#hell even in stockyards

[moki-dokie]

hey non-americans, yall are aware that cowboys still exist today right? yall know they aren't just from tales of the wild west yes???

please say yes

#cowboys #idk what to tag this to get it seen #europeans #i'm talking to you guys specifically #but the rest of the world too #actually no central and south america are exempt from this yall have them too #anyway i had a british person talk about them to me as if they were but a myth #and i had to um actually them #i imagine it'd be like any of us thinking shepherds don't exist anymore #like how tf do you think massive herds of cattle and horses are wrangled??? #hell even in stockyards #anyway if you didn't know now you do

[clan-ackerman]

-----mdni-----

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🩸🩸 BUTTER KNIVES🩸🩸

Human!Alastor x f!reader

blood / size kink / bitting / incorrect usage of knives / virgin reader / fucking in general / ALASTOR IS FILTHY AS HELL / porn with plot

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Your father always disapproved of him. A girl like you should never marry such man.

"A radio host? Pumpkin, you need a man who will be able to look after you when you grow old." Your father had said to you when you had gathered all your courage at dinner table one evening.

"But... I love him father..." You mumbled quietly.

"Love? You're far too young to know what love is. And besides, didn't you see at the ball how all the girls were looking at him? I can bet, that he looks at all the girls the same." Your father continued and dabbing at his moustache with napkin, cleared his throat:

"I must head out. Moon is out tonight and it's perfect for hunting. Lads will be waiting on me by now."

"Stay safe." Your mother kissed your father on cheek and saw him off. You were left sitting alone at the table, staring at your half eaten plate.

"Dont take it so hard, petal." Your mother stood next to you and gently run her hand through your hair.

"A man I respect is keeping me away from the man that my heart yearns for..." You sighed.

"Does father want me to marry someone I do not love? I'd kill myself in such marriage, mother."

"Don't even say such thing. You know your father is only looking out for you. For your future." Your mother said, trying to calm you.

"Alastor is also looking out for me." You narrowed your eyes at mother. With a hard look down at you, your mother advised:

"I think... It would be better if you did not see him anymore. Don't make your father angry, petal."

You looked up at her, not believing what she had just said.

"What..? Mama... How could you say such thing?" Your lip started to tremble. With blurry vision you looked around the table, butter knives shining in dim light. With angry huff you tried to brush your tears away and stood up, chair falling over in process. Your mother took a step back:

"Behave now." Mother said in sharp tone. You took a quick glance at the clock on the mantle piece and then bolted for the door.

"Where are YOU going at such hour?!" Your mother grabbed your hand before you even got two steps away from table.

"Clearly away from here." You spat, not breaking eye contact.

"You will sit back down, finish your dinner and go straight to bed." Your mother stated, her grip on your arm tightening. What she didn't notice, was how your other hand sneaked behind you and blindly reached for the first thing - the glimmering butter knife.

"I will not do such thing. Now. Let. Go." You said through gritted teeth.

"That's it. You insolent daughter." Your mother's hand reached up to grab your hair, but before she could do so - you were pointing the knife at her.

With wide eyes, both of you stared at the knife that was between you two.

"Mother.... I'm so sorry... I didn't mean--"

Your mother looked up at you and in one swift motion slapped you right across your face. With a cry you clutched your cheek and finally escaped the house. Leaving your mother to seeth back at the doorstep.

Quickly running down the front stairs of the house, you bolted across the yard. Ducked through the wooden fence that held your father's horses out of mother's garden, and run bare feet in the field. Trying to put as much distance between her and yourself.

When you finally had reached the other far off side of stockyard, you felt like you could breath again. Not bothering to climb over the fence you sat in the wet dewy grass and leaned against the fence pole. Distinct sounds of hunters gunshots and hound howls echoed in the forest behind.

You looked down at your hands. Right one still clutching the butter knife. From holding it incorrectly in your hand while on the run, you had accidentally nicked your fingers. New tears gathered in your eyes and you let out pathetic whimper.

"Y/n...?" You heard steps approaching on the other side of the fence on the gravel road.

"A-Alastor?" You immediately jumped up. Switching the knife from one clammy hand to other and hiding it behind your back. Now free hand, whipped your nose and cheeks, unknowingly to you - leaving red streaks across your face.

"What has my darling doe crying?" He quickly approached the fence when he picked up on your sniffling.

"Its fine, Alastor. Just had quarrel with my mother." You tried to laugh it off.

"A bloody one, as I see." He eyed you, reaching for your cheek. You tried to step away, but his warm touch was so inviting.

"Show me your hands, love." he said. He wasn't asking.

Swallowing thickly you brought both hands in front of you. Feeling like child in trouble. Trembling, and both bloody by now.

"We were having family dinner. And my father was reminiscing on the previous ball. And asked if I fancied any men there-" Alastor eyed you sharply for a second, unknowingly to you as you kept on rambling:

"-and I said that there was a man that I have had eyes for such long time, that the other men at the ball didn't even interest me. And he asked who. I said it's you. And he said that I should look elsewhere. I stood my ground and told him I love you. And he disapproved. Then mother said I should listen to him. Then she was screaming, saying I should stop seeing you. I got angry. She grabbed me. Tried to pull my hair and I... I just -I just pulled a knife at her... And then... And now I'm here..." You ranted so quickly that now you were out of breath.

With gentle chuckle, Alastor reached for your hand that was holding the knife, his ever seeing eyes, noticing the cuts on your other palm. He slowly frapped your fingers alongside his around the hilt of the butter knife and pulled both of your hands across the fence.

"When in dire straits, slice the sinew to halt movement," he murmured, gently drawing the knife across his chest. "Stab and pivot to temporarily cease motion," he directed, gesturing towards the center of his chest.

"You're wicked, Alastor..." You mumbled looking up at him.

"And you should never shed your blood. Though I am touched by your eagerness in defending your convictions concerning me, I would prefer not to witness your blood spilled, my love."

"Even if blood is such a pretty colour on you." He continued, his eyes flickering across your face. Standing up on the first wooden beam of the fence, he now stood way taller than you. Grabbing your chin he tilted your face one way, then the other.

"Since you say I'm wicked-" he gave you a cheeky smile,

"I might be afraid that your parents are correct. You should stay away from me." He looked away from you and across the field behind you.

"But I love you, Alastor..." You whispered so quietly, afraid that he might not have heard you.

"You have brought a knife in bloody hands tonight. What an odd way of confessing one's love." He bent his head closer to your face.

"What a lovely thing you are." His voice suddenly sounded sultry. It was enough for you to stand on your tippy toes and press your lips against his.

You could feel his smile against your lips. One of his hands sneaking to hold the back of your neck and pulling you closer. When that was not enough, in swift motion his legs swung over the fence and he was right in front of you. His lips never leaving yours.

It felt so right to kiss him. To kiss him felt like finally quelling an obsession. Just to feel the painful withdrawal as soon as his lips traveled to your neck to leave love bites there. Love bites that bloomed the same way as the blood splatters on your light summer dress.

His hands traveled down your back, the butter knife still in his hand. Both of you knew that no one would come down this road at this hour, but there was urgency in your actions. Desperation, almost. Your hands traveled to the front of his shirt, to get rid of the bow tie and open couple of buttons.

"The next move shan't be quite gentlemanly of me, my doe.." he was breathing hard and put the hilt of the knife in his mouth. His tongue briefly tasted your blood on it. Alastor's hands deftly gathered the skirt part of your dress and pushed you against the fence. Then raising the fabric around your hips and bunching it to the side, he grabbed the knife and pinned your dress to the fence.

"Alastor..." Your breath caught in your throat as your lower half was exposed to the cold nights air.

"Too much?" He asked, now stepping closer as his hands worked on his belt.

He clearly did intend to fuck you here. In empty field. Against a fence. In middle of the night.

"No, just perfect, you're perfect..." you breathed, hands looping around his neck to pull him in for a kiss.

"Lovely." He whispered and kissed you. His hand reaching down between your legs.

"Ah..." You moaned at the first contact.

"Needy little thing you are..." Alastor sighed against your lips, feeling the wetness between your legs.

It was the first time someone else's hands were touching you down there, besides your own. Feeling was not entirely new, but the anticipation was almost killing you. Your hand around Alastor's neck tightened, pulling him down, so you could hide your face in his shoulder. Breath heavy against his neck.

His fingers deftly slid through your slit.

"How.. many...?" Alastor implied, trying to shift his face away and look at you, making him pull his hand slightly away and his fingers circling back to your clit.

"Ah.." you gasped, not hearing his question and just trying to hide your face again.

"Sweetheart..." Alastor's hand slid from your cunt and instead dug his fingers in - right where your thigh met your pussy. This finally got your attention and your head shot up to look at him. You could almost swear that you could see your own debauched image reflecting in his glasses. He tilted his head down at you, and your reflection was gone and his warm eyes were staring right into your soul.

"How many men you have sle-" before he could ask the question you were shaking your head.

"None. No one." You said. "None has touched me this way," you looked down at his hand between your legs. His pointer finger that was closest to your pussy, slowly slid through your slit once more. Your head fell back and you stared at the sky. Stars were slowly starting to appear in the night sky.

"... except myself." You swallowed. Your head feeling empty of any coherent thought. Alastor's mouth fell open slightly:

"Say the word, and I'll stop, my doe..." He leaned down to your exposed neck, and gently run his nose up and down your pulse point.

Your hand shot down and grabbed his wrist:

"I want you and you alone."

His smile against your neck was almost infectious.

"Well, then... To rephrase..." He planted slow, open-mouthed kisses against your shoulder, his free hand pulling your dress down your shoulder. He moved his lips against your ear, as if to tell you something that no one else could ever hear:

"...How many of your own fingers have you taken?" you could hear his wicked smile in his voice. And you could feel his hand moving between your legs. His middle finger slowly, almost feather lightly, circled your clit and slid down to your opening. Your breath hitched:

"A-Alastor..."

When you didn't provide him the answer, he quickly pulled his hand out of your underwear and grabbed your hand putting it up between both of you. He pressed his palm against yours and looked at your hands. You did the same. Both of you could see how his fingers shined in the moonlight from your wetness coating them.

"Tell me."

"One."

"How far?"

You were staring at your pressed together hands. He was looking straight at you, watching how your eyes showed the realization of how much bigger his hands were and how longer his fingers were.

"Second knuckle..." You whispered and your eyes met his, over the frames if his glasses.

"Oh, my little doe... I will give you so much more than that..." He chuckled and looked at your hands as his fingers interlinked with yours.

"When I kneel before you, you shall receive all I offer. Diligently." He let go of your hand and took off his glasses.

"Understood?"

You nodded. For such a gentleman, he definitely had such a filthy mouth. You'll soon learn it both ways.

"Hold these for me, will you?" He innocently asked and put his glasses on you, quite lower so you could stare over the round frames. Before you could say anything else, he was on his knees in the dewy grass, both of his hands sliding up your bare legs. His lips gently leaving kisses on your hips as he dragged your panties down your legs. You couldn't look away from him. His soft lips moving from one hip, across your stomach to the other side. His fingers running between your folds, time to time coming up to circle your clit and then tease your entrance by dipping in a fingertip.

"Mark me..." you breathed out as one of your hands slid to his hair.

"That will hurt." He looked up at you.

"You won't hurt me. I trust you, Al..." You said through a moan.

"...where...?" He quietly inquired.

God, please, everywhere.

"Here..." you gently tapped your hip. Alastor smiled, leaned closer, pressed his lips to the top of your hand and then gently bit your fingertip.

"This shall mean you're mine, my love, I hope you are preparing for the consequences that it ensues." He said against your skin as you pulled your hand away.

"I was yours as soon as our eyes locked when I saw you riding horses with the hunters all those years ago..." You moaned as his fingers circled your clit, as if he was encouraging you to finish your though. Next second, you felt his teeth sink into your skin and his middle finger plunging into you.

"Alastor! Ah.." both of your hands flew to his hair, as your hips jerked against his hand.

"Shhh.." Alastor smiled against the blooming love bite. His eyes then locked on how you were taking his finger.

"Good girl." His smiled and looked up at you. His other hand joining to circle your clit.

"Oh Lord..." You moaned. He playfully rolled his eyes at you and leaned his temple against your hip.

"Such a good girl, taking my fingers so well." He praised, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. He twisted his finger and you let out a high pitch keen.

"Look at me." He straighted a little. Your eyes locked with his. Opening his mouth, he stuck his tongue out. Your eyes grew big, and a flash of warmth traveled down from your chest to your legs. Your pussy involuntary clamping down on his finger. And then his mouth was on you. As soon as his tongue got the first taste of you, his eyes fell shut and he moaned against you, sending vibrations straight through you.

"Ahh...ha...." You moaned loudly, both hands moving to his hair and pulling it. He lapped at your pussy as if he was a starving man. He sucked on your clit and then you felt a second finger stretching you open.

"Please.... Just don't stop..." You moaned, your hips jerking against his mouth. His fingers picked up the speed and your breathing did the same.

"I think I'm going to..." Your hold on his hair grew tighter and you were starting to push his mouth harder against your weeping cunt. Alastor grunted, his hand that was constantly squeezing your ass traveled down to his crotch and palmed himself. His pants growing too tight.

Alastor curled his fingers forward and sucked hard on your clit. With a loud cry you came on his fingers and tongue. You yourself could never reach such intense peak. Your toes curled, your knees almost wishing to pull together. You pressed Alastor's head closer to your dripping core, at the moment careless if he could breathe or not.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuckkk..." Your eyes rolled back into your skull. For a moment you felt weightless, your hands falling away from his hair, to hold onto to the fence beams that you were leaning against.

Flatly dragging his tongue from your twitching hole up your slit to the clit, he placed chaste kiss on your mound. Alastor leaned back and looked up at you.

When you had gathered at least some wits about you, you looked down at him. His chin and lips were glistening from your cum.

"You taste sweet." He gave you a wink and licked his lips.

"Alastor..." You whispered his name and in swift motion crossed your hands and pulled the dress over your head. Leaving it hanging by the knife. Alastor was caught off guard and sat back, his hands slowly starting to unbutton his vest and then his shirt.

Was Alastor intending to fuck you against the fence or where you intending to ride him in the dewy grass?

In two quick steps you were in front of him and straddling his hips. Your lips immediately seeking out his and hands helping him to unbutton his shirt faster. With a groan he pulled away and grabbing your hand dragged it down his chest to the front of his pants. Unzipping his pants you dipped your hand in his boxers.

"Fuck..." He moaned, his eyes rolling back. You wrapped your hand around his cock and gently freed him from the confines of his pants.

"How is that going to fit...?" You blurted out when you looked down at him and gave him two long strokes.

"... perfectly..." He hissed through his teeth and threw his head back when your thumb swiped across his dripping tip. You switched your hands, and raised now free hand up to your face. Alastor looked at you through lidded eyes. Gently you licked your finger, tasting him on your skin. Seeing you do that, Alastor's hips jerked up into your fist and his eyes fluttered shut.

"Lover." He gritted through clenched teeth. His hands coming to hold your hips. You only smiled at your ability to drive him as insane and he was driving you. You slid your hand down to his base and gently squeezed.

"Cheeky little thing..." Alastor opened his eyes and pulled you in for a kiss by your neck. It was slow but messy. Tongues twisting, saliva smearing against both of your lips.

You got up on your knees and wrapped your hands around Alastor's neck. However, he grabbed your hand and wrapped it around his cock alongside his own.

"Now, now." He smiled against your lips. "You gotta learn how to take it. Put. It. In." Alastor whispered absolute filth against your lips and moved your hand so that his cock dragged through your soaked folds.

With a shaky breath you dragged his cock through your folds once more. Pausing on your clit and moaning against Alastor's lips.

"Yes... Take your pleasure..." He whispered.

Then moving his cock down, you pushed it's tip against your entrance. And then with a hissfrom your mouth, your hips were flush with his. The unknown feeling between your legs made you bite Alastor's lip. He groaned in your mouth, but didn't pull away if both of you felt the tangy taste of blood.

Alastor was patient with you, and let you decide when and how to move. But once your hips started to twitch against his, Alastor ground hips up into yours. His warm hands moved up to your back and shoulder blades to pull you closer. Your own hands tangled themselves in his dark hair and scratched down his back. By now your moans were echoing the same as the hounds of the hunters.

"Harder.. Al... Please..." You moaned against his cheek, as your hips moved up and down. Your desperate cunt twitching around his cock and making Alastor moan in your ear.

Next moment you were on your back, your legs on his shoulders as he leaned over you. Your eyes locked with his. Both of you as mirrored image to each other. Hair disheveled, foreheads sweaty, short rapid breaths. And then he was fucking you as if this is the last night out here with stars. As if the coming morning you won't stop by the coffee shop where he gets his morning dose of caffeine.

The way his cock so deliciously dragged against your walls - you had nothing in this world to compare it to. Leaking tip of his cock was carving your cunt out with every push back in, and each drag of it made you clench around him. As if to say, that you need him back in and not let him pull out.

You grabbed Alastor's cheeks:

"I'm in love with you...." He said first, as if he had read your thoughts on what you were about to say.

"I love you." You smiled back and pulled him in for a kiss that was broken by your moan as Alastor gave harsh thrust, hitting your cervix. Making you lose your breath momentarily.

"More.. please..." You begged, your cunt twitching around him.

"Fuck..." Alastor moaned, his hips taking on harsher and faster movements. You could swear that you felt him in your guts. Your hand traveled down your stomach and pressed on the outline of his cock. He smirked at you, as if saying that no other cock will ever be this deep, no one ever will pleasure you the same way.

"You're mine..." He groaned. Letting your legs off his shoulders, he pulled your lower lip with his thumb until your mouth opened and he could slide his finger in. Your tongue latched around his digit and sucked hard, making him stutter in his movements as he wondered how to use that mouth of yours in other ways.

With press on your tongue, your mouth opened once more, Alastor pulled his finger out and dived in to kiss you. Your tongues meeting before your lips could. You moaned in his eager mouth as his wet thumb now circled your clit. Your hips raising to meet his thrusts. When your wandering hands were enough for him, he grabbed them and pinned both of them above your head.

"Keep them there..." He said breathlessly and leaned back lifting your hips with his.

He was fucking you like drowning animal would fight for air. And the pleasure was rapidly pulling both of you under. The way your cunt clenched around him more and more frequently, was a sign that you were close. As if not being able to stand not touching him, your hand raised to rest on his stomach, feeling the lean muscles flexing there.

Not wanting to soil you on your first sexual encounter, Alastor was ready to pull out when your legs wrapping around his hips locked him in place. Sliding his hands up your legs and then sides, he leaned over you.

Your orgasm approached you unknowingly, as such intense feeling you have never felt before.

"I got you. Just let go." Alastor said against your chest as his forehead rested against your collarbone. With a moan that stole all your breath - you came. Alastor's name tumbling out of your lips like the sweetest honey. Your body arched off the ground and pressed against Alastor. Not knowing what to do with your hands as all nerve ends felt like going haywire, you opt to grab Alastor's hips and, as if your legs being locked around him wasn't enough, you pulled him against you.

Corrupting such sweet doe as yourself felt so rewarding. He could almost feel your orgasm on his tongue. Perhaps that was just taste of your cunt that kept lingering on his tongue. His own hips stuttered and with deep groan he came deep inside you, his teeth latching on the side of your left breast, leaving another love bite to remind you of this night of debaucheries.

For a moment neither of you moved. Still ongoing gunfires of hunters and howls of hounds could be heard echoing, meaning that hunt was still on. And you could return home without your father seeing you here.

Alastor wrapped one hand around your back and gently laid you back on ground.

"I must beg your pardon. A lady such as yourself ought never to be deflowered in such a place for the first time." He said quietly against your soft breasts that were still raising and falling in short breaths.

"Oh, hush. I enjoyed myself very much so." You took a deep breath trying to steady your breathing. Alastor looked at you and you smiled at him. Gently running your hands through his hair in order to tame it.

Steadying himself on his hands, Alastor pulled out and couldn't help but to stare at your cunt that was already leaking his cum. Catching him staring, ought to teas him a little bit. Bending your legs you spread them open. Gaining Alastor's attention, you trailed one hand down your body and dipped your fingertips in your folds. Shyly looking to the side you spread your folds, making more cum leak out. Alastor was watching your hand like it was a prey.

"Darling-" Alastor warned as his lashes fluttered. He leaned to kiss your knee instead. Fighting so hard not to take your overstimulated body the second time.

"We should talk in the morning." Alastor got up with a sigh, tucked himself away and walked over to the fence to retrieve your dress.

You quietly got dressed, not questioning anything. You weren't sure what we're you to say in such moment. While you were getting dressed you couldn't help but stare as Alastor was putting on his shirt. His skin on the back scratched by your nails. Or how the fingers you had cut had smeared blood all over his body.

"Shall I escort you home?" Alastor turned to you.

"No. It's late, we both should be getting home and to bed. And besides, I know this field like back of my hand." You shook your head.

"Alright." Alastor tilted his head to the side and smiled. He walked up to you and gently took off his glasses from you.

"Not a scratch. Good girl." He praised you, leaning down to your eye level. Your cheeks immediately flushed red and you quickly pressed your lips against his.

As he watched you walk back home, you couldn't help the smile that was on your lips. The faithful butter knife clutched carefully in your hands, will be neatly stored in your vanity as a reminder.

Meanwhile Alastor was sitting on the fence, watching you walk away, with skip in your step. Once you were far enough, he hauled himself over the fance, back on the road. What you had not seen at the very beginning, was that Alastor had come with knive of his own. Quite menacing butcher knife, that he had wedged in the nearby tree.

You were almost home. You had just ducked through the fence and walked quietly across the yard when, one, so much differently sounding gunshot, made you turn back around and stare at the field where you had come from....

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Part 2?

#alastor fanfiction #alastor x reader #alastor smut #alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor fic #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel smut

[sniperjade]

Hard Rain and Righteous Angels

It was always raining on the days when you needed everything to go right. When your life was balancing on a knife's edge. As if the world knew and decided to fuck your shit up anyway.

Draco was hunkered down behind some barrels out in the stockyard. The signal would come at any moment for them to storm the warehouse and finally take Dolohov down. He pulled his trench coat tighter and flexed his hand around the handle of his gun.

He was ready.

She came out of nowhere and the light surrounded her like a halo. Hermione Granger. The only honest cop on the force.

He begrudgingly admitted that she was beautiful, and his judgement was shot in her presence, but fuck, she made it one hell of a ride on the way down.

She crouched beside him and pulled her revolver. “You can’t be here. It’s a trap.”

Of course, it was a trap. His trap. The police would apprehend Pettigrew and place the bastard in witness protection. He was a scum of a man but would testify to anyone with so much as a threatening scowl. Riddle would go to jail and everyone else in that warehouse would die. Whether it was by his hand or the hands of her fellow officers it didn’t matter. He knew they’d make sure all the bullets came from his gun. The Forensic Department was rotten to the core.

He clenched his jaw, “Just do your job, Hermione.”

“Riddle will have you killed! Even in prison!”

“I know!” he snapped. “I’m not an idiot.”

“There’s got to be another way.”

He flipped her round and pushed her up against the barrels making sure to stay low and quiet. “If I leave now there’s a chance they get away and I haven’t worked this long and this hard to let that fucking happen.”

Her eyes flickered between his own. “It’s not going to bring your parents back.”

He kissed her just to shut her up. He didn’t expect to like it as much as he did. The warm slide of her tongue as it darted between his lips. It was almost worth giving it all up for.

Almost.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flashing light. Go time. He didn’t waste a second, breaking off from her and running for the door. All around him, police officers were coming out of the woodwork until he was moving through a sea of blue.

Inside it was all gunfire, screams, and blood as he lay waste to the death eaters inside. They were bloody angels of vengeance.

Finally, he faced Dolohov, their guns and eyes trained on each other. He should have seen it coming. That Hermione wouldn’t let it go. She came out of the darkness, and she had her gun to Dolohov’s head the trigger already pulled, before he could say no.

“Riddle will have you killed!”

Her hair was wild, a Valkyrie of justice. “He can try.”

This was the drabble that I didn't use for "Last Drabble Wrister Standing" last week. I think I just felt the other one was better.

#dramione #draco malfoy #hermione granger #drabble #noir #hp fanfic

[blooblooded]

Lost Colony World Building

STANFORD, MONTANA, 2022: JERRY

After a draining day in the stockyard, Jerry Botega came home to find his wife arguing with their housemate for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid,” Reuben Kowalski was saying. Jerry could hear his loud, pretentious voice before he could even see him. It grated on his nerves like the squeaky brakes of a car and brought out urges he could not speak about. “There’s no way you think that. There’s no way that you don’t think Picard is the best Captain in Star Trek. Nobody agrees with you. You’re the only person on earth who thinks that.”

“Sisko’s better at making the hard choices. He–”

“First of all, Silas, first of all– Sisko’s a Commander, he isn’t even a Captain. Second– at least Picard’s not a war criminal! He has an actual moral compass. Do you remember the one where Sisko poisons an entire planet to get one over on that terrorist group? Picard would have come to a peaceful solution instead. Also, TNG is the superior series in every way so I don’t even know why you would think that.”

Not that Jerry held much stock in liberal terminology like mansplaining, but that was the closest word he could find for the way that Kowalski spoke to his wife. Their endless dorky squabbling exhausted him. Jerry bypassed the living room to avoid them both and opened the fridge to grab a beer. One of the dogs jumped up on him when he walked in. He closed his eyes.

Bone tired. He was bone tired. Another calf had been born...wrong…that morning. Its neck had been fused back to its spine and there had been oozing, translucent skin covering its eyes and ears. The poor pitiful thing ripped its momma apart on the way out and had been born screaming. Massive internal hemorrhaging, it was a miracle from the Devil that it had not been stillborn. He’d had to put a .22 slug in the back of its head to put it out of its writhing, painful misery. That was happening more and more often lately and now he had to walk in on the two people he lived with arguing about television.

