, once then twice more, she vocalized her internal thoughts. “Azriel, what are you doing awake so late?” Or early she supposed, depending on how you looked at it. She hadn’t been aware he had returned after so many weeks away; the shadow-singer had been gone on an important task with the Illyrians, alongside her sister and Cassian. Rhysand had casually informed her over dinner one night after she couldn’t bear to wonder any longer and perked up the nerve to ask, she had not realized quite how accustomed she had become to his quiet strength and companionship. Ordinarily she might not have noticed his absence quite so much, however with Nesta ‘s departure to the mountains as well it had left quite the notable hole in her life.

“I was returning from the mountains when I thought I heard a scream from the other end of the house, I thought I would seek out the source of the sound. Are you alright?” Azriel paused, he seemed apprehensious to continue but his voice picked back up again, just as clear as before. “May I come in if it is not an imposition.”

Casting a glance down herself she was relieved to see she appeared relatively decent, though sweat lined her temple and her hair was a tangled mess from thrashing about, she supposed he had seen her in far worse states throughout the years. Smoothing her hand through the tendrils in a half-hearted attempt to separate the sweat plastered hair lining her face, and righting the nightwear from off her shoulder.

“Of course.” She replied with a confidence she did not truly feel though the quiver in her voice almost certainly betrayed her.

The door released gently and as it unlocked the candlelight from the hall trickled in slowly, the glow framed his shape casting the rest of him in shadows but there was no doubt who the tall figure with broad wings belonged too, sapphire syphons glimmering across his torso, they seemed to thump steadily almost in unison with her own heart.

There was a stillness in him that set her on edge, though it had only been a few weeks it seemed like a lifetime ago as he stood quietly in the doorframe, whatever calm understanding had grown between them over months prior seemed to be absent. Tonight, he was tenser than usual she could read it in the creases of his forehead, in the tension of his torso, his whole being was screaming out for release. Not to mention his shadows rippled around him, very unusual for him to allow them such free range around her.

"I apologize for disturbing you, I did not realize I was quite so loud.”

He remained far from her by the now shut door, keeping his eyes downcast probably in some chivalrous attempt to allow her to maintain some modicum of privacy. He was always like that Azriel, gentlemanly to the core.

“You have nothing to apologize for.” His siphons glowing vividly in the dim room.

She knew he was only being kind to her as he always was, nonetheless she appreciated the gesture, did not have the energy to sustain any sort of façade she had been prolonging for Feyre. She had so much to worry over already, what with being pregnant. It certainly wasn't the time for her to fret about her again, so she kept her rising demons to yourself.

“How often has this been happening?” He queried gently, it was so low she had barely heard him, almost as if he had been speaking to himself.

“Not frequently.” Only constantly.

He searched her face for any trace of a lie and she knew with his experience, and intelligence he was likely to see the lie for what it was, if he did, he made no comment on the deception, allowing her this secret. And for that she was infinitely grateful.

He did not speak for a while the silence between them louder than the usual tranquility she was accustomed to when it came to the shadow-singer. Tonight, was different. Perhaps whatever happened in Illyria had put him on edge, at the verge of his control, because the silence between them was anything but serene.

“There are many who don't wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don't wish to wake for the same fear. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky ours are the former.”

“You get night-terrors too?” She guessed.

No hesitation. “Of course.”

It was hard to imagine such a strong and stoic man being capable of being rendered powerless by a mere dream, more likely he was trying to make her feel better about her weaknesses, for the fragility of her mind some days. She wondered if going mad might be easier, if she simply let it pull her under, perhaps she could finally get some much needed rest.

Elain implored genuinely, “And how do you cope with them?” He took his time to ponder her words, carefully picking the ones he would use.

“I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.”

“That seems inordinately sad.”

A soft chuckle, and then, “Never.” Pause. “Have you spoken to Feyre about your nightmares? From the look of your eyes, I am guessing she knows...”

“No, no... I do not wish to worry her, what with everything going on and all, it would be unfair. Anyway, it is all under control so there will be no need to lose sleep over it.” The god of Irony was looking down upon her she was sure. However, it was her best bet at making sure he did not seek Feyre out and tell her, so she would reason with him, certain he was aware of her sister's delicate condition.

"Mhm.” He fiddled with his rings. “Would you like me to do anything? I could bring you a sweat tea...” Azriel was looking around the room as if it would divulge all the answers to him, or mayhap to avoid looking at her. As the thought manifested, she considered how improper this was, how intimate this room was to her and even further still as she lay in short silk underthings with only a thin sheet covering her lean form.

“I can wait for you to fall asleep before leaving, if you'd like?” Damn— She had not realized how long her musings had gone on for, taking her silence as a refusal he had persevered on.

“Oh no, that's quite alright. I am sure I have a tonic around here Madja gifted me.” She refused to tell anyone she had ran out quite some weeks ago, believing she could regain control of her nightmares, perhaps that was ill-advised on her part. Continuing on, “Truly, I was not expecting such a rough sleep or I would have had some before laying to rest.”

A lie, regrettably. Elain felt a heap of shame envelop her but it was no more than she would feel at the look of pity she was sure to receive if anyone knew the truth of it.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Azriel was anything but at ease tonight himself, so at odds with his usually calm steady demeanor. He appeared to be contemplating his next words carefully but settled—

“Well should you need me at any point I'm in the West Wing. Day or Night.”

She offered him a appreciate smile, again it was out of kindness he offered, but it was no matter why as she knew with absolute certainty that she would never take him up on that offer. She watched him take his leave and some part of her rebelled and she murmured, “Oh, Azriel... I am glad you are back home.” A blush rose to the surface quick and hot.

He paused abruptly; his hand was paused wrapped around the doorknob and stayed so as if glued to it, though frustratingly, she could not make out his face with his back towards her, the air within the room seemed to vibrate over her skin, raising goosebumps along the length of her arms. The tension that he had been holding in since he arrived seemed to reach its crescendo, his shadows growing and rising higher up his body swiftly covering him as if safely tucking away whatever was eating away at him.

She could not be certain as the shadows pooled around them and pulled the room deeper in to darkness but she caught the slight movement as he ducked his head in a nod, a poor attempt to acknowledge that he heard her.

Elain wasn't even sure if that was just her imagination playing tricks because as quickly as she could think it, he regained himself and pulled the door open wide and fast, causing a rush of air to flow over her cheeks, Azriel was through the doorway and a mere shadow before she could even blink.

All that remained was the fading light from the halls as her door gradually closed on its own accord.

She would lay there for many hours to come, eventually falling back in to dreamland, though this time when she returned her thoughts were filled less of a frigid baren land and replaced by visions of dark mountains scattered with wild-flowers, gentle wind chimes sounding through the trees and a small but beautiful cabin lay ahead.

Although the inky sky should have filled her with fear there was no such unease here, the shadows seemed blanket her, appeared to comfort her in this foreign land, welcoming her home, even though she was certain she had never visited such a place before.

Elain was not able to identify anything familiar but its presence loomed over her in a intimate embrace and the soft smell of roses soothed her soul and coxed her in to a deep sleep.

The respite would not remain so for long, as the cold abyss would return on her next sleep as the sun set beyond the hills, summoning her to the icy void where reality was far from her reach.

As usual if you wish to be added or removed just let me know 🖤

@theshadowsinger-and-thefawn @verifiefangirl @stars-falling @abraxos-is-toothless @tswaney17 @elrielllll @empress-ofbloodshed @b00kworm @sleeping-and-books @julemmaes @thefangirlofhp

#Elriel #Azriel #Elain Archeron #Elain x Azriel #ACOTAR #ACOFS #ACOMAF #ACOWAR #a court of thorns and roses #elriel fanfic #elriel fic #myelriel #myelrielfic #the seer of shadows

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thevividgreenmoss · 3 years

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My grandfather was awake and lucid for a longish while between late Friday night and Saturday morning apparently first time since this past Sunday when we all thought that was It and crammed ourselves seven people in one sedan that got a flat on the way over of course (as we were leaving the handle of the screen door came off in my hand as I was closing it behind me so the vibe was very on the nose things farcically falling apart that whole goddamn day lol) but then when we made it he was smiling and laughing and talking to and teasing everyone that was there, albeit with much more effort than it would have taken him even just a week earlier when he was already in a really frail state because of his hip surgery. My sister happened to be up later than she usually ever is and got to video call and chat with him for a bit I wanted terribly for my cousin in Colorado to be able to also but by the time he could get through my grandpa's blood pressure had suddenly spiked or something and he'd drifted back into that borderline unconscious state so they didn't get a chance to talk which makes me want to claw my fucking skin off of my face but who knows maybe another opportunity will present itself hopefully it does like he suddenly became really talkative and energized the other day after not having said more than maybe a couple sentences over the few previous days like I was there with him for several hours on Thursday and the entire time he didn't say a word and only opened his eyes once for like half a second and even that I might have been imagining after sitting there sleep-deprived and holding his hand trying not to cry because then my mom would start crying and then my aunt and on and on and if he's conscious at that point he'll start to get worried and his heart rate will destabilize but after that for this one stretch without anyone expecting it he was really talkative and alert and joking around with the nurses and doctors and all that for a while but then later yesterday afternoon he started to get disoriented and drift in and out of the present in between dreaming and waking again at one point apparently he kept saying 'look at my shoes' to my mom and her sisters and they thought it was just just the medication/pain-induced delirium talking but he kept insisting and eventually said 'you're not taking me seriously' and I guess gave up? Or said it a few more times I'm not clear on the course of events I only heard all this secondhand when my younger aunt, who also got diagnosed with cancer late last year but thankfully is more or less in the clear now, got back home last night and she and I went into his room and took all the shoes out of the cabinet he keeps them in and like looked inside and turned over and examined the soles of every pair, took the cushion insert things out of the ones that had them, checked for scooby doo-esque hidden doors, all that but there was nothing there just shoes. Her kids flew back out yesterday morning, the older one's tentatively returning to Toronto in the next week or so she had a painfully rough time in some ways her first couple of years and then abruptly had to be uprooted and leave because of covid then everything with her mom and in time honored eldest daughter tradition bearing the brunt of the familial frustration and insanity associated with that and now everything with our grandpa I really really want her senior year to go smoothly and be enjoyable and memorable in a manner opposite to how this past year+ has been I'm so worried about her and her little sister's starting freshman year there in the fall and I'm terribly worried about her in a whole different way like she's still really attached to her parents in this innocent way that still strongly resembles like a baby's adoring my mom hung the moon type attachment and it can be especially hard being away for the first time ever when that's the case...like she's hyper hypersensitive even by my family's standards lmao but she does have this sort of self-possession and inner groundedness that no one can quite pin down but it's

definitely there and maybe that

could carry her through I really hope so...they were saying to come up to visit them in the fall hopefully I can find a job soon after returning to Texas and like be able to afford to do that and also like keep paying the bills and shit lol in either case I hope so so badly that they'll be okay like I think they will be the women in my family are all really strong but they've also had to be because of various fucked circumstances and I don't want that to keep having to be the case...my grandpa's a Strong Woman in a certain way also honestly lmao like my mom's aunts have always been like your father raised you in a way beyond even most mothers which like who fucking receives let alone genuinely deserves that kind of praise from their in-laws lmao let alone a man from a notoriously patriarchal culture of a generation when fathers from any culture barely had any involvement in their children's upbringing at all which I mean most still don't but even more so back then and like literally everyone we've been hearing from or seeing drop by at the hospital has a story of how at one point or another my grandpa was there for them when no one else was like distant cousins variously removed and loose family friends all with something about how he comforted me when no one else could, I remember word for word what he said to me when I suffered some loss of my own, he's the strongest man in our family, the best times we ever had were when he was near us, when he'd take us out, his youngest brother's children saying he cared for and spoiled them as if their were his own after their dad died suddenly when they were just kids, my mom's third cousin whose own father was with her till a late age saying that he was even more of a father to me than my own father, his other brother's son who was ostracized for decades by his immediate family on some straight up racist ass bullshit on the part of his mom and older brother because he married a black woman but my grandpa stayed in touch and made sure my mom and uncle did as well and made sure we all got together when he'd came to the states, like even now lying there on what very well might be his literal deathbed when he can barely talk he was telling my uncle he's worried about him and he needs to go home and rest, asking who's taking care of the house, are the kids all okay even at this point his thoughts are for others. After I put his shoes back in the cabinet I closed it and opened the one beside just in case I guess just in case what I don't know but it was just like standard cabinet stuff clothes a shaving kit and a couple of what I assume are photo albums that I didn't feel like I should open for some reason and a few old books, a collection of Ghalib's which I can't really read very easily if at all because it's in Urdu lol, a history of government college of Lahore where his father was teaching at the time of his death and the two philosophy textbooks my great grandfather had written himself, Inductive & Deductive Reasoning, and inside the latter I found a handful of yellowed pages torn out of an old notebook upon which mostly seem to be translations of french poems and I think maybe a song or two? I guess old coursework or just for funsies I'm not sure whether written by my grandfather or his own father. My khala was mentioning just the other day that she'd kept one of my grandpa's old notebooks marked as having been designated for biology but inside it were no actual notes just urdu poetry which she wasn't sure whether it was his own original tossed off work or something the lifelong frustrated creative transcribed while bored in class. The night I got here I was looking through his bookshelves after everyone had gone to bed and then a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the living room by myself watching archer when my cousin came and sat down next to me upset and unable to sleep on her own first night here and I held her and tried not to cry and then went through the same bookshelves again, this time with my cousin who we came to Pakistan for the first time after moving to the US

to see being born who turned three

the day we arrived on what until this current trip was the last time I was here her little sister having just been born earlier that same year (whose life I may or may not have saved when I caught her after she was dropped by the person holding her (the fact that (parentheticals within parentheticals!) I may or may not have been the one who dropped her in the first place is immaterial imo not that I'm the one on trial here but what's important is that I caught her and if anything this would be an even more athletically impressive and frankly heroic incident if I'd been the one that was holding her to begin with since I was 8/9 years old at the time and there wasn't much of a distance for her to fall and yet I kept her from hitting the ground like talk about reflexes like that's what's important and what's more important than even that @ my year older cousin (whose younger sister was the first baby in the family after myself whose arrival in this world when I was three had me positively giddy in the way that young children get when witnessing the miracle of even younger children, who's the only other one of the cousins that's been here during all this, just me and the three I got to see as darling little babies) who was the only other person in the room with me at the time, is that we take this to our fucking graves no one can hear a word of this least of all any adults in the house who like not that they're the ones on trial here either but like who allowed for this scenario to transpire in the first place where two children and an infant are in a room by themselves unsupervised in retrospect that's somewhat irresponsible not that I'd ever hold it against them or even mention it because then they might get mad and not let me hold my little cousin anymore and I do love holding my little baby cousin and carrying her around everywhere, mostly without incident)) neither of whom I'd see in person again until we visited them in Canada the summer after I graduated college the trip during which I finished the last of the Neapolitan novels the day after landing and turned 22 the day after their mother, my younger khala, turned 43, looking through my nana's bookshelves with my baby cousin no longer a baby but a U of T classics major entering her senior year, noting the overlaps with our own, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George Eliot, the same exact copies of Cheever and Kafka's collected shorts, Umberto Eco, Proust, wondering what the various titles meant to him or what they might say about him, wondering how much of even the version of him that can be hypothesized based off his library I'm missing now that I'm limited to the much reduced version of what had been in his old home in Lahore (when he visited us after my junior year of hs and my mom was trying to convince him to downsize and move in with my other aunt with whom he's been living the past several years, the one who most resembles my grandfather the only one that has his cheekbones my khala whose eyes have sunken all the way into her skull before my eyes with exhaustion and grief over the past two weeks, when my mom was like what's the point of just hanging onto a bunch of books that you've already read: I look at them [dramatic pause], and I feel happy [my mom sighing equally dramatically in.exasperation, me cracking up in the background]) the city I was born in the house where I spent the first almost five years of my life before we moved to the US to join my dad who'd moved back shortly after my mom became pregnant with what turned out to be me, abu nana's house with the garden we'd walk through every morning holding his hand and following along as he puttered around with his plants in the garden in the house in the city he had to leave to move into my khala's house in Islamabad where I've been the past almost a month now where two weeks ago he suddenly came down with pneumonia and had to be dragged to a hospital in Rawalpindi where he's been since, not in his house, my nana's house, with the garden in the city I haven't seen since the last time I was in this country the

summer I

turned nine the day after my khala turned 30 the day before my other khala turned 32(?) the summer I first remember obsessive compulsive disorder becoming an overwhelming aspect of my consciousness although it was there before, the first summer of the Iraq war and being terrified watching the Iraq war unfold on the BBC evening news my nana would turn on

at dinner time and hearing for the first time or maybe just the first time I remember the night we left the phrase 'the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer' from my younger khala talking to her sisters and some family friends that had come over to see us off feeling terrified and cold then embarrassed because she noticed my face visibly fall from across the room and told my mom and I was like godammit everyone knows I'm scared now smhead then crying the entire flight back home because I missed everyone and maybe had a little kid premonition that I wouldn't return to my nana's house and I would be years and years till I saw any of them again some I still haven't or maybe there was nothing premonitory about it but in either case that's the way it turned out. I do feel grateful I got to see him again at all, when he last came to the US late 2016-early 2017 I was sure it would be the last time we would be in the same room. I'd make breakfast for us every morning and we'd eat together and the entire day I'd sit next to him inhaling secondhand smoke and talking and reading. I was in the midst of my initial aborted attempt to read Swann's way when he arrived. I'd gotten to Guermantes way last summer but I couldn't find a secondhand copy so I had to read it via ebook and that didn't feel right so I abandoned it until now I've been reading a copy pulled from his bookshelf. Last he visited was the first time I learned we were both Garcia Marquez-heads which I'd kind of assumed before and I showed him Mad Men which he heavily fucked with and also every John Le Carre adaptation I could track down online. From the first time I read one hundred years of solitude the summer after freshman year of college the passage describing Colonel Aureliano Buendia's death already absolutely and unbearably heartwrenching enough immediately brought thoughts of my grandfather, aching aching sorrow over the solitude that he himself existed within in all the fucking pain his life has been inordinately filled with grief over the knowledge of this inevitable final separation from him after so many years and so much distance already having separated him from the people he loved and cared for and he loved and cared for so many people so deeply with such sincerity and beauty and endless endless warmth and compassion and humor when Gabo wrote of the colonel trying to reach back through to his memories and being unable to after previously recalling that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice even years later, as he faced the firing squad, at the moment of his death like a 'baby chick' my poor frail beautiful grandfather appearing exactly the same way when he'd take off his dentures and curl over to the side to sleep, then when awake but still half asleep hearing your voice having brought his apple cider vinegar and garlic concoction or a cup of tea or just coming by to hold his hand or play with his beard the way all of his grandchildren have at one point or another and smiling with his eyes still closed smiling bright and wide the expression of a precious little cat purring as you scratch under its chin always the most beautiful smile and even as his hair turned white and his body withered and wrinkled and shrunk his cheekbones while still not bad long ago ceased being the way they were in that picture from his wedding day back when he he looked like young Robert De Niro's much much prettier Kashmiri cousin from then until now always that same radiance and those same quick-witted and kind and bright bright bright sparkling eyes. The past month and a half I've been feeling like I'm seeing my own mother dying before my eyes along with her father, my adorable beloved abu nana, I can't even begin to comprehend how she must be feeling right now I feel like I'm witnessing her death in advance through all of this and losing the part of her that is him even though I know that's not actually the case. Things have been so fucking painful and complicated between us but the one thing we've shared that's never

been painful is our love for him. When he left after his last visit four years ago I spent the next two days barely able to even talk. Compliments or like any positive comments directed in my directions have almost always caused me this reflexive discomfort and uneasiness but whenever he or anyone else would say that I'm his favorite grandchild I'd want to hold on to that as closely as i possibly can. I don't want him to leave us and more than that I want for whatever happens to at least happen with him back at home but neither of those things seem likely right now although who the fuck knows. I hope his last thoughts can be of flowers, like Kafka's, and Lispector's, or of love, wherever he is I hope it's not asking too much to hope for that at least. For someone that spent his life so deeply immersed within that Garciamarquesian solitude he never made those around him feel any way other than at home, safe and warm and loved and adored and adorable and lovable and at home not because of a place not even the garden at the house in Lahore but with him always always I've never felt more at home than during the times I spent near him, and his love and his flowers

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writingsfromhome · 3 years

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Bad Timing I(.5)

A/N: This is the sort of backstory to Harry and you, I think it can be read on its own if you want, or before you read the first part too. It’s angsty af, but it has some death and sensitive topics jsyk. I tried to keep it concise but it got a little wordy as angst does. xx

Part 1

-------------------------------------------------

About 12 Years Ago:

“So are you coming to that party or not?” My roommate asks. She was one of the first people I’d met last year when we started uni and even though we came from different backgrounds we remained friends over the last year, even choosing to room together again. She got me to open up and find the extroverted part of me that was able to enjoy uni outside of academics.