“The Federation isn’t perfect,” Silas said sullenly. “That’s why I like Sisko better. Picard’s peaceful diplomacy only exists because other people in the Federation are watching over it and doing the nasty stuff that nobody wants to think about.”

“Yeah, Section 30-whatever it is. Oh, that’s wonderful, Silas, I’d rather not watch a series that glorifies terrorism and Soviet style secret police. And Riker’s in TNG! Come on, you can’t beat Riker.”

“Worf gets more development in DS9.”

“That’s– they completely mischaracterize him!”

Jerry took a long sip of beer. Everything smelled like blood. Everything had been smelling like blood since the sky ripped itself open and turned red two weeks ago. The astronomers on the news– including one of Reuben’s prissy ex-boyfriends who lived in Quebec– all said that it was a natural phenomenon. Jerry suspected that everything was about to go to hell.

He gave the dog another pat before walking into the living room. Reuben stood in front of the TV with his hands on his sizable hips, looking pompous. Even though the college stopped its classes after the unprecedented astronomical phenomena, he still dressed up every day in his khakis and button down shirt. Not exactly common for the middle of bumfuck nowhere. His eyebrows were raised haughtily as he looked down on Silas. Jerry’s wife on the other hand, was wearing the same sweatpants and hoodie she always did when she was not at work. She sat hunched and cross legged on the couch holding a half-smoked joint, her dark hair in a loose ponytail. Every day that passed without answers for the terrible slash in the sky left her more agitated and depressed.

Jerry shrugged at them both. The TV wasn’t even on.

“Busy day?” asked Reuben Kowalski.

“Eh.” Better not to worry him by talking about the deformed calf. Silas could handle it, she was entirely cornfed and unsophisticated. But Reuben had soft hands and a softer mind. He was tender. Jerry could not help but think of him with some manner of tenderness. 

“What are your opinions on Star Trek?” Reuben was trying to score some kind of nerdy point. Trying to get one over on Silas. For some reason he liked to poke at her. “You ever watch Star Trek, Jeremiah?”

Over the 10 years he had been married to Silas, Jerry had been forced to watch hours and hours of stupid television shows. Hours he would never get back. He sipped his beer. “I ain’t taking sides in this one, sorry.”

“He’s such a Worf.”

That seemed vaguely racist. Jerry rather thought of himself as more of an O’Brien; exhausted and overworked and married to a botanist who was brighter and better than him in every way. He just shrugged at that as well, then sat down next to his wife. Silas looked at him from the corner of her dark eyes and gave his knee a quick pat.

He knew that she was scared. He knew that they were all scared. The sky was red for god’s sake! People were posting online about some kind of disease that had come from outer space, which was crazy in itself, it was like something out of one of Silas’ shows. How was he supposed to comfort her? How was he supposed to make her or anyone feel like they were safe?

Oh god. The mutated, screaming calves. His hands had started shaking when he put them down. How many had there been now? A dozen? More? Was this happening all over? He could hear them when he closed his eyes. That was what was in front of everyone, wasn’t it? Everyone was going to die screaming because of whatever sci-fi bullshit the earth had been thrown into.

He figured they were all going to die very soon. They were just sitting around waiting for it to happen. And here were Silas and Reuben, arguing about science fiction. Maybe it was better that way. It was a distraction for them. He didn’t have the luxury of distracting himself though. Jerry had to be responsible. He had to take care of his wife and his…well, his Reuben. 

The sky was red! The stars were in the wrong places! People were getting sick all over the world, every country with nuclear weapons was threatening its neighbors, and all Jerry could think about was the screaming, twisting calves. He couldn’t handle it. There was nothing to do and nowhere to run. There was nothing to understand. 

When Jerry had to slaughter an animal, whether it was a chicken or a hog, he always treated it real good before delivering the killing blow. He’d feed the chickens meal worms. Distract them a little. Their lives were so short and bad, they deserved a little distraction. Maybe that was what was happening now. Maybe he was supposed to play along with this conversation, he just didn’t have the heart to.

Silas took a hit off her joint and then passed it to him. Jerry shook his head. She shrugged. Oh, his poor Silas. She tried so hard to protect herself from the world. Ever since she had been just a little kid in foster care she had walled off her heart so nobody could hurt her, she distracted herself with stories about a far off future she could never build. He wished he could protect her.

“You want to watch the news?” she asked him quietly.

Anything but that. He was so tired. Tired of everything, achingly bone-tired, ready-to-die tired. Jerry put an arm around his wife, a woman who could never love him the way he needed but who he loved anyway. He needed a distraction too but he would never get it. “Nah,” he said. “Nah, we can watch Star Trek. But only if we watch the series with the Black Vulcan guy in it. Not the one with the wormhole and the goo aliens, that’s too– that shit’s too close to home.”

He would not realize just how too close to home it was for hundreds of years. By that time it would be too late.

“Oh god,” whined Reuben. “That’s the worst one.” But he sat down on the couch beside Jerry anyways.

A welcome distraction. 

EDEN, 200 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: SILAS

“I hadn’t heard from him in months,” said Silas. She tried to keep her voice from breaking. Over the last few days, she had cried more than she had in hundreds of years. She couldn’t stand crying, she couldn’t stand any weakness coming from inside of her. But how could she help it? This was her husband! “I hadn’t heard from him in months and two nights ago he calls me and something is– something is wrong! He looked sick and he was talking about– I can’t explain it, he was talking about crazy things!”

“Talking about what?” asked Reuben Kowalski from the screen in front of her. He shared the screen with Frank Toussaint and Anikah Liu; all three of them were hundreds of miles away from her, just like Jerry was. All three of them appeared unaged and unchanged. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Things from before!” She could barely bring herself to say it, it was all too illogical. Her mind could not grasp anything that could not be explained by science and logic but here she was. “That Book. That Book he took from Teddy Isaksen’s compound when we– when we all–”

“--When we all died.”

The hair on the back of Silas’ neck stood up. She remembered how Isaksen had put a bullet in her and each of her friends. She remembered the black nothingness. She didn’t like to think about it, but Jerry had always believed that some kind of miracle had happened that day because of Isaksen’s Book.

But it wasn’t Isaksen’s Book, was it? It was something else. It was something…something alive. She could push that uncomfortable thought away as much as she liked but it did not change the fact that something had happened that day that nobody could explain. It was completely out of her control and there was nothing Silas hated more. 

“Well, what did Jerry say, Silas?” asked Frank. His voice and his nasally Quebecois accent made her grit her teeth. He had always talked down to her, thought that he was better than her because of his education, thought that he was more cultured than her because of where he came from. He thought that she was some stupid midwestern hick. She couldn’t stand him. “He must have said something to you.”

“He said something bad is happening in Asilo. People are– are changing.”

“People are fleeing his Colony and coming to mine.” Frank’s tone was dismissive. “Some kind of religious oppression. They’ve formed religious beliefs based off that Book of his and it’s out of control. I’ve opened my borders to anyone who wants to leave since the Territories are only 200 miles from Asilo.”

On her end, Silas was doing her best to stamp out all religion from Eden and set up the peaceful atheistic utopia that she believed was best. But this wasn’t that. This was something else. Something bad, something unmentionable. Something bad that was no longer contained! She shook her head. “You shouldn’t be letting anyone from Asilo into your Colony, Frank, you shouldn’t be letting anyone in at all. They’re all sick, I think they’re all sick or something’s wrong with them, very wrong. We should all be quarantined!”

“It sounds as if Eden has been quarantined for decades. Not all of us are isolationists.”

She wished that she could reach through the screen and punch him. “You’re not listening to me. Something terrible is happening there. Jerry wasn’t himself when he called me, I think everyone in Asilo is dying! There’s some disease, some sort of infection, it’s worse than what happened to everyone when the Rift opened!”

They had to remember what had happened all those centuries ago. Almost everyone in the world became sick and transformed into weeping, howling mutants. 

“Where’s the evidence? You’re as paranoid as ever. The refugees from Asilo are like anyone else, they’ve just been persecuted for not blindly following the ridiculous religion your husband has made up.”

“Evidence?!”

Reuben laughed nervously. He pushed his blonde hair back from his boyish face. “OK you two. This isn’t the time to bicker. Silas– I speak to Jerry regularly. Last week he was his normal self, he told me that he’d like to take some time to travel to Green River to visit me. I don’t understand why you think there’s something so wrong with him? It sounds like there’s some social problems in Asilo, but which of us don't have social issues in our Colonies? A bit of unrest is natural for any human society. As for the Book… I used to be curious about it as well, but my research led me to believe it’s nothing more than an oddity of the Rift, no different than the little slimy animals that came through it. I understand why Jerry feels a connection to it.”

His love for her husband had always blinded him.

They were all in danger. Silas’ head pounded. Her glasses were fogging up. What could she do to protect herself and Eden? She could not allow anyone to leave Asilo. For all she knew, she could not allow anyone to leave the Northern Territories because Frank, that idiot, had let Jerry’s people across his borders. They were unsafe. They were all unsafe. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t seen how sick Jerry was. They hadn’t seen what was happening in his Colony.

The people there were tearing each other apart. 

She tried again to make them listen. “I’ve seen it. They’re killing each other. There’s blood in the streets, they’ve built a temple, some kind of massive black pyramid, and they’re killing people there. There’s something wrong!”

There was a beat of silence. Anikah Liu made a sound of disgust. Like the others, she was completely unchanged, so completely full of beauty and life. Her eyes were filled with black light, her posture was casual yet poised. Silas could only see her head and shoulders on the screen but imagined that she must be wearing the same stylish athleisure clothing she used to favor. She smiled but there was no joy behind it. “Do you have cameras over there in Asilo too, Sy?”

Silas winced. So she knew about that. It wasn’t her fault. Silas just…she needed to know what was going on. She needed to watch. It made her feel safer to watch.

And the cameras in Asilo…the things she had seen! It was like nothing she could imagine. They were tearing down buildings, they were creating massive structures of unspeakable geometry. They were killing women and children in the streets like it was nothing and everything was red, so red. That madness could not be permitted to leave the Colony!.

“I could show you. I could show you what’s happening there,” said Silas.

“She has cameras there then,” said Anikah. “She has cameras everywhere.”

How had they turned into this? Anikah had loved her once, a long time ago, when they were both different people. Now everything was just...cold and far away. And Silas was alone, just like she was always alone. 

Something still needed to be done. For once she wanted to take action and nobody was listening to her.

“I’ll talk to Jerry,” said Reuben. “I’m sure everything is fine, Silas. He’s been stressed lately. I remember how it is. A few hundred years ago, I was dealing with similar political unrest in Green River. It happens.”

“Listen to me! I’m telling you that something’s wrong with him, he’s not himself!” She struggled to make sense of it. There were no words, she could not come up with a description of the wrongness in her own words. “It felt wrong talking to him, do you remember the episode of TNG where the parasites–”

“For once I’d like you to stop talking about television,” said Frank. He pompously smoothed down his thin mustache. “This is real life we’re talking about. You’re blowing things out of proportion as usual.”

“Blowing things out of proportion?! Can you imagine if we lose everything we’ve built because we ignore this problem? Can you imagine if we go back to the way things were before, with everyone starving and wandering and terrified? My husband is doing the exact same thing Isaksen was doing at his compound, only on a massive scale! We need quarantine procedures. Anyone who’s left Asilo needs to be detained immediately. I have unmanned combat aerial vehicles, I have drones, and I think it would be in our best interest to bomb–”

“Oh, there it is. There’s what this is about,” interjected Anikah with greater disgust. She rubbed her eyes. 

“You’re talking about murdering half a million people,” said Reuben, suddenly cold. 

“They’re already killing each other! What if their beliefs get to Eden?! All I care about is keeping my Colony safe!”

“Je m’en fous,” Frank’s face was all twisted up, he was looking at her like she was a bug. “I’ve met the refugees who’ve fled from your husband’s incompetence. They’re not whatever you’re claiming they are. They’re people like us.”

Silas did not really believe that she was a person anymore. Not since Teddy Isaksen had shot her and she had fallen into thick darkness. Not since Jerry had used that damned Book to bring her and Anikah and Frank back from…back from wherever it was that the spark of human consciousness went when the brain and body can no longer sustain life. For that reason alone, she knew that what Jerry was doing was real and terrible and could not be permitted to continue. If the words…if the power in the Book could pull life back into a dead body, what else could it do? What other terrible things?

The people in Asilo who were being torn apart…the people in Asilo who were being eaten alive?! She had seen the frenzy of their worship. That could not happen in Eden. She would not let it.

She would do anything within her power to keep Eden safe. Anything. If that meant killing everyone in Asilo, so be it. If that meant shutting herself off from the rest of them, from Reuben and Frank and Anikah, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about any of them anymore, and they certainly did not care about her. Silas had one purpose and that was Eden, its people and its safety.

Nobody understood and that was fine. Nobody understood her and nobody ever would. That was fine too. 

Whatever was happening to Jerry, whatever was happening in his colony, had to be stopped by whatever means necessary.

Silas would be the one to stop it. 

ASILO, THE LOST COLONY, 20 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: YANCEY

The boy did not have a name. Nobody in the place he lived had names. There was no reason for them to have words to call each other in the stinking darkness of the Lost Colony. The only language they had was the twisted, backwards lamentations that the gods spoke in the heaven beyond the stars. If God had no name, then why should any of the crawling humans on Earth have one? None of them even knew what a name was! They did not know what they were missing. 

If you have no sense of self, then it does not matter when you offer yourself up. The 300 people who had been trapped, reproduced, and died in the ruins of the Lost Colony since its fall were little more than animals. Most of their humanity had been stripped from them by starvation and madness.

Well. The boy was different. He had never cared about God. He was interested, but he did not ever throw himself down to the ground to worship him. That was just a good way to get ripped to shreds and eaten. And the boy had no intention of having that happen to him.

He had a secret. The boy had found a secret place. Everyone else was too scared to go there, they would shiver and shake and bite at themselves if they even looked at it. The crumbling building was where God had once lived. It was huge and very old, half destroyed, with numerous twisting passages and old rooms. The boy didn’t understand why everyone was so scared of it. He had never felt scared. He had never felt much of anything, really. All he knew was that he liked his secret.

The secret was this: there were things inside the old building that still worked. The boy did not understand how. He did not know what electricity was. All he knew was that he could touch things, he could flip switches and press buttons and they would light up like magic. The first time he had done it, the shock of the light had nearly blinded him. He had thought that something bad was happening, he had thought that he was about to die. But he kept going back inside. And every day he got more and more used to it. 

There was one room that the boy liked best. It seemed like someone had once lived there, but it was nothing like the place the boy lived, the place where he huddled for warmth with dozens of other stinking, naked people. The walls had been painted a color that the boy had never seen before, and he had learned that it was the color of things that grew and lived outside. There were very old things inside. There were scraps of soft things that people were supposed to put on their bodies. There were all kinds of trinkets and knick knacks. The boy spent hours looking at them and wondering what they were.

One of the first things he found was small and flat and when he saw it for the first time, a shock had gone through him. The image of two people was on this small object. So there was a way to capture the likeness of people and trap it forever? Unthinkable. The boy had held it and stared. The image was of a man and a woman. The woman was clean and smiling, her long dark hair looked very smooth, unlike his own dirty mats. She had clear square things on her face and one of her arms was wrapped around the man beside her. And the man–

Well, the boy had seen the man before. He had seen him many times, crawling and screaming and tearing apart flesh. Because the man was God. He just did not look like God in the image on the flat object. He looked soft and clean and happy.

Had God once been a man? The boy had to wonder this.

The secret place was full of images. In one room, there was a flat and shining surface covered in dust. The boy looked into it and was confronted by a reflection of himself for the first time. It made him flinch back in fear until he realized that he was looking at himself. The boy touched his own face and watched his mirror image copy him. The image of the boy was gaunt and pale as the belly of a blind fish. His eyes were pale pink and half-blind like everyone else’s eyes, his hair was black, and every inch of him was filthy. The boy opened his mouth and looked at his own teeth which were stained red from chewing on the roots that grew in the ruins for sustenance. He frowned.

He had no concept of the grotesque. Every person in that shadowy place was grotesque from generations spent in darkness, from 200 years of gnawing on their own bones. There was no light, there was no beauty. But the boy still did not like looking at himself.

Oh, but the other images! Once the boy found the other images, he could not tear himself away. In the secret place, there was a box with buttons that could be pressed, and the buttons played sequences of images on another flat surface. The images were not real but they seemed real. They showed the boy wonderful things outside of his comprehension. They showed the boy strange people dressed in clothes, moving and talking in clean bright spaces. In these images, there was no howling and wailing and sacrifices of blood. There was no empty God waiting to drag them into the shadows to consume. Only people.

At first the boy did not understand the sounds coming from the box of images. His people did not speak like that, they spoke the twisted language of the Void. Over time, he learned. He learned fast, he picked it up naturally. Something in his mind made the sounds…right.

“Does anyone smell anything smoky?” said a man with brown hair and clear things over his eyes as gray smoke flooded the space he was in.

“Did you bring your jerky in again?” replied a small pale woman, not looking at him.

The images and sound proceed, showing the flat people on the flat screen running around and panicking. The boy would watch transfixed. He would think about how he wanted to live like the people in the moving images. They did not have to worry about starving to death. They did not have to worry about being consumed. 

The boy would return to his own reflection. He would stare at it. He would stare and stare and think about how badly he wanted to look like the people on the flat screen. There was nothing he could do to change his own perception. But the perception of others?

The boy was different. When he thought about it hard enough, he could make others see him as different than he was. If he wanted to, he could make others see him like he saw the people on the flat screen: clean and healthy and happy, not pale, not grotesque, no milky pink eyes.

The other people who lived with him in the darkness didn’t like that very much. The boy didn’t care. He started to think about how different he was. He started to think about how he wanted to go to the places he saw on the flat screen. Did a place like that even exist? Was it real or was it fake, like a dream? But it had to be real. There had to be a place where humans did not have to crawl in the darkness and get ripped apart by a hungry God.

Maybe there was a place with no God. The boy didn’t know.

This wasn’t a life. This wasn’t even survival. This was scratching and clawing and waiting to die while praying to the howling gods of the Void. The boy had stopped praying a long time ago. It didn’t make any difference because they never answered. 

The roots stopped growing and the blind fish of the cave rivers went away. To keep from starving, the people the boy lived with killed a little girl so they could sustain themselves from her flesh. It happened from time to time during the seasons where they could find no other food. They cut her throat and rubbed her blood on their bodies while wailing at the gods of the Void. The boy didn’t eat. The little girl had been born to the same woman who had given birth to him. He wasn’t sad about it, but consuming her was not the same as consuming someone who did not share his blood. When everyone was finished, God crept out of the shadows to gnaw the marrow out of the girl’s bones.

The sound of the crunching bones made the boy’s mother shiver and gnaw her own fingers until they bled in the alcove of stones that they took refuge in. The boy watched her silently tear at her dirty hair, too scared to make a sound that God could hear. He didn’t like it but he had no way to tell her to stop. All he could do was crouch there and watch the huge, twisted creature devour what was left of the girl’s body.

He was close enough to see God’s empty, slack jawed face. Close enough to see his sharp white teeth, close enough to see his long matted hair and beard. Close enough to see his gaunt and naked body. God was starving, just like the rest of them. He fed on their bodies, just like everyone else. 

The boy wondered if God had once been a man. All men died. Maybe God could die. Maybe it could be done. Maybe it could be done. Maybe. Maybe if God died, all the people would be safe again. Maybe they wouldn’t have to starve and eat eachother, maybe they could find somewhere to live that was light and happy like the people in the flat screen.

The boy liked to think about a world where that was possible.

That was the night he decided that he would kill God.

#writing

[dandi-8nd]

Part 3, Snip’s First Fight at Claviers.

Read part 2 here🔻🔻🔻🔻

((So Claviers was supposed to be an abandoned Factory farm but I retconned it to be a previously owned brewery turned body bank instead so the abandoned stockyards are now a quad area in between the train station, the sleeping quarters, and the bone processing plant.))

This is what it would look like

"WHO WANTS TO SEE BLOOD TODAY"

"BLOOD?? Naaah fuck that, I'm gonna go to the lockers and definitely NOT steal anyone's shit" old fart scoffed

"You steal?" Asked dandy

"NO. But if I did .. it wouldn't necessarily be wrong since these suckers don't wanna use a lock HAH!"

Old fart let's out a dry short Fart before scurrying away. Dandy, still sitting on snips shoulders, spots a seemingly clean rag separating some high stacked crates of brew that a chipper Mudokon carries in his cart passing by, and pulls it out.

"Not you stealing too idiot" he snatches the piece of fabric from her. "And what's this supposed to be?, you know if you're gonna steal you can't get caught, that's like the whole point"

"Uhh-I didn't mean to steal it. It just...I don't know looked like it could make a good blanket maybe" she said shyly.

"This thing barely covers half your body, what is this, a blanket for your foot? Dumb kid..."

The crowd surrounding them cheers, a mass of Mudokons surrounds a barbed fence ring. Atop the center is a flying Slig, with a microphone in this hand whilst another is shining a spotlight and filming the ring.

“TONIGHTS PRIZE IS FRESH, CLEAN, BLANKETS!!! Aaaaaaannddd drum roll please….”

A handful of Mudokons slam their fists against the outer walls.

“I SAID I WANT A FUCKING DRUM ROLL WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT!!!”

suddenly a mass collective scream rushed over the croud, more workers banging against the walls producing a massive roar akin to thunder.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!!!” The Slig pulls out a small twisted shut bag of neon purple powder that let off a subtle neon glow. “AN 8BALL OF ZAW DUST BITCHES!!!”

Suddenly the entrance to the ring flooded with Mudokons attempting to get inside to be the first to fight.

“Snips? What’s zaw dust? It looks pretty”

“Huh…oh uh it’s…not something you should have”

“What is it???”

“It’s a powder that uhhh..makes you shorter, and you don't want that so..” he was lying

“Oh, a lot of people here wanna be short. I guess I’m lucky to be this short!”

“Yep very lucky”

“Snips?”

“Ugh WHAT??”

“What’s an 8 ball?”

“It’s like 3 and a half grams- wait why am I telling you this….shut up for a second”

It was hard for snips to concentrate when the crowd was so loud. He was contemplating whether to join. Especially since Dandy would be better off with fresh blankets than a possible blood, piss and shit stained rag at night to keep her warm. But at the same time, who would watch Dandy while he was gone?

“I could definitely stand to lose a few inches” said snips

“Huh? I can’t hear you Mr. snips!!”

“Nothin kid.”

Snips take's Dandys rag and ties it around his head whilst mowing through the crowd, pushing people apart left and right. Dandy clings to his head for dear life, the turbulence almost knock her over a few times. He finally arrives at the ring entrance and saw Kane at the door.

“You.”

Kane shifted his eyes back apathetically before his eyes widely popped in surprise and did a double take realizing who was behind him.

“H-huh? It’s you! Wait what the fuck??? Where did you find her?”

“Fuck you. How do I enter the fight?”

“You gotta be locked in ahead of time with the collar; if you don’t got a collar, it’s first come first serve, which means you gotta go to the back of the line”

Kane pointed behind snips to reveal an almost infinite line of Mudokons. Some not even looking to be in shape to fight but we’re desperate enough for the zaw dust to try anyways.

“ give me your collar NOW”

“Fuck you! No way man! I want that zaw dust!”

“I will literally rip your face off in front of everyone here and take that collar myself”

Dandy grew anxious and uncomfortable, she got a sinking feeling in her stomach. Kane was too intimated and shocked to even talk back, he took off he collar and handed it to snips. And frustratingly walked away from the entrance Snips grabbed him before he could leave.

“You’re watching the kid while I’m in here”

Dandy squeezed Snips “NO!!”

“Shut up kid, adults are talking”

Dandy began to thrash and pull at Snips head in a panic. They were beginning to hold up the line and time for registering to fight was running out

“NO NO NO I DON’T WANNA GO WITH THAT GUY HES-“

“Dandy calm the fuck down you’re looking like a scaredy-scrab in front of everyone here!”

Snips pulls Dandy’s tiny body off of himself and sets her down on the ground

“Look kid, you wanna warm blanket to sleep in tonight? Or do you want a stinky shit towel with odd knows what kind of stains on it?”

“…warm blanket”

“That’s right, now go with this guy and I’ll be back for you after the fight”

Snips pushes Dandy to Kane and buckles in his collar. He then pulls Kane in close.

“If anything happens to her I’m gonna rip your face off, you and that scummy friend of yours” he whispered

“Got it” said Kane hesitantly. Kane pulled Dandy out of the crowd and towards the surrounding walls behind the bleachers supporting the warehouse. It was a safe spot where people socialized and placed bets and wasn’t as crowded as the center where the fighting ring was Kane leaned against the wall and took a big sigh.

“Where are those cigarettes? I need one right about now”

“Snips took em”

“Ugh of fucking course he did”

The two stood awkwardly besides each other.

“So how did you get out?”

Dandy said nothing. She was not only mad at him but also didn’t want him to know. She kicked dirt at him.

“Fine be that way”

Kane twiddled his fingers and looked around at the other workers. He pondered the absurdity of his situation. He felt like it was just yesterday he had a normal job living a normal laborers life. Now he was stuck In this hell hole. A feeling of existential sadness fell over him.

“This is all it’s ever gonna be…just fighting everyday till I die.”

Dandy looked up at Kane and saw the sad look on his face “huh”

“I usually don’t have to think about it. I’m always distracting myself. I would be fighting right now, not being left alone with my thoughts watching a child…I really really needed that zaw dust”

“Why do you need to be short so bad?”

“What? Short?”

“Yea”

“Uhh… I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Kane began to scratch his head. He looked around for anything that could distract himself. He saw a Mudokon handing out Brews and called him over and grabbed one for himself.

“I feel like they’d do these fights to desensitize us to the violence and the idea of like…dying here. Well, that and the fact that they make a lot of Moolah from streaming the fights on those underground black-net sites. I feel like if we all weren’t so complacent we could find some way to get out of here, there’s way more of us than there are sligs or Glukkons here at Clavier’s but, I don’t know; it’s almost like everyone is fine with being in a depressing place like this”

“You’re mean. You and Beck are mean. Maybe if everyone wasn’t mean like you guys they’d work together to escape”

“What we did is merciful compared to what you’ll probably endure here now that you’ve escaped. How did you get here anyways??”

“When I was at rupture farms the sligs would sleep a lot on duty so I took their pants and threw them in the grinders! And then they didn’t have their legs they couldn’t be mean to us! But I got caught when the grinders jammed and they told me I lost them moolah in damages so they sent me away.”

“Woah really? That’s pretty bad ass! Damn, I wish I would have thought of something like that! I used to work at rupture too as a kid! Then I got relocated to the mines.”

“I don’t like it there, the grinder blades are scary…”

“So I assume you got the ‘rupture scars’?” Kane chuckled

Dandy pulled up her sleeve to reveal a few faint scars from accidentally cutting herself on the meat blades.

“Nice, check out mine”

Kane pulled down his shirt collar to reveal a huge and thick scar stretching from the nape of his neck to his chest where the jumper shirt covered the rest. It was about an inch in diameter and had faint suture holes.

“ as fucked up as it is, it was still nice that they let someone stitch me back up, my chances of surviving we’re very low but here I am”

Dandy stared at the scar, her eyes widened. She touched her neck were Kane’s scar would’ve been “Ow” she whispered under her breath.

"ALRIGHT IS EVERYONE READY?! IN THE LEFT CORNER, COLLARED! WE HAVE…Wait! Who’s this big fella!? What’s your name new guy!?"

“SNIPS!” He yelled

"uhhh okay, WE HAVE NIPS err… or NIPPLES OR WHATEVER!! AND IN THE RIGHT WE HAVE FRANK!! I HOPE YOU’VE ALL PLACED YER BETS CAUSE WERE STARTING THIS FIGHT IN 3, 2, 1!!"

As soon as the bell rings, Snips locks eyes with Frank, he pulls his arms back and widens his stance, placing all his weight on his left foot.

“ Damn haven’t seen anyone use that stance here in a while..”

“His stance? It’s all wide like the guy said”

“ well yea, It’s really great for transferring your weight into powerful punches. Our bodies got a more stable base which it can push from; that way and it allows for a good lean. It also increases the range of motion of your head while decreasing the motion of your hips. The angle of force from your legs also allows for easier side to side motion….only downside is his kicks will be harder to execute but I mean if he’s a more hand dominant fighter he should be fine”

“What about the other guy?”

“Oh, he’s got like a square stance, that’s more common here, I use it most of the time too. It’s great for both boxing and grappling but from what I can’t tell from his hands being positioned high near his head rather than low he’s probably gonna do boxing. Franky hasn’t been here that long. I only fought him like twice so I still haven’t memorized his habits”

“Did you win?”

“Well, not the first time no…but the second time yea!”

“It was actually a draw, you should get your memory checked” said Beck

Kane and Dandy jolted in surprise

“BECK! Ohhh..heh funny seeing you here!” Kane squeeked.

“What are you talking about Kane? We do this every night, I should be asking you that question cause why the fuck aren't you in that ring fighting Frankie?! AND WHY IS SHE WITH YOU?!”

Kane signed “Look, Snips took my place and made me watch the kid, it was either that or get my face ripped off,he was gonna fuck you up too if I didn’t do what he said! Didn’t you want him to fight anyways?!”

Beck rolled his eyes “well I convinced everyone to bet on frank so…if Snips kicks his ass which I’m sure he will, we’ll be off the hook regarding bets but Frank was supposed to give us that zaw dust!! I finally convinced him to trade it in exchange for our break tickets!! Do you know how hard I had to finesse that guy!? And I used the last of ours to perk him up for the fight and now it’s all fucking wasted!”

“Well what did you want me to do?! Get us both killed!?” Asked Kane.

Beck rolled his eyes knelt down to Dandy “ Hey sport! You know I didn’t mean any harm when I put you in that vent right? Do you think you could steal that zaw off of snips?”

Dandy angrily kicked dirt into Beck’s face

“Okay, I deserved that.”

“Hmph!” Dandy turned her nose up at him.

“Snips helped you out of there, didn’t he!?”

“No, he didn’t actually. I got out all on my own for your information!”

“Is that so…Well, you know I was only looking our for you right? I just wanted to keep you safe, now you’re gonna have to work here with the rest of us and risk your life. Look around you Dandy, look in that big cage! Look who’s on top! Look who’s surviving! Not little twerps like you. You don’t belong here, your chances of surviving are slim to none. I don’t wanna burst your bubble kid, but you’re gonna die here, and Snips? He doesn't care about you!”

“What about that old guy? He’s scronny too!”

“Who?! Old fart? That man almost died today! And he’ll likely die tonight when this is all through”

“But he didn’t!”

“So how are you gonna feel when he turns up dead tomorrow?! Huh? What then!?

“Stop pretending like you care what happens to me! You only wanted me in that vent so I could get you and Kane cigarettes!”

“It was a win-win!! Ugh why am I arguing with a kid I look so dumb right now” Beck stands up looking down coldly on Little Dandy “Your Loss kid, hope you like dying”

Dandy crosses her arms and lifts herself up by her tip toes. “Better than dying alone in a vent from starvation!”

Beck’s eye twitched he frustratingly growled, then sighed and looked away and put on a fake smile. “that was your choice still you little shit…”

“OH MAN THAT’S GOTTA HURT! THIS NEW GUY IS SAVAGE I TELL YOU A SAVAGE!!”

the croud yelled

Oh fuck!! Who is this guy!? I never seen him around before!

Thats some dude from the new labor shipment! Today was his first day here!

He’s gonna slaughter Frank! why did I ever bet on him! I thought he was gonna fight Kane!

“Mister Snips!” yelled Dandy. She couldn’t see the ring from where she was with her small height but when she tried to get closer, Kane pulled her away

“It’s not safe in there you’ll get trampled or worse”

The group watched intently, Kane felt bad and decided to offer Dandy to sit on his shoulders to get a better view.

“Hey kid I can lift you up if you wan- huh…? Where did she go??”

“What the fuck? Kane look up!” Said Beck, The two looked up to see Dandy Scaling the walls

Kane pointed at Dandy “How is she doing that?! Mudokons can do that?!”

“Of course we can idiot, you just never learned. I’ve seen a few people in my tribe do it.”

Dandy sat at the top of the wall, playfully kicking her legs up and down “GO SNIPS!!”

Beck smirked and crossed his arms “so, that’s how she got out of the vents huh…”

Frank is stuck in the corner blocking, not sure if the amount of sweat he’s gushing is from moving around or from stress. Snips catches Frank off guard with a left jab following up with a right upper cut. Frank’s stance weakens and when he least expected it, Snips finishes the combo with a left hook making Frank lower his guard and finishes off with a right straight punch to the throat. Frank coughs, and a few drops of blood hit the ground.

"HOLY FUCK! I’VE NEVER SEEN A 3-2 COMBO EXECUTED SO QUICKLY! IF YOU BLINKED YOU WOULDVE MISSED IT GUYS! NIPPLES IS A MENACE!"

Frank throws a right jab at snips and misses. Snips weaves back leaning his entire body weight back to his right foot. He feins blocking and Frank falls for it and throws a left straight punch. While frank is leaning forward. Snips puts his hands together and slams Franks back.

"DID….DID HE HIT HIM IN THE BACK WITH A JUST DOUBLE AXE HANDLE?!? OH MY ODD!! WHERE'D HE LEARN THIS SHIT FROM!"

Frank falls to the floor with a shocked expression on his face. Everything became blurry and he started to hear a ringing in his ears. “M-my back….I-I can’t…mov-“ he passes out.

"AND THE WINNER IS NIPPLES!!!"

"ITS SNIPS!!"

"WHATEVER! IF ANYONE ELSE WANTS TO FIGHT NIPS FOR TONIGHT'S PRIZES STEP RIGHT UP!"

The line gets smaller and smaller

Fuck that I don’t wanna die just yet!

Your loss! No Zaw for you!

“Alright he won, now get down before you hurt yourself, I don’t want snips doin to me what he just did to Frank!”

Dandy stands up on the wall’s ledge and jumps down

“WOAH WOAH HEY!” Yells Kane. Him and Beck panic and reach their arms out to catch her.

Dandy falls past the two and lands on all fours.

Kane held his head, surprised by what he’d just seen“You can land on your feet too?!”

“Well well well”

The three hear a sultry goatish voice but aren’t sure where it’s coming from.

“You’re Babysitting children now? What a fall from grace; Or is that your own spawn….Ir”

Becks face went pale, his eyes widened and his eyes began to twitch again

“Who the fuck said that…” he looked up to find a pair of bright green eyes piercing through the shadows behind the Quad entrance.

[squidproquoclarice]

Yeehawgust Day 15: Transcontinental Railroad

May 1869

Tumbleweed, New Austin

Hearing the clanging of the wooden spoon against the leg of the table again, May Griffith sighed and leaned down, pulling up the tablecloth and peering into the cave-like shelter.  “Sadie, for the love of all that’s holy, will you please--”

Amber brown eyes, so like her own, peered back at her from the shade, and Sadie gleefully said “No!”  Punctuated it with another thwack of the spoon against the table leg for emphasis.

Sadie, at a year old, had learned three words.  Namely, Ma, Pa, and her current favorite, No.  Probably learned because she’d been hearing it so much these past months from both her parents, as well as Will and Elsie Adler on the frequent occasions the two families got together for dinner in the afternoon.  

Everyone said boys were the trouble.  May gave a derisive snort at the idea.  Henry, at three, wasn’t nearly so much of a handful as little Sadie with her willful curiosity.  And Elsie’s Jake was as sweet as could be at six, though she hoped like hell that stayed with him when adolescence and manhood came upon him. 

She heard the sound of Rob’s boots on the floor, and heard his low chuckle as he said, “We got a budding musician, I see.”

“A real stubborn one.”

Rob winked at her, and she couldn’t help but smile.  “Stubborn as her mother.  Whoever the lucky fella turns out to be, that husband of hers is gonna have quite the fine adventure.”

“Rob Griffith, you--”

He laughed, leaned in, and kissed her cheek.  “No complaints on my end.  And I figure any man who ain’t sensible enough to not try to bridle our Sadie won’t be worth the bother anyhow.” 

She gave up on it, and accepted the wooden spoon music, such as it was.  Given the things Sadie could be getting into, this one was relatively harmless.  “What’s the news in town this morning?”

“They connected the rails in Utah two days ago.  We got us a true transcontinental railroad now.”  He handled his tin mug easily, despite the two fingers on his left hand lost in a skirmish in North Carolina just before the end of the war. He’d come home to Pennsylvania, and to her.  Far more than many women had got.

He was here, and they were making a life together, in a world where all sorts of things seemed possible with the carnage of the war done and over.  What a thing that news was.  “Hope they start building a spur here to Tumbleweed soon enough.  Ain’t gonna make for much of a cattle town like they promised us without the rail nearby.”  It was hard land here in the desert, even for ranching, so unfamiliar from the green hills they’d both grown up in, far too close to a town called Gettysburg that nobody had heard of until six years ago.  

But if they became a cattle town here in Tumbleweed, that would keep things steady and sure.  The stockyards would always need cattle, and so long as the trains came here, cattle ranches and cattle trails would follow.  America had proved it could build a railroad coast to coast--building one to here in New Austin would be child’s play by comparison, and Tumbleweed only made sense as the place to pin the western part of the state’s future.  She poured herself a cup of coffee as well, letting herself savor Rob’s news, and the hopes they both had, now seeming all too real.

#yeehawgust #yeehawgust 2021 #rdr2 #sadie adler #may griffith #rob griffith #writing #fic from the parking lot

[mohini-musing]

Any fic, anything you want, but bonus points if you include a roadside market’s inflatable steak. 🥩