“Ugh, I’m volunteering for the voting booths for the rest of the week. Maybe if I can make it?”

“You’re actually doing that?” She scrunches her nose. “I don’t get it. You’re just way too nerdy to be my friend.”

“And yet you loove me,” I squeeze her against me and she laughs. “It’s my mom, she said I had to do at least one extracurricular so I could meet friends this year.”

“You already have friends,” she points to herself, and with her came her group of friends that’d quickly taken me in last year.

And my mom doesn’t like that I hang out with you, I think. She thought we partied too much even though my grades stayed decent. “She wants me to have nerdy friends too, I dunno. They’re helping me pay my tuition until I get a job so I kinda have to play nice.”

“Parents suck,” my roommate flicks through her closet. I agreed, this was just something I would get through to get through. Then they would leave me alone for the rest of the year.

Little did I know the person they’d partner me with at my polling station was someone who would be in my life for the next decade.

“I’m Harry by the way,” he’d said after we received our orientation and assigned the building we were going to babysit the votes in. “Second year.”

“Me too! I’m Y/N. What’s your major? I’ve never seen you around.”

“Law--well I haven’t decided if it’s law but that’s what I’m in right now.”

“Really? Law?” I was openly judging, he just didn’t seem the law type.

“Well what are you in?” He demands.

“Business,” I cringe.

“Really? Business?” He has a cheeky smile on, one that would become familiar to me.

“Well, you just don’t seem like the law type. They’re usually more uptight, dress way too smart for me.”

“I know, it’s like, we’re not even in the courtroom yet,” he joins in and it makes me laugh--how he could poke fun at his own people. That’s when I knew we would get along fine, and I actually looked forward to the next few days getting to know him better.

“I’m definitely telling my mum about you, she’s been begging me to make friends outside of my circle. I’ll tell her I’m friends with a law student.”

“So we’re friends already?” We’d reached our booth and began setting up the partitions. He takes over when I set it up wrong.

“Obviously,” I say. “I actually like you which means you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

“I’m alright with that,” he grins and I notice the laugh lines that are brought to life as he does. It somehow made him seem more genuinely.

We spend the rest of the time swapping stories, classes, rants. We check student IDs and hand out voting cards in between but it doesn’t feel like a drag anymore. At the end of the day, I invite him to the party my roommate was going to with our friends. If he was going, maybe I would too. He seemed like he might be fun at a party.

“Er,” he suddenly seems nervous. “I’ll have to ask my girlfriend, she wanted to hang out tonight.”

“Well bring her too!” I say excitedly. “Is she law as well?”

“No, she’s in the arts.”

“I like her already,” I push. “Bring her, my friends are fun you’ll learn how to have a good time.”

“I know how to have a good time,” there was the flash of his dimples again. “Text me the address.”

And thus began a friendship for the next four years, partying together, studying together (trying to), and hanging out in each other’s rooms. We would set each other up with other friends, double dated, went out for sunrise-hikes, and took long drives at night when we had to blow some steam off from being over-stressed, over-studied uni students. Our friend circles overlapped, the fabric of our lives eventually bleeding together. We were made of the same fibers, sticking together even after uni, when our friends got more serious about their careers. When they moved out of the country or to another city, we made sure to rent places close enough that we could still see each other often. And somehow, in the new chapter of our lives, without the partying and our other friends to buffer, we became closer than before.

We cared for each other--we didn’t deny that ever. And somehow that platonic love turned romantic as we depended on each other while we navigated adulthood. I can’t exactly pinpoint where things changed, but one evening our relationship was changed forever.

7 years ago:

“She literally wants me to stay until 7, and she was offended when I said no! I’m not even getting paid for that!” I was bitching to Harry about my shitty job.

“That’s bollocks” Harry shrugs. “Just say you’ve got family obligations or something.”

“I said that the one time she wanted us to come in on a weekend and she gave me shite work the following week! I just...I can’t afford to lose this job Harry.”

“That’s shitty, I’m sorry.” He takes the last swig of his beer. “Want another one?”

“I haven’t even finished this one,” I moan at my now warm beer that I’d been nursing for the last hour, too busy ranting to drink it. “It’s getting late though I should head home before it’s dark. Don’t want that nutter that hangs around my building to harass me again.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Harry suggests. He lived a 15 minute walk from me.

“No no,” I get up and take our dirty dishes to the sink. “I didn’t even ask about you, how was your day?”

“Same old,” he sighs against the counter. “I feel like I don’t fit in, everyone my age is finishing their law degree but I don’t think I want to.”

“I knew from the day I met you, you weren’t destined for the courtroom.” I pull him into a comforting hug. “Do what makes you happy, or what doesn’t make you want to say fuck it and quit your job to hibernate.”

“You really know the perfect thing to say,” Harry chuckles but he pulls me tighter against him. I stroke his back, reassuring him he’d be alright in the end.

“Y/N-” he pulls away to say something but freezes mid sentence. I raise an eyebrow but he’s still, staring at my face.

“Harry?” I ask, but he continues staring. “Hello? You alright?”

“Yeah,” he breaks into a sudden smile. That was weird--I make sure he’s okay before letting go.

Before I leave, I kiss Harry’s cheek goodbye--I was never shy in the affection I gave my friends and Harry’s bummed mood needed extra affection tonight. But what I don’t expect is for him to catch me before I pull away, staring intently into my eyes. The lighthearted energy between us disappears instantly as it dawns on me, how close we were, the unspoken feelings in his eyes, the hesitation before he presses his lips to mine.

I kissed him back then, barely understanding what was happening, before pulling away. I give him a smile but that’s just what he sees at the tip of the iceberg, underneath my mixed feelings churn away. My best friend just kissed me, and I wasn’t totally mad about it.

“It’s getting dark I-” I say as Harry says, “Sorry was that okay?”

We laugh awkwardly, neither of us sure what to do at this point. We decide to ignore it instead.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Harry lets me go and opens the door for me. “Watch out for the neighbourhood nutter yea?”

I stand in place, feeling the fibers of our friendship unraveling but feeling hopeless in mending the tear. “Take care Harry.”

I high tail it out, my thoughts going at an impossible rate as I sort out what happened. And we try to ignore it the next couple weeks,

We hadn’t made it official then, too nervous to face what this meant about our friendships. It was only at my sister’s wedding, that I realised what was wrong between us. I’d been mourning our old friendship, and avoiding him in the weeks since the kiss. But what I didn’t realise was that our friendship had been changing over the last year anyway, and getting drunk on champagne and dancing with Harry, while my sister celebrated the happiest day of her life, made me realise there was a cause for celebration here: a new chapter in our lives.

A couple days later, after a stressful day at work, I’d taken the tube to his flat and waited for him outside. He was surprised to see me there, not saying much except to open the door and let me in. As soon as he’d closed it, my lips were attached to his and we’d let our bags drop, coats, and any piece of clothing between us. After that night, we didn’t even try to deny how we felt about each other.

“I didn’t think I could ever be this happy,” he’s whispered to me after. I thought he’d fallen asleep but his whisper in the dark made me grin to myself. “Are you awake.”

“I am. Awake and happy.” I turn to face him, giggling. “Who knew this could feel so right.”

“Our first kiss was quite wrong though wasn’t it?” Harry says and it makes me laugh.

“That’s why I needed to do a redo,” I tease. “Can’t leave you to plan anything.”

“It wasn’t planned I swear, I was trying to be spontaneous.”

“Let’s not try ‘spontaneous’ again then,” I kiss him in the dark. He pulls me snug against him, I never knew how safe it felt. The safest I would ever feel, wrapped in the warmth with my best friend and now something else.

It was a good few months, testing the waters as our relationship underwent a transformation. All of our friends were supportive, but we never missed the glances between them. Apparently, they were waiting for this to happen. But as sweet as those first few months had been, finding out my mum was sick with a timeline was devastating. I came apart at the seams but Harry stayed through it all, holding me together. He’d proposed then, wanting my mum to be part of the ceremony. We had a small wedding, intimate but still magical. It was bittersweet, the amount of love and happiness I felt towards Harry and our loved ones around us as he said I do and as he took my arm and swept me across the dancefloor. But the amount of sadness crushing my chest kept me from being the weightless bride I always thought I would be.

Through it all, Harry stayed by my side. While we were hopeful, the day our hopes were dashed, the days and weeks I mourned. When my sister and her husband came to stay with their crazy toddlers and Harry kept them entertained giving my sister and I time together. I thought he was perfect, that I’d lucked out.

That lasted a few years, 3 and a half to be exact. There were months leading up to our split and we could point to a bunch of things that could’ve led to it. a) him wanting kids, and me wanting to wait or b) long hours we worked as we changed careers and tried to make our way up or c) how hard getting pregnant actually was. Maybe I pushed him away, or he didn’t love me enough to try and make it work.

I think I lied to myself, avoiding the tension creeping into the relationship. The tired excuses and time spent apart, the lack of usual affection, or casual conversations. I was an idiot, I realise every time I think about the end in retrospect. Maybe if I caught on earlier I could have fixed us before we fell apart. Maybe I could have saved us.

“There’s someone coming in Tuesday morning to fix the broken washer, will you be home?” I ask, still in bed and scrolling through my phone. I hadn’t meant to be up this early but Harry woke me as he got up and I couldn’t fall back asleep.

“No,” Harry responds, his back to me as he ruffles through the dresser. “I’ve got a thing that morning.”

“Well I’ve got to go in early Tuesday-I thought you might be home.” I say. I hear an edge to Harry’s voice but I try not to focus on it. He’d been a little cold all weekend and I was scared to think what it meant.

“You couldn’t be bothered to check in when you confirmed the date?” Harry asks harshly.

“I...guess not.” I put my phone down and wait for Harry to turn, maybe I could read his expression. Maybe he was stressed. “Harry?”

“What?” He turns, but he looks at me with no emotion. No stress, no frustration, not even anger. It’s the lack of emotion in his face that cause my eyes to prick with tears. Harry raises his eyebrows and I shake my head, untangling myself from the sheets so he doesn’t see any tears. I rush to the bathroom but forget to close the door out of habit.

“Y/N,” a kinder Harry appears by the doorway. His face has smoothed out the harsh lines, his eyes hesitant and cautious.

“What’s happened with us?” I blurt out. “Why are you so cold all the time? Am I doing something wrong?”

Harry’s face falls and he walks towards me but doesn’t touch me. “It’s nothing like that. It’s...I don’t know. We should talk.”

He reaches his hand out but I flinch away. “Did you meet somebody new or something? What are we talking about?”

“Let’s not do this here. Right now.”

“Why not!” I finally had enough. “I’ve been walking on eggshells for months Harry! I don’t know what’s wrong and I keep waiting for you to bloody tell me!”

“This isn’t working!” Harry raises his voice to compensate for mine. I’m immediately silenced by the volume, and then the words sink in.

“Is there someone else?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, his gaze on the hanging vines by the window. My heart drops into my stomach like a boulder, and I find it hard to breathe. I clutch the porcelain sink and ask in a surprisingly even tone, “Harry. Answer me.”

“What we have, Y/N...it’s dysfunctional.” He says quietly, meeting my eyes. “It doesn’t matter if there’s someone else, we’ve been fighting for months. Things aren’t the same between us-”

“Who is she?” I ask. I needed to know.

“That’s not relevant,” he shuts my question down quickly. “I’m sorry Y/N, I...I don’t want to hurt you. I care about you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” I’d pleaded. “We can go to counseling, talk it through-”

“I can’t Y/N.”

“Because of her.”

“No, because this isn’t good for either of us.” He’d walked up to me, cradled my face. “We’re not good for each other, not like this.”

“Who is she?” I yank his hands away.

“She’s...it doesn’t matter, I swear nothing happened between us Y/N. Knowing who she is isn’t going to help this situation--”

“It is! If it weren’t for her, you’d be willing to work on us--to see a future. You...Harry how could you do this to me? To us?” The tears come with no control. “You’re moving on before we’re even over. How are you giving up on us like that?”

“I’m not!” his voice booms in the tiled bathroom. “I’m not bloody giving up on us! I tried Y/N, so many times. I tried! You just keep pushing at me to be someone I’m not and-”

“I can say the same thing about you!” I throw the brush in my hands into the sink. “We were good! And you got it in your head you wanted a baby even though we’re young, oh my god Harry you kept pestering me to change my mind even though I told you I needed time!”

“It’s not like we could have a fucking baby anyway,” Harry says bitterly before realising what he’d said. “Shit-”

“There you go,” I mock. “I knew it. I knew you were holding that against me. And that,” I jab my finger into his chest. “Is what’s made you so moody, so mean and why we’re always fighting. You held it against me.”.

There was absolute truth to what I said. Last year, Harry had brought the baby topic up. I’d told him we were only in our mid-20s, we had a lot of time, and we still had a career to establish. But he would bring up the topic often enough that I’d given in.To make him happy. And months went by, trying for a baby. Went we finally went to our doctor, she’d told us why it was so hard, it could take us years she’d said.

Harry came home that day dejected, and left me feeling like a failure. I think it tore us up.

“You wanted a baby so fucking bad and when I couldn’t, it made me feel like a complete failure. And I told you that! And you did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. You held it against me, Harry! You didn’t even try to tell me it was okay.”

“It’s not so fucking simple,” he says, his cheeks flushed pink. Maybe it was anger, or maybe it was embarrassment from being confronted with an ugly truth.

“It is. And now you’ve upgraded to a newer model, maybe her version comes with a fertile womb.” I take the cheap shot.

He doesn’t say anything though. And I don’t know why that hurts more than knowing he’d fallen for another woman while he was still married to me. My best friend in the whole world had just broken my heart into a million irrevocable pieces.

“It’s a bunch of things Y/N,” he finally says. “That’s just part of it. We’re not...we’re just not working!”

“Did you even try to make it work?” I ask, swiping my sleeve across my face. “Did you ever think how I felt? How you made me feel Harry? You’ve been slipping away from me without talking to me-” I break off. I couldn’t speak through the heartbreak, the thunderstorm of grief threatens to consume me and my sobs are the only thing that manages to come out.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Harry tries to place a hand on my shoulder but I jerk away, moving to sit on the edge of the bathtub. “Y/N...”

“Just go,” I say through the tears.

“We can talk more about this later-”

"Just go,” I say louder.

Harry’s phone rings again from the bedroom and he sighs. But he leaves me, crying on the bathroom floor. The sadness that was always in my peripheral consumes me. I’d carried this sadness for a long time--ever since I found out my mum was sick, the sadness plagued me. I’d neatly packed it up once I decided to move forward with my life like my mum would want me to, but now it comes back tenfold, marrying the grief of losing Harry like this. And I stay on the floor crying my grief away for hours, eventually crawling into bed and sleeping the daylight away.

When I wake, it’s 6 and Harry isn’t home. I take that as a sign and get up to pack up a few things. I call my sister who still lived in London then, and crash on her couch, staying there for a few weeks and ignoring any call or text from Harry. When I need to go back, for my things, I find him sleeping on the couch with the TV on, something I always found endearing. But I can’t afford to dwell on how much it hurt seeing him like that.

He must have woken from the noise because when he finds me, he tries to stop me and tell me that we still needed to talk.

“About what?” I ask, just tired now. Too many tears shed and too many hours laying awake thinking about the exact moment we went wrong.

“Us,” Harry looked tired too. He was probably throwing himself into his work with nothing like me to hold him back, I think bitterly. His girlfriend had probably already been to our house--his house.

“What about us?” I barely look at him as I begin folding away all my clothes.

“I don’t know,” Harry sits on the bed. “Don’t you want to talk?”

“I’ve got nothing to say, do you?”

Harry sighs, “I don’t know.”

“Nice talk then,” I say, shoving the rest of my things in just so I could get out.

“I just want you to know I care about you Y/N, I don’t want to hurt you.” He says as I pack.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. If you cared about me, and you didn’t want to hurt me you wouldn’t have done this to us.”

“I wasn’t trying to--I didn’t mean to go and fall for someone else-”

“Just stop,” I cut him off. I couldn’t hear it, how the man I loved fell for someone else. I couldn’t break down here. Again.

He said he cared but it didn’t feel that way. It hurt more than I wished to admit. He knew what I’d been through and he still betrayed me, tossed my heart like it was replaceable. The cut he left in me ran deep.

As I leave he tries to talk to me, but I barrel past him. He still reaches for me and pulls me into a hug, I struggle against him but he’s too strong. He wraps me in his arms until I go still but it’s too much. A sob escapes me, and this time he lets me push him off and leave, my bag banging into my hips every time I take a step. As soon as I got into my Uber, I can’t stop crying. There was an infinite pool of tears where Harry was involved.

3 years ago:

My trust and my heart had been been lost in the war between Harry and I. It only took him a month to mail my divorce papers which sat collecting dust on my dining table until he showed up at work one day and demanded I sign them by the end of that week. I’d taken the day off the day I mailed those in, mourning the end of something that was once so safe and beautiful.

When a close friend calls me on a warm July afternoon, I don’t consider her warning that I shouldn’t check Instagram. That I still had Harry’s friends on my list. I open Instagram before she can tell me why, and see it. Harry was getting married, again. To the woman he gave up on us for. I try to zoom in on a picture without liking it, she was pretty...and blonde. She looked familiar--probably from his office. It didn’t take him long.

It was like someone had taken a retractor to the wound I thought had finally scabbed over. The physical proof that Harry had moved on is just the salt on the wound.

I cry myself to sleep that night.

2 Years ago;

The guy in front of me drones on about his job, mansplaining to me how a mortgage worked as if I wasn’t in finance myself. I excuse myself to use the restroom, checking my phone to see a text from my sister. She’d moved to Scotland this year, to where her husband was from, and I’d missed her terribly in the last year.

A little birdie told me your demon-ex just got divorced 🥂

I stare at the screen, chest feeling tight. I felt vindicated somehow, but I also felt a small bit of sadness. What a fuck-up.

Good for him I had texted back. A part of me wanted him to hurt the way he hurt me.

I went back to my date with a renewed enthusiasm. I’d ordered more wine and got so drunk he was actually interesting enough to take home.

About 1 year ago

“Y/N,” a voice from my past says, one that haunted me some nights. I turn as I exit the shop I was just in. I blink at the sight before me, Harry in a vest and hat. He realises what I’m staring at and laughs awkwardly. “I’m in uniform.”

“You’re...police?” I look up to his face finally. He hadn’t aged a day, although the hat he wears makes him look a little silly.

“Yeah I joined the force uhm...almost 4 years ago now...law didn’t really suit me.”

I know what he was doing, trying to find a baseline to have a conversation. But he was dead to me, and I didn’t want to invite him back in when I was finally forgetting about him.

"Seems like you dropped a lot of dead-weight four years ago.”

I watch his face fall as he realises I wasn’t going to pretend to be friendly.

“Seems that way to you,” he says cautiously. “But that’s not how it happened.”

I shrug. “So. I heard about the divorce. Must’ve been hard being put through that.”

I knew I was being petty, obviously I never got the closure I want (according to my therapist) and I wasn’t over him hurting me the way he did (also according to my therapist). This was how I got my peace, and it wasn’t the best version of me but it was the only one I knew how to be right now.

“Yep,” he crosses his arms over his chest. “So, are you seeing anyone?”

He knew I wasn’t, I don’t know how but the way he stoops to my level I know he knows I hadn’t had a long term relationship since him.

“Not at the moment,” I say awkwardly. “Just focusing on my job...trying to get this promotion.”

“Sorry,” he seems to shake off whatever had come over him. “That was...nosy, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Having him be the bigger person sets something off in me, like there was an anger-bomb inside my mind where he lived and knowing that he was doing okay enough to be able to be the bigger person disrupts this calm I was trying to keep.