Coming Home 'verse

marginally compliant with Black Widow movie

~~~

She is unbreakable.

That’s the cover she chose long ago. Before she was a widow. Before she was Tasha. Before she was Natalie. Before she was… anything.

The Red Room didn’t break her. It made her.

A monster.

A killer.

A whore.

It made her less than human. And something infinitely more.

She thinks of all these things as she sits on the floor just outside the nursery, a word that surely the child within would argue against. Still, it’s what Laura calls it and so that is what it remains. She listens to Nathaniel’s soft snuffling breaths. Times her own inhalations with his.

Home.

Safe.

Loved.

The words don’t belong to her world. She will burn herself to ashes to make absolutely certain that they are his world. Their world.

Nathaniel.

Lila.

Cooper.

She remembers learning what mothers look like with their children. Remembers watching Clint and discovering that fathers could encourage without demanding perfection. She knows nothing of those things in her own past. Cannot remember being a child. Only a machine. In the academies there was only one way to be loved. Perfection. She was absolutely, utterly devoted to achieving that perfection in long lines and deadly aim alike.

There are footsteps behind her. Laura kneels a few feet away, feet tucked beneath her body and eyes searching over Nat’s face in a way that stops just short of uncomfortable.

“Tell me what happened.”

It’s an invitation to speak, neither question nor demand. Just an opening – one she can choose to step into or away from. That’s Laura’s way. She wants to explain. She wishes she could offer stories of the blue dye that she got all over the bathroom, a shade eerily similar to the one currently adorning Lila’s long braid (and the countertops of the upstairs bath). To tell the story of a little blonde child, of a blue haired older sister, of a backyard playset and fireflies in the trees.

But that story ended in a needle in her neck, blue strands chopped off until nothing remained of the little bit of experimentation she was allowed on what she thinks of only in her most private of moments as that one mission where she was a child. Clint asked her once where she learnt to fly a plane. She told him she doesn’t remember not knowing. It’s easier than explaining that she was coached into her first takeoff by a bleeding woman she called mom while a little child cried out in terror inches behind her and bullets pinged off the glass ahead.

Bile rises at the memory and she chokes it back, sputtering. She doesn’t think about that. Not ever. But she’s here again in this home where mom and dad are real and not just mission directives. Where family actually exists and by some hideous miracle she’s included. Her body lurches forward unbidden and she heaves, stomach long emptied but trying to expel its very lining anyway.

Laura doesn’t wait for her to finish before pulling her into arms, coaxing her shaking limbs against warmth and the scent of something earthy and organic – whatever handmade soap she last picked up at the farm market in town.

“Shhhh, just breathe,” she tells her.

Natasha obeys, breathing slow and deep, eyes drifting closed in a mixture of adrenaline crash and honest fatigue. She startles when her body shifts upward, transferred to arms that carry her like a toddler into the bedroom where a cot awaits her. She has a bedroom. But she also has a space in their room, for the hard nights. There are so many hard nights.

“No,” she whimpers, shaking her head as hard as she dares. Sleep isn’t safe. Sleep brings dreams. Sleep could bring words brought into the open, and tonight she dares not risk telling the one story left to her. Fury knows. Fury knows everything. There’s a folder in her room, slipped beneath the mattress that’s evidence enough of that. Yelena. Still blonde. No longer a child. Abandoned by her when they were children, abandoned once more when she left for SHIELD. When she struck a deal with the devil she trusted more than the one she knew better. For that she will always hate him. She doesn’t refuse Nick often. But that folder – that’s a mission she’s not accepting. It’s also a mission she made damn clear no one else would survive taking. She knows Nick sees her as both a weapon and a bit of a hazard. It’s lucky for her that he knows she means it when she makes promises.

It's just her luck she came home to a bathroom full of blue drips and an excited child who wanted to show off her new look to Auntie Nat. She thanks a wide variety of gods in which she does not believe that Lila bought her lies about a migraine when that excitement set off a panic attack impressive even by Natasha’s standards.

“Tell me what to do?”

“Shoot me up,” she grumbles, tired and wrung out and too fresh from falling to pieces on the hallway floor to care what’s coming out of her mouth.

It’s been a long time since she’s asked him for a drug run. He used to do it, before there was a family, before he was a reasonable adult, before she was the only one who was testing and fucking past limits at every opportunity. She hears their hushed voices, and it’s a shock when the suggestion comes from Laura.

“You know the one. Up by the stockyards, with that stupid inflatable steak in front. There’s always someone around selling what she needs.”

Natasha knows the one as well. It’s something of a running joke. The revolting nine foot tall blow up t-bone, with the handwritten sign for discount beef taped to it with what is clearly repurposed electrical tape. No sane human would ever buy such a thing. But it’s a hell of a landmark none the less.

Laura’s holding her in the big bed when Clint slips a needle into her arm an hour later. The world goes dim around the edges and she drifts, images of fireflies in the treetops dancing behind closed lids.

--

I sat with my anger long enough that she told me her real name was grief.

~ C.S. Lewis

#black widow #natasha romanoff #natasha and yelena #clint barton's farm #clint barton #laura barton #drug use #panic attack #coming home 'verse #the inflatable steak fic

[llewey-watts]

Work in progress post:

Detective Watts Best Quotes

Concocting A Killer

Watts: “Ah, so you’re the one who botched it.” Murdoch: “Excuse me?”

Watts: “Well, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

Brackenreid: “Listen, Detective Murdoch did nothing wrong. The Crown is just worried that Shanley may claim prejudice if the same detective reinvestigates the case.”

Watts: “Right, right, right. You’re just biased. The coroner’s the one who botched it. Coroners. Odd lot. Far from reliable to say the least. Not to mention the smell.”

Murdoch: “Our coroner has a flawless record. And she also happens to be my wife.”

Watts: “Good God, man. You’re married to the city coroner?”

Murdoch: “Yes.”

Watts: “Oof. Is she pretty? Ah, she’d have to be pretty. I don’t know how else you could tolerate being married to a colleague.”

“The streets of this fine city are my office.”

Crabtree: “Should I read these files?”

Watts: “Absolutely not. The less you know, the more pure you remain. From purity emerges truth. From truth emerges justice. Knowing nothing allows one to see everything.”

“Our mind is where we live our lives. The only home one needs is the human skull.”

Watts: “Oh, no. You interviewed a witness?”

Murdoch: “Oh, no. She called on me.”

Watts: “Your involvement was to cease entirely. Instead, it appears you are continuing to seek a conviction. And based on what? A visual test done 12 years ago by a neophyte coroner?”

Murdoch: “Dr. Ogden is my wife.”

Watts: “Which makes it all the more likely you’re blind to her mistakes. No, it appears this dinner was a poor idea. Good night Detective.”

Watts: “The detective was wrong.”

Ogden: “About what?”

Watts: “You’re not pretty.”

Ogden: “Excuse me?”

Watts: “Look at you. Classic, Romanesque bone structure, excellent physiognomic symmetry. You’re not pretty. You’re beautiful.”

Ogden: “Well, I suppose I’m flattered.”

Watts: “Why? It’s merely an objective assessment. But that necktie **shakes his head**.

“Honestly, Inspector, how does anyone work with this man? He is some kind of renegade to whom rules are a foreign concept.”

“Let’s suppose for a moment that Mr. Shanley is guilty of this current murder. Now, does that make him more or less likely to be guilty of the first? Are you the same man today you were yesterday? Your hair is not the same. You cut and discarded it. Same with your fingernails. Over time, our entire body falls away and is reconstituted. How, then, can you be the same? Oh, but our thinking changes with maturity, with experience. In truth, the continuity of personhood may be nothing more than a delusion. In fact, it makes me question our whole profession..."

“We need to get out of doors detective. The truth is in the air. We must **deep breath** breathe it in.”

“We both know you didn’t do it. — We have to blame someone. The function of the police is to attribute blame on behalf of the community, but the community doesn’t particularly care if we blame the right person. — Why not? Man has been using scapegoats since Leviticus. The sims were placed upon the goat, the goat was banished to the desert, but mo one cared that the goat was innocent.”

“The ignorami at Station One have done it again. I clearly told them to release the man who looks like Karl Marx. They’ve let out some fellow who’s as clean-shaven as bloody Kierkegaard.”

Hades Hath No Fury

“How could I have been so unaware? My sister was in distress, and I suspected nothing. Age is no excuse for inattention. -but, sir, you found her. Your sister’s alive.- Yes. So I’m at peace.”

“Yes. Well life is but a cruel sport for whatever maker you are forced to believe in. -Detective Watts I understand...- Would your sister forsake you for a house of women who have eschewed the world in which you live?-my sister was a nun.-“

“Truth is absolute, unyielding and eternal, Jackson. It is our one constant in a turbulent universe.”

“Your face is *pause* symmetrical, but that hat *shakes his head*”

Merlot Mysteries

Watts: “Wine is proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.”

Murdoch: “I highly doubt that”

Watts: “Oh, you reject the words of Benjamin Franklin?”

Murdoch: “Even a clever man is capable of a bad idea. no. wine, like any alcohol, is a depressant. It hinders the mind.”

Watts: “Ah, but ‘in wine there is truth.’ -Pliny the Elder.”

Murdoch: “Writers and Philosophers are seldom the best of judges. Especially when it comes to alcohol.

Watts: “Well, no one less than Louis Pasteur called wine, ‘the most helpful and most hygienic of beverages.’ Is it that you don’t enjoy the taste?”

Murdoch: “Ah.”

“Oh. Wait right there. I’m going to show you how wrong you are.”

“‘Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and a serious smile.’”

“In the words of Diogenes, ‘What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.’”

Murdoch: “Spectroscopic analysis.”

Watts: “Ah, yes. Not reliable in my experience. How’s it meant to help us?”

Murdoch: “By comparing the wine in question to the light profile of other varying ages, we’ll be able to discern precisely how old it is.”

Ogden: “The older the wine, presumably, the light the color, thanks to the blanching effect of sunlight.”

Watts: “Mm, but it was kept in a cellar. Depending on conditions, two bottles of the same provenance could be wildly different. There’s absolutely to way to determine —“

Murdoch: “Thank you, Detective. Please.”

Watts: “All right.”

Ogden: “Ready?”

Murdoch: “Yes.”

Ogden: “It’s 4.3.”

**Watts waiting + messing around.**

Ogden: “It’s 5.2. 8.5.”

Watts: “Well?”

Murdoch: “[Sighs] They are all different.”

Watts: “Really?”

Murdoch: “Every grape, every year, every bottle.”

Watts: “Hm, you don’t say.”

Murdoch: “It compares to an 1880 Merlot...a 1902 Tempranillo...and...several others.”

Ogden: “Well, I suppose you told us so, Detective.”

Murdoch: “All right. Call in your expert.”

Watts: “Uh, not my expert. My sommelier.”

The Talking Dead

“No one intends to get murder **scratches his beard** and yet.”

Crabtree: “Sir, are you not concerned that you yourself are marked for death?”

Watts: “Oh, I don’y like it, but the truth is death could come to any one of us any day.”

Crabtree: “Still, no need to hurry it along.”

Watts: “Well, very little of life is under our control. Very little death as well.”

Crabtree: “Watts, have you ever been to Paris?”

Watts: “Ah yes, The City of Light.”

Crabtree: “I thought that was Buffalo?”

Watts: “No, I believe Paris came up with it first. Why do you ask?”

Crabtree: “Nina’s involved with a show that’s preforming there. She wants me to go.”

Watts: “Forever?”

Crabtree: “No, no, just a short while.”

Watts: “Well, the world is only an oyster if you choose to open it.”

Crabtree: “So go to Paris today, for tomorrow I might die?”

Watts: “Precisely.”

Crabtree: “What about you? What would you do with your last day?”

Watts: “Just this. Talk to a friend.”

Crabtree: “Who? Oh me?”

Watts: “And solve a crime.This is what were looking for.”

Crabtree: “Brilliant.”

Watts: “The City of Love with a beautiful woman. You’d be a fool to say no.”

Crabtree: “Thought you said it was the City of Light.”

Watts: “Light. Love. Are they not one and the same?”

Crabtree: “I prefer to love with the lights off, sir. I fear I’m bashful.”

Crabtree à la Carte

“A shame. It looks terrific. I think I’ll go out for lunch. Anyone care to join me? —- This disappoints me. But I soldier on.”

“I’ll work with her. People are not to be defined merely by their words, thoughts, and actions.”

“KRRRKRRRKRRRSHING SHING SHING SHING SHING! a moleta.”

“[speaking Italian] RESPONDA TO ME!”

That man’s look tho.

Watts: “It may once again be safe, but I’m not sure I’ll ever regard meat with the same enthusiasm again.”

Cherry: “Perhaps you should stick to freshly butchered cuts.”

Watts: “I thought the same. Then I read up on the abattoir conditions in the stockyards.”

Cherry: “The Shelleys subscribed to a Pythagorean diet. Da Vinci too.”

Watts: “Pythagorean? You mean vegetarian?”

Cherry: “I do. ‘My body,’ said da Vinci, ‘will not be a tomb to other creatures.’”

Watts: “Yes. Yes, it’s the only way to live, isn’t it? Join me, Miss Cherry. From this day forward, we shall follow the ranks of all moral men in our strict adherence to vegetarianism.”

Cherry: “Uh, I don’t think so. What, are we cows?”

Murdoch Schmurdoch

“Are you being facetious?”

“**To Constable John Brackenreid** Let me guess, you invited a lady to accompany you on an outing and she declined. — I would counsel you to persevere. Ask again. As Lord Nelson wrote, ‘the boldest measures are the safest,’ although I suppose a woman is quite unlike a Danish Fleet. — Yes. Tread softly, Young Brackenreid. Let her know that if her inclination changes, your offer still stands.”

Game of Kings

Ogden: “I see. Well, I don’t much fancy being stared at for the next five months.”

Murdoch: “Julia...”

Ogden: “Inspector, I couldn’t help but notice that you and all of the men were staring at the us both. Is there something you’d like to ask?”

Brackenreid: “Uh, no.”

Ogden: “Constable Crabtree?”

Crabtree: “What? [Chuckles]”

Ogden: “Higgins?”

Higgins: “No, ma’am.”

Ogden: “What about you, Detective Watts? You seem like a curious fellow.”

Watts: “Well, there is one thing.”

Murdoch: “What is that?”

Watts: “When’s the baby coming?”

Crabtree: “Oh!”

Brackenreid: “Bloody hell, Watts! They wanted to keep it a secret.”

Watts: “How could they do that when everyone clearly knows what’s going on here?”

Free Falling

Watts: “One hopes this won’t put too much of a strain on their relationship.”

Crabtree: “How so?”

Watts: “In the face of great loss, emotions can be misdirected. Feelings amplified. I knew a young couple who experienced a similar issue. They never recovered.”

Watts: “The secret to dealing with gruesome remains is to replace natural instinct with logic.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Okay. How?”

Watts: “Consider an ant. Imagine you trod upon one, crushing it, and leaving it’s body mangled beyond recognition. Now, does this disturb you?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Not really.”

Watts: “Exactly. So we simply apply the transitive law. If we are not disturbed by an ant, there is no reason to be disturbed by a beetle. If not by a beetle, then not by a caterpillar. Nor a butterfly, nor a sparrow, nor a fish, nor a rabbit, not a dog...nor a human. What we have here, then, is no more disturbing than the squashed remains of an ant.”

Hart: “What’s this?”

Watts: “A reminder of the inhumanity of man, Miss Hart.”

Hart: “How poetic.”

Watts: “Constable? It seems something’s troubling you.”

Crabtree: “How so?”

Watts: “There’s an expression on your face that suggests you have a thought in your head.”

Crabtree: “Do you remember I asked you about visiting Paris?”

Watts: “No.”

Crabtree: “And then I was away for some time?”

Watts: “No.”

Crabtree: “No. Well, in any case, I did. I went to Paris with Nina.”

Watts: “Mm.”

Crabtree: “And she wants to go again, but for good.”

Watts: “So you’re considering leaving us all behind?”

Crabtree: “I don’t want to. My whole life is here. But I could imagine a life there. I don’t know. If I...If I don’t go, I lose Nina. If I do, I lose everything else that’s dear to me.”

Watts: “One loss doesn’t outweigh the other?”

Crabtree: “The enormity of either seems too great to contemplate.”

Watts: “Oof. Well...I can’t give you any advice. But I can tell you what I know. I know that we spend our whole lives holding on to what we have. We fear loss as much as death itself. But without loss, there is no change. Without change, there is no? Life.”

Crabtree: “Detective. You realize there’s nothing written on the blackboard, right?”

Watts: “Uh, yes, but it provides a frame of reference.”

Crabtree: “Ah.”

Brothers Keepers

“Of course I’m not certain. Memories are fragmentary impressions at best. The mind moves like a flock of starlings. It’s hard to pin down a thought, let alone a memory.”

“Did I have reason? Nigel Baker tortured and killed a man I...A man who was in every way my brother. Someone who deserved my protection. I had ample reason to kill Nigel Baker. But as I have already made clear, I didn’t recognize him. So did I kill him with intention? No. Am I sorry he’s dead? No, I’m not. To be honest, even if given the chance to exact my revenge, I’m not sure I’m capable of it. Obviously, my philosophy rejects that very idea. No one asks to be the way they are, not even boys like Nigel Baker.”

In reference to justice being found:

Watts: “Where is that to be found? I’ve been asking myself that. To be honest, I’m unable to think of much else.

Murdoch: “You seek justice.”

Watts: “I crave it. If I could, I would demand it. I want the man who killed my brothers to feel their pain. To feel my grief at what he did to them. But he’s dead. At the hand of his father. Did he even know why? And now the father will likely hang. Is that justice?

Brackenreid: “Of a sort, I suppose.”

Watts: “Then why don’t I feel better?”

Annabella Cinderella

Constable Brackenreid: “Do you think I’ll get a chance to meet him?”

Crabtree: “Who? The lawyer? What do you want to meet him for?”

Constable Brackenreid: “I-I followed the trial. I felt sorry for her.”

Crabtree: “John, she killed her mother with an ax.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Harriet Rawlins wasn’t her mother. Annabella was a home child.”

Crabtree: “So that makes it alright?”

Constable Brackenreid: “She was beaten and tortured. Her home sister admitted as much.”

Crabtree: “The home sister that Annabella then tried to murder?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Rosemary Rawlins was abusive as well.”

Watts: “That’s what made it such a brilliant defense. The victim was painted as a villain, the villain painted as a victim. Annabella Cinderella.”

Crabtree: “So you’re a fan of the lawyer as well?”

Constable Brackenreid: “He took her case for free.”

Watts: “Oh, nobody’s motives are purely altruistic. It’s all in the service of his political aspirations. He running for mayor, don’t you know?”

Crabtree: “Thank you very much, Detective Watts, for everything. You as well, Mr. Daniels.”

Constable Brackenreid: “And I’m terribly sorry about all of this.”

Watts: “Of course you’re sorry. It doesn’t change anything, so why waste energy in saying it?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Does Detective Murdoch know?”

Watts: “No, he doesn’t. And that’s not the question you should be asking right now.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Sorry, I...”

Watts: “Nope.”

Constable Brackenreid: “W-What is?”

Lawyer: “How do we find her?”

Watts: “Ah. On the train over, I went through the file from the Crown prosecutor. There’s one more person we should protect.”

Lawyer: “Who’s that?”

Watts: “The doctor who filed the death certificate and attended the case.”

Lawyer: “Dr. Beattie was never called to testify.”

Watts: “He provided evidence that helped convict her.”

Lawyer: “Good point. Let’s go.”

Watts: “No. You stay. **waves gun in the air** This is police business. All right.”

Constable Brackenreid: “I’m not saying she’s innocent. I just pointed out that there are other people who may have wanted to kill her mother.”

Watts: “Which, if they did, would ipso facto make her innocent.”

Crabtree: “Did she say she was innocent?”

Constable Brackenreid: “She did, yes.”

Watts: “‘Twas ever thus.”

Constable Brackenreid: **opens the door** “Oh, my God.”

Watts: “Still think she’s so innocent?”

Constable Brackenreid: “This is my fault.”

Crabtree: “It’s jot your fault, John.”

Watts: “Losing the prisoner was your fault. This is merely a consequence. One cannot be accountable for every consequence, because the consequences of every action are infinite.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Watts: “Your feelings are irrelevant. It’s simply the truth of it.”

Crabtree: “It does confirm our fears. The girl’s out for bloody revenge.”

#llewellyn watts #murdoch mysteries #jack walker #george crabtree appreciation society #detective watts #quotes

[georgescatcafe]

vermillion — 3

rating: t warning/s: period-typical homophobia pairing/s: georgenap genres/tags: cowboy x city boy au, rancher sapnap, rich george, coming of age, slow burn word count: 3,306 summary: When Sapnap gets sent into the city to get quick cash for his family’s struggling ranch, he’s not expecting much from the experience—lights aren’t very blinding when held up to the Sun, and he’s not exactly there to play around. But then he meets George, a boy built on money, who quickly sweeps in not just paying customers but also Sapnap, leading him into what any ruddy country boy would call the mouth of the Devil: high society. Cue a summer spent by each other’s side while feelings run unbidden, uncaring of deadlines and restraints.

It should be enough for the pair—and for awhile, it is, right up until it isn’t.

+ao3 +masterpost

;;

George’s parents aren’t even home. They get inside, George unlocking the door and calling out a tentative greeting only to be met with silence. Nick turns to him.

“Dinner, maybe,” George says. He readjusts Nick’s bag from where it’s started to slide down his arm. “Come on. I can show you to your room.” Nick doesn’t have a room, not yet, he knows, but he follows George anyway when he starts walking out the foyer and past the living room, er, both living rooms. He can’t help but crane his neck when they pass a doorway leading to what looks like an open dining room and adjoining kitchen. He bumps into George then, the other having stopped at the base of a staircase to wait for him.

Nick stutters out an apology.

“It’s fine,” George replies. “I can give you a proper tour in the morning, if you want?”

Nick will have to head out earlier, to set up at the market. “Maybe,” he says.

George smiles.

Nick’s room is apparently the first room on the left.

“The bathroom is right at the end of the hall,” George says, “and my bedroom is basically right across from yours.” He points at another, slimmer door. “Linen closet if you get cold. Or if you want to switch out your pillowcase or something.” And another door. “Another guest room. We don’t have company, but sometimes my parents strike unexpected deals and we end up having someone in there. If they’re at some dinner tonight, that might happen.”

“You’re going to tell them I’m here, right?”

George hasn’t stopped smiling, but it’s dull, eyes dark and shadowed, cheeks strained. “They’ll know; don’t worry.”

“I can stay in my truck,” Nick tells him. “It’s fine.”

“But you don’t have to,” George says. “Seriously, don’t worry about my parents.” He nods to the bathroom. “We’ve got extra toothbrushes if you need them. I’ll be in my room. You won’t have to look at me anymore.”

“I like looking at you,” Nick says and then wishes he didn’t because the smile finally drops from George’s lips only for the shadows in his eyes to expand and cover his entire face. “I didn’t mean that,” he adds.

“Yeah,” George replies, “I know you didn’t.” He turns, heading towards his room. “Anyway, I’ll be in here if you need me.” He tries a smile again. It’s weak, and Nick feels bile rise in his throat. He’s not sure brushing his teeth will make the sensation go away. “Goodnight, Sapnap.”

“Night, George.”

When he spits for the nth time over the sink, the tangy sharp taste remains. Being right is always fun until it isn’t. Nick splashes water over his face, cold and stinging. When he looks up, his eyes are bordering red. He squeezes them shut before pressing his fingers into them. When he pulls his hands away, his eyes are only even more red. Whatever. He takes his toothbrush and heads back to his room.

He can’t help the glance he sends to George’s door as he passes. The lights are off. He bites back the sigh threatening to slip out and keeps walking.

;; 

Despite the bed which is comfortable as hell, sleep doesn’t come easy. Every creak from downstairs puts Nick on edge, and a couple of times he hears creaking right outside his door, and he’s left to wonder just what it is George is doing out there. If it’s even George walking around. The room he’s in is big, with a high ceiling and tall windows, even for a second-storey bedroom, and it leaves him feeling open and exposed, and part of him wonders if it’d have just been better to sleep in his truck, in that market parking lot. Yeah, he was equally exposed there, but he was also in the middle of the city where shouting could wake up pretty much anyone. And he wasn’t the only one asleep under the open sky. Here, George is his friend, but that’s a new term, and Nick doesn’t plan on meeting George’s parents, not really. Here, he’s basically on his own.

Nick rolls over, tugging the sheets higher, tucking them right under his chin. It’s fine. He’s fine. It’s like first sleepover jitters. He just needs to get over it.

But there’s voices now, from downstairs, and his ears strain as he tries to listen is. It’s all accented, so it’s hard to pick out if George is among the voices. Definitely his parents, though. Nick groans, finally just giving a rough jerk to the sheets and pulling them fully over his head.

And the damn footsteps, again and again, going past his door. Seriously, what the fuck is George doing? If he didn’t hate the idea of meeting George’s parents, especially when he’s the way he is, he’d go out there and force the other to stop, marching him back to bed and tucking him in himself.

In the least weirdest way possible.

Eventually, the voices die down, and with them, so do the footsteps. Nick lets out a breath. When he looks over to the window, he’s grateful to see it’s still dark out. There’s still a chance for more than a couple of hours… hopefully.

 ;;

Morning is not kind to Nick. He wakes to birdsong, sunlight on his face, and that’s well enough, but it’s when he goes downstairs, planning to leave a note for George and his parents, thanking the family for their hospitality, that he sees a note is unnecessary.

“Um,” he says, and then, “good morning, sir.”

George’s father looks nice enough, if you look past the air of frigid coolness X from him while he butters a slice of toast. “Good morning,” the man replies. “Are you Nick?” The name comes out after a hesitation, and it makes Nick want to slam his head into the sparkling granite counter, embarrassment flooding him when he realizes George probably introduced him as Sapnap.

But all he does is smile and nod his head. “Yes, sir,” he replies. “You’re George’s father?” At the affirmative, he continues: “Thank you for letting me stay here. I know it’s probably inconvenient, and I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“It’s alright,” George’s dad offers a polite smile. “George said you’re a Pappas?”

“Yes, sir,” Nick thinks he’ll be using that phrase a lot, “son of Glenn Pappas.”

“I’ve spoken to him once or twice,” the man thinks for a moment, “has your father ever mentioned a Davidson family?”

“I think I’ve heard that name, sir,” Nick replies. “I’m guessing you’re Mr. Davidson?”

“Guessed right,” Mr. Davidson replies. He spies the clock over the stove. “Well, you know us working men, I’m off. Take George with you when you go. I tell him he’s inside too often.”

Nick nods as Mr. Davidson takes a final sip from the mug that’s been sitting on the counter, placing it delicately in the sink before bidding Nick goodbye and disappearing out the doors and out the house. Nick stands alone in the kitchen before heading back upstairs to wake George.

George does not rise after the first knock, nor the second nor third.

Finally, Nick opens the door.

“George,” he says. “Wake up.”

The lump on the bed groans, shifting before settling again.

Nick sighs. “I had to talk to your dad. You have to wake up. George, what the hell.”

The blankets fall away as George sits upright, rigid. “You what?”

“Yeah,” Nick replies, “I went downstairs because I need to go to the market soon, and your dad was down there. He told me to take you with me.”

“Good,” George says at that, finally climbing out of bed, his lounge pants catching on his toes with every step he takes towards what Nick assumes is the closet. “Not good that you met my dad, though. You’re okay?”

“I didn’t want to,” Nick admits, “but he knew Pa, so I guess it went fine?”

“Stockyards, remember?” George sends him a smile oddly bright for someone who didn’t want to wake up a minute ago. “Anyway, get out.”

“What?” Nick takes a step back anyway.

“I’m going to get dressed,” George tells him, disappearing into, yup, the closet. “Get out.”

“Oh my God,” but Nick still exits the room, shutting the door behind him.

George comes out a couple minutes later, tugging a jacket on over his shoulders.

“You’re going to get hot later,” Nick says, but George waves him off.

“I’m cold now.” George leads the way downstairs. “Now come on, I’m fucking hungry. What do you want from McDonald’s? There’s one on the way back to the market.”

 ;;

Nick watches in both admiration and horror as George orders half the breakfast menu then proceeds to eat that and drink a large orange juice. Normally, it’d be just admiration, but George is so skinny—there’s no way he can just fit all that in there without dying. But he does, and when Nick still hasn’t exited out the parking lot after thirty seconds, George turns to him with a cocked brow.

“Weren’t you the one wanting to leave early?”

So Nick drives.

 ;;

The day passes much like the last, but with less awkward pauses and hesitation. Banter comes easy between the two of them, and George brings in customers while Nick leaves them satisfied with their purchase. The day’s inventory depletes quickly, and for that, Nick allows them an early dinner, the two of them packing up the truck and heading out before the sun’s even thought about reaching the horizon.

As they sit nursing sweet tea and picking at their pasta, George gives a sigh. “You can stay the night again,” he says.

“Do you want me to stay the night?” Nick asks.

George shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean,” he blinks, staring into his paglia e fieno before winding the fettuccine around his fork, “I like your company. I just mean—I don’t—I don’t know what I mean.” He takes a bite of his food. “Do you feel like you’re intruding?”

“No,” Nick replies, “I feel paranoid. Dissected, maybe.”

George nods, stabbing again at his pasta. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah.” He sets down his silverware finally, the metal making a small clink against his plate. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Can’t help it,” Nick says. “Oh, uh, what were you doing last night? I heard… were you pacing?”

George picks up his fork, and with the action, the pasta-twirling starts again. Nick refrains from reaching across the table to still his hand. “Yeah, that was—I went downstairs a couple times, and a couple times I was going to see if you,” he laughs, quiet, embarrassed, cheeks an obvious red, “were all settled in and stuff.”

He wasn’t. “I was,” Nick tells him, offering the other a smile. “No checking-up necessary.”

George smiles back.

;; 

It takes a couple more nights at the Davidson’s before Nick meets George’s mother. Equally nice as her husband, equally frigid. “You must be the Pappas boy,” she tells him. “Nick, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, “and you’re Mrs. Davidson?”

She smiles at him, and Nick finds himself smiling back, though he keeps a good few steps between them. “George says he’s been working with you,” she continues, “at the market downtown?” Nick nods, and she nods too. “Good. He needs to get out more.”

“He’s definitely out more now,” Nick says, and she smiles again, tighter at the corners, though. Right. He straightens. “I’ve told your husband but thank you again for letting me stay here. I’m sure it’s inconvenient, but—”

“If Harry said it’s alright, then it’s not a problem,” Mrs. Davidson interrupts him. “And we’re equally grateful you’re getting our son out of the house. Out of his room, honestly.” She shakes her head. “Always did wonderfully at banquets.” Elegant fingers rub at the pearls on her wrist. “He’s very good at speaking when spoken to, that means.” The smile she wears now is soft, gentle as the light from above the stove.

Nick isn’t sure whether or not he’s supposed to laugh. He tugs at his shirt collar. “Well, I’m glad to help. He’s a great business partner.”

Wherever Mrs. Davidson is, it isn’t with Nick. Her murmured yes is as much a dismissal as Nick thinks he’ll get. He bows his head and wishes her a goodnight. He doesn’t hear a reply.

 ;;

“Your ma is nice,” Nick tells George when he gets upstairs, finding the other sitting at his desk in his room. “Is it really not a problem? Me being here?”

George leans back in his chair, pushing himself away from the desk. “Yeah,” he finally says. “It’s not. We’ve got the space, anyway. You went three days without meeting my mum.”

“Not as much luck with your dad,” Nick says, and George laughs. When George pulls himself back into his desk, fiddling with the various knickknacks there before scratching his pencil across a notebook page, Nick wonders about what his parents said.

George talked about having friends—talks about having friends, even. He didn’t sound close to them, not really, didn’t even sound like he enjoyed having them, but he had them. Has them. Nick frowns, taking a seat at the foot of George’s bed before falling back onto the soft duvet. George doesn’t glance up from his writing.

“Are you going to see your friends at all?” he finally asks. “I mean, I know you said you don’t want to bother, but still….”

At that, George straightens, setting down his pencil and turning to look at Nick. “Anna and Blair are in Paris; Vince, Theo, and Gordon are back in the UK; Beth and Seraphina are in Switzerland. Everyone else is either away on summer internships or partying at South Beach.”

“And the people you named… are you close to them?” George sends him a look and Nick is quick to revise. “As close as you can be, I mean.”

“Sometimes,” George says before frowning. “Why? Do you want to stay at a hotel or something?”

“Stop acting like it’s the end of the world if I sleep in my truck,” is what Nick tells him first, and then, “and no. I was just curious. Before, you were by yourself, and now it feels like you’re always with me. I know you said you can’t really trust your friends, but you don’t even have plans with them.”

“It’s unconventional, yeah,” George says, turning back to his desk, “but it’s fine. I like what we’re doing at the market, and I like my friends in small doses. You, that exception.”

“Probably because I’m not someone that would leave you behind for South Beach,” Nick replies, and George allows a small laugh at that. Nick grins. “Alright,” he says, “I’m going to go get ready for bed. See you in the morning?”

George nods and lifts a hand in a wave. “See you in the morning.”

Right before shutting the door, Nick pauses. George does too. When they look at each other, Nick opens his mouth, words on the tip of his tongue, before he realizes he doesn’t even know what those words are. He shakes his head, closing the door quietly behind him.

 ;;

He’s practically forgotten about the conversation when George brings it up again. “My parents,” he begins, “what’d they tell you?”

Nick freezes. “Nothing,” he replies, slicing a liver, eyes locked on the organ. Can’t afford to mess up and all that.

“Sapnap,” George says. “They told you something.”

“They didn’t!” Nick bites his lip and squints, lining his knife up again. Really, he’s got to get this cut right. He does.

“Nick.”

He puts the knife down. “They just said that you don’t go outside much and that I help with that. It’s really not a big deal.”

“Nothing with my parents is ever not a big deal,” George sneers. “I can’t believe this. So what—I fucking hate my friends, what about it?”

“Nothing about it!” Nick tells him, packaging the sliced liver. “Really, I was just wondering if you really didn’t have any plans. I think this is something that’s not a big deal.”

“No, no,” George sinks to the floor, squatting, palms pressed over his eyes, “it is a big deal.”

Nick frowns, lowering himself to pull George’s hands away from his face. “Everyone likes a little alone time, and you’re, like, living in a pit of snakes. How is it a big deal?”

George glares at him. “Let’s just say it’s not a very good look when you’re inside all day, and when you’re not inside, your usually with girls that you aren’t having an affair with.”

“You’re a teenager; how the hell would you have an affair?”

“It’s the thought that counts,” George replies, flat. “I look fucking weird! To my parents and to all their stupid business partners! Especially here. We literally work with oil companies and ranchers, Sapnap.” He jerks his arms free of Nick’s grasp to cover his face again. “No wonder they stopped putting up a fuss about you—you make me look good! I’m actually working, getting work experience, and to have a friend like you, a real, rugged, gritty guy—oh my God.” He drags his hands down his face to look up at Nick. “That’s so dumb.”

“So I make you look like a man?” Nick asks, and then blinks, shaking his head. “Also, stopped… putting up a fuss? So they didn’t approve at first?”

“Of course they didn’t approve,” George hisses. “I never do stuff like that, what I did with you, they were—not terrified, but you know.” He widens his eyes, lips set in a stern frown. Nick nods, though he’s not sure he knows. George continues anyway, “It’s messy. Families are messy.”

“Yeah, they are,” Nick agrees, though his was always pretty neat. Oh well. “But it’s fine,” he tries a smile, though the frown doesn’t leave George’s face, “I didn’t think anything of it, and your parents are happy with you—I see no downsides.”

“It’s the principle, Sapnap,” George tells him, but finally, he gives a small smile too. “It’s fine.”

“Do you want to maybe get off the floor now?” Nick asks, and George nods.

They rise, and Nick clears his throat. “Uh, I don’t know how good that was for business.”

“Sorry,” George replies, “I don’t usually… do that.”

“I know,” Nick says. When he smiles, George smiles back, zero hesitation.

;; 

The next day, George asks him how long he’s staying. Nick frowns down at his street tacos. “Until all the meat sells,” he says, “and then I’ll go home, get more meat, and stay until that sells out.”

“All summer?” George asks.

“All summer,” Nick replies.

George stares at a point past Nick’s shoulder. “Huh,” he says. “Well, you’ve been here a week. Are you going home soon?”

“Give it another week.”

George nods. “How many trips are you thinking?”

Nick shrugs.

“Do you think I could go with you on one?”

Again, Nick shrugs.

George narrows his eyes before huffing. “I want to see the ranch.”

“It’s got the animals you sell and grass,” Nick says. “What are you hoping for?”

“Consider it my South Beach,” George replies.

“Go to Galveston, then,” Nick retorts.

“Take me to Galveston, then.” When Nick looks across the table at him, George is serious.

Nick sighs. “Do you mean it?”

George doesn’t reply.

Another sigh. “Maybe. Can’t you drive?”

“My mom doesn’t want me to risk it,” George tells him, and the statement is so ridiculous it makes Nick choke on his next bite of taco. “What?” George asks, brows furrowing. “It’s true!”

Nick swallows as best he can before taking a drink of water. “I know,” he replies. “That’s what makes it so terrible.”

;;

next

#snf vermillion #georgenap #sapnotfound #snf #fic #fanfiction

[cowboyshit]

starlight will be the only light when I can tell my heart to you... PART ONE OF ? future parts: two, three

Ship: Hangman Adam Page x Female OC (Hazel Baker) x Matt Jackson  Summary: Hazel’s engagement ended awhile ago, and she’s finally decided she’s ready to jump headfirst back into the dating game by having a fun, carefree, no-strings-attached night with a handsome cowboy at the local rodeo. Instead, she finds something much, much more complicated and catches herself between two men and a whirlwind of feelings.  Rating: explicit (part one only has a brief, heavy-handed make-out scene but it’s written explicit enough to elicit this rating, and the piece itself will become more explicit in the future) Length: 14,079 words Warnings: alcohol mention, brief descriptive make-out/verging on smut situation

author’s note: wow, this thing turned into a monster I didn’t expect. Initially, I just wanted to have a little fun and write the elite as rodeo cowboys in a rodeo au, but this fic sort of took on a life of it’s own. I will warn that not much happens in this part, despite how long it is. It’s just a bunch of FEELINGS. Look forward to part two, where things get even messier than they are here! And yes, I promise in the next one they’ll actually get together.

“Oh wow, look at that one.”

“Hazel, I told you I wasn’t going to bring you here if you weren’t going to behave yourself.” Her friend, Andrea’s playfully exasperated tone made Hazel grin wide.

“I know, but can you blame me?” She said and nudged Andrea with her elbow, jerking her chin toward the blond-haired cowboy dead ahead. 

He was handsome in a heart-stopping, jaw-dropping kind of way, she thought. The late afternoon sun hit the edges of the blond curls that stuck out of his cowboy hat, making them look as if they glittered. His eyes crinkled at the corners as his cheeks pushed into them, a big smile on his face as he laughed. She could just hear the faint hint of it - that laugh - through the people passing between them and it sounded warm, and rich, and honest. She wanted to hear it closer.

He was wearing a bright pink, long-sleeve button-up with some sort of white pattern she was too far away to figure out. It was fine print, but looked like swirls. Maybe paisleys. The sleeves, upper back and chest supported bold, silver-white thread and patches sewn into it of varying sponsors and brands. Considering the multitude she could count, it was easy to guess he was one of the hot shots on the rodeo circuit. The money went where the winners were, after all. Plus the addition of that big silver, gold-trim belt buckle that was biting gently into the fat of his stomach had likely been won as a prize at another rodeo. It looked pretty fancy, even from this distance.

“Who is that?” She asked, and when Andrea didn’t answer she finally pulled her eyes off him and looked at her friend. 

Andrea blushed and shook her head. “You don’t need to go near those guys.”

“What?!” Hazel exclaimed, frowning at Andrea and looking back at that beautiful pink-shirt wearing blond-haired cowboy. He was talking with two other cowboys, both with long, dark-brown hair. She looked from them, back to her friend and found Andrea frowning at her. Hazel rolled her eyes. “Oh come on! You know how long it’s been since Ethan and I called off the engagement and ended things. I’m finally feeling like me again, like I’m getting over that heartache. I could use some fun! The best way to get over someone is to get under someone, right?” She wiggled her brows and grinned playfully. “So, spill it, who is he? What’s his deal?”

Andrea worked the grounds when the rodeo pulled into town and had been doing it enough years that she was known and knew the folk who came to compete. It was a side-gig she had on top of working the cafe at the stockyards. This meant she often knew the rodeo competitors and other cowfolk who found themselves in Brimwood Creek. Therefore, she knew exactly who Mr. Blond Haired Angel Cowboy was and for some reason she was withholding that information. Andrea knew Hazel had a penchant for falling for those handsome cowboys and was enough of a confident little flirt to strike up some fun with one, but she’d never minded before. A thought occurred to Hazel as she remembered her friend blushing, and she looked both surprised at the realization and apologetic.

“Oh! Are you two a thing?” Understandably Andrea wouldn’t want Hazel making eyes at him if she was after him.

“What?” Andrea laughed and shook her head. “No.”

“Okay, so what’s wrong with him then?” She was getting suspicious. She narrowed her eyes on him, trying to find the flaw, but just found herself more distracted by how handsome he was. She glanced at his hand, or tried to, but couldn’t see his ring finger from where they were standing. “Is he married?”

“No! Hazel, look. He’s not the kind of guy you’re after. He’s sort of a recluse. He comes out to compete and then disappears after hours instead of spending time hanging out with everyone. I’ve never once seen him with a girl. He’s not like the rest of them, at least from what I’ve seen.”

Now that was surprising. A lot of these cowboys were known to be roaming heart-breakers with a little lady in every town the rodeo made a stop in. That’s what Hazel had been thinking when she’d gotten Andrea to agree to not only bring her to the rodeo, but get her a little bright green paper wristband that’d let her stay once the rodeo wrapped up for the night and the citizens took off, happy and entertained. After her serious, four-year long relationship had ended over half a year ago she was finally ready to get out, but she’d only meant to find herself a good one-night stand. Her heart wasn’t ready to open up to anything more than that.

“What a shame,” she murmured, eyes still on him, “cause he is quite the looker.”

“Adam! Harper’s out, you’re takin’ his spot!” A sudden barking shout from an older, bow-legged cowboy to her right drew his eyes, and when he nodded and lifted a hand to signal he heard and understood, he caught her watching him. His gaze moved from the cowboy to her, lingering a little, and she wished she could tell what he was thinking. Probably: Why the hell is this woman gawking at me?

His frown deepened and then he looked away as one of his friends - a handsome man with a dark beard and his long, equally dark brown hair secured in a ponytail, tucked beneath a black wide-brim cowboy hat - asked him a question. Hazel’s eyes jumped between them for a moment, admiring the view, before Andrea tugged her sleeve.

“Come on, quick gawking. You promised you’d help me work and not spend the entire day ogling cowboys, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Hazel said, dramatically overacting with a heavy sigh, “I did say that. What a bummer.”

“Shut up,” Andrea laughed and pushed Hazel’s arm playfully, to which Hazel gasped in mock offense, which quickly spilled into laughter before she pushed her back, the two turning to walk toward the chutes and figure out where they’d be best helpful. Neither girl saw the blond-haired cowboy, Adam, turn and watch them retreat with a curious, lingering, thoughtful frown across his naturally down-turned brows.

The rest of the afternoon and evening went by rather quickly. In between lending a hand wherever Andrea needed her, the girls propped themselves up on the metal fences and watched the rodeo events take place. It’d been a couple years since Hazel had gone to a proper rodeo, and her heart felt full to experience it all again. Even the way the crowd hollered encouragement for a particularly good ride, or how everyone lingered in groups and their familiar conversations drifted by her ears as she walked past them brought her back home. She’d missed it, every sense of it, and for a good moment during one of the last rides she let herself close her eyes and soak everything in as deep into her skin as she could get. For the most part she’d wanted to find some cute cowboy to hook up with after the show, but in reality she’d needed the entire day spent here more than she realized she would. She’d been away from this world for too long.

Eventually the citizens were gone, the gates were closed and security made their rounds past little encampments where friends had gathered around portable barbecues and bonfires to check and make sure everyone had the wristband saying they could stay. Hazel and Andrea were hanging out with a small group of workers like Andrea who saw to the set-up and tear-down of the chutes and paddocks, the feeding of the animals and the cleaning of their pens, the organizations of the rides and kept the level ground of the arena smooth for each competitor. One of the older men, a veteran of the rodeo, was telling a hilarious story about a mishap with an angry bull when Andrea gently nudged her elbow in Hazel’s side.

“I heard there’s a cowboy who was asking about you,” she whispered suggestively with a little wiggle of her dark, bold brows.

Immediately Hazel thought of him - blond curls, pretty eyes - and her heartbeat increased. She looked hopeful at Andrea. “Was there?”

“Mhm,” she nodded and tipped her beer bottle back, taking a slug and drawing out the anticipation. “One of the Jackson brothers. Matt.”

“Oh,” Hazel’s shoulders dropped as she felt a stab of disappointment that it wasn’t Adam. But then again, what had she been expecting? She’d only ogled him like a weird-o, then made sure to watch his ride and holler for him until she couldn’t breathe, wrapped up in watching him sit through each buck, knees bending in perfect rhythm with every jolting land and upward hop and twist the bronco put him through. He hadn’t even looked twice at her, but she’d hoped…

“Oh?” Andrea blew a breath from her lips and shook her head. “I thought you’d be all over that. He’s exactly your type and,” she tipped her beer bottle with her brows raised, “exactly what you’ve been looking for.”

No strings attached. Just adult fun with no expectations.

“Yeah, no, I am, believe me.” That was the dark-haired bearded cowboy Adam had been talking to. Hazel remembered thinking he was handsome, but she was so distracted by Adam that even in her mind she could barely remember him. “He’s hot. I was just… you know… hoping maybe Adam had said something?” She felt like she sounded pathetic, fishing desperately for some sign he’d thought something of her too.

“Adam? Adam who?” Andrea asked, perplexed.

“The blond haired cowboy we saw first thing today!”

A few curious eyes pulled their way as Hazel talked louder than a whisper, interrupting the old cowboy’s story. He set her with a heavy glare and she sheepishly shrugged her shoulders.

“Sorry!”

“Adam Page?” Andrea asked with a whisper once everyone had gone back to talking, then shook her head. “Honey, no. I told you, he’s not like the other guys around here. You could prowl the entire rodeo grounds tonight and you wouldn’t find him. He never sticks around here. Goes right back to his trailer, keeps his nose clean of trouble.”

“I wouldn’t be trouble,” Hazel retorted with a pout.

“Oh yeah, right.” Andrea snorted and slugged another swallow of beer. “Speaking as a friend that knows you, I’d say go find Matt. He and his brother have a little bonfire on the other side of the grounds, past the corrals. A few of their friends will be there too, so it won’t be too weird for you to drop by.”

“Won’t you come with me?” Hazel asked, frowning.

“Oh, no,” Andrea shook her head quickly, but even by firelight Hazel could swear she saw a little bit of color in her cheeks again.

Andrea was always so busy with work and her four younger siblings that she never found time to date, and normally because she didn’t have the time, she didn’t get boy-crazy the way Hazel always had. It was… interesting to see Andrea a little flustered.

“Alright, spill the beans. Why won’t you come with me to the Jackson brother’s little fire pit?”

Andrea glanced at the people they were sitting with, who were still engrossed in their own stories, and then back at Hazel.

“Hazel, it’s nothing.”

“Unless you tell me the exact reason I’m going to grab you by your wrist and drag you over there with me.”

“Hazel!”

“Don’t test me.”

Andrea groaned and set her beer bottle in the cup-holder of the camping chair so she could bury her face in her hands. “I kind of sort of have a crush on Nick Jackson.”

Nick Jackson, obviously the other half of the Jackson brothers. 

“Really?!” Hazel was so enthralled by the idea of Andrea having a thing for one of the cowboys she immediately wanted to hook them up. “Well, come on! Come with me, come talk to Nick!”

“Hazel, no. I can’t. You know I can’t. I don’t want to do the whole one-night-stand thing with a rodeo cowboy I’ll have to see next time they come into town, and I have too much going on to add an attempt at a long-distance relationship to everything. He’s cute and he makes me feel tongue-tied and stupid when he smiles at me, but that’s just all it’s going to be. You, on the other hand,” she fixed her with a pointed stare, “should go get what you came here for before it’s too late.”

Hazel wanted to drag Andrea with her anyways, just to shove her in front of Nick and let the sparks fly, but she knew her friend and she knew what she said was right. Andrea’s life was already packed and bursting at the seams, the last thing she needed was a romance with one of these rodeo cowboys.

“Okay, I’ll go talk with Matt.” She said as she popped up, “and I’ll make sure to tell Nick you said hi.”

“Hazel!”

She smiled at Andrea’s frustrated, warning tone and gave her a wink before turning and heading off to make the walk across the grounds, past the corrals just outside the touch of the bright stadium lighting. Hazel was used to those kinds of slide-in conversations at these after-hours events. Everyone was everyone’s friend, and if a cowboy had been asking after you, all his attention would be yours the minute you were in that firelight. Honestly, was she really the kind of girl who was going to pine after some guy who wouldn’t give her the time of day or was she going to let loose, be free and have a little bit of fun with a totally handsome, dark-eyed cowboy who definitely wanted her? The decision was too easy to make.

She started to walk across the grounds and could just make out the horses in the pop-up pipe-fence pens, lined in a halo of white from the distant stadium lights. She could hear their soft breathing as she drew closer and the gentle swish of their tails as they flicked away late summer night flies. Her pace decreased until she stopped, turning toward the corral and watching the shape of a large golden palomino mare who dozed on the other side of the little one-horse pen. Noticing eyes on her, the mare's ear twitched and she shifted her weight, opening her dark eyes on Hazel. Her pale lashes looked gilded as they caught the light.

“Hey girl,” Hazel beckoned with a soft clicking under of her tongue, slipping her hand into the pen and holding the back of it out as a greeting. “Aren’t you a pretty thing,” she talked gently, her voice just above a whisper. All the people were far from the pens, set up in little circles around their parked trailers, and their laughter and conversation was a happy, distant noise. It left Hazel feeling as though she were in some hushed, isolated place, somewhere special.

She’d always lived for these moments as a kid, these points in time where it was just her and a horse, and she could talk about everything. The things that she was going through, the dreams she had, or even all the places she’d love to go riding if she ever could.

The mare drew close at the sight of Hazel’s hand and brushed her velvet, whiskered lips over the back of it, huffing a warm breath gently that smelled like sweet hay. Hazel smiled. “Hello, beautiful,” she said, gently turning her hand and letting the mare sniff and lip curiously at it, testing her smell. 

“You have a little snip on your nose!” she exclaimed softly with delight, seeing the oddly shaped little white mark between the mare’s nostrils. 

“When I was a little girl I had an imaginary horse I used to pretend was with me when I ran around, and I always imagined she was a pretty golden palomino with a little white snip on her nose just like you, and one, two,” Hazel scratched beneath the mares chin and leaned to try and count the markings on her legs, “Oh, darn. Almost.” She looked back at the mare’s face and smiled. “My imaginary mare had three socks, but you’ve only got two. Well, you’re still beautiful anyways. Dreams can’t always come true, hm?”

She laughed gently under her breath as the mare stepped closer to the fence, stretching out her neck and as if to offer more areas to scratch. 

“Her name is Dolly.” A warm, low, soft voice nearly startled her, but she kept herself calm so as not to spook the mare. The mare clearly knew this intruder, though, as she swung her head forward and pointed her ears, letting out a loud rumbling whicker in immediate greeting. She forgot all about Hazel’s scratches, clearly too happy to see whoever had joined them. Hazel glanced over her shoulder and saw him - Adam - with his blond curls tucked neatly beneath his wide-brim cowboy hat and a sheepish expression across his face. He almost looked embarrassed to have interjected. “Well, it’s Lil Dun Dolly, officially. But I just call her Dolly.”

“Oh! This is your mare?” She felt her face go hot. He was going to think she’d stopped here on purpose. Probably saw her lingering outside his mare’s pen and wanted to know why the weird-o who’d been staring at him earlier was now bothering his horse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to disturb her.”

“Ah, no, ma’am. It’s no trouble,” he laughed a little weakly and cleared his throat, waving his hand between them, “Dolly doesn’t mind the company.” He glanced at her and almost looked like he wanted to say something else, but lost the courage.

“So uh, how much of our conversation did you hear?” She asked, already cringing a little inside, but when she braved a peek at him, saw he was smiling a sort of lop-sided smile.

“Are you going to be mad at me if I say all of it?” That smile of his seemed to want to stretch a little wider.

“No,” she said, laughing, “but I am going to be embarrassed you heard me telling your horse about the fact that I had an imaginary horse when I was little.”

Adam had walked up to the fence and leaned on it while they talked, cheating his body toward her and glancing down beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. She could just barely make out the sinful blue-green of his eyes with the way the shadows and light played on either side of his bearded face. Dolly abandoned her interest in Hazel and was now affectionately lipping at the folds in his shirt with the arm he had leaning on the fence, clearly happy to have him in reach. He reached over and affectionately rubbed his palm over the bridge of her nose and up her forehead before he started talking again.

“Mine was a little bay paint.” He said, and she frowned at him, confused by what he meant. “My imaginary horse I had when I was little? It was a bay paint with a big white spot across it’s chest and one over its haunches. I called him Bandit. What’d you name yours?”

She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face, pushing high into her round cheeks. She wanted to worry over the way her heart started beating a little faster, but she couldn’t be bothered, trapped in those pretty, bright eyes of his. “Her name was Honey.”

“Honey, that’s a good name for an imaginary horse.”

“So is Bandit.”

They smiled at each other for a minute too long before they seemed to realize it, both clearing their throats and trying to jump into a different conversation, cheeks hot. They laughed awkwardly and Hazel shook her head. A change of conversation was probably for the best, so she grabbed at the first topic she could think of.

“I saw your run earlier, by the way. You were impressive! The way you sat that bronc despite his best effort to throw you was honestly amazing.”

He looked flattered and it endeared her how humble he was. Most cowboys at his level soaked in whatever adoration they could get. Damnit! Couldn’t he do something to make her not like him? This was becoming unfair. 

“Ah, I owe most of it to that little firecracker I was riding,” he said, patting his hand against his mare’s muscled neck and gently ruffling her cream-white mane. “I’ve ridden him a couple times at past rodeos, but he was on something else tonight. He helped me get that good score.” 

“Oh stop being so humble,” she laughed and rolled her eyes, “any cowboy or cowgirl who competes in the rodeo knows it’s the animal, the rider, and the rider’s understanding of that animal and their communication that makes the ride. No matter which sport it is. It’s about how you work as a team, you know?”

He was looking at her with an expression she’d describe as surprised understanding, like she’d just said something he thought of as important, too. Like they shared the same understanding of something a lot of people took at face value. 

“Yeah… it’s... exactly that,” he stumbled over. “I haven’t seen you around before, how do you know so much about the rodeo?”

She felt her cheeks get hot and shrugged, choosing to look at Dolly just as an excuse to not see him looking at her like that. “I did some barrel racing a few times in my late teens and very early twenties.”

“You did?” He said with delighted surprise.

“Yeah! It wasn’t anything huge, just locals, qualifiers, and a few state shows. But I always enjoyed it.”

“Why’d you stop?”

She hesitated. “It’s… complicated.” Her eyes lifted slowly and apologetic to his. “Sorry,” she started, trying to explain it wasn’t something she talked about with practical strangers, but he held out a hand as if to stop her and gave his head a little shake.

“You don’t have to say any more.” He assured her, “I’m sorry if I touched a sore spot.”

“It’s okay,” she noticed the way his brows tilted downward a little harder than they were naturally set and it tugged at her heartstrings in a way she wasn’t ready for. “I don’t tell many people about that, actually. Although it figures that my rodeo past would come up at a rodeo though, so that’s kind of on me.” She laughed, and he grinned a little deeper.

“Man,” he said and sucked air through his teeth. When she looked at him he shook his head in disappointment. “I can’t believe you missed the opportunity to tell me this ain’t your first rodeo.”

For a drawn out second she just stared at him - the way a half-smile hung on his lips, just showing those slightly imperfect teeth; the way his eyes hung on her face, hoping she thought the silly joke was as funny as he did; the way one blond brow quirked higher than the other; the way that smile inevitably deepened as a couple more seconds crawled past. 

And then, she laughed and shook her head. “I can’t believe you just made that silly of a joke.”

“Believe it,” he laughed and shrugged, warm southern accent merrily heavy as he talked. “I didn’t become a rodeo competitor to shy away from making rodeo-specific jokes whenever and wherever I can.”

“So that’s why you decided to compete in rodeos for a living, huh? Not the thrill of the sport, not because you’re good at it, not for the money…”

“Nope! Just the jokes.”

They laughed together in gentle breaths, their smiles still on their mouths by the time it stopped. She knew then exactly how dangerous this was for her. She needed to excuse herself and step away, because there was something between them that made her nervous and excited and painfully hopeful. Hopeless, more like. Everyone knew rodeo cowboys didn’t settle down; they traveled the road over half the year during the season and went from town to town, never too far from a pretty doe-eyed cowgirl in denim she’d cut into too-short Daisy Duke’s. After what Hazel had just gone through, the last thing she could afford was catching feelings for a rodeo cowboy.

“I should probably um-”

“Hey, would you like to-” 

They had started talking at the same time and talked over each other, sharing an awkward laugh before he cleared his throat and tipped his head toward her with a smile. “Please, ladies first.”

“No.” She said it a little too breathlessly and cleared her throat when he looked at her with a curious expression. “Please, I want to hear what you were going to say.” 

Carelessly, she mentally shut off the alarm bells blaring in her head and refocused on him. 

“I was going to ask if you wanted to walk with me? I kinda like walking the corrals away from everyone at night. I normally do it alone but, if,” he glanced at her as if asking permission even as the next words tumbled out of his mouth, “if you wanted to, I’d like your company.”

“Yes!” She said, almost too quick, and then blushed and shook her head, heating up clear to her crown with embarrassment for how eager she’d just obviously been. “Sorry - erm - I mean yeah. That’d be cool, I guess.” 

When her eyes darted to him, she saw he was fighting a grin. He jerked his head to the side and turned, starting to walk down the fence line. She fell in step beside him and for a moment they shared the quiet together. The crickets chirped in the tall grass outside the dirt grounds; the horses snorted and swished their tails, some of them lifting their heads and watching them curiously; the cattle flicked their ears and huddled close together, moving as a group wherever they went.

“What was your run when you were competing in barrels?”

Of course he’d ask a rodeo related question to break the ice and figure out what they should talk about. Typical cowboy.

“My mare ran between 18.3 and 19 seconds. My gelding was a little slower, he normally clocked solid 20.”

Adam sucked in a breath and released it slow, brows raised, he tilted his head toward her and appeared impressed. “Those are some good times.”

“Not World Championship times, a few seconds off, but yeah, I did pretty good in my local and state classes.” Wanting to shift the attention off herself and back onto him before he asked a question she wasn’t comfortable answering, she decided she’d throw a rodeo question his way. “So why bronc riding?”

He glanced at her a little sheepishly.

“Come on! Why bronc riding?”

“It’s just you have to really know a horse well when you’re riding them as they buck. It becomes a kind of dance; you need to anticipate every move, where that horse is going to shift its weight, making sure you’re as fluid with it as you can be so you don’t get dislodged. It’s about precision and timing, nothing can be off. It’s a constant attempt to achieve perfection in a narrow time window and it’s just you and that horse. You have to trust yourself to understand those animals so you can do it exactly right and not get yourself hurt, either.”

“Wow.” She was stunned, genuinely, and she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t unheard of for a cowboy to talk so highly and credit the animals he competed with, but there was something about the way passion bled into Adam’s voice the more he tried to break it down that really got her. “You really love doing this, don’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?” He laughed, and she decided she definitely liked the way a smile looked on his face. 

“I love it,” she said, and tried not to pay attention to the way that made him grin a little more, scuffing the toe of his boot against the hard packed dirt ground they walked. “So why trailer in Dolly if you don’t compete in a sport you need your horse at?”

“Sometimes I help pick up, if something happens and they need someone to step in and help. Dolly’s been doing it for years and she’s a great little pick up mare, never lets the excitement from the broncs or the bulls rile her up.”

The cowboys who did picking up were the ones who rode in at the end of the eight second ride to offer a horse for the cowboy to safely jump off and onto. They’d take the rider away from the bucking roughstock and somewhere they could safely dismount and await their score. That required a sound horse who’d listen to its rider and not get carried away with the spirit and herd mentality of another horse kicking its heels up or a bull twisting and threatening to charge with angry snorts. Telling a horse to run toward another horse that was bucking like that was a whole other ordeal. Those cowboys needed people they could trust, and it said a lot that Adam paid the extra gas to haul a trailer and dealt with loading and unloading his mare here just in case he was needed.

“Plus,” he concluded, and looked almost a little sheepish, “I like having her company.”

“You really have to stop being so cute.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think about the consequences, and he laughed. If not for the shadow beneath his wide-brim hat and the gentle haze of darkness they walked through, she thought she might have seen him blushing.

“Ah,” he rubbed at the back of his neck and stopped in his tracks, making her stop a second later and turn to face him, her head tilting curiously as she looked up at him. He knocked the brim of his hat back so it sat more slanted on his curls and let her see that handsome, blond bearded face more clearly, lit in gentle white-blue from the distant haze of the stadium lights. It caught one side of his face more than the other, and his eyes were such a dark, pretty grey-green that she bet they’d have her heart doing somersaults over how pretty they were in the daylight. 

“Look, I don’t normally do this, but,” he started, pausing a little between his words, struggling to get out what he wanted to say. Her heart increased its beat, racing with anticipation, her full lips fell apart in a gentle break to let her suck in a sharp breath of air. His eyes fell dark down to them and he trailed off, looking intently. She was dizzy. Was he going to kiss her? Oh God, he was going to kiss her. 

Please, she thought, kiss me. 

No, she groaned inwardly, don’t kiss me! 