“Maybe you shoudn’t have stopped me to ask anything at all. We don’t have anything to talk about anyway.”

I turn around and start to walk away but he catches up, “I wasn’t trying to upset you-”

“Well you have a way of doing that. Please just leave me alone Harry.”

He huffs beside me, “After all this time, can’t we just bloody talk like two adults?”

I freeze and turn to him slowly. He seems to sense this was the wrong thing to say because he takes a step back. “After all this time? Are you serious? I was the one you left behind Harry when you went off to lives your best lift Harry. We’re not living the same life, and we’re not coming from the same bloody place. Don’t fucking patronize me and ask me to talk to you like an adult when you bring out the worst part of me. I meant what I said: I want you to leave me alone. And you know what, if we ever run into each other again, just don’t even talk to me. Pretend you don’t know me. I want nothing to do with you.”

He opens his mouth but his partner calls him from the shop’s entrance. He stays silent, letting me go. As soon as I turn the street corner I rush the rest of the way to the tube, collapsing into a seat and trying to sort out my breathing. It was a shitty feeling, knowing someone was going to be in your life forever because you shared so much history that even when that part of your life ended they were still there. There was so much apart of me, around me, that reminded me of him. And it felt so lonely carrying that around. I wanted to be done with him, I wanted my heart to purge him out. But it couldn’t stop carrying him around everywhere I go.

#Harry Styles #harry styles fic #harry styles angst #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #fic #writingsfromhome #harry styles x reader #harry styles series #detective!harry #backstory #this one made me sad to write #but ALSO #if there are any errors #no there is not

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dingoat · 3 years

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[I mulled over a few possible options for this one, heh, but after some chatter with @cinlat I realised I could mush some of my ancient Ahuska backstory with half baked future plans with vague species lore/headcanons and string it along into something roughly story-shaped. The whole thing wound up a lot more somber than I’d anticipated, but at least I can always count on Crow to soften the mood!] ---

For the better part of three weeks, she’d been dwelling. What had started out as the most unexpected news conceivable had led to a flurry of unanswerable questions; was the news welcome? Was she excited? Did she care? Did she want anything to do with it? But that had all rapidly died down into a sullen simmering of nerves, as Ahuska struggled with something she genuinely never thought she’d have to face.

She had a family. She’d been raised well, and loved, as far back as she could properly remember. Did she really want to go back further, did she need to know anything about where she’d come from? The thought of being connected to Bothawui in any way made her feel ill, but Crow had gently reminded her, over and over, that this changed nothing.

She was Mando’ad, where family is built on more than bloodline, and having surviving relatives from a life she couldn’t even recall changed nothing.

Having a twin brother changed nothing.

Except that it clearly meant something to… him. And the older one. Two brothers, with families of their own, who’d reached out to find the sister they’d thought they’d lost with their parents. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know them, but…

“Crow?” Ahuska tapped his arm with a single hesitant finger, but he’d already turned to seek her out. They were more in tune with one another than ever.

“Mmm?”

“I think I… I want you to meet my family,” she mumbled, eyes slipping to the side.

Crow grinned his softer grin. “Ahhh, I think we’ve already been through that part of the relationship. Was a couple years ago now, at least?”

She felt her ears grow warm, but her eyes turned back to him. “With me, I mean. I want you to come with me to… meet the family I haven’t met yet. I don’t know if I even want to call them that yet, I guess, I doubt they’ll want to either once they’ve met me…”

“Oh, psshh,” Crow made to wave away her worry with a flick of his hand. “You said the whole reason they found out you existed was from holos of the business down at the Ve’lora place, right? Not like they haven’t already got some sort of clue about the life you live, and they still reached out.”

“It already feels so weird, though. They’ve known about me… all their lives. They… knew me, a-and mourned me? They missed me, and I’ve just never known… it’s like they’re strangers, who call me a sister. It’s fethin’ weird.”

“I know, I know. And if they’ve got half a brain between them they’ll realise that too. All you gotta do is meet them, say hi to them and their… uh, heh. Hey. What are baby bothans called, anyway?”

“Huh? What, I… I don’t think he told me any of their names, I don’t even know how many kids he said they each had…”

“What? No, I meant like… y’know. Do you call them… uhhh, like how little cathar are kits, and…”

Every one of Ahuska’s nerves abruptly vanished, and the series of blinks followed by a hard stare made Crow immediately realise he’d made one of those mistakes.

“Sorry, sorry, I just figured…”

“Babies,” Ahuska said, her tone completely flat. “Baby bothans are babies. Not cubs, not fawns, not kits…” her snout wrinkled a little at that.

Crow’s manner was meek, but the way he squinted at her made it clear he was still trying to work out where exactly the problem lay. “Okay but… don’t… wouldn’t there be some word you use for them…?”

“What, like ik’aad?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Crow brightened as Ahuska offered the comparison, then immediately ducked his head as her expression grew harder still.

“Like ik’aad. The Mando’a word that literally translates to ‘baby’?”

Crow’s grin wavered, sensing a trap. “Ye-es…?”

“Not likaya? Not pe’ninr?” Ahuska continued to watch Crow carefully as she offered the Mando’a for kitten and puppy.

“Well. No. Of course-”

“Of course not!” Ahuska snapped over the top of him, with an emphatic gesture of both hands to drive her point. “Likaya literally means baby cat. Not baby person. Not baby human, or bothan, or even cathar, it’s the word you use for a little cute wobbly baby animal that meows before it opens its eyes. You wouldn’t call some random Mando kid likaya if we were talking in Mando’a, would you…?”

“I… guess not…” To the unfamiliar, it would look as though Crow were simply still grinning, but Ahuska knew the way it’s quality shifted that he was in fact frowning on the inside.

Ahuska took a slow breath, pinching the bridge of her snout. “And just the same, the bothese for ‘baby cat’ and ‘baby person’ are two totally different words. One translates to kitten, in basic, and the other to baby. Just baby. There’s nothing fancy, nothing cute about it, grown-ass men and women aren’t bucks and does or stallions or vixens, and I’d be willing to bet that there’s a good chunk of cathar out there who hate the way the better part of the galaxy pretends their own native words for their kids translate to ‘baby cat’---!!”

Despite her efforts to calm herself, Ahuska’s pitch and volume had rapidly increased, her gestures had grown more emphatic, and her attitude was positively simmering. Crow didn’t even need to tune into the beat of her heart to know he’d struck a hard nerve, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, lifting his hands in an effort to make it clear he was willing to concede. The crease of his forehead knit a little deeper. “I just would’ve thought, of all people, you might… find it kind of cute, at least? Like the way Nines…”

She shot him a look that made him shut up quick smart, then immediately made a visible effort to cool herself off.

“Let me… try and explain it another way,” she said, speaking slowly, her gaze focused inward. “One time when I was little, nine or ten years or something. I was on a trip with my buire, we had to spend the night in an Imperial settlement. We were checking in to some accommodation, just on the outskirts where it was quiet, and… you know buir’ika was a chadra-fan, right? Well, they had me and her go around to the back somewhere, and wait a while in another building. There was a nerf there, a couple of tauntauns, I think a big old varactyl even... one of the tauns had a fawn so that’s where all my attention was. I thought it was excellent, like, some special treat for me, buir’ika sure acted like it was. Anyway, it was a while later that nuvhu’buir… ah, that’s what I called Jinn, yeah? She came round to where we were with all our stuff, a few extra blankets and things, and we built ourselves a bed right there in the hay and spent the night there. I knew she was mad about something, but she never said why, at least not ever to me. I remember falling asleep hearing her and buir’ika talking really quietly together, and I was wondering why she was so upset. Didn’t make any sense to me at the time, since I thought it was… pretty much the best thing ever. I was too little to get it.”

Crow listened quietly, and when Ahuska paused, he didn’t say a word. He just watched her, offering his full attention, and waited for her to go on.

“They made us sleep in the damned stables. It was years later I looked back and realised that. They probably would’ve let nuvhu’buir stay up in a proper room, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Stables, me and buir’ika, just because of our damn faces. So no. No, I don’t appreciate it when people joke about me going to a vet rather than a doctor, or offer me ‘treats’ for being a ‘good girl’. It’s not cute, it’s gross. And that goes hand in hand with asking if my species have litters, or if our babies are called foals, or if we go into heat. Ugh.” She made an ugly scowl at that. “Rule of thumb? If you wouldn’t ask a Mirialan the same question, it’s probably rude as hell to ask a Bothan. Or, y’know. Literally any other sapient species.”

Flushed, Ahuska found herself glancing off to the side, feeling oddly unburdened to have let it all out, and yet also heavy for having to unload to Crow. She knew he meant nothing by it, that of all the beings in the galaxy his intentions were utterly pure. She’d never forget the way he deflected those stuffy noblewomen on Alderaan that time.

She felt his hand envelope hers. “Did you want me to talk to Nines, and get her to let up a bit on the way she-?”

“Nayc,” Ahuska found the answer came easily, even if she couldn’t quite articulate why. “Not to me, anyway. I want to say it’s different, but it’s probably not, really. I dunno. Just maybe give her a poke if she starts on any other bothans with ‘Puppy’, yeah?” “It used to bother you a lot though, didn’t it?”

Ahuska stared out at nothing for a while.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Still sorry.”

His chin came to rest over her head, and she closed her eyes as she let her face rest against the comforting curve of his neck.

“I’m sorry too. Not your fault the galaxy is the way it is. I’m just… a little wound up right now, I think. I’m nervous about this.” “Shhh,�� he soothed gently, and she let her face fall against the hand he brought to her cheek. “You don’t need to make an excuse for yourself. I asked you something stupid. Can’t promise I won’t again in the future, but I’ll always be ready to listen to you. Mmkay?” Ahuska found herself nodding against his palm. “‘kay.”

“And I’ll be right there with you, meeting those other relatives of yours. And if they turn out to be bastards? I’ll find a totally not-xenophobic way to give them a piece of my mind.”

She made a little snort, and let her arms wrap around him. “And that’s why I love you.”

#dingoat writes #swtor fic #writing prompts #ty ty for asking!!#let's see if I can actually get through the whole lot haha #my inbox #both haunts and inspires #but wow here's some thoughts that have rolled around in my head for some long while #and I know I'm in the fandom minority with a lot of things when it comes to certain alien species #ah well

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ickle-ronniekins · 4 years

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duet | see you soon then

DUET MASTERLIST

NOTE FOR ALL READERS: this is an installment of a series. the masterlist for a catch-up is linked above. this particular chapter is to fall between [im]mature and silky smooth. thanks!

desc: things had been a bit rocky when the twins told you they were leaving hogwarts before graduation. you’d been so hellbent and obsessed on spending time with george that you’d sort of neglected fred. emotions are running high, but the three of you fall into a comfortable routine and suddenly you’re bursting at the seams with happiness. but since it’s finally time for them to leave, you have absolutely no luck in trying to suppress your tears. they’re making their dreams come true, so why is it so damn hard to say goodbye right now?

a/n: yo! sorry its been a while. school has been kicking my ass and also I genuinely had no inspiration to write this chapter. it was actually supposed to look a little different which is what I think was evidently holding me back. but leeann’s the best and has been incredibly patient with me as I worked through my writer’s block and we bounced ideas off of one another. i..... am so sorry for this. full masterlist is linked above, loves.

word count: 3.4k

warning(s): just sadness bc boys are leaving :(

Things had been… tense, to say the least. Your arguments with both of your best mates had caused quite a bit of discomfort between you all. And not to mention that the Easter holidays were rapidly approaching, which only seemed to speed up the pounding in your chest.

You’d been making progress, though, coming around to the idea of finishing school without them. What an incredible opportunity this was for them, wasn’t it? While your feelings of dread and sadness were still very much prominent, you couldn’t help but be bursting at the seams with pride, too.

They were damn brilliant individuals and it was about time more people recognized that, right?

It still didn’t lessen the pain in your heart, though. It only seemed to elevate it. But you supposed, you’d only learn to grow from it.

The three of you had fallen into a somewhat comfortable routine. Spending lots of time with one another -- you’d also been very conscious about how much time you spent chasing after George. You didn’t want to embarrass yourself any further than you already had. Plus, you’d sadly forgotten how lovely it was to be with just Fred -- he was your absolute best mate, after all, and while yes, there had been times when the two of you had very angrily bumped heads, it only made your friendship that much stronger. You owed it to him. You owed it to yourself.

And you’d taken to spending more time with the Gryffindors too, when that ghastly toad look-a-like of a woman wasn’t around. What she didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. They were your friends, too, after all -- Ginny, Ron, Harry, Hermione, Neville -- the lot of them. And by the light of the common room fire reflecting in Fred’s eyes, and the very bright grin George had painted onto his face nearly every evening, you were pretty certain they were genuinely happy to have you there.

“What’s this one?”

“Ah -- an extension of our latest and greatest inventions, Y/N,” Fred beamed, examining his own creation as he twirled it in his fingers, “Wildfire Whizbangs.”

“You mean you’ve created something even bigger than those blasted fireworks you’d let loose in the courtyard a few weeks ago?” you asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re about to set the bloody Great Hall on fire -- I’ve got exams coming up, you know.”

George laughed and pulled out yet another wildly vibrant colored whizbang from their trunk. “Can’t make any promises.”

You’d been spending so much time in their common room, in fact, that people had just ended up making you an honorary Gryffindor. You did miss yours, though -- the warmth hues of the yellow lining, the cozy armchairs near the fire with books next to it stacked so high they touched the ceiling, the tiny, potted plants on the windowsill. You were placed in Hufflepuff after all, so it was only normal that you’d miss the coziness of your own spot.

You couldn’t help it, though. You found yourself with your friends until the late hours of the evening, and sometimes you’d ever crash in the girls’ dormitory in Gryffindor tower because it was far too late to even attempt to sneak back down to your own common room, and the boys didn’t want you to risk getting into some type of trouble. Who’d have thought? The Kings of Mischief, worried about you getting into trouble. The irony was wonderfully funny.

You’d even found yourself working less and less on your assignments, just to spend time with them. It was, truthfully, the closest the three of you had been since you’d met. Absolutely nothing could squash your happiness.

Until you realized one evening when you were pulling on your silk pyjamas and thinking about how good things had been, that you had exactly one week left with them. One week. Seven days. Most of which would be spent studying for exams.

Some type of knot shot up into your throat and you found that your eyes had begun to water more so than normal. Sometimes, you couldn’t quite believe the effect this was having on you.

And so you swallowed down your feelings and forced yourself to sleep, hoping that the next day, you wouldn’t think about the limited time you had left with them before they fled school, but only about just how much you enjoyed your time with them.

-- -

“Please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry, and I’m a bloody ugly crier.”

You knew that Fred was doing his best to make you laugh. He always had a particular knack for making you burst out into giggles at the most inappropriate of times. But even so, the mischievous glimmer in his eye and the lopsided grin on his face couldn’t make you laugh. Not this time.

You’d sort of distanced yourself this last week. Not purposefully, mind you, but because there was studying to be done. You had exams, didn’t you? And the boys needed to pack all of their belongings for their adventure into adulthood. It sounded so silly when you thought about it. But it also sent a soul-crushing feeling straight through your body.

You hated crying in front of them. Sure, you were a bit dramatic at times, but you tried your absolute hardest not to break down in front of them if you could help it. But this was different, you reckoned. This was them leaving with a permanence that could not be undone. This was goodbye… for now.

“I -- I’m just --” your voice sounded raspy and weak, like someone was gripping your vocal cords and strangling them. You watched through blurred vision as Fred’s lower lip began to wobble, and he bit down on it to keep you from noticing. But you noticed. Of course you did. How could you not? You knitted your brows together to keep the tears from falling, but your emotions were far too high for anything to work. You searched desperately for the words that were filling up your heart, though were proving very difficult to leave your lips. “I’m.. I’m really…”

And Fred, who found himself sometimes turning to mush around you, let his shoulders collapse as tears welled up in his eyes, too. He couldn’t believe they were really doing this -- really leaving. Hogwarts had been their home away from home for so many years, and you, the second sister he didn’t know he needed.

When he spoke, his voice didn’t have the usual cheeky sound to it, that mischievous tone you grew to know and love so much. It was soft, and tired, and pleading with you to please not be angry. You could hear it in the way that he said, “I know,” before pulling you into his chest. He interwove his fingers in your hair and pressed his lips to your forehead before sucking in a breath. You tugged gently on the drawstring hanging from his sweatshirt. It was hard to stay mad at either of them. You forced your eyes shut and bit down hard on your bottom lip, causing you to suck in another breath due to the pain. You felt your heart snap perfectly in half when you heard his voice shake a bit. “I’m really going to miss you, too.”

That was one of the most intimate moments you’d ever shared with Fred, letting each other cry into one another’s shoulders. The vulnerability hanging in the air between you both was so intense, it almost didn’t seem real. But as quickly as this new side of Fred had appeared, it vanished when he pulled away from you and held onto your shoulders to steady you. He sniffled a bit and tried to nonchalantly wipe away a tear from his eye. “But you’re coming to visit, yeah? First thing after graduation?”

“Of course,” you playfully swatted him with the sleeve of your robe. “Have got to make sure you two don’t find yourselves in any mischief, right?”

Fred threw his head back and laughed. “Great thing about our shop is that mischief is more than welcomed, darling.”

You both continued to laugh through tears, until everything became still and silent between you both. You bit down on your bottom lip again and repeated the address back to him very slowly. “Number 93 Diagon Alley.”

“Number 93 Diagon Alley,” he echoed you. His grin was so large, you began to see traces of that thirteen-year-old boy you’d first met all those long years ago. He was so excited, wasn’t he? You felt a pull at your heart. And you were so excited for them. “I love you, kid. Don’t forget to write, and definitely don’t forget to study. Molly Weasley would be so disappointed.”

He pulled you in for another hug before making his way down the corridor. You folded your arms across your chest and raised an eyebrow. “You? The King of avoiding schoolwork at all costs is actually telling me to study?”

“What can I say?” Fred shrugged his shoulders. Your best mate. Your best mate in the entire world, known for his pranks and laughter and everything in between was pointing a finger at you and telling you to get a jump start on your school work, like he’d done a complete one-eighty. “You just bring out this side of me.”

“I love you, you absolute git.”

“I love you more.”

Your breathing intensified as he vanished down the corridor.

“Wow,” you heard a voice from behind you, “can’t believe you somehow got my brother to tell you to study. What has the world come too?”

When you whirled around to come face to face with George, his face was an exact carbon copy of Fred’s -- but his sparkling eyes and lopsided grin made your insides twist in a way that Fred’s didn’t. All you wanted to do was run up to your dorm and cry, thinking about the entirety of your schooling where you could’ve been wrapped up in his arms if he’d just felt the same way. But that wouldn’t help you in any way. You had to be thankful for what you had.

“It definitely won’t be the same with you two gone.”

You couldn’t help it -- the words escaped you before you could register your own thoughts. You could see George’s expression fill with guilt, something that had been happening more often than not, so you offered him a tremendous grin that split your face in half, despite the tears that were falling generously now. You stuck your hand out to pull him into you. “I hope you know how proud I am of you both.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, took your hand in his and walked toward you. He pulled you into a bone crushing embrace, one you’d definitely feel the effects of a few days from now. He cradled your head in his hand the exact same way Fred did, and also placed a kiss onto your hair, but the way your blood bubbled at his touch was so very different from the way you felt with your best friend.

“I just want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For.. everything.” George’s voice was raspy. He pulled away from you but didn’t let go. He slid his hands across your shoulders and down your arms before intertwining his fingers with yours. He slowly caressed his thumbs over the tops of your hands as he chose his words carefully. “For being my best friend, for believing in this ridiculous idea, for dealing with my antics. For everything, all of it. I reckon Hogwarts would not have been the same had I not met you in Charms.”

“It was my favorite lesson, you know.”

“Mine, too.”

You forced yourself to continue to smile at him through your tears, because you didn’t want you blubbering like an idiot to be the last thing he’d see before leaving the castle. As if this entire exchange hadn’t been dramatic enough, you were really considering telling him how you felt -- right as he left. You could shout out I love you!, couldn’t you? It would be the perfect time, too, because he’d already be off and you could run up to your dormitory without worrying about having to face him or your own intense feelings! The words were right there, on the tip of your tongue --

“Save a pygmy puff for me, yeah?”

But those were the words that spoke instead.