If he kissed her, she wasn’t sure she could keep fighting off the chemistry that was obviously between them, and something was telling her it would hurt a little bit to see this one leave her bed in the morning and never call again.

He started to lean in. She caught her breath.

“Hey, Page! Finally coming to hang out with us or what?”

They both jumped apart and looked with wild eyes on the cowboy standing a few paces behind Adam, who must’ve just walked up from the glowing orange fire pit set up near the trailer at his back. She didn’t recognize him immediately, but Adam clearly did. 

“Hey Nick, actually, I-” Adam had turned his body a little to answer Nick, and when he did it revealed her standing near him.

“Oh jeez,” said Nick, blinking, the wide happy smile he’d been wearing slipping away almost immediately, “I hope I didn’t just interrupt something.”

“No!”

“Nope!”

They were both too quick and too eager to jump in and defend themselves, as if they hadn’t just been seconds away from giving in to temptation.

“You didn’t interrupt anything,” she said, rushed, and tried to ignore the way Adam’s eyes shot back over her, and how he took a small step away, as if her words had repelled him back. She wished she could explain it, that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to kiss him, but that she knew better than to. That she was guarded against any kind of hurt right now, even something as little as regretting the cold space that’d be on his side of the bed by the time she woke up the next morning.

“Right,” something in his tone told her Nick wasn’t buying it from either of them, and when she pulled her eyes away from Adam and looked at him, noticed he seemed to be struggling to keep from grinning again. Her cheeks felt hot. 

“Well, things have wound down a little bit, but Kenny’s still hanging out and we’ve got food and drinks leftover if you guys want. Well,” he shrugged and held up his palms, stepping back as if to physically excuse himself from their space, “I mean, you guys probably want to get back to whatever you were doing out here all alone, so…” Did she sense a sort of mischievousness in his tone? Was he teasing them? Maybe she should have brought Andrea and sent her ahead to keep him occupied so he wouldn’t have interrupted them.

“No,” Adam was the one who spoke up this time, but he wasn’t looking at her. “I’d love to come hang out.”

“Really?” Nick said, “huh. That’ll be a first.”

He was definitely poking fun at Adam in the same way you’d tease a good friend. It occurred to her that if Andrea, someone who worked the rodeo grounds when they came into town, knew that Adam was the type to be a loner, the friends he had would know it even more. What had Nick thought when he’d seen that Adam was with her? Was he surprised? Glad that Adam wasn’t alone for once? Did he even care?

Adam shot him a glare she just caught as they started towards him, to which Nick bit into his wide grin and turned away, leading them both back toward the nearby fire with camping chairs strewn in a haphazard half-circle around it. She bit into the inside of her lip to keep from smiling, not wanting to give away that she’d seen the interaction between them and fought the urge to playfully bump her hip into Adam’s. The warm glow of the crackling fire and the light laughs and conversation grew louder as they came close.

“Found a couple wanderers near the corrals,” Nick announced as he made his way back to an empty chair, flopping unceremoniously down into it and grabbing a can of diet coke from a nearby ice chest. It made a soft pop as he cracked it, and Adam and Hazel were left staring at the little group.

“Adam!” Said a man with surprised delight. He was sitting in the chair beside the one Nick had sat down in, and made it look tiny by his mass alone. Even beneath his purple checkered pearl snap, she could see how big his arms and chest were. He wasn’t wearing a hat, though he must’ve been all day, as his tight wound dirty-blond curls had a slight crimp from where the band had sat. He had eyes a more vivid, concise blue than Adam’s could be. They were so blue that she could tell even in the orange glow of the fire. “Who’s your friend?” He asked, turning a politely curious eye and friendly smile on her.

“Oh,” Adam started and glanced at her, slight smile on the edge of his mouth before he looked back, “this is-”

“There you are Hazel. I was beginning to worry you weren’t going to come after all.” Matt Jackson had walked from around the trailer, chewing gum, returning and eyes all hers, not having noticed he interrupted Adam talking. His attention absorbed Hazel, like a dog trained on a scent, he wasn’t going to give up until his paws were on her. She’d seen that look before on a man, and normally it excited her, especially a man as handsome as Matt was. Alright, maybe it still excited her a little (she was only human), but Adam shifted ever so slightly beside her and she felt the change in the air around them and watched as Matt’s eyes jerked from her to him, and he looked genuinely shocked.

“Page?! Finally decided to be social, huh?” His smile showed teeth. “That’s great! Sit down and hang with us.” He waved toward an empty chair near Kenny, who was watching the three of them with a curious eye.

Matt’s attention was hers again, those brown eyes dark as sin, smile just the right level of smug that made her palm itch to slap it and grab desperate around his shoulders to pull him down into a passionate, heated, dizzying kiss. To spell it out in one word, Matt Jackson was one-hundred percent certifiable, damningly handsome trouble. It was the kind she’d been initially looking for, the perfect distraction from her broken heart… So why was her smile a little pained? Why did she want to turn toward Adam and ask where he was planning to sit so she could sit with him, put her hand on his arm, do something to let him know the only place she wanted to be was back to where they were? Why the fuck did it matter? He was just a guy; a guy who was trouble in a different way. That kind of trouble that meant broken hearts and burning aches in your chest for days; that kind of trouble was exactly what she was running away from.

Matt had moved closer to her while she was thinking, and she snapped out of it when his hand waved in front of her. He laughed softly, as though finding her momentary lapse in concentration adorable. Assuming she was so taken away with seeing him again and knowing he’d wanted her, she’d had her feet knocked right out from under her.

“Earth to Hazel!” He said, smiling. “Come on,” his head jerked toward a pair of chairs on the opposite side of the fire. Still a part of the group, but paired off a little separately. “I saved you the best seat in the house, right next to me.” He said, a grin growing before he winked.

Pretentious, egotistical prick. She nearly snorted. Fuck, he’s hot. 

But she managed to pull her eyes away, intending to make eye contact with Adam and get help on what she was supposed to say here. Only… she didn’t meet Adam’s eyes. He had turned away from her and was already edging around the fireside to join Kenny and Nick opposite of where Matt was. He’d walked off without even waiting for her, or waiting to see what she’d say to Matt. 

Hazel sucked back a sharp stab of disappointment and mentally chided herself immediately thereafter. What a fool. Just because he was cute and she was sure they’d been about to kiss didn’t mean anything. A momentary lapse in judgement where he’d been about to kiss her didn’t mean anything if there wasn’t going to be any follow-up. If he was willing to fold at the first sign of another man’s interest, it wasn’t worth her getting hung up on either.

But maybe she was being a little childish and spiteful when she turned a charming smile back toward Matt and made sure to speak loud enough that Adam would hear her, saying, “I’d be happy to sit with you!” She put a bright smile on her face she didn’t necessarily feel, and looked up beneath her mascara-curled lashes as she bit into the corner of her grin to match his smirk.

They sat in the two camping chairs, pointed inward toward one another, though hers damnably kept Adam in her sights too, just beyond Matt. She could avoid looking his way, she thought, focusing on Matt’s smile and his appreciative dark eyes, wondering what the hell was wrong with her that she’d waste her chance for some fun with a guy this handsome over one she barely knew.

“You seem to know your way around a rodeo, huh?” Matt asked her, chewing thoughtfully on his gum after pushing his hat back on his head so the firelight would catch his face and reflect the warmth and hunger that was in his eyes. His long dark hair was tied back, a few wispy strands caught the soft night breeze and stirred. She wondered what it looked like down, around his shoulders, curtaining his face.

“Do I?” She asked him, and remembered how she’d told Adam about her former barrel racing days. She didn’t volunteer that information here.

“You do,” he said, and reached lazily between them to tap a long finger playfully on her knee. An excuse to touch her. “You don’t seem that green to me, little filly.”

Alright, maybe she swooned a little bit at that, and maybe the smile on her mouth was a little more honest than before, and maybe her focus sharpened on Matt and Adam became a soft, firelit blur of pinks and blues and golden blond in the background. She laughed and didn’t notice the way Adam stiffened at the sound, and how his eyes shot fast over to see her grinning at Matt, and Matt’s finger on her knee. She didn’t see Nick frown and glance between herself, his brother, and Adam. She didn’t notice any of it but Matt. There was something… commanding about his charm.

“Well, you haven’t even tried to ride yet, cowboy. You don’t know how hard I can buck.”

The smile he wore stretched wide enough it showed his teeth. Endearingly she noticed his bottom teeth were crooked; it softened her to see something human peek through what had so far only been arrogance wrapped in a damningly handsome package. A little imperfection. Cute. He laughed loud at that, too, and his brows shot up with surprise.

“Alright!” He laughed again and his hand smoothed over her knee. It’s weight was heavy with intent, and warm.

Adam came a little more into focus past him. She could see how he tilted his head toward them. Was he listening?

“Do you have any experience riding a wild filly? Can you manage to stay on?” She barely managed to get the words out, and she wished she was looking into those soft grey-green-blue eyes, and that she’d get to see the wrinkles push up his hat when his eyebrows shot up after she got the words out. She wondered what sweet-seeming Adam was like when faced with bold, flirtatious advantages. Instead, she refocused on Matt, and she saw the self-assured expression cross his face at her tease. He slid his fingers off her knee and leaned back in the chair, gesturing down at himself.

“You’re talking to the top number one PRCA Team Roping Header champion, sweetheart.” He scoffed playfully, jokingly offended she’d question his skills. She wished she didn’t feel the need to press her thighs together and adjust her seat, or the way she wanted to take in a sudden, sharp breath when his eyes pinned hers. What was it about a cocky man that made something inside her come alive? That’s why he was fun to play with, but she’d never make the mistake of dating someone like him. That ego was fun in small bursts, but too much was liable to get you burned.

Somehow she managed to cover the jolt of attraction with a soft laugh and a jerk upward of one of her brows. She knew she was smiling too much into her words and couldn’t stop herself. “A roper? That doesn’t tell me you can ride a bucking horse, cowboy. Maybe I should go find myself a champion bronc rider, then I’ll be sure he’ll stick the ride.” 

And she hoped Adam was eavesdropping and heard her say it, but she couldn’t look away from Matt to check.

Something in that dangerous look that flashed dark in his eyes told her he caught on to exactly what she was trying to do and say. It was a challenge, and she was quickly learning Matt was the type of man to grab on to a challenge with everything he had. He had a boldness that matched hers, and it invited her to play along. They continued to flirt and talk, weaving around and through topics, using little chances here and there to lay a hand on an arm, or a knee. She danced a dance she knew well, avoiding giving pieces of herself away she assumed a man like him wouldn’t actually care about. He was just trying to get into her pants, not her heart. 

That was a good thing, she reminded herself, once again trying to resist the urge to let her eyes find Adam. They’d made eye contact by accident a few times that night as she talked with Matt, both catching the other trying to sneak a glance and looking away just as quickly. Matt had noticed a time or two as well, but he never made a comment or said a thing. Instead, they kept talking, kept flirting, and eventually got on the topic of his recent, most impressive roping championship run.

“That’s where I won this buckle,” he said, tapping the shiny, gold-filigree decorated silver buckle with it’s bold writing proclaiming him as champion of that specific rodeo.

“Is there a replay of the run?” Hazel asked curiously, wanting to see the way he and his brother worked in-tandem to rope a calf in less than six seconds.

“Yeah,” he said, and pulled his phone from his pocket. He tapped away, and she used the chance to look at Adam. He wasn’t paying attention to her this time, but was nodding and talking to Nick, moving his hands. Expressive. Nick had his hat in his lap and was stretched out, boots propped on the ice chest the sodas had been. He was nodding in agreement. She blinked, watching Adam’s hands… and then Matt leaned over to show her the clip and drew her sharply back to him. Suddenly, with his free hand he reached up, fingers skimming her cheek as he tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Sorry,” he’d breathed softly near her when her eyes darted to him and she noticed how close they were. She’d barely have to move to put her lips on his darkly bearded cheek.

“No you’re not,” she said.

“No, I’m not.” He agreed, and she noticed his eyes had fallen to her lips, which ached and wanted all at once after having been denied earlier.

“Alright, I’m going to call it quits.” It was Kenny speaking up and moving out of the chair that made her jump and glance toward the rest of the group. He somehow came across as even larger when he got out of it, and she briefly wondered what the hell his workout routine was like. It was then she noticed the light had died down, the fire was burned to coals glowing a soft orange-red among the black. It’d be safe to put out, clean up, and leave. Nick had popped up as Kenny edged around the fire, and was starting to grab up empty soda cans and whatever other trash they had to throw out. They made quick work of taking care of things before she could even offer.

“I’m heading out too,” Adam volunteered quickly and without a glance in her direction. “Night guys, see y’all in the morning.” He didn’t linger, lifting his hand in a slight, dismissive wave before he took off and didn’t let his eyes touch her again. He was avoiding acknowledging her existence entirely. Where did that nice, genuine sweetheart go that he’d been earlier? The one that’d made her heart skip in a way it never had, not even with her recent ex. 

The way Adam was treating her stung, and she was, yet again, angry that it did. He’d chickened out of making the move on her and let Matt step in. That was on him. It wasn’t her fault and she didn’t deserve to be treated like shit for getting attention from someone who wanted her and was willing to do something about it. She didn’t deserve to feel guilty for flirting with Matt.

That’s what she told herself as she watched Adam disappear into the night.

“I’m going to get a ride back with Kenny,” Nick said as she and Matt stood up from their chairs and started folding them, helping each other shove them into the canvas bags and handing them toward Kenny’s outstretched hand.

“Alright,” Matt nodded, “see you guys in the morning.” 

Today had been the qualifying runs, tomorrow they’d have to compete with the best in their sport to try and win both the purse and the added points to keep them at the top of the yearly rankings.

“Nice meeting you, Hazel.” Nick smiled kindly, and Kenny bobbed his head of curls in her direction with a smaller, shyer smile before slinging three of the canvas bags with camping chairs on his back and grabbing up the ice chest in the other. Nick grabbed the other ice chest and the remaining two chairs, leaving nothing for her and Matt to take back but themselves.

“You too!” She said politely in return, and then they left and it was just she and Matt, completely alone.

“You want to come back to my hotel room?” The blatant invitation was asked without hesitation, wasting little time, and the look on Matt’s face was unmistakable. He’d reached out between them and grabbed one of her hands to pull her body in a little closer to his, and she realized the calloused pad of his thumb was gently skimming her skin and making goosebumps rise up along her arm. Her heart even started beating a little faster in her chest, making her pulse jump.

So why wasn’t the obvious answer so… obvious? Why did she look in the face of that handsome man she’d been flirting and talking to for hours and not find the word yes leaping off her tongue? 

“I-” she struggled with the hesitation, and a slight frown disrupted the predatory expression he wore. She saw confusion, and knew he had every right to be. Up until this point she’d been giving him every sign that he would have her in his hotel bed with her feet pointed up to heaven by the end of the night. “I want to say yes…”

“But…?” he volunteered softly, watching her. There was something suddenly gentle there in those brown eyes and across his face. It made something stir in her. Something she’d been reminding herself all day and all night to be wary of.

“I’m in a weird place right now,” she felt guilty, like she’d led him on, and hated that she did, immediately jumping to explain herself in a rush. “I was in a relationship for a long time and our break-up has me kind of messed up, I thought it’d been enough time and I could just have some fun but, I’m just… struggling. I’m so sorry Matt.” 

“You don’t have to apologize to me.” He sounded even more confused that she had, and chuckled softly just once before giving her hand a little comforting squeeze. “I’m not pissed at you just because you don’t want to fuck me.” He laughed a little dryly and shook his head. “Come on, let me walk you to your car sweetheart.”

He still hadn’t let go of her hand.

“Okay,” she said, and tried to shrug away the anxiety that told her somewhere, deep down, he probably was. He just didn’t want to be an asshole, so he’d said that to make her feel better. He’d probably noticed how many times she was paying attention to Adam instead of him.

After a lengthy period of silence filled only by their boots scraping the packed dirt ground, Matt tugged her gently by their joined hands, pulling her off balance to crash lightly into his body.

“Hey!” She said in surprise, jerked out of the anxiety spiral her thoughts were becoming, blinking rapidly at him.

He was grinning.

“Earth to Hazel,” he said, echoing that same phrase he’d had to use to pull her out of her thoughts earlier. They didn’t even know each other, how did he know to do that? 

“Sorry, I’m such a basketcase today, I swear I’m not normally like this.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes, exasperated with how much she was struggling.

“Aw, you’re fine.” He reassured and smiled at her. “Get out of your head, wild filly.”

Butterflies in her stomach at that little pet name he’d decided on after their earlier conversation and she blushed, looking away from him to gather her thoughts on a safer topic. She was thankful she saw her vehicle and could avoid answering altogether. “That one’s mine,” she said, pointing toward the little bright blue Ford Ranger waiting in the dimly stadium-lit field where they’d been parking cars throughout the day. They walked toward it, just a few paces away.

“I didn’t think you drove a truck.”

“I mean,” she laughed, “does a Ranger really count as a truck?”

He laughed and pulled her to a stop beside her truck, turning her to face him. He still held her hand and grinned down at her. “I was right. This definitely ain’t your first rodeo.”

And just like that, she remembered Adam’s joke, the same one he’d made earlier when she’d talked about her past. She hadn’t told Matt about that. She inhaled a sharp breath and blinked, but Matt was leaning in, pulling her close, and pressing his mouth hot against hers. And her lips were moving, forming to his, opening, her tongue prying at his mouth, his sliding into hers. And he was pushing her up against the side of her truck, jean-trapped cock rubbing against her thigh as she opened her legs to give him better access. And his breath was a hot hiss of air from his nose, and his beard scratched her skin as he moved his mouth hungrily over hers. His hands pinched her waist hard, trapping her at the angle he wanted to fit best between her legs. She spread them wider, and he dipped, fitting his hips up so he could rub the swollen, hard lump of his need and want more firmly against her. The pressure just barely teased her, enough to make a needy, whiny moan crawl up from her lungs and push desperate into his mouth.

He pulled his mouth off of her like he’d had to be forcibly removed, his arms shaking, fingers curled tight around her hips, hard enough she wouldn’t be surprised to see little finger-print shaped bruises on her skin later on. He tried to laugh, but was too breathless to do even that, and he hadn’t moved his body away from hers. He was struggling, trying to catch his composure.

“Sorry,” he said, and flashed his eyes toward her, “I just… meant to kiss you. I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

“No, it’s okay,” her voice barely had any volume to it and she was dizzy. Her lips were tingling and the breath she sucked in with need tasted like him. Like the faint mint from his gum.

“You are something else,” he murmured in a warm breath, grunting as he seemed to all but force himself to step off of her, peeling his weight away from her and letting her settle flat on her feet again. The night felt so much colder, all of the sudden. Her hips ached pleasurably where he’d been holding her. She flushed under the compliment, and the stare in his eyes that was still eating her up. It was killing him not to take her back to his hotel room, but he wasn’t going to cross that line again unless she gave him the invitation. 

“You too, cowboy.” She said, and her voice sounded dazed. Her blood was rushing in her ears.

“Drive home safe now, alright?” He said, and his hand moved at his side, like he’d wanted to reach out and grab her again but had to remind himself not to. It fell back down again.

“Okay,” she said, heart aching suddenly, confused on why she was still deciding not to say fuck it and throw caution to the wind. She pushed herself off her truck and turned to fish her keys out of her pocket. She’d turned it in the lock to pop the door open when Matt spoke up behind her.

“Actually, can I get your number? You can text me when you get home so I know you’re alright?”

It was a cute, classic excuse to hide the real reason he wanted her number, but she didn’t mind. She assumed he likely wanted to have her number on hand in case another rodeo brought him close enough to justify them meeting up and, maybe, he’d get lucky to actually sleep with her the next time they did. It wouldn’t surprise her and she wasn’t offended, in fact… she was more than interested. If he got her that crazy just kissing her up against her little truck… Wow.

“Yeah,” she said and smiled so he’d know she knew what it was about. She didn’t expect good morning texts and long conversations late into the night. She tugged her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her contact screen, passing the phone to him as she pulled her truck door open and hopped into the cab. He finished typing his information in by the time she turned to look at him. Matt extended her phone toward her with one hand, and leaned his forearm on the roof of her truck with the other.

When she grabbed the other end of her phone, he didn’t let it go. Instead he dipped down, and he pulled her toward him (though really she leaned up of her own volition) so their lips could meet for another kiss. He started to press in hard, to smear his lips against hers, the energy building back up inside him again, and pulled back with a sharp inhale. He released a slow breath through his nose, lips pressed together as he looked down at her.

“Are you planning on coming back tomorrow?” He asked, voice warm and smooth, his finger skimming her jawline after he let her take her phone back, thumb resting at her chin and keeping her face pointed up at him. Tingles spread from his touch. “I’d love to know there’s a pretty little thing like you in the audience cheering as me and my brother win the championship.”

There it was, that big ego that was all too natural and he couldn’t help flex with such confident casualness and a knowing grin shortly after. He might as well have winked when he took his fingers away from her chin. She playfully pushed her hand lightly into his chest as if to shove him off her truck, and he stumbled back.

“What makes you so sure you’re going to win?” She teased, pushing the key into the ignition and turning it over to start the engine. He flattened his hand on her still-open driver’s side door.

“Oh please,” he laughed and rolled his eyes. “Tomorrow night,” he tapped the belt buckle that currently clasped the belt slung through his Wrangler’s belt-loops. “I’ll have a shiny new buckle on my belt.” 

He was so matter-of-fact about it, she didn’t question that he was probably right. He slid his hand down her driver’s side door and slowly started to close it, but before he was shut out, he arched a brow beneath the shade of his hat.

“So, am I going to see you cheering me on tomorrow?” Something hung in his tone. Something that told her he actually cared if she’d be there or not. Funny… but she decided to not let herself wonder about it for too long.

Her smile pushed high into her cheeks. “Yeah,” she said with a nod, “I’ll be there to cheer you and your brother on tomorrow.”

“Good girl,” he murmured, and she suddenly felt dizzy all over again. 

He gave her that damnable wink, as though he knew the exact effect he’d had, with a smile pushing a little higher into one side of his bearded cheek than the other, and gently closed her truck door, stepping back to watch her drive away and giving her a wave in the rearview mirror.

**********

She chucked her keys on the side table, pushed the door shut behind her and half stumbled, half kicked off her boots as soon as she got home. The scrabbling of dog nails on hardwood from the kitchen alerted her that her two golden retrievers, Callahan and Carson, were about to rush around the corner to greet her. Hazel pulled her phone out of her pocket, typing across the touchscreen with one hand as the pups came panting and wagging their entire bodies, dancing and prancing around her, pressing their nose to her clothes and demanding attention for having left them alone all day.

“Alright, alright!” She laughed gently as they pushed at her, and abandoned finishing the text message to give them affection and apologize for not being able to take them to the rodeo. They followed her as she made her way down the hall and toward the master bedroom and adjoining bathroom. She finished typing the text message and hit send.

TEXT TO: MATT JACKSON Made it home in one piece!

She gently tossed the phone atop the fluffy comforter that lay over her bed, letting it land with a soft thud. It chimed with a returned text message as she rummaged through her drawers just as Callahan and Carson jumped up onto the mattress, flopping down with huffs. Carson perked his ears and glanced toward the phone as it buzzed again, then glanced over at her.

“I’ll look at it in a minute, Carson.” She chided, unbuttoning her long sleeve shirt and pulling it off, unclasping her bra and barely suppressing the relieved moan as she took it off. She slipped a soft, large shirt over her head, it’s hem just brushing her mid thigh. She unbuttoned and stepped out of her jeans, tugged off her socks and padded barefoot to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash the rodeo dust off her face.

And of course Callahan and Carson got a few more cuddles before she finally reached for her phone and swiped to see Matt’s reply.

TEXT FROM: MATT JACKSON Glad to hear it. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.

She smiled and reached to flick off the lamp on the side table, typing away into the white-blue glow of the phone screen.

TEXT TO: MATT JACKSON In case I’m too busy working and don’t see you before your run, good luck!

TEXT FROM: MATT JACKSON Didn’t we already discuss that I don’t need luck, because I’m definitely winning? Anyways, hope I do get to catch you before the run, I’d hate to not get a little good luck kiss.

At that she rolled her eyes, but pressed the button to give a “heart” reaction on his text.

TEXT TO: MATT JACKSON Goodnight, cowboy. Rest up. 💗

TEXT FROM: MATT JACKSON You too, wild filly. ❤️

**********

The second day went by quicker than the first. Maybe it was because they were busier, with more people to watch the championship runs than had come for the qualifiers. Maybe it was because she threw herself wholeheartedly into her work to keep her distracted so her wandering eyes wouldn’t pull toward every blond haired cowboy she saw out of her peripherals.

Not that she had to worry. Either Adam was avoiding her, or there were just too many people to single him out, because even ducking along the chutes and helping sort and load the roughstock for the upcoming rides, she didn’t catch sight of him once. She thought it was peculiar, especially given that she crossed paths with Matt and his brother Nick at least four times that day, and had even run into Kenny once.

But never Adam.

“Ash! Give us a hand!” A shout from Andrea distracted her, and she shook her head as she glanced down the lane of pipe-fencing. “Stand by that gate,” Andrea pointed at a gate near her, “and swing it shut as soon as we push Bueno away from Brisket! Don’t let Brisket bully by you, cause he’ll try!”

They were trying to separate two of the bucking horses in the pen, Bueno, a big seal bay gelding, needed to be sent down the lane to the chutes where he’d get tacked up for the ride, but Brisket, the dun bay, needed to stay in the pens behind. Brisket was running as though stuck to Bueno’s side, as if he knew they were trying to separate them and he wasn’t interested in doing so.

Andrea and the young volunteer that’d stepped up to help her shouted and raised their hands, sending the big horses thundering in bouncing trots toward her. They were picking up their gait, coming faster. Hazel planted her boots firm and lifted her chin, getting ready to spook Brisket so he’d turn about, but keep Bueno running forward. However, as they got near, Brisket pinned his ears and lurched toward where she was standing, lips peeled and flat, yellow teeth showing.

“Hey!” She shouted, jumping back to keep from getting snapped by the grumpy horse, though, at the same time someone else shouted loud over her.

Whoever it was reached to wave a hat over her head, spooking Brisket into pulling his gait up and jerking his head upwards over his withers, ears flat and eyes rolling white. It had the needed effect, as Bueno jolted forward down the lane he was meant to go and Brisket back-stepped and turned about, releasing an angry, loud snort as the gate closed and he didn’t get his way. Whoever behind her had scared Brisket off swung the gate shut, and the automatic lock secured it.

“You alright?” He said.

She glanced toward the familiar voice and found herself trapped in pretty eyes that looked more blue than green today, framed by gold ring-curls that had a soft impression from the hat he’d taken off to shake in the horse’s direction. The mid-afternoon sun was beating down and made his hair look as though it were gilded, like he was some creature of heaven. She could have rolled her eyes at how stupidly romantic that thought was. He raised a hand to shake through his hair and set his hat back on his head, frowning with concern down at her.

“Adam,” She said his name on a breath, exhaling slowly, her entire body suddenly on fire, standing so close to him. She blinked, and her brain caught up through the surprise at seeing him to remember he’d asked her a question. Heat flushed her cheeks immediately. “Uhm, yeah! Yeah, I’m fine. He didn’t get me, just tried to intimidate me. I don’t even think he was going to bite.” She glanced toward Brisket, who was being guided back through the lanes toward the holding pen where he’d wait for Bueno’s return, his ears perked and posture far less aggressive than before.

“Glad you’re safe.” Adam’s tone was dismissive and she whipped her head around to see him turning away, planning to walk off.

“Adam, wait-” She said it before she knew what she was going to say next. Adam paused and looked at her, though she could easily tell he didn’t actually want to. “I didn’t sleep with Matt last night.” She blurted it out and immediately felt embarrassed. Heat crawled up her neck and flushed her cheeks as she fought to keep looking at him and not fall to the cowardice that wanted her eyes at his boots instead.

A look crossed over his face, but before she could wonder what it meant, it was gone and a polite expression was in its place. Despite his cordial look, his voice that’d been honey warm the night before was cold when he spoke, and it sliced right through her. “That’s not really any of my business.” And I don’t care, seemed implied. He reached up to pinch the brim of his hat and tip it to her. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Baker.” 

Miss Baker, now. No longer Hazel. 

Those eyes lingered on her a second more, and then he turned away and walked off to prepare his bronc rope and get ready for his ride, his shoulders tense and back a little hunched.

She was hurt by his dismissal, and she was angry that she was hurt. What was he supposed to have done? Walk over and kiss her? Admit that he’d been jealous and that he wanted her? 

Yes, her heart whined. 

Fool, the scars across it mocked.

Maybe she wasn’t even ready for casual fun like she’d thought she was. How could she have been so affected by him? They’d only talked for a little while. Maybe there were still some things she needed to work through from her break-up instead of trying to bury that pain in attention and sex. Maybe she was just shaken because she’d been open with him, vulnerable, only to have him treat her poorly after she’d trusted him so quickly. 

Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Hazel shook her head and closed her eyes, taking a breath and giving herself a moment to try and breathe and get out of her head.

“Up next, Adam Page’s ride on Brisby’s Bueno! This young man has had a stellar career this year, after running mid-rankings the last few years he’s risen to the top this year and is definitely this announcer’s must-watch kind of ride!” Kenny’s voice crackled over the announcer’s microphone, and she found herself mildly surprised to learn he was an announcer. He didn’t exactly have the look of an announcer…

Adam’s ride. His championship ride.