George raised his eyebrows and held up a finger. “Oh! That reminds me. Have got something for you.” You threaded your eyebrows together in confusion as he reached into his pocket. He very gently pulled out a ribbon, the colour a perfect blend of purple and pink, same as the puffs, with sparkles dancing across it as if it were charmed. Which, knowing George, it probably was. He fiddled with it slightly in his hands before looking up to meet your gaze. “You’ve inspired us. Got a whole line of these things in the works. So I want you to do me a favour.”

Your voice was a whisper. You’d nearly forgotten how to formulate coherent sentences. “What?” you asked him.

He then took a very deep breath and reached out to move your hair. He gently placed the ribbon behind your ears and tied it into a small bow on the top of your head. “When you’re feeling poorly about your exams, or about finishing school, or about anything, because I know you will -- put this on. Think of us. And just remember that we’re only a letter away until graduation, alright?”

As he watched more tears well up in your eyes, he considered telling you the truth: that it had been him this whole time, sending you these letters and gifts. It’d been him since the beginning, he’d just been too afraid to tell you. He wet his lips and watched as you brought your fingers to the ribbon and touched it gently. He was going to do it, it was time. Probably a few years too late, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He was leaving in five bloody minutes, and he had to seize his chance, when the vulnerability was thick and the emotions were high and he wasn’t going to chicken out completely --

But just as he found his confidence, Fred softly called his name from round the bend before disappearing again. You threw your arms around the back of George’s neck and stood on the tips of your toes to hug him. There was no mistaking the sound of your wobbly voice in his ears -- you were crying fully now. “I’m going to miss you.”

If his emotions weren’t sky high, he would’ve noticed just how easily the tears came to the front of his eyes at your simple, five word phrase.

“I’m going to miss you, too.”

He wished it could be yesterday, or the day before. Or last month. Or last year. He wanted to be back in Charms in your third year. He wished he could go back in time, any amount of time, just to have more with you, because this couldn’t possibly be the end. It couldn’t be.

Through sniffles and sobs and the cracks in your voice, he swore he heard you say, “I love you.”

Fire shot through his veins, but bloody hell, he didn’t have time to unload all of that. Fred was calling his name again. “I love you, too.”

George pressed his lips to your hairline and stayed there like that for a few more seconds you wished could last a lifetime. You didn’t even bother trying to hide your tears anymore -- they were cascading down your cheeks, and violent sobs were involuntarily escaping from your overused lungs. Every single ounce of your body hurt due to all of the crying you’d been doing the last couple of days. It felt so stupid and so dramatic and so absolutely awful, because the truth was, it was only a couple of months until you saw them again. Until you saw him again. A few months was nothing.

But the idea of being here without them hurt more than you could begin to fathom.

When he pulled away, you noticed how red and blotchy his cheeks were alongside his bloodshot eyes, his messy hair. But you beamed at him again and squeezed his hand and said, “Congratulations,” and watched him as his fingers let go of yours and he walked toward the other end of the corridor.

“Hey,” you called, thinking of something. George spun around quickly and peered longingly at you. You just needed a few more seconds or so. “How’re you two getting out of here, anyway? You know Umbridge has all the entrances sealed. You think it’s going to work, whatever you two’ve got planned?” There was a sliver of selfishness that hoped it didn’t, but you suppressed it. You were overflowing with pride for your best friends.

And then there he was -- that young boy filled with adventure and reckless abandon, looking at you as if only seeing you for the very first time. His grin deepened when he replied, “Don’t worry -- it’s in typical Weasley fashion.” He stopped in his tracks and placed his hands in his pockets, and peered at you with a type of intense sincerity that made every muscle in your body ache all over again. “I’ll see you soon, then?”

Your lip quivered again. “Yeah,” you replied, willing yourself to believe it. You would. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

You shook your head at him and watched as he disappeared around the bend, but not before that signature wink he loved to offer.

About thirty minutes later, after you’d had a good cry and rinsed the runny mascara off of your cheeks and from underneath your eyes, you heard a bit of yelling from inside the castle. You were sitting in the courtyard basking in the glorious spring weather, forcing yourself to focus on what you needed to study, when a group of students began to huddle near the windows.

Confused, you shut your spellbook and wandered over to where they were gathered, wondering what the bloody hell could be going on inside. Weren’t the fifth years supposed to be taking their OWLs?

And then two red headed figures zoomed out of the castle on their broomsticks, followed by a firework dragon the size of the real dragon Harry had fought just last year, with more sparklers and pyrotechnics behind them brightening up the sky. Students flooded into the courtyard and cheers were nearly shaking the whole entire structure of the castle. You looked around at all of the students, beaming with exuberance, and wondered just how many of the Wildfire Whizbangs had gotten caught in Umbridge’s hair, setting it aflame. You smiled to yourself and began to clap, too.

For as blue as you felt, you were ten times happier for them.

George and Fred were now hovering in the air beneath a very large firework in the shape of a ‘W’. Fred was busy cheering along with the crowd, clearly pleased with the feedback from all of the students -- and even some teachers. Was that Flitwick he spotted below? Had he made his Charms teacher proud?

But George wasn’t cheering -- he was focused. Focused on scanning the crowd, focused on bouncing his eyes from student to student until he found the familiar one he was looking for.

“You alright, Georgie?” Fred called over the roar of the dragon, now swimming through the clouds.

“Yeah,” George replied, though he didn’t fully believe it -- not until he saw you, in the middle of a sea of Ravenclaws, peering up at the two of them with nothing but admiration plastered onto your face. George breathed another sigh of relief and didn’t take his eyes off of you. He couldn’t. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

“To new adventures!” Fred cheered and raised his hands in delight. More students began to scream and cheer and wave to them from the grounds. He proceeded to do a backflip on his broomstick in the air.

When your eyes met his from below, he watched as your smile slowly grew a bit larger and your clapping became more exuberant. He could already count down the bloody days until you were finished with school and walking through the front doors of their shop, a grin on your face so large it could cure diseases! But for now, you had to study, and he had a business to run.

He turned toward his brother, who had never looked more excited or proud in all his years. George stuck out his hand for a high-five as he wobbled slightly on his broom. To Fred, George replied, “To new adventures, mate.”

tag list: @georgeweasleyx @seppys-return-to-madness @fopdoodledane @fredd-weasley @iprobablyshipit91 @darling-details @laneygthememequeen @lupinsx @keoghans @helloallthethingsilove @waschbiber @dreamer821 @feffffffy @the-hufflepuff-of-221b @62442-am @wtfweasleyy @obsessedwithrandomthings @sleep-i-ness @shadowsinger11 @harrysweasleys @shadychaoticcollection @haphazardhufflepuff @afriendlyneighborhoodhufflepuff @hood-and-horan @geeksareunique @insearchofnewdreams @notstandingstill-imlyinginwait @lumos-barnes @thatfuckingliardavidtennant @slytherinqween @xinyourdreamsx @skiving-snackboxess @wildfire-whizbangs @dwarfwizard-from-panem @diary-of-an-onliner @answer-the-sirens @woakiees @black-widow-fangirl @theheirofnightandday @summerstardust @whysoseriouspadfoot @chocok22 @myhopesareanchoredinyou @siriusblackisme @illusivedaydreamer @zeeneee @writingwitchly @wolfpotter12 @obsessedwithrandomthings @carolinesbookworld @shadowsinger11 @pit-and-the-pen @summer-writes-words @peachesandpinks @gweaslvy @alpineweasley @letsfightsomeorcs @theweasleysredhair @purpleskiesstorm @hxfflxpxffs @wand3ringr0s3 @finecole @angelinathebook @highly-acidic @90shermione @zreads @susceptible-but-siriusexual @hollands-weasley @andromedaa-tonks @bbystrawberry0421 @cappsikle @mytreec @imseeinggred @idont-knowrn @flyingserpxnt @auroraboringalis57 @godricsswords @jejegu @annasofiaearlobe @starlightweasley @alwaysasadaesthetic @thisismysketchbook

#george weasley #fred weasley #fred and george weasley #weasley twins #george weasley x reader #george weasley reader insert #george weasley imagine #george weasley fanfic #george weasley fanfiction #weasley twins imagine #weasley twins imagines #fred and george weasley imagines #weasley twins fanfiction #weasley twins fanfic #harry potter fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #hp fanfic #hp fanfiction

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coindraws · 3 years

Text

Put a trigger warning on this just in case. Nothing too bad, but it’s mentioned

I found out a few weeks ago that somebody who was quite important to me had passed away. Idk, it was very surreal when my dad told me those news, I had tried to reach her for some months now but wasn’t successful.

For some context, back when I was still in school in 2016 I had a seminar and our teacher asked us if there was anybody wanting to visit an old lady in my hometown and regularly have conversations with her. Her three daughters live very far away and her husband died a long time ago, so she didn’t really have anybody there apart from her neighbors. My teacher’s former classmate had asked her and that’s basically how I got to know her.

It’s funny because I actually used to live across the street from her house (my dad and my mom had rented an apartment there before moving a few streets away because the apartment would be too small for four people and my sister was on her way) and my dad knew her. Anyway, ever since then I’ve visited her every week and we just drank coffee and ate cake. Sometimes we’d take a walk together or go grab something at a store or go to a café in the city.

When I left school and quit university for the first time to try and see what I would pursue next, she quickly became one of the only constants in my life because I’d always make it a point to be able to continue seeing her. Over the time I also got to know her family and she told me lots of stories, about her husband, how she built the house she now lived in and how she got to that town in the first place since she was from a different region.

I still feel bad to this day that she gave me money each time I visited her and even if I told her that she didn’t need to do that, she always gave it to me. It felt weird to me that I was basically getting paid for keeping somebody company but she made it a point to me that I should see it more as some kind of pocket money. She also felt really bad when she forgot to give it to me and I was too uncomfortable to mention it.

Over the years I got to know her and her story really well, whenever I was planning to travel somewhere I’d try to not miss out on too much time that I could spend with her. The first big journey I did was in 2017 for a month and when I told her that I’d be away for some weeks, she was sad that I wouldn’t be able to visit her during that time but she was also happy that I got the chance to do something she never really did. I sent her a postcard from each city I saw because I knew she’d like receiving this and once I came home and saw her again, she told me how happy she was each time there was a new postcard in her mail.

She was easily one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met in my life. Whenever I told her about my plans for my future she was genuinely interested in it and encouraged me to pursue what I wanted. She liked art and history and knew how to play the violin among other things I had in common with her. I struggled a lot after school because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life but she always made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

It’s kind of strange thinking about how I got along so well with somebody who was over 80 years old and I remember how I was so afraid the first time I went to her place and see if I wanted to go visit her every week. I was so nervous, you never really know how old people react to things and what kind of worldview they have. But everything that I was worried about wasn’t the case.

Since she was really old and wasn’t able to live on her own anymore, she moved closer to one of her daughters, so they could visit her more often. It was hard to finally say goodbye to our weekly conversations but I still called her every once in a while and also visited her a few times. When I visited her in her new home (it was a very fancy retirement home) she paid for my room as well as everything else like food. Even when I offered her to pay it myself, she told me it was okay because I was her guest.

The other people there wondered who I was of course and admittedly, it was kind of weird eating with her in a room where everybody else was at least 70+. People that walked by asked her if I was her grandchild, which I wasn’t, so she told them that I was an old friend from the place where she used to live. She even called me a “substitute grandchild” which might sound weird, but it was nice to hear that I was this important and special to her.

I didn’t have a lot of time to call her because I was busy with university but every time I did manage to call her, she was very happy to hear from me. The last time we talked was in early January 2020 and I had planned to visit her sometime in February or April that year but that didn’t work out. I’ve tried to call her ever since then but to no avail. I don’t know the exact circumstances why she passed away but she was 89 after all.

I wrote a condolence card to her daughter and today I got a card back from her. Apart from wishing me good luck on any plans I had in my future, she also wrote that her mother had really appreciated me. I don’t know why, but this made me very glad to hear. I knew that she did, she had always told me when something reminded her of me or when she called me her friend. She even gave me some things to keep, like a necklace and a whole teaset (?!) from the 1880s. But it was still nice to hear it from somebody else that had known her.

When I heard that she passed away, it felt very weird. I felt bad that I wasn’t able to reach her again and I felt guilty that I maybe didn’t try enough to keep in contact. But at the same time I feel like she wouldn’t have been disappointed or mad at me that I didn’t manage to talk to her one last time. She never was, she was very understanding and also told me that she knew I’d never forget her. Which is true, because I will treasure the times I got to spend with her. She had a huge impact on me and I can only guess if she felt the same.

#laber net #tw death #I hope this is how you tag it because I've never done that so far

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bakurik · 3 years

Text

The breakup, aka, BonBon messed up bad.

Rockstar Bonnie could handle a lot. Children running around the pizzeria? Fine. An annoyed teen throwing their lackluster breadsticks at him cause they didn’t want to stuck at their little sister birthday party? Easy. A few small pranks, annoying but what can you do? But when he had started a relationship with the broken bear that was salvaged from the back alley he never expected to have to put up for so much and only get so little in return. He had promised his funny bear that he would make sure his little hand puppet pal was fixed, and to his credit and help of the other assembles they had done so, but finally he had enough. The little thing was dangerous. Jealous. And it wasn’t worth it anymore. “I am so sick and tired of getting pushed around like this. I am so SICK of having to fear death every day of my life, because of you.” There was a snap of plastic, well another snap. If the instrument wasn’t broke before, it sure was now. This wasn’t meant to happen like this. “You know, sure, maybe I tried getting along with you because of Freddy, and maybe I thought you were annoying at a few points in time. But I tried, I genuinely tried.”

BonBon hadn’t meant to actually break the stupid thing. Sure, snap a few strings to annoy, make the larger bun have to spend the day rummaging through the back of the Pizzeria’s supply closet with helpy before the night was over so the owner wouldn’t catch them when ordering things. He didn’t think that a little prank would end like this, none of the rest ever did. No. No this was the rockstar’s fault. “..And what do I get? A swinging bucket of water to the head. Make my circuits lock up and then have me land right on my beauty.”

The little rabbit didn’t know what to say back. He just stood on his spindly legs, tiny hands clasped together as he felt a weird sensation wash over him. Bonnie was mad. Steaming. This wasn’t the jokey anger he was used to and it wasn’t the complete insanity laced rage he learned to cool with Freddy. Did he try to distract the bun? Tell him to go to sleep? That worked on the bear.. He didn’t know how to even begin to fix this situation.

“I admit it might be my fault that Freddy doesn’t hang out with you a lot anymore. But it was his decision. And it’s not my fault you can’t even respect that.” The rockstar had started to pace, the broken neck of his instrument in one hand while the base rested on the floor. That was going to forever to try and fix with how splintered the plastic on the neck had gotten. “I’m going to have to have Helpy order another one, that’s going to take a week or more to get here. I’ll be out of order until then..”

BonBon finally opened his mouth, “There should be another guitar in the back-”

“Really? ‘Cause I remember you ripping off the tuning pegs and flushing them while I was taking Freddy outback to see the stars a few days ago.”

The little bun didn’t think they would go down, or at least that is what he told himself. He figured it would clog up the thing, it would have been funny to see the date end with the big bun trying to fish out the things before the owner got around to unclogging them via the computer. The things seemed so much larger in his paw. Watching the rockstar he could see the utter exhaust seeping in. His normal droopy eyelids Were the pranks really taking that much out of him? Surely not. It was just harmless fun to break his best friend and the guy apart. All he wanted was more time with Freddy, he loved the bear. He was comfort for the bear. They had been apart so long, he didn’t want to be replaced by-

"You don't want me in your life? Fine. You win. Keep the bear, keep your little weird relationship, i'm done." ….What? “I can do a lot better than that pile of scrap. And without you sticking your button nose into my affairs. You want to play partner, then go ahead. Now if you’ll excuse me,” He reached down and placed the lower half of the guitar under his arm as he did so. “I have to go find some flex tape for my guitar since it’s now utterly broken.” Stepping closer he pressed his free hand to the puppet’s face, pushing aside the bun and not caring as the thin metal legs scrambled to keep stable but ultimately failing as he landed on his back. Sure it hurt but the pain wasn’t crossing his mind, there was a new emotion that was washing over him. He didn’t know what it was but it wasn’t something he had felt before. Did he really cause this big of an issue? Just a few pranks didn’t… Okay sure, he didn’t do this to anyone else but he didn’t have to. Chica was hardly around at night. She wandered, cleaned, things that kept her busy. That rocker Freddy only seemed to care about collecting coins the kids left scattered after hours with the fox. And Lefty….well nobody fully knew what to make of the dark bear. She was always so quiet so most never bothered her and in turn she didn’t bother anyone else. She liked the vents and Freddy used to say she and him used to be buddies but the little bun never had to worry. BonBon didn’t see her as a threat-

Wait...what?

Threat? Why would anyone be a threat to...no. No that wasn’t right. BonBon knew that Freddy cared about him more than anyone. They were once attached at the wrist, always together. Always having such fun with the children that came to the paties. They knew all the best knock-knock jokes, could sing in harmony, if someone was mean to the bear BonBon was the key to keeping him calm and stable. Though the best times and the worst times. He made sure Freddy was okay even when the laughs turned to screams. They needed each other. Freddy needed him. They were made for each other, they were family! Even when the scooper tore them apart and everyone was forced to rebuild into one. BonBon could remember the voices going dark first, the bun had done all he could to stay awake but he just became so tired…

Looking at the ceiling of the pizzeria, the bun had gone quiet but felt his ears twitch as a new voice started coming down the hall, “-eard tha bear in the back, poor thing.” He knew that voice. With the accent it must have been the fox.. “I feel bad for the lad-” The pirate must have been talking about Freddy. How long had he been laying on the floor? “Bonnie seemed upset too, but ya know how his temper be. Cool and calm but inside it’s all a mess in his circuits. Dat wee lil’ one wasn’t much help. Da bear was helpin’ tho. ‘Least I believed so.”

Was Freddy okay? BonBon knew one thing, and that was that big emotions weren’t easily processed by his friend. Most of the funtimes were very advanced but Freddy was simple in mind. When things got too much he’d snap, that’s why the human had made himself. BonBon was the safety switch. And now...now Freddy was now without the safety switch.

#five nights at freddy's #fnaf #rockstar bonnie #Funtime Freddy #BonBon #FunRockFronnie #it's not good #I was just writing to write #fic ideas

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meloingly · 3 years

Text

Have Me, Have You, Have Us

@carlosreyesweek Day 3: “Well, that just happened” + Friendship.

Summary: Five times Carlos reveals something about himself that no one else knows, and it helps him get closer to the 126 crew, and one time the 126 knows something that Carlos doesn't.

This is a multi-chaptered fic. I've tried to write them all in time to be published together, but by God, they weren't having it. I still haven't decided how I'll update, but I'm thinking bi-weekly. Tags will be updated accordingly.

Tags: Carlos Reyes, TK Strand, Paul Strickland, Marjan Marwani, Mateo Chavez, Judd Ryder, Owen Strand, Michelle Blake, Original Female Character, Original Male Character, Developing Friendship.

Warnings: Mentions of Past Homophobia.

Beta: The owner of my soul @lire-casander

Read on AO3

---

Chapter 1: Paul: Live This Life, It's All We Have

Carlos walks into the honky-tonk a mere forty-five minutes after his shift ended. He was on the way home when TK called him and asked if he would detour. He likes the man, so it didn't need much pondering over.

He sees TK standing in front of one of the multiple dartboards hung on the wall, alongside Michelle, Captain Strand, Judd, Marjan and Mateo. They seem to be engrossed in a contest, if the annoyance on Marjan's face, the smugness in Judd's and the paper and pen in Mateo's hand are anything to go by.

He hesitates for a moment, the idea of walking into the middle of the group to greet them sends a slight shiver down his back and he quickly decides he'll wait for them to finish. He spots Paul sitting at the self-claimed "126 table." He moves towards the bar, ordering mineral water, before he grabs his drink and walks towards the man. Recognising TK's jacket slung over the chair right next to Paul, he plops on the next stool over.

Paul turns around, a hint of surprise in his eyes, until the realisation of who this hits him, and it's replaced with a smile.

"Hey, man."

"Hey," Carlos greets him back, "how you doing?"