For some reason, despite what had just happened between them, she couldn’t help but wander toward the arena. She couldn’t deny herself wanting to watch his ride.

He rode beautifully, with his free arm raised, moving fluid as the rest of his body did with every twist and hard kick and upward hop the bronc gave underneath him. She watched the determination on his face, the way his chin bowed to his chest, and how hard his gloved hand wrapped around that bronc rope. Bueno kicked hard and jumped high for a horse as tall as he was, earning delighted and excited gasps from the audience at the show unfolding in the dirt ring in front of them. No matter what the horse threw his way, Adam stuck on, his legs moving in perfect synchrony over and down Bueno’s withers with each leap. The counter ran up, and Kenny’s voice excitedly crackled over the speakers, growing more and more heated as the ride progressed through snapping bucks and high-spirited kicks.

The buzzer hit eight-seconds. It’d felt like time stood still.

The pick-up riders charged their horses up, one took Adam as he took his hand off the rope and leapt over the pick-up horse’s haunches. The rider turned the horse away while the other pick-up rider unbuckled the snap on Bueno’s flank strap. He gave a few more excited, hyper bucks before slowing to a trot and allowing himself to be guided back toward the chutes. Meanwhile, Adam slid off the horse that’d taken him a slight distance away and landed with a thud onto the dirt, getting a supportive cheer from the crowd as he finished his ride safely. He didn’t even soak them in, but immediately turned his eyes toward the scoreboard, waiting for the judges final call.

89.6 point ride.

The crowd erupted into cheers, and she saw him glance down at his boots and smile, as though soaking it in himself, trying to believe it before he finally let himself look up at the crowd. They hollered even louder. She realized she was screaming for him too.

“89.6!” Kenny’s voice crackled excitedly over the speakers. “With that score, ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a champion! Raise a hand Adam, give them a wave!” He encouraged from the announcer’s booth, earning a glance and almost bashful smile from Adam before he shook his head and waved a hand at the audience, making his walk back to the chutes. Back toward her.

She was smiling when their eyes met, and he smiled too. It turned a little apologetic. A little sad.

She decided he was something of an enigma, and she would never understand him or these feelings she had for him. She shook her head and turned away, knowing she’d be needed in the holding pens as hands always were and deciding she’d rather throw herself back into work as a distraction to keep her mind from mulling. Unsurprisingly, it worked. Needing to stay alert while helping work around the animals and being a willing hand kept her busy and unable to pay attention to much else than what needed done and she could help with.

The only time she let herself stop again was to get herself a cold water bottle and perch up on the top of the fence to watch the Jackson brothers have their final run. She watched as they rode toward the box, the young white and grey-roan speckled roping steer loaded in the chute and ready to run the moment those gates flew open. Hazel caught sight of Matt glancing Nick’s way, Nick giving a reassuring nod before the pair separating to load up in their separate boxes. Matt hadn’t been putting on a front with his confidence; they gave the signal, the man pulled the chute latch open and the calf sprung forward, the brothers in quick pursuit. Matt, the header, threw his lasso over the steer’s horns and turned his direction. Nick, without hesitation, threw his lasso straight through the air and looped it perfectly around both back legs. He did it so quickly and so flawlessly, he made it look easy. Wrapping the rope around his saddle horn, he leaned back, holding tight as his horse dropped its haunches and pulled the steer taut. A cheer rocked the stands as the boys let the ropes go and the calf was able to kick free. The timer buzzed as they gathered and looped the slack of their ropes, still sitting on their horses.

She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and shook her head in disbelief. It’d been over so quickly, with such precision, she found herself gaping as she watched the little speckled calf trot with a bleating cry back toward the pen to be with the other calves.

“And with that impressive time rounding out their final roping session of the evening, the Jackson brothers have done it again! Matt and Nick Jackson everyone, your rodeo tag roping champions!”

She screamed with the rest of the folks in the stands, jumping up and down and hollering enough to make her voice go out. The brothers shared broad grins and Matt turned his horse to ride alongside Nick, giving his younger brother a quick pat on the back and another happy smile. Nick returned the gesture of affection and waved toward the crowd as Matt rode off back toward the gate they were swinging open for him.

He saw her, and his grin slipped a little higher up one side of his bearded cheek. She noticed when he’d ridden, the tie on his hair had come loose not quite enough to be completely undone, but enough to give her a hint of how handsome he looked with it loose around his face. He shrugged as he pulled back the reins and stalled his sleek, bay roan roping horse to a halt beside her.

“What did I tell ya?”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled still. 

“I didn’t doubt you for a second.”

He leaned in the saddle, the leather softly creaking. She smelled the faint cologne, a damp of sweat, a little rodeo dust, horse and leather as he reached and ran his calloused thumb gently along her jawline. Tingles again.

“Good girl.” His smile showed teeth before he winked, slipping his hand away, leaving her skin warm. He gave a gentle squeeze of his knees, getting his horse to walk back to where he could dismount and tend to it. Along the way she watched him pause to clap hands and receive congratulations from his fellow rodeo buddies, a fond smile resting gentle over her lips.

“You guys must have had a good night,” Andrea’s familiar voice broke her from staring after Matt and she shook her head, focusing on her friends grinning face.

Hazel laughed. “We didn’t hook-up.”

“Don’t lie to try and impress me or make me think you’re some innocent angel. I’ve known you too long for that.”

“I’m not lying!” Hazel protested, “Honestly! I… got myself confused.”

“What? Like lost your way across the rodeo grounds?” Andrea frowned at her.

“No, I… ran into Adam, and we talked and I opened up to him like…” Hazel glanced around, looking for anyone overhearing, then back at her friend's expectant, curious face. “Like no one I’ve opened up to in a long time. He was going to kiss me, but then Nick interrupted us and assumed we were coming to their little fire. Matt was there and he assumed I was there to see him and Adam got pissed off and now he’s acting like an asshole and Matt and I made out but I didn’t fuck him and now I’m more confused than I was coming into this mess.”

She’d talked fast, and her pleading eyes looked desperately at Andrea, who blinked rapidly.

“Wow, a hell of a lot more happened last night than I thought.”

“Yeah!”

“Don’t bother with Adam getting his panties in a bunch. Like I said, he’s a keep-to-himself kind of guy. If he was so upset with you and Matt flirting maybe he should have spoken up.”

“Thank you!” Hazel exclaimed with frustration. 

“Still, I can’t believe you didn’t sleep with Matt.” 

“You and me both.”

**********

Fire in his belly, it licked hot at the insides and spread over his skin like an itch he’d never scratch. In his mind, as he loaded the trailer and collected his winnings, preparing to leave the rodeo, he just kept seeing them.

Matt, leaning down on his horse to gently, affectionately hold her face. Her, looking up at him with a smile that he would like to have had reserved for him.

It was stupid, he told himself for the hundredth time as he climbed into the cab of his truck and started the engine, letting it gently rumble to life. It was stupid because she wasn’t anything to him.

Only that he’d felt like he’d been struck by lightning the moment he overheard her talking to Dolly. Only that he’d found a funny little smile on his face as he stayed quiet and listened, feeling bad for eavesdropping but finding a foreign, comforting warmth settling inside him the more he listened to her talk. Only that he’d thought the wind had been knocked out of him, like he got kicked in the gut by a bronc, when that soft light lit her profile and showed him the most gorgeous woman he could ever remember lying eyes on. Only that when her eyes had gotten sad, and she’d said she left competing for a reason she couldn’t share, he wanted her to trust him to take on that pain with her, and help her heal from it. Only that he’d shut himself off to the possibility of romance years ago, but when he talked to her he felt like every second of their time together was the most important moment of his life…

And then came Matt.

He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and squeezed hard enough to turn the knuckles white. His jaw clenched as he glared at the open road, turning truck and trailer onto it, leaving the rodeo grounds behind. It wasn’t Matt he was angry with, or her for that matter, though he might as well have been with how he behaved.

It was himself.

The tension in his body slowly leaked out, color returned to his knuckles, and his shoulders sagged. It pierced right through him, remembering that look across her face this afternoon when he’d dismissed her. As he’d walked away he’d called himself every name in the book, begged himself to turn around and grab her and ask her what it was about her - a stranger - that made him feel so many things he hadn’t felt in years.

And how much that scared him.

And how much he let that fear control his life, removing the chance of losing her by driving her away before it could happen.

Driving her into Matt’s open, eager, waiting arms.

I didn’t sleep with Matt last night.

Why had she told him that?

He knew why. He only wished she hadn’t. He only wished she hadn’t looked up at him with those big, amber-brown eyes that made him ache to his core like he’d always known them. He only wished she hadn’t kept reaching for him with that longing he felt an understanding of, that made the defenses guarding his wounded heart snap and snarl and drive her away. It’d been bruised again and again and again, it no longer knew how to accept even the gentlest touch without fearing pain that might follow.

It was better this way.

He’d been telling himself that since the night prior, since watching her eyes light up as she talked with Matt by the fireside, and still finding himself aching for her company. He hadn’t been able to follow Nick and Kenny’s conversation, because any time her giggles swelled a little in volume his eyes shot to them, and jealousy was something bitter in the back of his throat. He had a feeling he hadn’t been subtle about it, because eventually they stopped trying to include him in their conversation and kept talking to one another, instead.

He had enough to deal with from helping his dad with the family tobacco farm, to trying to raise, train, and sell his own rodeo circuit horse stock, to trying to make a name for himself as the top, undeniable bronc bustin’ champion. There was no place, no room in his life for a woman that made him feel like loving her would change how he saw the world. Especially not one who lived a good six hours from where he did. Especially not one he’d hardly ever see as he traveled town to town to compete in the rodeos. It would never work, and the pain it’d cause when it didn’t wasn’t something he was brave enough to risk.

No matter how he tried to justify himself walking away from her, every piece of him screamed and rebelled against what he’d done. It was an exhausting spiral from want to anger to anguish to disappointment and he hoped it’d leave him soon. 

The more miles he put between her and those damningly beautiful eyes and that pretty little smile that made his heart skip a beat in his chest, the better.

Or so he tried to tell himself.

#hangman page #matt jackson #hangman adam page fanfiction #adam page fanfiction #matt jackson fanfiction #aew fanfiction #mine: fanfiction #my fics: hangman adam page #my fics: matt jackson #me? throwing this up at 3am? so I can just. run away? and pretend I didnt??? YEP #anyways this might be the Most self indulgent piece I've ever written #and that SCARES ME to share it but HERE WE GO #my fics: starlight

[berniesrevolution]

Americans believe a lot of lies about the police. In fact, most people can agree on this. They just disagree about what those lies are. Is the typical cop a cold-eyed executioner with a brutal disregard for human rights, or a selfless hero who risks his life to protect the community? Depending on who you are, you probably think one of those descriptions sounds utterly ridiculous. And you’re right. You recognize an obvious caricature when you see it. Just as the average Trump voter is neither a cross-burning Klansman nor an amiable unemployed plumber who just wants his job back, the average police officer is also a more complicated creature, a “sausage of angel and beast,” in the words of poet Nicanor Parra.

But “complicated” does not necessarily mean “good,” or “righteous,” or even “defensible.” After a certain number of rapes and murders by police, it becomes much more difficult to believe that “a few bad apples” are responsible for the flood of dead bodies and terrible headlines. The cases come from every part of the country—huge East Coast metropolises, laid-back liberal enclaves on the Pacific seaside, and even the sleepy small towns of the Midwest. Isolated incidents stop being isolated when they happen every week. Something is clearly wrong with America’s law enforcement.

Is this because cruel people become cops, or because becoming a cop makes people cruel? I used to think the answer was obvious, until I watched my friend kill a man on Facebook Live.

Jeronimo Yanez, better known as the cop who shot Philando Castile, was one of my best friends in high school. We played on the same baseball team and hung out in the same Chipotle parking lot. We went to senior prom together. On graduation day, we rolled our eyes and laughed while our parents took ten thousand pictures.

We drifted apart in the years that followed, as high school friends usually do, though once in a while he’d pop up in my newsfeed. My eyes would linger for a second over this CliffsNotes version of his life. Went on a fishing trip—cool. Got married—good for him. Graduated from the police academy—wait, he’s a cop now?

Huh. Weird. What else?

Oh, here’s a photo of Jeronimo holding his baby daughter. Here’s one of him with a classroom full of smiling third-graders. Here are a dozen generic snapshots of an ordinary human enjoying some small and unremarkable pleasure. Five minutes with Photoshop, and that could be your face blowing out birthday candles.

Then, one day, my feed became an endless stream of articles saying that Jeronimo was a murderer.

The people who shared these stories were outraged and heartbroken. Some of them said that Jeronimo was a heartless racist who killed a man and deserved to burn in hell. Many agreed that his acquittal on all charges was yet another mockery of justice in an America that has become a brutal police state where government-sanctioned killers are all but immune from legal consequences, even when they execute an old man eating chicken in his own backyard.

To these people, I would say one thing:

You’re right about the police, and you’re wrong about Jeronimo.

Before we continue, I have to make an apology of sorts. There are inherent problems in telling a story like this one, not the least of which is: why spend thousands of words talking about a cop who killed a human being and then walked free? Don’t “writers of conscience” have a moral obligation to elevate the stories of the oppressed above those of the oppressors? Isn’t Philando Castile, the man who was killed, the person whose story we really ought to be telling? Isn’t profiling his killer a waste of time, at best, and an implicit rationalization of police brutality, at worst?

These are all valid points, but they’re not the only valid points. Our first duty is to mourn the death—and celebrate the life—of Philando Castile. But we should seek to understand why Jeronimo Yanez pulled the trigger. We need to do the difficult and uncomfortable work of exploring how this particular “sausage of angel and beast” was made. Was Jeronimo rotten from the start, or did he become contaminated by a toxic environment? We can’t respond to this tragedy, or the broader tragedy of police violence in America, without a good answer to the question. Understanding what made Jeronimo shoot Philando  Castile is not an act of indulgence. It’s a tactic for preventing future violence.

Although I never met him, I have to think that’s something Philando Castile would want. Before his life was snatched away, he made a reputation as a man of incredible kindness and compassion. His family and friends have spoken about him far more eloquently than I could. His pastor, Danny Givens, said, “you felt seen by him…. you felt like you mattered, like you meant something to him at that moment.” His friend and co-worker, John Thompson, recalls that “if kids couldn’t afford lunch, he would pay for their lunch out of his own pocket. And that was against school policy. And I mean kids can’t afford lunch right now. They miss Mr. Phil at that school. They miss him. I miss my friend.” Another colleague, Joan Edman, put it simply: “this man mattered.”

I believe that Castile’s death was a violation of the fundamental agreement that underpins any society—namely, that its members agree to not slaughter each other—and therefore that it is what most people would consider “a crime.” By definition, that makes Jeronimo Yanez a criminal. Critics of the criminal justice system are fierce and convincing in their call for criminals to be treated as human beings. I draw certain conclusions from that, but I understand that others will draw their own. You’d have a point if you said, “but Yanez isn’t actually a criminal—he’s already been humanized by a system that literally let him get away with murder because he was scared.” This is true, and it is terrible. Yet even if you believe that he’s an inhuman monster, and you hate everything that he represents, it’s still generally a good idea to know your enemy, if only to fight him more effectively.

It is neither my intention nor desire to portray Jeronimo as a sympathetic figure. I just want to give a truthful description of the person I knew, because I believe that his story can help us understand why America’s police problems cannot be solved by “smarter” or “nicer” cops. This is the most dangerous lie about the police. If they could turn my friend into a killer, there is a deeper evil at work.

I met Jeronimo Yanez on the first day of our sophomore year. It was September 2004 and I had just transferred to South St. Paul, proud home of the South St. Paul Packers. The school took its name from the historic Union Stockyards just down the street. Its slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants were slowly being replaced by respectably bland business centers, but a faint odor of boiling fat still wafted up from the riverside when the wind blew just right.

South St. Paul was the kind of blue-collar town that inspires entire Bruce Springsteen albums. Many families had lived there for over a hundred years. They traced their roots from the Eastern European immigrants who came to work in the stockyards, and who had built venerable social institutions (i.e. drinking establishments) with names like “Croatian Hall” and “Polish National Association.” Polka music was enjoyed, meat raffles were held, bowling leagues were well-attended.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #current affairs #police state #police brutality #criminal justice reform

[amydancepants-peralta]

3, 23, and 45 for the prompts!

Hiii Anon,  I’m so sorry this took me a while!  But here go you, response to 23: “Just tell me why you did it!  Because I’m in love with you, ok!”

Title courtesy of Foo Fighters (and I know the lyric ‘is watch him as he goes’, but ‘falls’ works much better here, so just roll with me on this xD)  Hope you enjoy! xx

there goes my hero (watch him as he falls)

There had always been a tiny part of Amy’s mind that was a little concerned that maybe she wasn’t the badass she made herself out to be.  

Sure, she knew how to fight.  But that was because she grew up watching (and learning) as her siblings sparred.  She was tenacious, because with her and her Mom as the only two women in the house, she had learned quickly the importance of standing your ground.  And she certainly knew how to use her mind, but the mind wasn’t everything.  Logically, she knew that she was tough - and always held onto the belief that when push came to shove, her natural born instinct would be to fight like hell.

That was until this afternoon, when she and Jake had followed up on what turned out to be bad intel from her CI, resulting in them chasing their perp into a nearby stockyard.  With his head start, neither of them had managed to catch which direction he’d been heading in and so they’d split up, Jake heading west while she stayed east (or, as Jake had put it, you go this way and I’ll go that way).  

Maybe it was the lack of sleep she’d experienced the night before.  Or maybe it was sheer stupidity.  But for whatever reason, she didn’t notice the perp gaining on her until it was too late, and he was standing in front of her with the barrel of his gun pointing straight at her chest.

And she froze.  Despite all the training, and god knows how many simulations she’d been in.  She froze.  

The rest of it played over and over in her head, a continuous loop she cannot seem to escape.  She remembers her body tensing up as she heard the perp cock his weapon, remembers her eyes squinting as her face turned into a grimace, and then suddenly: Jake was there.  He was there, and his hand was on her shoulder pushing her away, his body in-between hers and the perps, and then the shot rang out. 

Round and round.  The shot rang out, and Jake was there, and then suddenly he wasn’t.  

He was on the ground, and a scarily large pool of red was surrounding him, and the perp was getting away but she didn’t care.  Instead she was shouting words into the radio, free hand frantically pushing her jacket off her body to cover the wound (a through and through, she remembers thinking), and before long there were paramedics and officers and Terry’s familiar voice and her hands just would not stop shaking.

This wasn’t her first time witnessing a shooting.  And as part of her job, she knew it would not be her last, either.  But this one had been different.  She’d never had her partner in front of her, mouthing her name as his face grew pale and her once grey jacket pushed against his shoulder, turning crimson at an alarmingly rapid rate.  Never had the knowledge that it should have been her on the ground, because she was the one that froze, and now Jake was on the ground bleeding and it was all her fault.  

There has just been so much blood.  It was what she kept coming back to, what she found herself repeating to Terry over and over in the car on the way to the hospital - There was so much blood, Sarge, don’t you think there was so much blood?  Too much blood to be okay.   I’ve never seen that much blood.  Terry?  Was it too much blood?  He’d remained silent beside her, eyes trained on the road ahead, clenching jaw the only indicator that he’d heard her at all.  

And then Amy was silent too, mind lost in the memory of the previous week.  Her consuming one too many drinks at Shaws, followed by Jake taking her home in a cab.  She had been so eager to stop the world from spinning, resting her head on his shoulder, but that only seemed to make it spin faster.  Before long his nose was in her hair, and okay, maybe she was completely drunk but she could have sworn she heard him say her name.  She’d lifted her head to answer him, but his eyes were closed, and there was so little distance between them that Amy could feel his breath against her skin.  The urge to push forward - to close the gap and find out if his lips were as soft as they looked - was strong, but then he’d opened his eyes and she’d felt her face rush with blood, the blush so obvious from being so clearly caught out.

He’d smiled at her, that small smile that he’s only given her a handful of times, the one that was secretly her favourite, and her heart had skipped a tiny beat.  And then the cab had pulled over outside her apartment, and just like that, the moment was gone.

It had been close to a year working together when the conversation of dating colleagues had come up.  Jake had been filling the silence of a stakeout with his usual jabber and had just finished describing, in elaborate detail, the disaster that his previous relationship had left behind.  That she had been a cop from another precinct, and that things were great until they weren’t, and that before Jake knew it he’d unknowingly embroiled the Nine-Nine in an all-out war with the Eight-Six.  

It had taken months for their Sergeant to smooth things over, he’d admitted sheepishly, and Amy couldn’t help but take the opportunity to announce that she never wanted to date another cop.  Nothing but bad ideas, she remembered saying, and if she had only glanced back in Jake’s direction, then she too would have seen the flicker of anguish that had crossed his face.

But she hadn’t, and even as they grew closer, Amy had held onto the rule like her talisman - fooling even herself into believing that they didn’t flirt with each other, that they weren’t growing closer every day, and that there definitely weren’t nights where Jake infiltrated her dreams.

An hour passes by.  And her mind never stops thinking about what happened.

She finds herself standing outside his hospital room, filled with irrational anger, willing herself to calm the hurricane down before stepping through the door.  At some point Terry exits and takes one look at her appearance - hair long pulled from its professional ponytail; bottom lip red from her incessant chewing, arm a constellation of crescent scars as her nails continue to dig in - and wisely steps aside, mumbling something about Jake getting changed into a clean shirt, and still Amy finds herself unable to step into the room.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, she shakes her hands free and pushes the door open with a little more force than was probably necessary.  It bounces off the wall with a heavy bang, not unlike the sound of the gun earlier that evening, and she jumps at the sound.  She turns, sheepishly looking for him, and he’s sitting at the edge of the bed in a standard issue NYPD shirt, one arm wrapped in a sling, eyes wide and strangely silent.   

He’s been waiting for her.  She can tell from the look on his face.  But the sudden confrontation of her partner in front of her, one shoulder covered in gauze and nursed against his chest is unfamiliar to her, and everything she had been about to say suddenly seems irrelevant.  

He clears his throat, sensing her discomfort because of course he does, he’s her partner, and he knows her body language better than she does.  “So, they said I have to keep my arm in a sling for the next couple of days, but that otherwise I’m fine.”

She nods, fingers digging into her arms again.

“Through and through.  Only a few stitches, really.  That good ol’ Peralta Luck came through for me again.”

Another nod.  He sighs.

“I’m fine, Amy.“

She takes a deep breath and shakes her head.  “But it could’ve been worse.”

“It could’ve, yeah.  But it wasn’t.”

“You weren’t there,” she whispered, trying desperately to fight the tears threatening to escape.  “You were on the other side of the yard, away from the danger.  And then, you - ”

“I heard his footsteps.  Dude was a heavy walker.  There was nothing happening on my side, but on your side, I could hear his.  Yours, I would know anywhere.  And when they both stopped, I knew something must have been going down.  The rest, I guess, is history.”

“You should have stayed away, Jake.”  There is was, that irrational anger that Amy had thought she’d managed to stash away, rearing its ugly head.  “You should have stayed back, and called for backup, and not put yourself into harm’s way.”

Jake shakes his head, his disagreement so obvious that it serves only to fuel her fire.

“You know I’m right on this, Peralta!  We weren’t even wearing vests.  It made absolutely NO sense for both of us to end up in front of that gun.  You could’ve distracted him, tried to take him down, or - ”

“Don’t you dare suggest that I should have stood there and watched him shoot you, Santiago.  There’s not a chance in hell that I was ever going to let that happen.”

“Alright, fine.  But still ….”  

He stands, craning his neck as he clenches his jaw, mouth turning into a grimace as he fights to say what he so obviously is dying to say.  

And so she pushes.  “Just tell me why you did it, Jake!”

“Because I LOVE YOU, okay?  Are you happy now?  I love you.  I am so in love with you it’s ridiculous.”

She stares at him, mouth opening slightly as his outburst continues.  

“And I know you don’t want to date cops, and I know that we’re better off just being partners, and I’m trying the best I can to not be in love with you.  But I can’t do that when there is a bullet flying towards you, Amy.  I can’t.  I won’t.  There’s no point to any of this without you here.”

“ … Jake.”

He shakes his head, taking a step back.  “Don’t.  It doesn’t matter, Ames.  I’ve been getting pretty good at the whole ‘Jake Doesn’t Love Amy’ act, and after tonight I’ll fall right back into the role, I promise.”

“But, I -”

“Seriously, Amy.  You’re off the hook.  This whole thing is just as much my fault as it is yours, and honestly, I’ve been holding out for a super cool scar for ages, so who’s to say that I wasn’t just thinking about that when I did it?”

The memory of his warm breath on her skin in the backseat of a cab washes over her again, and Amy knows that this time she can’t let the moment slip away.

That maybe she was a badass, but that her bravery sometimes took on other forms.  A stranger pointing a gun at her could make her freeze, but the mere thought of walking out of this hospital room without finally being honest about her feelings could propel her into immediate action.

That this was Peralta, and yes, he drove her crazy sometimes, but also:  this was Jake, the man that filled her with the intrinsic knowledge that he would never do anything to hurt her.  That after today, he was going to have a scar on his shoulder, and that was entirely her fault. And she would be damned if she was going to be the reason there was a scar on his heart as well.

And so she steps forward, bold steps turning timid as the distance falls shorter, heart pounding out of her chest as she moves to place her hands on either side of his neck.  

“ … Don’t.”  His body stiffens.

She pulls back slightly, eyes raking over his face to distract herself from the sting, searching for more information.  He shakes his head, sad brown eyes meeting hers.

“Don’t do this because I’ve made you feel bad about today.  I don’t want you to kiss me because you feel obligated.”  Another shake of his head, looking away as he closes his eyes.  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.  I only want you to kiss me if..” he never finishes the sentence, because suddenly her mouth is on his, and in an instant everything else just seems to fall away.  

She was kissing him, and it shouldn’t make any sense, but it absolutely did.  He was the perfect fit, lips slotting against hers, warm and soft and fundamentally Jake.  His body freezes, but only for a moment, and then she feels him melt into it, releasing a soft sigh into her mouth as she presses harder.

This was it – this was the feeling that she had been waiting for.  That sense of fulfilment, of everything clicking together for the first time in a long time.  And right now, Amy can’t think of any logical reason why she had held back for so long.  He could have died today.  Jake could have died, and she would never have felt what it was like to kiss him.  And honestly, that would have been a terrible waste.

Slowly – reluctantly - she pulls away, smiling as his lips chase hers as she moves.

“I …” she swallows, throat suddenly dry.  “I don’t know if I’m ready to say the L-word just yet,” she whispers, forehead resting against his as she struggles to swallow again, her heart suddenly taking up residence under her tongue.  “But I’m also not ready to go back to pretending.”

“Pretending?”

“Yeah.  Pretending that this thing isn’t real.  That I don’t think about kissing you every time I see you.  You know, that kinda stuff.”

He raises his chin slightly, brushing his lips against hers in the most tantalising manner.  “I might be familiar.”

It’s Amy’s turn to sigh against his mouth this time, pushing herself closer to him, reveling in the new sensation of Jake’s lips against hers, and in the back of her mind she wonders why they waited so long to do this.  Something that feels as good as this did, should never have been denied.

His right hand traces light patterns against her shirt, sending tiny shockwaves along her spine, and as the kiss deepens he raises his left arm to pull her closer, the resulting groan of pain vibrating against her lips.  She pulls away with a sigh, eyes flitting straight to his shoulder before returning to his face.    

“You’re going to need someone to keep an eye on you, Jake.  Make sure you don’t …”

“Do anything stupid?”  She shrugs, and he reciprocates with a grin.  “You’re not wrong.  Although, if you want me to come home with you, you could’ve just asked.”

She pulls him in for another kiss, letting her teeth sink into his bottom lip this time in reprimand as she pulls away.  His responding moan does things to her, and the years of repressed feelings begin to fight their way to the surface.  Her head falls to his good shoulder, sighing as his arm circles around her, and although they were still standing in the middle of a hospital room, Amy already feels as if she is home.  

Her actual home however, with all its comforts, beckons, and reluctantly she pulls away, trailing her hand down his right arm until her fingers are linked with his.  

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

A blush washes over her, and she resists the urge to tuck her hair away, choosing instead to keep her hand interlocked with his.  Together they move towards the door, for the moment silent as the reality of what they have just started begins to sink in.

And then - 

“So, just out of curiosity … would this be a bad time to mention that I’ve got a real thing for nurses in uniform?” 

She smirks, leaving a mental tick to the checklist already forming in her head. “Duly noted, Detective.” 

#my fic #b99 fanfic #cliche post prompts #here goes nothing #hero jake jumps before thinking #for anon

[raewrite]

Headlong into the Storm

Arthur Morgan x Reader

Part 1

Hey everyone! This is my first real attempt at fanfic so go easy on me asdfj

I hope you enjoy and I'll try to get the next chapter up before too long

(This takes place before the events of the game by at least a year, but I haven't quite worked out the time line yet)