Paul shrugs, and even though it's not much, Carlos understands the meaning behind it all the same. They fall into a comfortable silence, Carlos' eyes roaming the open area ahead of them. Three girls stand in the corner, dancing quietly amongst each other, two elderly men occupy a booth, Carlos gets the vibe that they're trading life-altering experiences. More "dudebros" hang around the snooker tables and dartboards. Carlos is about to focus back on TK, when he notices a singular woman sitting in a booth alone, a drink in her hand, a small, shy smile on her lips and eyes trained somewhere on their table.

Carlos frowns. He turns around, about to ask for some super-human Paul deduction powers when he realises that Paul is staring right back at her. A shy smile on his face too.

Carlos blinks. He looks back at the woman and sees that her eyes are now on her table, and then he turns to Paul, and his eyes are roaming the ceiling of the bar. He turns back to the woman, and now she's looking at Paul again. And Paul has his eyes locked on her.

Carlos curls into himself slightly, trying to get out of their visual field. He's sitting somewhat between them, and he'd like to not be. He concentrates on his drink, and everything else in the bar that isn't Paul and his potential lady friend.

A few minutes later, he can't help but look towards her again. She's got her phone out now, scrolling up and down on the screen. Turning to Paul, he finds he's looking at his drink as well.

Carlos goes baffled. The woman is clearly interested in Paul, and while he might not be a super-detective like the other man, he can tell that the feeling is reciprocated. And yet, they're both just sitting here, alternating between eye flirting and avoidance. His curiosity gets the best of him, and he slides into the chair in between them.

"So, you're just not going to talk to her?"

Paul gawks at him, eyes widening in clear shock before he schools his reaction into some form of indifference.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Man," Carlos starts, rolling his eyes at the man, "I may not have the Gods of perception poised on my shoulders, but I'm not that blind!"

Paul narrows his eyes in response. Carlos is pretty sure he's going for accusation, but he's been trained to pick up on anything underneath, and in this case, it's a moment of contemplation. Whatever it is though, Paul seems to have made up his mind on it rather quickly. He sighs and looks down at his drink again.

"It's hard, man. Last thing I need is another rejection."

Carlos can't help the wave of sympathy that goes through him. The again that Paul’s not saying takes him back to the night they went clubbing. TK hadn't said much about why, just that a friend needed a night to have fun and forget about things.

"Ahh. Yeah. That's the queer life."

Paul snorts in reply, "Yeah, not all of us can find the one gay firefighter transfer and charm the pants off him."

Carlos lets out some mix of a loud laugh and a snort.

"Hey! I'm lucky right now, but that doesn't mean growing up didn't suck."

He can tell he's said too much by the way Paul goes quiet, and the atmosphere around them changes. With both understanding and pain. They look at each other, sharing a sympathetic smile, trying to convey a silent "yeah? You too?"

"Parents took it hard?" Paul asks.

Carlos lets out a genuine smile at that. If there's one thing he was blessed with the moment he was born, it was his family.

"The family was amazing. It's everyone else that wasn't."

Paul doesn't ask after that, not verbally at least. Carlos can see the questions in his eyes. He takes a calming breath. No one knows the story that's swarming around his mind right now. Michelle might have collected and connected bits and pieces through the years, but other than that, no one in Austin knows about his childhood.

But here he is. He's okay. And he has a friend who is in a place he was in years ago. Fighting with acceptance and fear of rejection. He takes another breath.

"I came out to my dad and sister when I was 12. Everything went well. They were supportive, pledged their love, all of that," he starts. "A few weeks later though, I started finding notes in my locker."

Paul lets out a groan, undeniably aware of what kind of notes Carlos is talking about.

"A few weeks after the notes started, I got called into the principal’s office and told that my dad would be informed and they would help us "change my homosexual ways", he added, air quotations included.

It takes him back to a decade and a half ago. When a young, short and lanky Carlos was in science class, the notes hidden in the depth of his backpack. When the school speakers boomed with the principal's voice saying "Carlos Reyes, please report to the Principal's office. Carlos Reyes, please report to the Principal's office." He remembers thinking, hoping, that it was about the notes, that the principal will ask who is sending him the vile words, and will make them stop.

He remembers standing up to leave, and the teacher, Mr. Roger, telling to pack his bag as well. He remembers hearing a strange tone, but not quite understanding it. He knows now it was poison, venom, hate. He remembers doing it anyway. He remembers the walk down the hallway, bag on his shoulders, and the teachers glaring at him through the glass slits in the doors.

He remembers getting to the office. The secretary, Ms. Harding, holding his hand, telling him "The Lord will cure you." He remembers not knowing what they meant. Not knowing what they were talking about. He doesn't get the chance to ask. He remembers being led to the Principal's room, the big office much more intimidating to his twelve-year-old eyes than it should have been. He remembers the nameplate; a large golden script of "Mr. Steve Atwood" and a smaller "Principal of Lubbock Junior High School" on a wooden piece. He remembers thinking it wasn't normal wood, it was red, and he didn't know wood could be red.

He remembers Mr. Atwood speaking, telling him that life is ruled by the Bible and God and Jesus. That he's a child who can still change. That this isn't the way to continue living. That his dad will be informed. That he will get help. That there are camps. That he will stop being this way.

"Were you out at school?" Paul asks, the horror evident in his tone.

It's the same horror Carlos remembers feeling when they were leaving church a few weeks before the incident, his sister by his side and their dad a few steps up ahead, talking to a neighbour. His sister had pointed towards a rainbow flag hung on the house across the street from the church. "We should get you one and hang it at home, that way the other boys like you will know where to find you," she had giggled. He had giggled right along with her, until he heard a gasp coming from behind him, and turned to find Mrs. Atwood behind him, eyes wide as he stared down at him in what he now knows was disgust. He remembers the fear that ran through him. But then his sister ran ahead. And he had followed her.

"Not really, but it doesn't make a difference," he explains. "It's not like they would have been supportive if I sat them down and told them."

Paul shakes his head, and then asks, "And then what happened?"

"My dad came in somewhere through the dialogue, I remember Mr. Atwood standing up, trying to greet him, but he was mad. Angry in a way I've never seen before. He told me to go outside and wait for him."

Carlos pauses, the memory assaulting his senses. "I heard him screaming at the principal, saying that it wasn't Mr. Atwood's place to talk to me, that I was a child, that it was none of his business. That I wouldn’t be coming back to that school again."

He remembers the entire interaction like it was mere days ago. His dad walking out of the office, squatting down to Carlos' level and asking him if he had all his things. Carlos had answered a weak "yes", and his dad was already holding his hand, pulling him out of the school and into the car.

"He was quiet throughout the car ride. We turned into our street, but he just kept going, saying he forgot to get something from the store. He started to joke around with me then, telling me he was the World's Strongest Man and he could carry me, and the car and everything and anything. I played right along, and somehow, I found myself agreeing that if he could carry me then he was as strong as he said. We circled around the block, didn't even go to any stores, and parked in front of our porch. He pulled me through his door, hid my head in his neck and ran me home."

Carlos pauses. He can see Paul frowning over the story losing sense. Just like he had thought for so long. It never made sense to him why his dad carried him. Why that day? Why that fast? Until…

"I later found out that someone had written the wonderful “f” slur on our garage door, and he didn't want me to see that."

Paul smiles and nods. Carlos knows there is nothing else he could do. There are no words or actions to express what he felt when he found that out. His dad, the man that had spent his everything raising him, seeing something he knew would hurt his child, and doing everything in his power to protect him. If he turns out to be half the father his dad was, he would consider himself a good father.

"We started packing almost immediately, and we were out of that town in a week. He wouldn't let me or my sister leave the house, not even to play in the yard, throughout the week. Dad said he got a transfer, but he was home for a month, so I have a feeling that wasn't exactly true."

"He just packed y'all up and brought you here?" Paul asks.

"Yes. That's exactly what he did. He wanted us to live freely. To love freely. And he knew we wouldn't be able to do that in Lubbock. So he moved us out."

"To Austin?"

"Yeah, I mean, it was miles better than Lubbock, so, no complaints." Paul hums, but Carlos isn't done, "And plus, I met you, my new bestest friend in Austin!"

Paul laughs at that, and Carlos can't help but join him at Paul's mumbled "Yeah, right!"

The laughter dies down, and the easy silence returns. Carlos lifts the drink to his lips, eyes searching for TK. He sees him practically hanging off Mateo, arms around his shoulders. Marjan butts in between, shaking her hands towards the board while TK makes some sort of hand gesture. They're trying to show Mateo how to throw a dart, he realises. Slightly to their side, Michelle, Captain Strand and Judd hang around, beers in hands, looking pleased. His vision roams the bar again, falling on the woman, and it dawns on him that he never got to tell Paul what started the whole story in the first place.

The realisation sends him into a frenzy. He turns to Paul, only to, of course, find him looking at the woman. He pokes Paul's arm, and his eyes break off her to focus back on Carlos.

"I didn't tell you my coming out story because I had nothing better to do, you know," Carlos starts. "I have more story."

Paul shakes his head, a smile on his face, before making a "go ahead" gesture with his hands.

"When we moved here, my dad sat me down, and told me that he had my back, and that I should live free. Be the person that I am, who happens to be gay. And I thought that would be it, you know, I'd live now. My family was supportive. I was in an open city. I had it all good."

"But?" Paul interrupts.

"But. It wasn't that easy. That interaction with the principal and the looks of the teachers hit me harder the more I grew up, the more I started to understand what they meant. And I found myself a seventeen-year-old gay guy that was out in every way but wasn’t really out. I wouldn't ask anyone out. I wouldn't flirt. I wouldn't even let myself look at guys. All because I was afraid of that judgement and rejection and hate."

Paul huffs a breath, eyes moving to stare at the table. Carlos doesn't speak either. He knows that's what this is all about. The fear of not being accepted. Of not being taken in and liked because of something as trivial as their identity. He knows Paul is contemplating the situation. The win-loss ratio. He knows he did, many times before. He still does.

"How did you get over it?"

Carlos is so lost in his own thoughts and emotions, he almost misses the mumbled question. He takes a breath, letting it out almost instantly in a sigh.

"My dad told me that I had spent too much time in fear. If I'm out, I might as well be out, live life, love life, and stop taking every rejection like it's the end of the world."

Paul nods, looking away at the woman across the bar, before Carlos continues, "When I still complained though, he then said "stop letting homophobic dickhead assholes control your life, if you like dick then you like dick, if the dick you like is a judgemental dick then find a better dick"."

Paul whips his head up to stare at Carlos, realises he is being serious, and proceeds to break out in a booming laugh. Carlos feigns offence for a moment, withdrawing his hand and holding it to his chest.

"You dare make fun of my father's sage advise?!"

Paul is still laughing, letting out broken no's and never's. Carlos drops the act, hands landing on the table and laughing with Paul, until it dies down.

"How did your nerdy self come from such wisdom?" Paul asks, after they take a moment to catch their breath.

"Hey! I took after his wisdom and handsomeness, I'll have you know!"

Paul snorts as he looks at the woman again, and Carlos turns his head just in time to see her lift her head up, make eye contact with Paul, and smile. He hears Paul inhale, and then, the scratch of a stool on wooden flooring.

He looks back at Paul, and finds that he's on his feet, fixing his pants. A grin takes over his face, and Paul levels him with a glare. It does nothing to diminish the excitement he feels when Paul pats his shoulder as he moves to the woman's table. The happy smile that takes over her face increases his own. And when she gestures at the empty seat across her - after a moment of talking - and Paul slides in, he realises that his heart beats with joy for him.

He's brought out to focus when arms circle his torso, and the very familiar lips of one TK Strand press a kiss on his cheek.

"Hi."

"Hey."

"What's Paul doing?" TK says, gesturing with his chin towards the booth they're in.

"Going after the proverbial dick he likes."

#carlosreyesweek2021 #Day 3: Friendship #Day 3: Well that just happened #Friendship #Carlos Reyes #TK Strand #Paul Strickland #Marjan Marwani #Mateo Chavez #Judd Ryder #Owen Strand #Grace Ryder #Michelle Blake

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saintheartwing · 3 years

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Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2: Rage of the Forgotten Ones

Author's Note:

Regrettably, this time, I'm not accepting OCs for the story. Though you may spy a cameo here and there for certain...persons. ;)

Anyhow, on with the tale! And feel free to tell me what you like and dislike about it. :D

BREAKING DAWN, PART TWO RAGE OF THE FORGOTTEN ONES

If you're reading this, then again...thanks. I'm glad somebody bothered to check out my blog. I'm surprised you're checking it now, though. Shouldn't you be more concerned with the fact that hundreds of planet Earths are floating around in the sky above, defying all physics? Even the average ignorant idiot can tell: something is seriously wrong.

And I know you want to know how this happened. Maybe you heard about me. Remembered I was the "crazy kid" for a long time, that I had all of these "insane" theories about aliens and the supernatural, and now that this is happening, well, you turn to me for answers. I've got answers, alright...I've got answers.

It all ties back...to him. To an alien named Zim.

His species is called the Irken race. They're like reptile-esque bugs. Their bodies are organic shells, their REAL selves are attached to their backs in robotic backpacks called "PAKS'. They're generally proud, vain, narcissistic, selfish, dangerous, in a word...evil. I knew from the moment Zim entered my classroom in his pathetic disguise that fooled everyone but me that he was bad news, I swore to expose him.

But something happened over the years. Zim and I began to...

Well...

...I can't call it friendship. I really can't. It's like...we were rivals. And we always wanted to stay that way. To outdo each other. It was a "same time next week" kind of deal we had: he'd try to make some world-enslaving or world-destroying plot...I'd stop him. It was a great game we played. And I think we began to develop...well...a kind of respect...a kind of trust. We kinda mellowed, in a sense. Heck, we even applied to the same colleges. I guess that my life fell into a rhythm I intended to ride for the rest of my life.

...but before all that happened, there was...a period that I think back on with shame. It was kind of like the turning point. When we looked back on what we did, something changed in us. I think we kinda were forced to change.

See...I wasn't the only one who knew Zim was an alien. My sister knew, but she didn't really care much. Zim had another Irken living at his home, named Skoodge, but Skoodge wasn't really too much of a threat. He wasn't actually too bad, as far as Irkens went. But I did tell my classmate Gretchen about Zim, and I think she wanted to believe me.

And then there was Nick.

Nice kid from down south. Slightly annoying accent. Little bit dumb. Okay, maybe more than a little bit.

But friendly. Helpful. And Zim had experimented on him before. Made him REAAAALLY happy with this strange device he stuck in his head. Twice. I asked him for help, knowing he knew the truth.

I TRIED to train him. I really did. I tried to help him get smart and savvy the way I was. We planned...we calculated...a few missions went by, we did well.

He wasn't my friend, but...but he was a good comrade. Yes...a comrade. And that day, on March 23rd, six years ago...Zim did the worst thing he'd ever done.

And he did it to Nick.

...I own that. Because he was my soldier. My comrade.

...my fault.

I don't know if he...remembers it all. I kept wondering "Was he afraid? Was he begging for me to save him in his head? Was he crying all the while as Zim..."

Now I know how he felt. I'm feeling that way too. Because someone showed up at our front door. They forced a very dangerous, very powerful ring on me. A ring that can turn the imagination into reality. Chosen for me because I can overcome great fear.

And yet...

All I want to do now...

Is SCREAM.

At first...it was a spiritual experience. Exhilarating. Almost transcendental. He felt invincible. He felt...like he could face anything. Anyone. Dib Membrane wasn't afraid of anything or anyone, and he knew, in that first few moments he KNEW he could have taken on the entire world and WON. For those first few moments...the ring upon his finger showed him a world just in front of his fingertips, a world of potential.

And then...then it was not HIS will that controlled the power. It felt like he was being tugged around by slimy strings, his flesh was not his own...he was lost in his own spirit...and he knew what was at fault.

"Get this thing OFF me!" Dib yelled out, yanking on the white ring on his finger as best he could, gasping as the Irken with the golden eyes looked on in pitiless amusement. Two sets of antennae, one teal, one black slightly raised in amusement with gloved hands and a blue vest across his chest, with dark blue pants and boots of black...black to match the gloves...black to match his heart. "GET IT OFF!"

"It's no use." The Irken with the golden eyes said, waving his hand in the air. "I was the first one to touch the Exemplar Ring you wear on your hand. It might be powered by your Will, it might think you're using it, but really...it's MY will that matters now. It might as well be on my hand. And you're going to do everything I tell you to do. You won't have a choice." The Irken said.

Dib's sister bellowed angrily, punching the ground below and seething, frothing at the mouth. Unlike Dib, who was dressed in a fine outfit of black and green, she was all red and black, with a form that looked vaguely machine-like in its design, a fury dripping off her facial features as the Irken snapped his fingers and she panted slightly, slowly calming down.

"You...fix us...NOW." Dib snarled angrily, summoning up all his willpower, leveling the ring on his finger squarely at the Irken. "You FREAK."

"The NAME...is Zerinim Two Jookiba." The Irken with two sets of antenneas said, putting one gloved hand on his chest before growling fervently, a burning red fiery blaze of energy forming in his hands, sizzling like he was holding a miniature sun in his palms. "But don't call me "Two" like my closest loved ones do. Call me...MASTER."

He immediately launched the wave of energy squarely at Dib and Gaz, knocking them to the ground, Gaz taking a blow to the head, unconsciousness settling in as Dib felt the thing's grip on him relaxing, and now the many sledgehammers he kept imagining should be beating into this thing actually manifested in a bright green glow, energy constructs that struck at Two over and over as Dib kept the manifestation up, intent on one thing and one thing alone...

MAKING...HIM...PAY.

"I'm gonna make you sorry you ever came to my planet!" Dib yelled out, stepping closer and closer to Two as the Irken held his gloved hands forth, a sonic blast of red construct energy knocking Dib back as Two snapped his fingers, a surge of power rising from his form as a bow popped into his gloved hands. Dib jumped back up, quickly firing off blasts of energy from his ring like a cowboy desperately firing his pistols at an oncoming posse, but Two calmly stood still, the blasts missing him as he notched an arrow of burning red.

It launched through the air, impaling Dib through his left side and he screeched in pain, falling to the ground as his grip on his body faded, and he swam in and out of consciousness, struggling to stay awake, Two chuckling coldly as he approached the human and his sister.

"Ahhhhh, I NEEDED that. I'm in a such good mood right now...now you go home and power down and get some rest. Dream peacefully...it'll be the last happy sleep you ever have, I'm afraid." The Irken said, kneeling by Dib and lifting his head with one claw. It wasn't a mocking tone...it just said it. A statement of fact. Nothing personal. "You've got a busy day tomorrow, after all." He added with a slight smile, clapping his hands as Dib and Gaz found themselves returning to their normal clothes, getting back up and returning inside the house of their own accord, the will of their master, the being named Two, echoing in their minds...

Mercifully, Dib could feel his wounds healing. But this was cold comfort. All Dib could think about...was what this thing was going to do the world he loved.

...

...as Dib rested in his bed, snuggling up beneath the covers, shivering slightly, he grit his teeth and grounded them together. He was mad. He was furious. He couldn't even fall asleep without feeling like that...that thingwith the double set of antennas was watching him. It had loosed it's control over them...just barely. It was allowing them to rest, but that was cold comfort considering Dib knew the thing would be up to no good.

What would it do to his world? What would it make himdo to his world? What would it make him do to the people he loved?

Simply trying to imagine talking to his father or anybody else about what had happened was giving him a headache...no doubt another part of that being, "Two", inflicting his will on him. What would happen if he actually tried to tell his father what had occurred, get him to simply analyze the ring that he was unable to take off? Would it be some "Battle Royale" kind of deal? Would a collar manifest around his neck and take his head off?

Gaz. What was Gaz thinking, Dib wondered as his eyelids slowly beginning to drop, genuine sleep mercifully setting in. Was she scared? Was she indignant about being used? Or was she just...angry?

Well, as it turned out, Gaz was none of those things. She had long since fallen deep asleep to dream of a world that shaped and shifted by her will, brought to life by a giant red pen, floating upon a rubber piggy and laughed giddily at the new world she was making. She liked seeing things in red...yes, yes, she wanted to paint everything in red...

She knew this power would help her do it. She was aware it was bringing out her most violent desires and attitudes. But she knew she could channel it. She just had to wait for her chance.

She could take control of this. She could prove stronger than the thing on her finger.

"That idiot thinks he has me. But I've beaten worse things before." Her dream-self said as she raised a chainsaw high, cutting through a swath of imaginary Twos. "AND YOU'LL FALL, JUST LIKE THE REST OF THEM!"

...

..."Oh great. Two is here. Help me put my clothes back on."

"Why did you ask me to bring HER along? I could understand Lilo, but…"

"I want her to understand what we're…willing to do to break her. Lilo, do you know HOW the Minor Arcana was formed? How the…application process is undertaken?"

"..."

"Well, in exchange for very, VERY large amounts of power and the ability to remain eternally young…you've got to kill family. Close family. One member, to be precise."

"Samael approached me and told me that if I wanted into the Minor Arcana…if I wanted the ability to be immune to control and to control reality, I'd have to kill a family member."

"No, please tell me you didn't…didn't kill them…Kila, Zim, you…you didn't?"

"No, of course I couldn't, I…I love my parents. I…I chose Green, my sister from the past."

"If Kila and Zim ARE your parents, the ones I know so well, then they would have been horrified at the idea of you working for the person who made them suffer so much! They wouldn't have raised you to be so cruel!"

"They didn't raise me to be cruel, but we never could stay in one place long…do you know how some kids move around city after city, state after state, never really making friends, or worse, constantly leaving the friends they DO have? For me…it was TEN TIMES WORSE. I had to move from world to world and whenever we got REMOTELY settled into the hotel or other temporarily dwelling, we had to leave! Working for Samael meant he wouldn't hunt my parents anymore and…It's not like I know Green. She's my sister and I understand mentally that the whole thing is…sad."

"..."

"I OUGHT to know her. I should have spent my childhood with my big sister being there, we should have blown stuff up in the backyard together or played gorka-ball or "Toss the GIR"…we should have been siblings but…but we weren't. Aren't. It IS sad, but…I just don't really know her, and so I don't have many qualms about killing her, though MIYU had NO qualms in killing MALIK! And to get to her mother, she killed her dad too!"

"Azazel has yet to kill Nick, his dear, beloved Grandfather. So perhaps he'll kill his originator instead, he was so close to Nick, In his reality, his "Pee-Paw" was so PROUD of him…he even gave him his-"

"..."

"As for Frequency, lobotomizing Sari, whom he cared for greatly, was his act. Samael was happy to allow him to do the act, it allowed Miyu to replace Sari, who had refused to kill her parents and had taken Samael's gift of immortality. Such a pity…she would have gained Miyu's incomparable battle skills but instead she lost most of her brain."

"And now let us come to the point. You are not going to be rescued. You are going to be tortured here by us, one at a time, and when TWO finishes with you, I…will begin."

"Question: Who shall start?"

"I'll be the first...my power will be good for torturing you-"

With that, Dib awoke from the strange dream. It had felt real. FAR too real. And that person...Two. It had definitely been him. What was going on? Were Two's memories of the past somehow crisscrossing with his slave's head? Possible, he supposed. The Irken could control him from his head, but that meant his mind was open, at least when asleep, to Dib's own...

How strange...

"How odd..." Dib mumbled as he scratched his head, sweeping his legs out of his bed and onto the floor as he made his way to his bureau to get his usual attire out. Dark jacket? Check. Blue t-shirt with a "Meh" face on it? Check. Dark pants? Also check. Glasses...shoes...belt for said pants...check, check, check-

"...is the ring still on my finger?" Dib mumbled, looking down at his hand.

Check.

"...crap." He muttered. "You JERK." He growled, turning his head to look out the window at a cheerily grinning Two, who pushed the window open, letting in the sunshine to the dark blue walls of Dib's cluttered-up bedroom.

"Nice place, it really is...except for the smell." Two admitted as he looked around the bedroom. Indeed, over the years Dib had gotten slightly more advanced equipment from his father for birthday presents...yes, Birthday. Dib's father refused to celebrate Christmas due to his undying hatred of Santa Claus, so he always wasted that day searching for signs of Santa. And beating up Santa's Helpers in the street.

Yeah, it was weird.

A sophisticated computer system on a desk with what appeared to be three dozen drawers, many of them stuffed full of papers on Bigfeet, ghosts and aliens...a pile of laundry in the corner, all dark clothes, blue t-shirts...and several dozen paranormal posters littered the walls, including one of a flying saucer. And not just ANY flying saucer. "Is that from the X-Files series?" Two found himself asking, an intrigued expression coming to his features.

"Yes, the original one. I got it off of Ebay. Cost me two month's allowance too." Dib added, not taking his eyes off the alien scumbag. He wanted to jump through the air and do a karate kick to his head, hey, years of fighting with Zim meant he'd picked up a couple of tricks. But no, no, it was like he was rooted to the spot, and he knew EXACTLY why.

He tried to yank the ring off anew...hopeless. Two chuckled slightly as he snapped his fingers. "I used to watch the show when I was younger. Ahhhh, memories. Moving from dimension to dimension it's still nice to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Wait until I tell you about the second movie."

"Second movie?" Dib remarked, blinking stupidly.

"Oh, right, you don't know. Guess this world will never see it once I'm...well..." He chuckled coldly. "Once WE'RE finished. Go on, my little puppet. Eat breakfast. Say goodbye to your father with your sister. Then we begin, and I think I'll start by doing you a favor, and doing what all children dream of doing at one point or another...burning down your school."

"Why would you want to do that?" Dib growled angrily, fingers clenching almost like claws, eyes alit with fury. "What could you POSSIBLY gain from-"

"Do I look like a Bond Villain, my boy? I'm not TELLING you." The Irken chuckled. "But I'm in a good mood, so being the nice person I am, here's the deal. You get until Lunch Period's over. Then I'll take full control...and have you and your sister burn down the school and everyone and everything in it."

The Irken was suddenly up in Dib's face, smiling coldly, one hand gripping his chin, the other tapping Dib's ring. "You have until then to convince the others to get out, and don't bother trying to use your ring to convince them, I'll put it under a lock that won't open until it is finally time to BURN, baby, BURN." The Irken laughed. "Hey, you've been failing to get your classmates to listen for years. Maybe today's the day they'll finally listen!"

"You don't have to do this." Dib said, trying another tack, remembering the dream. Normally he wouldn't EVER negotiate with an alien, not even try, but...this was different. "You don't need to hurt anyone."

"But I do." Two whispered, raising his gloved claws up and clenching them. "...I DO."

Letting off cold-hearted laughter, the Irken jumped back out of the window, strolling off. Dib cursed under his breath. This was one of the few times an alien was out in the open! NO disguise! Why, WHY was nobody outside? Or LOOKING outside? What had their attention? Were they all still ASLEEP?

"So then he shot her, it was weird." The newest arrival on the "Okrah" show said to the titular host, Gaz munching on some cereal as the tall and weirdly surreal Prof. Membrane adjusted the goggles over his eyes, looking at the screen.

"This PULP is what the people are interested in?" He inquired.

"Yeeeeep." Gaz said nonchalantly through a mouthful of "Choco Frosted Sugar Bombs".

"And it's on every morning from 8 to 9? Without fail?"

"Yeeeeeeeeep."

"...what next, dancing panda bears?" Prof. Membrane mused sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he poured himself some coffee. He was getting better at this, he TRIED to be there during the day for breakfast if nothing else. And to think, it only took him a little over 10 years to actually start being somewhat of a good father figure.

"Mornin', Dad." Dib said, entering the kitchen and going to the fridge before shrinking away. Every time he tried to open the fridge, weird things happened. Last time he was SURE he'd heard a sneeze, and the mayonnaise had started yelling "The ketchup did it! The ketchup!" And ANOTHER time his father had left an experiment in there. Something had been living in the fridge.

"...is...the thing still in there?" Dib asked Prof. Membrane, inching away from the fridge and reaching for the knife drawer by the sink, pulling out a large carving knife as Gaz watched with interest.

"No, I'm fairly certain I moved him to the freezer." Prof. Membrane said, shaking his head back and forth. Smiling in relief, Dib wiped his brow and opened up the fridge...and was then forced to hack back several dozen tentacles before slamming the fridge shut. "Or maybe I forgot. Who keeps track?" Prof. Membrane added a moment later, putting a gloved finger to where his lip might have been...it was hard to tell, the white labcoat that he wore had a loooong collar that reached up high. You couldn't even see his nose!

"I'll just make some toast."

"SUPER-Toast?" Prof. Membrane asked expectantly.

"...er, I was thinking cinna-" Dib began to say, before he saw his father's slowly drooping expression. "SUPER-Cinnamon Toast." He quickly changed his mind, nodding enthusiastically.

"EXCELLENT choice, my son!" Prof. Membrane agreed, clapping Dib on the shoulder and moving to the cupboard to get the cinnamon sugar for his boy. "I can only spare 110 more seconds but I'd be HAPPY to get your cinnamon toast started!"

"...thanks, Dad." Dib said quietly. "I...I really appreciate it. And...appreciate you." He murmured.

"What will that thing make me do to the ones I love?"He thought sadly to himself, sitting in the chair next to Gaz as she quietly looked over at him, a faint flicker of genuine regret passing over her face for an instant.

...

...the Beautiful Angel clutched his mother's paw, looking down at her closed eyes. She looked so...worn and tired. So sad...so lost...so forgotten. She was a sad little doll that had been tossed into a closet to be forgotten about. She lay there in the ornately-draped bed inside of the crystalline palace that hovered high above the clouds, hidden from all sight not by ignorance on behalf of humanity, but by carefully-constructed machinations, creations of Zerinim Two, and of the robot that calmly watched, her face solemn before she turned her red-helmed head away from the sight of her beloved kneeling by his dying mother.

"C'mon...just a few more days, momma." He whispered, his golden/amber eyes gazing down upon his beloved mother. "...just a few more days and maybe we can end all of this...get our world back...and bring all of us back to normal."

"Is she...any better? Any worse?"

The Angel looked up. Zerinim Two's face was normally a window...behind his eyes you could tell he was barely suppressing a furious rage within. Now that window was cracked, but not showing rage...but deep, deep concern and sadness...

Personal loss...one of the greatest causes of rage in the world.

"No. And...and I've been talking with her and...she kept asking about the plan." The Angel went on, sighing as he stood up, brushing his thick slightly-light-brown locks of hair back. "You know that this base Earth is very...unstable. It's got the seeds of potential for all the other stories, but if this plan works, I'm worried what'll happen to the other-"

"Who GIVES a rat's ass?" Two snapped angrily, cutting his hand in the air to shut him up. "Azzy, these people are awful. AW-FUL. I might have been petty and selfish but when it came down to it, I ALWAYS put doing what was right for the ones I loved and for the world I loved at the forefront! Do you think ANY of the so-called "cornerstones" of this Base Earth would?"

"...I don't know." The Beautiful Angel admitted softly, honestly. "...I'd like to believe that some of them would."

"I'm sorry that "some of them" isn't enough." Two spoke quietly, folding his arms. "You know...I saw into Dib's mind when I controlled him. He has a family. He has a father. He has a sister. And his life's been slowly getting better for the past five years. Zim getting more considerate, Gaz becoming more tolerant, his father's actually eating BREAKFAST with them!"

That made the woman in the bed chuckle slightly. "Brekkie? N-no kiddin'? Ame kef, never thought he'd actually..." Her chuckling dissolved into pained coughs as she held her paw over her mouth and Two gently patted her forehead. "I'm...sorry I'm so friggin' useless now."

"It'll be alright, maneem." Two whimpered, kneeling by his mother and kissing her paw as a blue-furred being entered, Two rubbing his eyes as he left the room. The blue-furred being took off his cap, letting his hair fall down as he nervously chewed his lip, gazing at his aunt.

"...are we really gonna go through with this? I want the world back but..." He sighed. "...what he's making Dib do isn't...it isn't right."

"I want you to have this." The Beautiful Angel said, giving the blue-furred bounty hunter a pad of paper he had in a pack slung around his shoulder. "It's notes that mother took. I've read it five dozen times..." He trailed off, taking his mother's paw again.

The blue-furred being chewed his lip again, walking out of the room as he went to stand on a balcony, reading the journal as the robot stepped out on the balcony to join him.

"I shall be meeting with MY personal inductees today." She said in her emotionless tone, holding up the rings she would be using. "They shall join my Corps and I will then bring the two up here so that they may understand why we do what we do. I think he would go along with it anyway...a chance to destroy this world? Have "fun"? How could he say "no"?"

"Will you bother to tell him that once enough of this world's been destroyed by the Cornerstones, he'll get folded into the historical fabric?" The bounty hunter wanted to know.

"That's on a "need-to-know" basis." The robot said, a flicker of amusement passing over her metallic features as she sauntered back into the crystalline palace, leaving the bounty hunter alone on the balcony as he reached into his pocket, pulling out two small rings of his own. One was shining slightly, a chosen partner found, but the other...it's light was dull.

"...why isn't it lit up? What's it missing? WHO is it missing? I might have been the first to get ahold of these, but...can't do this alone..." He murmured, putting them back in his pocket, his paw going over the journal to his side, over an entry stained by teardrops.

...

...Dib nervously gripped his pants pockets as he looked out the window of the bus, sitting in the back with Gaz as she looked over at him. "Any ideas?" She asked sarcastically.

"...I thought about offering twenty bucks to everyone to leave school right after lunch...but my allowance isn't THAT high." Dib admitted, pulling out his wallet and opening it, a tiny moth fluttering out as Gaz rolled her eyes.

"And just TELLING them the truth won't help either, will it?" She asked. "They'd never believe you. Well, they might if you tried to use that thing in front of them, but-"

"It's not working." Dib mumbled, shaking his fist angrily, the ring uselessly dull. "I'm trying and trying...but he meant it...he shut it off. And after lunch, it turns on...and I turn into a living weapon. He'll drive me like I'm a BATTLEBOT."

Gaz looked around the bus, eyes narrowing darkly. "...Dib...what's wrong with this picture?" She asked quietly, dangerously.

Dib looked up from his lap, glancing around.

"Notice anything...missing?"

Suddenly it hit him. Zim. Skoodge. Gretchen. Nick. All four of them were gone. How strange...how very, very strange...

The bus came to a stop as everyone headed into the school, their new guidance counselor greeting the children at the door. He saw Dib's clearly sullen expression and his gentle green eyes softened. A hand reached out, placed squarely on Dib's right shoulder. "Dib, is something the matter?" Mr. Thildari inquired, one eyebrow raised high over a head with perfectly-combed grey hair.

"...nothing you could help with, sir." Dib told him as Gaz headed inside. "You've been more help than the last guidance counselor I had, but...you can't help me with this."

"Aww, why not try me?" Mr. Thildari asked, moving Dib inside and sitting him down at a bench by a water fountain. "First period bell doesn't ring for a whole seven..." He checked his watch. "...six whole minutes!"

"...I need to get everyone out of the school before lunch. And I mean EVERYONE. Even that creepy janitor." Dib told the guidance counselor, leaning back in the chair, Two's smirk lingering in his mind. "Or else something terrible is going to happen."

"Dib, did a friend of yours say they're going to blow up the school?" The guidance counselor wanted to know, his darkened skin paling slightly.

Dib's eyes went wide.

There it was...

...hope. Why hadn't he seen it before? It was such a simple solution.

"Yes, yes." Dib said fervently. "...except he's not really a friend, he...he said he was going to blow the whole school sky-high after lunch period, Mr. Thildari." Dib informed the guidance counselor, shaking him by his shoulders, back and forth, back and forth.

The guidance counselor looked deep into Dib's eyes, mouth becoming a taut line as if "reading" him. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully before closing his green eyes and letting out a soft, long sigh. "I believe you." He told Dib. "I'll inform the principal and vice principal about this, and I'll have everyone escorted out of the building until the police can search the grounds."

Dib inwardly cheered for joy as Mr. Thildari stood up and headed for the staff wing, punching the air as he headed off to class. He won. He'd WON.

Or at least...so he thought.

"I should have KNOWN you'd cheat." Two muttered furiously, sitting in a tree outside of school, his fists clenching tightly as red energy swirled off his body like sparks off a fire as his own ring swirled around him like a tiny fly, buzzing, buzzing.

"Calling in help like that, you great big cheater...well, you're about to find out that I'm just as petty and immature as you, Dib Membrane..." The Irken chuckled darkly. "I suppose the saying's true. If you want something done right..."

He hopped down from the tree, making his way towards the school as red energy seeped off his body, his footprints leaving behind burning indents within the ground as he chuckled coldly.

"You have to do it yourself."

#invader zim #zim #superhero #superheroes #Dib #Gaz #Two #Zerinim #action #adventure #fanfic #fanfiction

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just-some-fiction · 3 years

Text

Just You and Me Part 23

Block parties and the Good Girls... how’s that gonna go down?

Rio was freaking out - internally of course - looking at Mick as though he grew a second head, “Hermano what the fuck were you thinking?”

“Ms Boland is a handful, but her girls are aight,” he shrugged - Rio didn’t disagree but there was no way his pregnant and hormonal wife was going to be okay with Elizabeth being invited to one of his mother’s block parties.

It started an hour ago when he walked into Boland Bubbles. Mick and Annie seemed to be having a very animated conversation, while the others were just watching them.

“Then she adds a bit of salsa and it just pops,” Mick was explaining to her, “nah Mrs Ramirez carnitas are bomb.”

Rio internally groaned, knowing exactly what was coming, “You should make a turn, she’s having a block party this weekend.”

Before he could jump in, Annie replied, “Sounds like a plan,” she paused, “who’s Mrs Ramirez?”

“The Boss’ moms,” Cisco answered and the girls froze, looking slightly surprised - obviously they’d assume he didn’t have a mother.

He made himself known at that moment, letting his calm facade slip into place, “What’s going on ladies?”

“Nothing,” Beth handed him the bag. He raised an eyebrow and looked over at Mick and Annie.

“Invited them to the next block party,” Mick spoke up.

“Are these like block parties or,” Annie raised her eyebrow suggestively, “block parties.”

Mike scoffed and sent Annie a confused look, “What shady ass block parties you been to?” Annie shrugged.

Rio doesn’t know what possessed him to say the following, “Y'all should swing by, bring the kids with,” everyone looked at him surprised.

Mick shook his head, “Mrs Ramirez parties are special, everyone can come.”

After they left and got into the car, Rio turned to Mike, “You couldn’t stop this idiota from opening his mouth?”

“How is this my fault?”

“If Lucia gets a gun, imma let her shoot you homes,” Rio looked at Mick in the rearview mirror.

-----------

The day of his mother’s party, he walked into the kitchen where Lucia was filling a platter with something. Her baby bump wasn’t visible yet and it seemed as though she was taking advantage of that by wearing a dress that yet again made him want to do indecent things to her in public. Standing behind her, he splayed his hands on her stomach.

“How's my girls doing?” he whispered into her neck.

“Girls?”

“Yeah,” he pressed his hands gently into her abdomen.

“It’s too early to tell papi,” she laughed as he kissed her bare shoulder, moving up to her neck, then behind her ear, “Rio,” it came out as a sigh.

Before he could do anything else, the backdoor swung open and his sister walked in, “Yo dumbass, your weirdass employees rocked up.”

Rio froze and squeezed his eyes shut - after the meeting in the week, things got busy and he forgot to tell his wife. His sister looked at the couple, waiting for a reply.

“Be right there Mia,” he said as she turned and headed out.

“What weird ass employee?” his wife asked, her body tense.

“No one mami,” he went back to kissing her shoulder but she pushed him off and walked to the kitchen window.

“Christopher, why is that bitch in your mother’s yard?” she snapped, watching Mick greet them - she noticed Jane, Sarah, Henry and Ben were with but not the other kids, Marcus running towards his friend. Turning to face her husband, she had to control the urge to throw something at his head. He sighed, deciding to keep quiet and not upset her more. Walking past him, she picked up the plate and made her way to the door.

“Come on baby,” he tried to stop her, “don’t be mad.”

Before they could leave, the kitchen door swung open yet again and Yolanda walked in, eyeing the couple, “Why is the lady who put three slugs in my son, at my party?”

“Mick invited them,” he ground out.

“Really?” Yoland looked at her son, “Cos according to Mick you told them to swing by and bring the kids.”

Lucia said nothing, sending her husband a scathing look and walked out. Before he could follow her, his mother stopped him.

“Don’t,” she snapped, “I trust you mijo but this is unacceptable, not only did she try and kill you, she interfered in your marriage as well,” Rio narrowed his eyes, “now as far as I understand, those other two aren’t the problem,” she sighed, “so go introduce me to them and let me decide if they can stay or not.”

“Since when you ever turn someone away?” he pulled his face.

“Since that someone almost took my son from me,” she snapped.

Elizabeth watched as Lucia made her way outside. Soon Marcus and Jane ran up to her and she crouched down to their level. The redhead’s eyes travelled over her outfit - an off the shoulder floral dress with a slit down one side. She noticed a few of the other women around her also send Lucia scathing looks. Turning back to the group at the table she watched Annie talk to a lady - Charlie - while Ruby and Stan were conversing with a man called Jakes. It seemed as though Rio’s operation was larger than she thought.

Mike smiled at something behind her and she turned around. Rio was walking towards them with an older lady who she assumed was his mother. He had his arm slung around her shoulders and they were talking animatedly.

“Hey Mrs R,” Mike greeted her.

“Hi mijo,” she smiled as they came to stand by the table, “I’m here to meet some of my son’s employees,” she looked at the three ladies and Beth immediately knew this lady knew who she was and what she did.

She spoke to Annie, Stan and Ruby, disregarding Beth for a while before turning to the redhead, “So you’re the brains behind this little group,” she let her eyes scan over the woman who caused her family so much stress over the last few months. Elizabeth was lost for words as the older woman unleashed her bluntness.

“Thank you for allowing us to come,” Annie jumped in, “Mick was raving about your carnitas.”

Yolanda smiled at her - she’s been around people and watched people for long enough to know who the genuine ones were and who was not, “Welcome, please, eat, socialise, enjoy,” she paused, “my son seems to think the three of you have potential in this business so you might as well get to know everyone,” she turned to leave, “Lucia, there you are, you look lovely today mija.”

Lucia smiled at her mother in law and nodded to the group - there was a man here that she’s never seen before, assuming it was Ruby’s husband. Rio slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her close as he accepted a drink from Jakes.

“Hey Cia,” he nodded at her.

“Sup Jakes,” she smiled.

She was still upset with her husband, but she wasn’t going to give Beth Boland any chance to try anything or any of the other ladies that were there. He wrapped his arms around her waist as they stood in front of the group. She stroked his forearms as he kissed her temple.

“Yo,” Cisco walked up to them, “the fuck you letting Boss lady stand Boss?”

Elizabeth bristled at the insinuation that Lucia was a boss, but stopped when she noticed her ex-lover’s wife not having anything to drink and Cisco pulling up a chair for her.

“It’s called pregnancy, you degenerate, she ain’t an invalid,” Chuck joked, throwing a napkin at Cisco.

Soon a little girl with dark brown hair ran up to the table, plopping herself against Rio, “Uncle Wio,” he groaned, knowing Annie was gonna have a field day with this, “where’s Marcus?”

“With his cousins Franny,” he pointed to the small group by the jungle jim, the little girl gasped in excitement and took off.

“Be careful Franny,” Chuck yelled.

“Okay mama.”

Ruby seemed to notice that most of the people here had kids and families. A few minutes later, she felt someone slide in next to her and turned to see Lucia, who smiled at her. They’ve never had a conversation before, but she didn’t mind gang friend's wife, who seemed to hold nothing against her or Annie. Stan was a bit shocked when he saw Lucia, not realising that the crime boss was a married man with a family.

“Who’s that?” he whispered to her.

“Gang friend’s wife,” she replied softly.

“He married?”

“Yip.”

“You good?”

Lucia laughed, “Yeah, three months along,” motioning to her stomach, “taking advantage of the fact that I can still sit on a normal picnic bench,” she laughed, pausing for a few moments, “can’t believe Mick actually invited you guys,” she looked amused, “and that ya’ll actually came,” she laughed.

Ruby didn’t know how to react, but luckily didn’t have to because Rio walked over to his wife, “Mami,” he called, “need help with something real quick.”

Chuck sent him a look, which he ignored as he helped his wife up and pulled her away, “It’s been close to twenty years and he’s still horny for her,” Chuck laughed.

Lucia let Rio pull her towards his old bedroom, pushing her gently against the door after closing it, “Why you ignoring me?”

“Rio,” she sighed, “you really dragged me here to ask me that?”

“Nah dragged you here to hit it while you in this dress mami,” he let his hands slide over her waist, “look so good mami,” he caged her in, “hurts when you look this good and ignore me.”

“You know why I’m ignoring you papi,” she huffed.

“I know and I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled her dress up, “but how good would it feel if you go back outside filled with me, knowing you the one I’m with.”

She rolled her eyes, “Wish I wasn’t,” she mumbled - she was being petty, but he fucked up.

“The fuck you say,” he stepped back, “nah mama you ain’t gonna be a brat now,” he pushed her back against the door, “I’m trying to make it right and you keep fighting,” he growled.

She refused to look at him, turning her head and looking to the side.

“Lucia,” he growled.

“What?” she snipped, still looking to the side, gasping as he sank his teeth into her collarbone. She slapped him when he lifted his head, letting a slew of curse words out in Spanish. Rocking his jaw he pushed her up against the wall, crashing his lips onto hers, his hands diving under the slit of her dress and feeling the absence of panties. Growling against her lips, he undid his jeans and pulled himself. Hoisting her up against the door, they both groaned as he sank into her. His thrusts were deep and hard, his hands gripped her hips, holding her in place. Somehow he got them to the bed.

“Get undressed Lucia,” he growled as he unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off along with his undertop. When she took too long he helped her, unclasping her bra as well. He sat them down on the bed, continuing to suck and bite her breasts. Soon he lifted her up and sank her down onto him, hissing as her nails scratched over his shoulders.

“That’s it mami,” he groaned, “fuck yourself on this dick,” flicking her clit, “you love being dicked down like this huh?” he smirked.

“You close baby?” he asked innocently, kissing her neck.

“Fuck Rio,” she mewled, letting out another string of Spanish curse words, only this time in pleasure rather than anger. Suddenly he stopped and pulled her off him.

“Nah mami,” he drawled, “you ain’t coming now,” he grinned at her, “go get the toy,” he motioned to the dresser.

“No papi please,” she begged, trying to scootch back onto his dick, but he kept her in place.

“The toy Lucia,” he growled, watching as she pulled out a vibrator - one they conveniently left here when they moved out. Taking it from her, he flicked it on, satisfied to see that the battery was fully charged. He slid it into her after putting it on a low setting.

“You know why I’m punishing you?” he stood up and gripped her jaw lightly.

“Yes,” she sighed, “cos I was being a brat.”

“Nah mami,” he laughed, “cos you talking shit bout not being with me.”

She rolled her eyes, “You mine Cia, ain’t no one will even think of being with you cos they know I’ll kill em,” he pulled her naked body against his own, “and cos you feeling threatened by some suburban lady I fucked when we was broken up,” he made her look at him, “you my queen mami, aight.”

She nodded, pulling him close and kissing him. Her arms pulled him closer as his arms wrapped around her waist, slipping his tongue into her mouth, moving them back to the bed. Sitting down, he gently pushed her down, between his legs. Looking up at him, she licked the head of his dick while her hand stroked his shaft. She took him down her throat, as far as she could.

"That's my girl," he groaned, stroking her hair, "sucking me so good," biting his lip, he kept looking at her, "while there's a yard full of people downstairs, you like doing shit like this when there's an audience huh," groaning as she deepthroats him, "they all outside knowing what we up to."

This seemed to spur her on, sucking him harder, "Just like that mami," he groaned, holding her head in place, as he felt the familiar pull.

She swallowed as he came, licking his head as she pulled away. When she straddled his lap, the vibrator shifted inside of her, pushing against her clit. This caused her to double over, resting her head against his shoulder. Rio tilted her head up, kissing her roughly.

"You want it mami," he held her chin, "you wanna come?"

"Please," she mewled as he slipped a finger inside of her.

"Nah mami," he reached for her dress, "get dressed," he grinned, "let's go have some fun."

He kissed her shoulder as he helped her with her zipper, while she fixed her hair, the vibrator still nestled inside of her. Turning around she rested her hands on his shoulders. He smirked, as his eyes trailed down her body, leaning down, he placed a kiss between her cleavage. She stroked his chin, smiling slightly, giving him a peck on the lips.

---------------

They were only gone for about thirty minutes, his hands around her waist as they walked back outside. There was music playing and some people dancing.

"When last we danced?" he pulled her towards the dancing group of people.

"Can't remember," she laughed as he swayed them.

She caught Beth's eye as she stared at them. Deciding to not let her ruin her moment, she focused on Rio, who was looking at her.

"Just you and me mama," he whispered, kissing her.

A few moments later, a little body ran into Rio's legs, "We also wanna dance," Marcus looked at his parents, Jane in tow, who waved at her.

“Come here Janey,” she stuck out her hand. As the four of them danced, soon joined by Chuck and Franny, as well as Mia and her son, she could feel the daggers Elizabeth was shooting at her, but she couldn’t care less.

Later after Beth and her people left, she was sitting in Rio’s lap, his hands stroking her stomach. They were alone in a corner, everyone else absorbed in their own conversations. She leaned down and kissed him, letting her hands trail along his shoulders. Lucia's dress was flowy enough that no one could notice his hand between her legs, moving the vibrator against her clit. Every few moments, he’d whisper obscenities against her skin.

"Come baby," he whispered, as he applied more pressure, before sinking two fingers in alongside it. Soon she was clenching around them, her abdomen tensing up. Her head was resting against his, her hands stroking his cheek and arms. A few minutes later he pulled out the vibrator and slipped it into his pocket. She sent him a look and he just shrugged.

Marcus wondered over to his parents, stifling a yawn as he climbed onto his father's lap, "Someone's gonna be knocked out real soon," Rio looked down at his kid.

"No I'm not," Marcus argued, this time yawning, covering his mouth.

"Come on," Lucia stood up, "let's get you ready for bed," Marcus followed his mother into the house, as Rio watched them. A few moments later he got up and followed them into the house. He shut his sister’s room door behind him as he watched Lucia help Marcus change into his pyjamas, the little boy rubbing at his tired eyes.

“And someone ain’t tired,” Rio smirked making his way into the room.

“I’m not,” Marcus the ever stubborn six year old argued. Rio rolled his eyes and picked his kid up off the bed and pulled the blankets away, laying him down, before turning to his wife and pulling her down onto his lap. It didn’t take ten minutes for Marcus to fall asleep.

As they walked out of the room, Rio pulled her towards his old bedroom, “Come on baby,” squeezed her ass, “let’s go have some fun.”

A few minutes later, in his locked childhood bedroom, Lucia was riding him, her hands braced against his shoulders and her head buried in his neck as she moved against him. They weren’t even undressed, he kicked his shoes off and hopped onto the bed, pulling her with him.

“Fuck papi,” she moaned, “it’s so good,” a whine left her throat, “you fuck me so good,” Rio said nothing, his brow creased, lips parted as he fucked her.

“I’m coming,” she moaned, her body shuddering slightly, him following soon after her.

“Fuck baby,” he groaned into her chest, his tongue gliding along her cleavage, licking the sweat droplets off, “too good ma.”

Her fingers started undoing the buttons on his shirt, exposing his skin. Pushing his shirt off his shoulders Lucia placed open mouth kisses along the exposed skin. Soon her dress was pulled off of her, leaving her in a bra, which her husband pulled off as well, his lips attaching to one nipple, using the tip of his tongue to circle the hardened nub.

"Fuck baby," Rio groaned, letting his eyes travel down her body, "love when you pregnant," this she knew, "everything about you I love baby," he pounded into her, enjoy the sight of her tits bouncing as he entered her body, "come for me ma," he circled her clit, "be a good girl and come on my dick," she felt her wetness gushing down between her legs and along his dick, "that pussy so good," a few moments later she creamed on him as her orgasm hit.

They kissed as their orgasm hit, riding out their release. Lucia collapsed against his chest, her body still shuddering and her walls still spasm around his dick. Rio sucked onto her collarbone, shooting the last bit of his load inside of her, he rested against the headboard, breathing heavily, licking his lips as he felt his wife continue to clench around him. Somehow as they fucked he managed to get his jeans and boxers off, leaving the couple completely naked.

“Fuck babe,” Lucia moaned against his neck.

“That’s my girl,” gripping her ass, Rio pulled her closer and off of his still hard dick, his tongue darting out, licking the corner of his mouth. Lucia lifted her head and looked at her husband who was leaning against the headboard, eyes closed and mouth slightly parted. She kissed his chest and neck, wrapping her arms around him. They stayed like that for a while, holding one another. Soon they pulled on some clothes and got under the covers, Lucia falling asleep. Sometime during the night, Marcus slipped into the room and walked to his father’s side of the bed.

Rio who was awake, popped an eye open, “Wassup pop?”

“I had a bad dream,” the little boy rubbed his eyes as his dad pulled him onto the bed. Marcus cuddled into his father’s side.

“Daddy,” the little boy whispered, “do you have bad dreams?”

“Sometimes pop,” Rio looked down at his kid.

“Mama had bad dreams when you were gone,” that was something he didn’t know, “when we stayed with abuela for that time, she’d wake up crying,” Rio looked over at his wife who shifted slightly in her sleep, they never discussed that.

Marcus decided to sleep on the couch, Rio built him a makeshift fort, the little boy falling asleep fairly quickly. Climbing back into bed, he pulled Lucia closer, pressing her back against his front.

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” her voice was soft, barely audible, he said nothing for a while, simply pulled her closer.

“Mami,” he kissed her shoulder, turning her around, until her head was tucked under his chin and her leg was over his hip. His jaw was clenched and he was tracing a line up and down her spine. Deep down he was angry with himself for putting her in a situation like this in the first place, having promised her that he’d protect her. He felt her kiss his neck softly, her arm wrapped around his middle.

“You and me baby,” she whispered, “just you and me ok.”

The next morning, they were woken up by a little body wiggling his way between them. Rio moved up a little, to let his son between them, Marcus cuddling into his mother’s chest. Lucia kissed his head lovingly.

“You and me and bean,” she said, looking up at RIo who rocked his jaw before wrapping his arms around the two of them, “and bean number two,” she laughed.

“Mama, when is the baby gonna get here?” Marcus scrunched his nose up, which Lucia kissed.

“Still a couple months baby,” she laughed at her son’s expression.

“That’s gonna take forever,” he sighed.

“We had to wait the same amount of time for you pop,” Rio chuckled.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Lucia kissed his forehead, "why don't you go see what abuela made for breakfast papi."

The little boy scurried off the bed, "Ok."

Rio looked at his wife who stretched next to him, he took this opportunity to slip his hand down the length of her body and under the covers, resting it between her legs. Lucia smirked, pulling his head towards hers, kissing him as he slipped two fingers into her heat. He fingered her until she came, his thumb grazing her clit.

"Yes baby," she moaned, her hand cupping him through his boxers, before pulling him out. Rio slipped into her, not wasting any time and pounding into her relentlessly.

Rio sucked on her neck, holding her hands above her head as he slowed down his pace. Moving slowly, he looked down at her, watching her face clench as he hit a sensitive spot inside of her.

"Christopher," she mewled, as he let go of her hands, she raked her nails down his back, "fuck baby," her legs tightening their grip around his hips. Her walls clenched as she came, pulling him closer until their foreheads touched, her hands clutching his jaw.

Continuing to move inside of her, Rio pulled her closer, slipping a hand under her thigh, allowing him to go deeper. He felt himself get closer to his release.

"I'm coming," he groaned, his hips stuttering as he came inside of her, "fuck baby," his entire body ceasing up as she milked him. Lucia ran her fingers down his spine, letting his weight rest on her for a bit.

The couple stayed in their cocoon for a few more minutes. Rio kissed along the length of her neck. Lucia felt his load drip out of her, her hand moving down to catch it. He rolled off of her slightly, thankful that Marcus shut the door when he left, then pulled the covers off of them. Proceeding to place bites and kisses from the valley of her breasts down to her thighs sucking on the junction where her pelvis and thigh meet.

"Rio," she sighed, stroking his head, the feeling of his beard against her soft skin making her back arch slightly. Her husband found her clit, latching onto it as he plunged his fingers into her.

"Baby we need to go down for breakfast," she had to stop him or else they'd never leave the room.

He didn't stop though, rather sucking her harder. Pulling away he looked up at her, a questioning look on his face. His fingers were still buried inside of her, the pad of his thumb circling her overstimulated nub. Lucia looked at him, feeling her walls start to clench.

"Want me to stop?" he curled his fingers, causing her to jerk forward, "I don't think you want me to stop baby," he chuckled.

Lucia came suddenly, her body jerking as he fingered her. When she caught her breath, he moved up and kissed her cheek lovingly and stroked her hair.

"That's my girl," he whispered against her ear, "can always take it," pulling her sleep shirt in place, he wrapped his arms around her, "come on baby, let shower and go have breakfast yeah?"

A few minutes later they were out of the shower and making their way to the kitchen. Marcus was propped on a stool helping his grandmother with pancakes. Lucia stood behind him and placed a kiss on his head.

"Morning you two," Yolanda smirked at them.

Rio kissed his mother's cheek, "Hi ma," rolling his shoulders as he poured himself coffee.

"Heard anything about the house yet?" his mother asked them. They decided to move into a house after he came back. Marcus enjoyed the time spent by his grandmother, having a yard and ample space to wreak havoc, so the couple decided now with another baby on the way, it was time.

"Yeah," Rio smirked, "we got the house," seems like they were officially moving back to the neighbourhood.

His mother smiled.

"I ain't throwing no block parties though."

#rio #rio x lucia #lucia solano #beth boland #annie marks #ruby hill #stan hill #the kids are their too #charlie graceland #mick good girls #mike graceland

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oneweekoneband · 3 years

Text

charming, if a little gauche: the taylor swift story

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youtube

“the last great american dynasty” is a song that no other pop star could make or, more to the point, would want to make, and as the third track on folklore it marked the spot in my very first listen—sweaty and embarrassingly strung out sitting in the cab of a pickup at the third place where we’d tried to find wifi—at which I let myself vault over the ledge, out of my cautious remove, and into real excitement for what this album might hold.

This is a song that Taylor Swift wrote about Rebekah Harkness, the ballet-obsessed socialite who married into the Standard Oil family (”the wedding was charming, if a little gauche” Taylor sings, and I scream.) then lived, fifty years ago, in the Rhode Island beach house Swift now owns. It is—and on this matter there can be no argument—the horniest song on the album. Taylor is absolutely jazzed out of her WASPy little gourd over this woman, this house, this grand, cyclical American story she imagines herself as part of. Does Taylor actually want to fuck her house and/or the ghost of the woman who once owned it? Well, that’s not for me to say. But the idea of them very evidently gets her going, and her zeal is infectious. She’s so clearly been bursting to indulge this passion, to memorialize this house, and I’m grateful that fate or timing made it so that she didn’t do it until now, until Aaron Dessner provided her with these specific instrumentals, because the combination is divine.

Taylor Swift in the Disney+ documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions confirming that her psychosexual obsession with Holiday House is longstanding.

“the last great american dynasty” relates in colorful detail the life of Mrs. Harkness, who became a widow at just thirty-nine ("the doctor had told him to settle down / it must have been her fault his heart gave out") then used the remaining years to spend her late husband’s fortune in the most lavish ways possible. Rebekah, Taylor tells us, "Filled the pool with champagne / And swam with the big names / Blew through the money on the boys and the ballet” and, again, her total, perfect thrill with this story, with the fact of living in the house this woman once misbehaved in so egregiously as to be an affront to all her stuffy Rhode Island neighbors, is evident throughout. The song is wonderful, good fun, sounds great, feels insane, and then at the quintessentially excellent bridge Taylor pulls a pivot that should be completely noxious, but is, in practice, anything but. Wryly, she inserts herself into the song at the final stretch. “Fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness / Their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me”. When, “She had a marvelous time ruining everything”, transforms into, “I had a marvelous time ruining everything” I almost clap. I have clapped. It’s all unbearably cute, and in every word there is sonic evidence of Taylor’s pleasure at her own cleverness, but unfortunately it’s so good that there isn’t even really any room left on the private beaches of one’s heart cavity wherein to be annoyed at having been got by a Taylor Swift bridge once again.

Honestly............Taylor is like two decades max from this.

Though Swift was born in Pennsylvania and came of age in Tennessee, the idea that she’d take instinctively to the blue blood fantasy of wealthy New England is no surprise. It’s unclear whether there’s ever been another person alive who radiates such Big Connecticut Energy while, in fact, not being from Connecticut at all. Watch Hill, Rhode Island made perfect sense to me, in fact, for Taylor, because it not only, at $17 mil cash, made her the owner of the most expensive private home in the entire (extremely small) state, but brings with the choice a kind of self-satisfied dignity. Not being one of the more popular East Coast seaside destinations for the rich and famous, like Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, or even The Hamptons, stylishly insists that you must really be trying to get away. The house is classically lovely and has a big yard with a pool and flag pole that extends high into the blue to look down over the plebeians in the sand.

Being myself a natural born daughter of the New England states, albeit of a considerably less pristine stripe than the denizens of Watch Hill, I have spent countless day trips and weekends at the Misquamicut State Beach just a few miles down the coast in Westerly, the town that Taylor’s village (”village” ...Rich people are so weird) is a part of. Not long after Taylor moved in, I was there at the beach with my mother, and my sister, and my mother’s sisters, and whatever other beer-filled bodies might have been around, a whole hoard, and we were lounging on fanned out bed sheets in front of a restaurant called Paddy’s where you can get a blue rum-based cocktail in a plastic fish bowl. I was nursing a sprained ankle that summer, and still a week or two from being fully well, but I wanted to see Taylor’s house up close, so we walked along the water’s edge until we got close enough to snap a photo for posterity, and to see that Taylor was using around the property custom no trespassing signs which read, “I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In”. When someone who is very rich, popular, talented, basically has everything going for them, could buy and sell you and everyone you’ve ever known, etc., makes a stupendously bad joke it is a moral imperative that you tell as many people about that as possible, and so with love in my heart, even, I share this fact now. People had their towels right up against the edge of her sea wall, like a geographic version of the nervous game, but almost as soon I arrived, it was time to limp back to the land of the mortals.

Your hero in 2014 standing in front of the saltbox house on the coast that took Rebekah Harkness’ mind off St. Louis

The pleasures on offer in “the last great american dynasty” are almost too many to name, and all of them so specifically, distinctly, freakishly, bona fide Grade A Taylor Swift, wonderful and grating not separately, one then the other, but both the whole time, and all at once. Taylor saying “gauche”; Taylor telling a story about this dead woman she has a gigantic crush on once dyeing a neighbor’s dog green; Taylor invoking the phrase “middle class divorcee”; Taylor using the word “bitch” affectionately. Even Taylor’s actual vocals, which have been, at times, the notable weak spot in her rigorously streamlined overall package, sound really, genuinely lovely here, and as spirited as ever. The song is laden with Taylor’s remarkable self-righteous belief that by purchasing a multi million dollar home in tony Watch Hill she was somehow “ruining everything”, when she was born and bred for enclaves like that long before she had any number one hits, and actually the only major problem was people thought it was poor form for her to rebuild the huge seawall around the property, even though it was her right, and she was able to do it without issue. To know that Taylor, raised wealthy, imagines herself somehow persecuted as insufficiently chic in Watch Hill for having, by way of immense pop superstardom, multiplied many times over the riches to which she was born, brings me a great and uncomplicated joy. It is a train of thought so wholly unrelatable as to seem plucked wholesale from a work of magical realism, and that happens to be exactly the feeling I want most from a Taylor Swift song. My one and only criticism of “the last great american dynasty” is that, if you’re not right on top of the skip button, it bleeds directly into the Bon Iver duet “exile”, which does kill the vibe, but, well, nobody’s perfect.

The defense rests.

#taylor swift #folklore

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twoidiotwriters1 · 3 years

Text

Christmas Eve 1970 (Pure Blood One-shot)

A/N: So, This story is part of my Pureblood series, before the whole teen drama. Enjoy and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

Words: 1,647

Chapter’s masterlist:

"Sirius, wake up!" yells Regulus entering my room.

I could pretend I was fast asleep, but I’d be lying. I woke up an hour ago, I just didn't want to get up yet.

"Sirius, c’mon! We should have breakfast and get ready for tonight!” He says excitedly. He walks up to my side of the bed, jumping several times while pulling my blanket.

I smile trying to hide my emotion that is perhaps worse than his.

"Tonight's party is a long way off, Reg."

“Well, if you keep delaying it will be longer. Come on, if not, Mum will be angry,” he warns and then leaves.

I stretch out on the mattress.

For much of the day, Mum tells us about the arrangements the house will have and the guests we will have. I rarely see my mother happy, it’s great that it always happens at Christmas time. Even my father is relaxed.

We have breakfast, we eat and prepare everything for when all the important people that my parents invite every year arrive, but it’s quite obvious that the only family that interests me is the Singhs. I can't wait to see my best friend, Persephone.

My brother and I are forced to wear a suit, although it’s not as uncomfortable as the one my father wears. But that doesn't matter, I would use whatever it was just to make everything perfect.

"What time do you go to sleep?" Regulus asks me after welcoming another family. We are both next to our parents, smiling as if this is not boring at all.

"Why do you want to know? You always fall asleep before us.”

He frowns.

“Not this year. I've prepared myself and I'll be awake,” He grins.

“Sure thing, dwarf.”

"Hi guys!” I turn and meet Persephone. Her black hair is tied up and she has a sparkly green dress.

My smile is finally genuine and I quickly hug her. She laughs and hugs me too.

"I missed you too," She whispers.

"Hey, I want to hug her too!” Regulus complains.

I grunt, but let her go. After a few minutes, we convinced our mother to let us go play.

We run through the new garden, hide, talk to other children, and eat snacks without the adults seeing us.

“Are you nervous?" she asks me when we're sitting under a small tree decorated with lights. It's just her and me.

“Of Regulus failing the challenge? No, the truth is that I don't think he’ll dare to steal the cake.”

She laughs.

"Don't underestimate your brother…” I look at her.

"Why would I be nervous?"

"Next year we’ll get our letters to Hogwarts,” she says looking at her hands.

I frown.

“You're nervous?" She looks up.

"A little.”

"Why?"

“What if they don't want me in that school? What if I'm not a witch like all my siblings?"

I want to think she's joking, but I know that face and she's about to cry.

“But, you are! My uncle Alphard said so. Remember that strange things happen to wizards with magic unintentionally before going to school. Like that time you made some glasses explode in the store when a lady told called you spoiled girl!”

I get chills when I remember it. I had never seen my friend so angry. She crosses her arms.

“She provoked me. She and her daughter Trixie!” She’s silent and then sighs. "You're right. My letter will surely arrive, but…” She bites her lower lip. “What if they put us in different houses? Oh Merlin! What if I don't stay in Slytherin? My dad is going to be so mad…”

"Hey! No- Wait…”I take her hand and sit down to face her. “Don't think about that. First: Our letter hasn't even arrived and second: You will obviously be in Slytherin, you have it all. Why do you have all these questions all of a sudden? A few weeks ago you were excited…”

Persephone makes a face.

"It's Isis and Balder's fault, yesterday they mocked me saying I would be a bad Hufflepuff attempt and a Ravenclaw mockery.”

“Don't listen to them. They just want to annoy you. You know it's their favorite sport,” I joke.

"But what if they are right?"

“They aren’t. On the way to school everything will be different. I'm sure you will be a Slytherin.”

“Maybe…” she looks me straight in the eye and smiles. “No, you're right. They always try to play jokes on me. Luckily you'll be with me. If not, I would have already killed them,” She laughs.

"That's what I’m here for.”

"Thank you, Sirius. I already want to go to Hogwarts with you…”

"It will be great,” I say smiling, but this time I'm tense. Maybe she’s excited, but I can't imagine being in Slytherin.

But before I could say anything to her, she stands up and offers her hand.

"Come on, your brother’s late.”

She helps me up and we both go back into the house. Near the snack table, we see Regulus trying to get closer to the cake.

"Now what are you up to?" says a man covering our view.

“Nothing!" Persephone and I say at the same time.

“Aha, as if you could really fool me. What is little Regulus doing near the cake shaking like a defenseless animal?"

"Maybe you should ask him, Uncle Alphard,” I say with a shrug.

He shakes his head and walks over to my brother.

"Do you think we're in trouble?"

"I don’t. We haven’t done anything.”

“Still…” she continues and we both smile.

My uncle gets up, takes Regulus's hand, and walks over to us.

“Well, now I have a challenge for you,” the three of us listened to him. “If you can get me one of the dishes with red berries that my sister has with maximum security, I myself will get you a piece of cake for each one.”

We share a look and nod.

***

Our plan worked… for ten minutes. My mother noticed that two plates were missing and didn't think twice about finding out who it was.

At least we got to taste some cake before anyone else. My uncle took us to the room where they keep our coats and gave us the cake. But my father found us.

The adults laughed, and my mother held back the scolding that I know awaits me tomorrow, but it was all worth it.

"He told me that he prepared to stay up all night with us," I say covering my brother with a blanket, who fell exhausted on the sofa.

"At least it lasted longer this year," says Persephone.

We walk away from him and sit near the fireplace. The guests have already left and my parents are fixing something in the garden. Like every year, my best friend stays the night at my house.

“Here," She says pulling out a small black box.

"Hey, you have to wait for the sun to come up!” I say with a yawn.

"I couldn't wait," she says excitedly.

I smile and open the box. Two little charms of a star are there.

“They are brooches that are put on the sleeves of shirts. It has a name, but I don't remember it. I saw them in a men's store and the stars reminded me of you.”

“They're great. Thank you,” I’m about to get up to go for her gift, but she stops me by taking my arm.

“Look!" she says surprised, pointing to the fireplace.

I follow her gaze and we both get up to see better.

"Why do they put a plant there?"

She approaches carefully and stands on tiptoe to see better.

"I think it's mistletoe!”

"What?"

"It's something they put at Christmas for... well I don't really know what for, but I've seen my dad make it appear sometimes, he tells mom and they kiss…”

When she finishes speaking, I feel my cheeks burn.

"We have to do that !?" I ask nervously and she walks away. Now I can see that her face is red.

"What!?"

“You said it. Is it an excuse adults use to kiss?"

"But we are not adults!”

“But we saw the mistletoe. Oh no! What if he's jinxed and something bad happens if we don't?"

“I don't know, oh no! Sorry, Sirius! I was the fool who saw it first…”

We were silent for a few minutes. No one knows what to do.

"I know,” She says and I look at her. Now we are face to face. She sighs. "Close your eyes and I will kiss you. It will be quick!"

At what point did we come to this? My hands are sweating…

"We have no other choice? I think my uncle is still up–”

"What if the enchantment is broken when someone leaves? Something bad could happen to us, Sirius!”

I sigh, she's right.

“Fine."

I close my eyes. I wait for what I feel like hours and she does nothing, I even think that maybe she repented and ran away, but just when I want to open my eyes. I feel a light pressure on my lips.

It’s soft and warm. It barely lasts a few seconds. When she pulls away, I open my eyes. I bring my hand to my chest as I feel my heart pounding.

"Sirius, are you okay?"

I nod. I can't take my eyes off her lips. They were against mine. She starts laughing. Her laugh is so catchy that it infects me and now we both laugh like crazy.

"Persephone, Sirius. What are you doing awake? To bed, now,” says my mother. My father holds Regulus still asleep.

We both obey and I walk her to the guest room. She opens the door and turns to me.

"Merry Christmas, Sirius,” She says with her cheeks flushed.

"Merry Christmas, Percy.”

Taglist:

@treestarrrrrrrr @siriuslysirius1107 @thagreenmoon @madmaiden2890 @msella @avipshamitra @auroraawrites @findzelda @lizlil @siriusmuch @chloe-geoghegan1 @reverse-hxlland @may-rapp @the-specific-oceans @eveft @secret-obsessions @nikki-sixx-is-daddy

@xkonpinkx

@littledeadgirlwalking

@yunloyal

@bloodorangemoonlight

#Merry Christmas #Pure blood #Sirius Black #Before the storm #Sirius Black x Oc #Harry Potter #Regulus Black #twoidiots writing

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princessizumi · 4 years

Text

Stitches

Random idea I came up with. Please let me know if you like it! <3

Azula had finally gotten Izumi to sleep. Ty Lee was trying to help earlier but she had only managed to rile the girl up more so Azula banished her from the room, telling her to get ready for bed herself. It took a few stories and empty threats, but she had done it, the girl was sleeping soundly now.

The woman slowly removed herself from the bed and tip toed out the room. Zuko had left Izumi with Azula and Ty Lee for the weekend, the little princess had begged her father for a sleepover with her aunts and he couldn’t say no. Although he did leave them with very specific instructions on how to care for his daughter and to please, please send for him should they need anything at all. Azula had scoffed. Her? Need him? She found it an unlikely scenario.

Ty Lee was still in the bathroom so Azula decided to make sure their quarters were locked up before heading to get washed up herself. On the way back to the bedroom she notices a trail of little droplets of blood coming from the guest room where Izumi was sleeping. Azula rushed to push open the door only to find that the little girl was not in bed.

Impossible! She couldn’t have left her alone for more than ten minutes! A rush of dread fills Azula’s entire body. Stay calm Azula. You should investigate before you start to panic.

The princess followed the trail of droplets all the way to her bedroom. Inside, Azula found her niece sitting cross legged on the bed cupping her hands on her chin. She was waiting patiently for Ty Lee to come out of the bathroom.

“Izumi what happened? Where did all this blood come from?” Azula asked bewildered.

“Zuza I fell. My chin hurts.” Izumi blinked sleepily.

“Fell how? I thought you were sleeping.” She walked over to the child. “Let me see.”

“I dunno. I fell off.” Izumi pulled her hand away from her chin revealing so much blood.

“Oh sh- Ty Lee!” Azula banged on the bathroom door. “Ty Lee come out right now!”

“Yesss?” Ty Lee sang cheerfully as she opened the door. Azula pushed her way inside to grab a towel.

“Hurry we need to see a physician.” The aunt rushes over to press the towel against her niece’s chin. “Izumi is bleeding.”

“Oh!” Ty Lee calmly came over to examine the young princess. “It looks like you broke your chin! You’ll probably need a few stitches. I’ve had to get stitches there before. Azula, remember that one time I-.”

“Ty Lee!! I don’t have time for this! She’s bleeding!” Azula yelled as she picks up Izumi, pressing the towel on her wound.

“Alright, jeez, calm down before you scare her.” Ty Lee turned to the child “Everything’s gonna be fine Izumi, does it hurt?”

“Yeah, a little.” The girl said, anxiously looking between her aunts.

“You’re so brave! And you’re not even crying!” Ty Lee clapped her hands. “Congratulations!”

“Enough!” Azula was looking for her shoes while still carrying her niece. “Stop wasting time, we need to send for the physician!”

“Alright, alright. I’ll have Zuko send a doctor.” Ty Lee was about to leave the room before Azula stopped her.

“What!? Do not tell Zuko about this. He does not need to know.”

“Azula, I think he’s gonna find out sooner or later.”

“I don’t care! He will just make things worse!” She looked panicked, holding Izumi closer. She just knew it, Zuko’s going to blow up on her because of this.

“Hey.” Ty Lee laid a hand on Azula’s arm. “It’s ok, Zuko’s not gonna blame you. He trusts you.”

“It doesn’t matter! Now go find a physician, bring them here now, and whatever you do, do not call the Fire Lord.” Azula pointed to the door.

“Ok Azula, whatever you say Azula.” Ty Lee shrugged as she left.

Azula set Izumi down again at the edge of the bathroom counter to further inspect the wound. Her chin was definitely split open but most of the bleeding had stopped. Azula felt a little more relaxed knowing that her niece wasn’t going to bleed out on her.

“How does it feel?”

“It hurts.” Izumi looked remarkably calm considering the hysterics Azula had been in a few moments ago.

“I know.” She tried comforting the child. “Just don’t touch it.”

Shortly after, Ty Lee arrived with the physician who assessed the situation. He confirmed that Izumi would need four stitches in her chin.

“Alright then, do it.” Azula demanded. “And be careful, that’s a royal chin you’re stitching.”

Izumi looked nervous as the doctor set up all his equipment. “Zuza, what’s he gonna do?”

Not sure how to explain it gently she said, “He’s going to use stitches to close your chin.” That didn’t seem to soothe the young girl. The doctor got to work while Azula and Ty Lee watched over his shoulder.

“Maybe you should hold her hand Azula, she looks pretty scared.” Ty Lee whispered.

“Ok.” Azula grabbed Izumi’s little hand in hers. The girl squeezed her eyes shut when the doctor injected a drug to numb the area. Ty Lee applauded her for being so brave. Azula just held her hand tighter as he began stitching.

“Maybe you should talk to her, tell a joke, you know?” Ty Lee suggested.

“I know how to comfort my own niece Ty Lee, thank you very much.”

A couple minutes passed in silence before Azula said. “I’m surprised your chin didn’t break the floor instead, Izumi. It’s so sharp. If you’re not more careful you could puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea. Because... it's so sharp.” Ty Lee smacked a hand to her forehead.

Izumi giggled. “You’re weird, Zuza.”

The physician finished up and Izumi didn’t let go of Azula’s hand once. Azula was proud of the four-year-old, she hadn’t cried at all through the whole ordeal. The doctor gave the young couple instructions on how to care for the stitches and how long it would take to fall out and then bade them goodnight.

“A whole week for them to come out?” Azula snarled. “How irritating. Do you think we can keep her here for a week, so he doesn’t find out?”

Izumi was sleeping in between them in their bed. The last thing Azula needed was for her to roll off again.

“Nope. He’s gonna be here bright and early tomorrow to pick her up.” Ty Lee frowned.

This was a new feeling to Azula. Zuko was usually the one afraid to confront her, not the other way around. Azula gently pushed back a lock of hair on Izumi’s face. Surprisingly the girl had taken to Azula ever since she was a baby. Even when Azula was moody or aloof Izumi would ask to play with her or follow her around. There were a lot of people responsible for the person Azula was now, her brother, her wife, her mother. But Izumi was different. She never saw Azula as scary or crazy, she was just her Aunt Zuza. And Azula loved it, no matter how much she pretended she didn’t sometimes. She loves Izumi.

And now Zuko would probably never let her see her again.

“Don’t worry Azula. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll see.” Ty Lee pressed a kiss to her lips and laid down to sleep.

Azula watched Izumi’s sleeping face for a few moments before getting out of bed. She put on a robe and shoes and headed out the door. Azula walked all the way to the nearest guard post. The soldiers inside were shocked to find the Fire Lord’s sister demanding to use the communication line that connected directly to the palace.

She had to wait for over fifteen minutes by the time Zuko came on the line. She heard his confused voice over the receiver ask. “Azula what’s wrong? Is it-”

“Listen Zuzu,” Azula interrupted him, “I just called to let you know what’s happened, but rest assured I’ve already handled it, so I don’t want you barging over here at this time of night, that would be completely unnecessary considering I’m doing you the favor of calling.”

“Handled what? Azula what are you talking about?”

“You have to promise me you won’t overreact like you always do.”

“Azula! Tell me now or-”

“She broke her chin. She rolled out of bed and broke it. She has four infinitesimal stitches in her chin, and they will fall out in one week. She didn’t cry not once and was very brave and if you come get her now you will have to wake her up and that will just upset her more than she already is.”

“Oh.” Was all Zuko could say as he processed the information.

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t push her out of the bed if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Azula, I wasn’t-” Zuko sighed, “She’s Ok?”

“Yes, she’s sleeping soundly with Ty Lee right now.”

“And she didn’t cry?” He sounded surprised.

Azula laughed, a genuine one. “No, not at all. She’s brave, that one.”

“Yeah, she’s something else.” Zuko sounded proud.

There was a long silence over the line. “So, you’re not angry then?”

“Well I’m annoyed that you didn’t tell me when it happened but no, I’m not mad. It was an accident.”

Azula wouldn’t admit that she was relieved. “Yes, well you have a bad track record of overreacting.”

She heard him huff over the line, “I can’t help it. When you have kids, you’ll understand.”

“No, I think one little gremlin for a niece is enough for me.” She rolled her eyes.

“Thank you, Azula. For taking care of her, and calling me, a- and everything else.”

“Of course, Zuzu. Anytime.”

#Azula #Ty Lee #Zuko #Tyzula #Atla #Izumi #Princess Izumi #Fire Lord Zuko #Fic #Fire Siblings

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