~~~

It had been three days since the gang’s departure from the plains where they had last settled. The promise of a good payout from the more remote ranches on the grasslands had been far too tempting to pass up, and the group had taken up residence in a patch of trees nestled comfortably on a creek not too far from a small stockyard town. The pickings were good for the first couple of weeks, what with the wandering herds of pronghorn antelope and the decently stocked general store in town, but prosperity never seems to last for the Van der Linde Gang. 

Now, you rode bundled in your winter coat through the falling snow of the mountains you and the others had fled into, your breath puffing out in front of your reddened nose. The frigid evening air was a stark contrast to the prairie breeze you'd felt just a few nights prior. As the wagons clattered along around you, your mind wandered back to the chaos of the past few days.

The morning itself had been crisp and unassuming, with the sun alighting on the tall, dewy grass and the thin mist that had settled over the creek. You had set about feeding the horses while Pearson worked up a warm breakfast, whistling as he set the pot over the fire to come to a boil. There was a spark of excitement running through the camp that morning, and for good reason. The night previous, Sean and Javier had rode into camp with fire in their eyes. You had heard them speaking excitedly to Dutch over by his tent, the ecstatic jumps in their voices drawing the attentions of Arthur and John nearby. The scraps of their conversation you managed to catch over the drone of the phonograph and the crackling pops from the campfire you and the other women shared told of a particularly successful ranch just to the south by a few miles. Sean had heard rumor in town that the owner had just sold off a sizable head of cattle, and was likely sitting on a nice stack of cash for it. Without much need for persuasion, Dutch had given them his blessing to head out that evening to see what they could find. 

The morning before a heist was always full of chatter from everyone, regardless of whether or not they were taking part. Upon finishing your chores, you had wandered over to Arthur’s tent, where he was sitting on his cot and running an oiled rag over the barrel of his shotgun, humming softly to himself. Nearby you could hear Sean talking excitedly about the plan to Bill and Uncle, both of whom barely seemed to listen. When Arthur caught sight of you, he scooted over a bit for you to sit. You were both quiet for a few moments — you had mastered the art of companionable silence, you and him — before you asked when he thought they would be coming back. Dutch had told Arthur to go with the younger gang members and keep them in line, which was more than understandable considering both Sean and John were adamant that they go.

“I’d say we could be back by morning, so long as everything goes smoothly,” Arthur sighed, casting a look of apprehension over towards the chattering irishman across the way. When he looked back at you, he caught the unease in your eyes. “Hey,” he said softly, “don’t worry. The ranch we’re hittin’ is too far from town for the law to be showin’ up at the first sign of trouble. Hell, we’ll be in and out before the owner even figures out what happened.” He gave you a small nudge in the arm, trying to draw you out from your distress.

You knew he wasn't one to speak so flippantly about a job, no matter how easy it seemed on paper, and that he was just brushing the matter off to make you feel better, but you just couldn't help but worry anyway. You always did. Despite that, his words had eased your mind a bit.

When sundown came, the boys loaded up and unhitched their horses. Before he could hoist himself up into his saddle, you grabbed Arthur by the arm and made him look you in the eye. This had become common practice between the two of you. You still weren't quite sure where your relationship stood, but that wouldn't stop you from tugging him towards you and making him promise to come back safe, and, more importantly, to not do anything stupid.

“I won't do anything you wouldn’t,” he replied, keeping his voice low as a smirk tugged at his lips. There was a fond sparkle in his eye as he pulled you into a quick hug, just brief enough for no one to notice, at least you hoped. When he was situated on his horse, he looked back down at you as you reached up. Arthur took your hand in his own and squeezed gently, before taking the reins and pulling his horse into a turn. You went to stand by Tilly and Abigail as you all watched them ride away.

~~~

You were drawn back to the present by the sound of Dutch’s voice calling out to you and Javier, cutting through the wind that whipped around the wagons. You urged your horse forward to pace alongside the cart manned by Hosea where Dutch perched in the shotgun seat. 

“I need you two to go and scout ahead a ways. See if theres any place we can make camp until this storm dies down,” he hollered, giving you a wave to send you off. “Be careful out there! We’re in unfamiliar country. The snow should cover you, but you never know what’s out there.”

With little more instruction needed, you and Javier spurred your horses ahead of the wagon train, waving to the others as you passed. You managed to catch Arthur’s eye as he looked on from his seat next to Charles. He tipped his hat as you rode onwards. 

Once the procession was far behind you, you turned to Javier as the two of you galloped ahead. “Hey, so what exactly did happen out on that homestead?” you called over the scarf you had pulled up over your nose. In the chaos of breaking camp and getting out of the countryside before the lawmen could track you, you hadn't gotten the details of the botched heist. From the way Arthur and Javier had been acting made you think that it was by some fault of Sean, which didn't surprise you in the slightest, but you still wanted to know exactly why you were now freezing your ass off in this God-forsaken valley. 

You heard Javier sigh heavily from behind his bandana, his shoulders slumping forward at the memory. “I don't know,” he shouted back. “Everything seemed like it was going fine until MacGuire started howling like a banshee from inside the house. I was keeping watch outside while Arthur and him went in through the back. John was hiding by the garden out front, and I thought we were gonna keep this one clean, but next thing we know gunshots are goin’ off and Sean starts yelling, and…” Javier stopped to rub at his face, his brows furrowing as he groaned and exhaled. You gave him a tight, knowing smile.

“Hey, its alright,” you said, trying to put some empathy behind it as you called over the gale, “shit happens.”

You thought you heard him laugh next to you. “Yeah, shit happens.”

The past three days had been hard on everyone. The gang had hardly stopped once since leaving the prairie, which, when paired with the winter weather you endured now, was cause for everyone’s exhaustion and short temper. You felt particularly bad for Javier and Arthur, who were easily the most upset about the whole ordeal. John wasn't exactly pleased either, but he was never one to mind up and leaving at a moment’s notice. 

The two of you continued on quietly for a while longer, not wanting to dwell much more on your circumstances. After an hour or so, Javier sat up straighter on his horse. You looked up as he pointed out in front of you. “You see that?” he called.

Ahead of you, you could just make out the silhouette of a structure through the snow. From where you stood, you could see no lights coming from it or anywhere else nearby, which was promising. Javier spurred his horse forward to investigate, with you following close behind. Getting closer you realized you had stumbled across an old barn, its timbers rough with age, but still standing. You stayed out front while Javier checked the perimeter, and when he came back around with nothing, you both hopped from your horses to see if you could get the large sliding doors open. 

“Hey, maybe our luck is changing, huh?” he joked as he tied his horse’s reins to a half-rotted post.

“If this is what you call luck, I’m afraid you have a skewed sense of fortune, my friend.” Javier just laughed, despite everything. 

“On my count,” you said, digging your feet into the snow to find traction. Javier did the same. “One, two, three!” You both pushed forward with all your combined strength, leaning your bodies into it to get the door to budge. Nothing happened. You tried twice more before falling back to catch your breath. Javier tipped his hat up, his bandana having fallen from his nose.

“Maybe we should just wait. The others will be here before long,” he heaved between breaths. “Between the rust and the ice, this ain’t budging for just the two of us.” You nodded and looked back down the trail you had forged for the wagon train, then up at the surrounding trees. You weren't entirely sure of where you were at, and the valley was too unfamiliar for your comfort. This barn had been long-abandoned, but why? Sure, the owners could've died or have just moved on, but that didn't make you feel any better. 

“I think I’m gonna do some more scouting,” you stated after a moment’s contemplation. “I won't go far, just wanna make sure there’s nothing else nearby. You’ll be alright here by yourself?”

Javier looked at you quizzically, but decided against arguing. He’d learned quick that none of the women in the group were your average housewives, and you in particular would gladly take on any labor the other men would, just to prove you could, if anything. He watched as you mounted your horse once more. “Just be careful, alright? Try not to go too far,” he said wearily, pulling his bandana back up to brace against the cold while he waited.

“I’ll try to be back before it gets too dark,” you replied over your shoulder, giving a wave. You patted your horse on her neck before digging in your spurs and galloping headlong into the storm.

~~~

Disclaimer: I have not finished the game yet (i fear for the cow boy), so if some things are off lore-wise, my bad!

Thanks for reading!

#arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rae writes

[svampirebait]

So yesterday’s game was, interesting to say the least.

After getting the Tome of Strahd from Diath’s grave, at the crossroad gallows. The Warlock cast Find Familiar and summoned the Imp, Samiel, who was the Imp his Grandfather had as a familiar when the PC was a child.

She was sassy and out spoken. Loves to drop the F-bomb and takes every opportunity to do exactly what she’s told but in a way her master does not expect. The players loved her and she was so much fun to play.

The first thing she did was call out her master for being stupid enough to get himself brought to Barovia.

When he asked how she knew this place she dropped the revelation that his Grandfather was born here and got out at great cost. She even went as far as to say he still had family in Vallaki.

While this was going on the Druid saw a figure in the trees watching them. He could only make out a black pointed hat and a Crescent staff, before the figure yelped and turned into a cloud.

This was Strix.

The party moved on, saying goodbye to Ismark and taking Ireena on towards Vallaki.

They’d already received an invitation to dinner from Strahd back at Death House so his carriage was waiting for them. They debated but decided not to go because of Ireena.

They passed through the gates and camped in a clearing where they found a ruined Varda wagon and the Rogue had flashbacks of his family being murdered by Van Rickton here. (I’ve adopted Paultin’s history for him as he had no backstory.) his reaction was amazing! He played out the horror and pain his character felt and got drunk by the campfire.

They found Mr, Shambleface in the wreckage and he kept hold of it.

The next day the party saw Bonegrinder on thehill and the Hag Morgatha making her way towards it. They’d seen her back in Barovia village tormenting a boy who got away. They’d also taken the deed to the mill from the Durst family back in Death House. The Warlock was very put out that there were “squatters” in his Mill.

Ireena, persuaded to party to take the hag out and they followed her to the mill.

This is where it all went to hell!

They left the horses on the road and spent so long bickering in the road that Bella, one of the Hag daughters saw them and came to the door.

They pretended to want to buy Dreampastries and went inside.

The Druid pretended to leave and cast invisibility on himself. He snuck up to the second level but bumped into the mother hag who threw flour on him so she could see him. She cast hold person and called her other daughter down from the third floor. They started to torture the druid while the rest of the party was oblivious downstairs.

The rest of the party bought two dream pastries then asked about potions so Bella called for her mother who came downstairs leaving the other daughter up with the druid.

Ireena tried to stealth around and attack the mother hag but was caught in the act.

They all rolled initiative and the Warlock loudly tells the Hags that Ireena is Strahd’s betrothed and that the party was his guests.

The hags immediately wanted Ireena from then on. She ended up unconscious at the bottom of the stairs with the mother hag dragging her to the upper floors.

Lightening bolt was cast and the lower floor caught fire. The druid finally broke free and joined the fight but it was going very badly for the party. That’s when the Warlock called out for Strahd to come and save Ireena.

He didn’t expect it to work but he’d accepted some of the Dark Powers from the vampire secretly in the night and so Strahd heard and was on his way.

In the meantime the rogue heard children screaming on the upper floors and started to run up to try and save them.

The druid decided they should all run and when he went outside he looked up and saw Strahd arriving on his Nightmare.

Strahd walks intk the mill and sees Ireena barely alive being dragged by Morgatha who has her blood all over her and has clearly done the most damage to her.

While the Hags grovelled Strahd picked Ireena up and looked to the Warlock suggesting he leave.

Strahd then cast fireball into the bottom floor of the Mill at 6th level, doing 48 points of damage and turning the first floor into an inferno.

Strahd walkedback to his Nightmare with Ireena in his arms and like the Badass he is, didn’t turn to look at the explosion.

The druid stood his ground and said “I know it’s useless to fight you, but you know I have to try!”

Strahd was kinda impressed and the druid cast tremors hoping to stall him but the Nightmare just started to fly ignoring the effect.

Behind them the mill started to collapse. One of the burning hags ran out screaming only to be kicked back inside this-is-sparta style by the Warlock just as the mill crumbled around them.

The rogue was on the third floor trying to get two children out of the crates. He got them both out and they were climbing down a rope as the tower started to fall. The little boy failed his check and fell to his death.

The rogue and girl held on as long as they could but had to jump 20ft to the ground. The girl died on impact.

The Warlock was buried under the rubble and Strahd was flying away with Ireena.

The druid shouted “WAKE UP” and cast healing word on Ireena who woke and plunged her dagger up under Strahd’s chin, up through his tongue and pallet. She took out his speech and spell casting and used his shock to leap from the nightmare.

Strahd vanished and I couldn’t bloody believe that not only were the party still alive, but Ireena was still with them!

They dug the Warlock out and made a shelter out of the rubble where they made camp.

They decided to take the children’s bodies with them in the hope that the abbot at St Markovia’s abbey could resurrect them.

During the night Strix snuck into the camp and took Diath’s Amethyst out of the Rogue’s pack. They all woke the next morning to Owlbear tracks.

The party carried on to Vallaki and the Warlock cast Friends on the guards to get them to let the party in. He was immediately arrested and taken to the stocks while the rest of the party hid in the stockyard and found Rictavio’s wagon.

The druid now has made ithis mission to havd the armoured sabre-tooth tiger for a pet even though the smell of the vistani rogue makes it go savage.

Meanwhile at ghe stocks, a boy theew a rock at the warlock who told their Imp to scare the child. She immediately went over and stung the child in the neck killing him instantly.

That was where i ended the session.

Kinda proud of my players.

#curse of strahd #spoilers #dice camera action #strix beestinger #diath woodrow #d&d 5e #d&d #dungeons and dragons #barovia

[davidhesseauthor-blog]

Cowboy Up

Sometimes there are two rodeos, one inside the arena and one outside. No buckles are awarded for the one outside.

When the sun goes down the west Texas heat lets up a bit making it tolerable to sit outside at night and enjoy the quiet of the evening.

Beanie Franklin and Ike Stovall were sittin’ on the rail watching the stock eat the hay they had just thrown out. Ike watched Beanie as he took his time filling a blanket. He twisted both ends and licked the entire stick with his tongue before placing it in the corner of his mouth. He struck a match against his leather chaps, lighting the freshly rolled cigarette. He squinted as the smoke rolled out of the side of his mouth and drifted up into his eyes.

“That little one is fine as cream gravy,” Beanie said, as he exhaled a stream of blue smoke.

“Yep, but you don’t want to get by that boy's ears,” Ike replied. “That gray one over there the horse you rode today?” Ike asked, pointing in the direction of a dapple gray gelding.

“Yep, he just didn’t seem to have it. He is just plum fagged out. Four years ago he bucked me off and hung me up and dragged me for a few trips around the arena before I learned saddle broncs and I don’t mix too well. Then I went bareback. That was ‘bout three years ago. He’s been around a long time. These damn small rodeos ain’t got the cash to bring in good stock like they should.”

“How’d that bareback work out for ya’?”

“Not much better. I got jerked down in the well and stomped on a few times. Now I do a little roping’ and ride pick up whenever I can land a gig. When you’re younger you live like the road goes on forever and the party never ends. But it ain’t long before you begin to see the bend in the road and you begin to fear what’s around that bend, the unknown.”

They both sat and let the quiet of the evening settle in while listening to the stock quietly chomp on the hay.

“Well,” Beanie said while standing and slapping his thighs, “if that sun don’t come up tomorrow, you’ll know I at least had a good ride. You hungry?”

“Yeah, how’s the food at that joint, the Crystal Cactus?”

“Purty good and so are the drinks. It’s a right nice place. They even give you eaten’ irons but it’s the afterclaps you gotta look out for. I was on the shitter all night the last time I ate there.”

They heard a gunshot, then another before the telltale crash of panels and a cry, “Get the horses saddled.” It was the night watchman, Felix Dunn.

“Who fired them shots, Felix?”

“A couple of ol’ drunks came ridin’ through here yellin’ and a cussin’ and firing their dadgum pistols."

They looked up and watched as a corral full of bulls came running past, led by none other than Dirty Sam, one of the meanest bulls neither of them never rode and never wanted to.

“Did you see that? It was Dirty Sam. He lit out of town like his dick was on fire.”

“Well, let’s go git him.”

They grabbed their saddles and tacked up their horses and took off after a half dozen crazy-ass bulls as they left the fairgrounds toward the stockyards that ran parallel to the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad.

Beanie and Ike were just about to catch up with the rest of the cowboys when someone yelled out, “There they are,” pointing in the direction of the levee road that snakes its way east toward Pumpkin Vine Creek.

They all turned and headed out at full gallop, the steel shoes of the horses throwing sparks off the asphalt as they rode in pursuit of the bulls.

As they got closer, one cowboy tossed his rope around Dirty Sam’s big old horns and proceeded to dally it around the saddle horn when Dirty Sam busted free, taking the rope with him while he headed back for the train tracks and a platform loaded with boxes with the rest of the bulls following him. As they passed the startled cowboys one of the horses reared, tossing its rider in the tall grass lining the road. The riderless horse took off in the direction of the bulls with the rest of the Cowboys in close pursuit.

When they arrived at the platform, Dirty Sam proceeded to hook the boxes and toss them all over the yard while the other bulls stomped on the contents that spilled out on the ground.

A train whistle and the clanging of metal on metal startled old Dirty Sam and he turned and ran off across the tracks and dropped down. His left front leg got stuck under the rail and was broken and twisted grotesquely in an oblique and unnatural angle to the rest of his body. He was snorting and bellowing in obvious pain while the rest of the bulls, not knowing what to do or where to go, just stood there milling around.

“Well, one of us has gotta fix his flint," Beanie said. "You been know’d to always carry an equalizer, Ike. You got a rifle in that scabbard?”

“Ya, I got one. Damn!”

“Just put it between his eyes and git it over with.”

“I can’t do it Beanie.”

Dirty Sam let out a deep moan and whipped his head back and forth slinging snot over Beanie and Ike’s legs and both their horses. His eyes were red and still filled with hate.

“Aw hell,” Beanie said, dismounting from his horse. “Gimmie your gun.”

The crack of the rifle echoed in the night. Ol’ Beanie’s eyes filled with tears.

“It ain’t right, Beanie. Dirty Sam shouldn’t have ta go this way. He was one of the best there ever was.”

About this time a couple of railroad dicks drove up in a white pickup truck with blue lights flashing on the top of the cab.

They saw the carnage and what was left of Dirty Sam and asked, “What in the cornbread hell is goin’ on?” the bigger of the two dicks asked.

“A little rodeo,” Ike replied.

“Well, who’s going to clean up this mess?”

“I reckon you should call the owner of the fairgrounds back there. We’ll take the rest of these bulls back and put ‘em away. They played enough for one day.”

“That’s it boys, the monkey’s dead and the shows over. Let’s throw a rope around Dirty Sam and get him off the track and get the rest of these boys back so we can go eat.”

[awakeningofthedeath]

Awakening of the Death: Chapter #30

A day and a half passed on as the Swift and Armor train cars that contained the two rouge assassins in one of the empty cattle cars. Jack and Hellen spent most of the travel time in nothing but the sound of the tracks clanking and the feel of their beating hearts. Hellen loved to have Jack close to her. She never minded every scar and flaw that he felt upon her. She wanted to be nothing but close to him without interruptions; yet the mile markers indicated to them that they would be approaching Kansas City as soon as the sun set.

As the miles gotten closer to the stockyards stations, Jack and Hellen had to put on their clothes and hide behind the giant hay pile in case of any rail inspectors, which had happened before in several stations along the way. None of the inspectors were harmed or killed whilst the couple hid. The only bloodshed the had one time was when a train hopper tried to load in the car and saw the naked couple. Jack only had to push the hobo off to where the man fell too close to the rail and the sound of cracking bones and a dying man’s screams made both Jack and Hellen shiver to the core. They both kept quiet holding each other until they saw the sight Hellen had not seen in years. The observatory buildings of the Kansas City stockyards were of a mass that Jack had never seen, with the rich smell of livestock and smokes from the factories around the city area across the river.

When the train ceased to a halt, Hellen and Jack took several seconds to grip their sacks before darting towards the exit, and barely got off intone before the men would see them before lowering the loading ramp. Seeing their breaths in the chilled air, Jack followed Hellen through a labyrinth of wooden panels and fences, the smell of cattle laced thick in the air, a scent Jack found it surprisingly strong. His only experience with cattle was during his stay in India, where the cattle were worshiped, decorated, and respected. These cattle, to which Jack passed by as he and Hellen traveled towards the observatory docks, were larger and more muscular than any he’d seen. Some of them had horns as thick and as long as Jack’s arms stretched out. Hellen climbed upon one of the beams to the deck, with Jack following behind. The wood creaked as they snuck across.

“This place has gotten bigger since I was last here.” Hellen commented on the expanse viewpoint of pens where cattle cried out to one another

“So if this were the cattle area, the horses can’t be too far.” Hellen made a turn to where other panels were set.

“Kansas City here is the biggest in the horse and mule market, My pa used to come here to buy horses to train them, only to sell them again for more than what he paid for. I went with him a few times. First time I was possibly 5 to 8 when I snuck away for a bit and road an ass bare assed. Surprised my pa never gained a grey hair with all the hell I’d given him.”

Jack chuckled, which surprised Hellen.

“Seems to me you tried to be Lady Godiva.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She was a noblewoman from long ago who stood for what was right against her husband’s poor decision making on taxes by riding in the streets naked upon her horse. Legend even said that a man named Thomas watched her ride and was struck blind or dead.”

Hellen gave a cheerful laugh. “Oh I like her! She’d be good company. Maybe perhaps, I could be your lady bare upon a horse when away from the bull’s viewpoint.” Jack gave a signature smirk, thinking the beautiful image of Hellen on a horse’s back. 

The couple found the horse and mule area where the equines munched upon what hay remained in each of the pens. Some of them contained a maximum of four to five in each pen. Jack watched as Hellen observed each pen looking upon the animals. He could hear Hellen’s frustration as she failed to find a stead that would possibly carry both of them. Whilst she searched, Jack’s eyes wondered to the pens behind him, where there in a large pen with only by it’s self was a beautiful buckskin mare with a white sock on it’s left hind contrasting against the other three blackened legs. It’s eyes meet Jack’s as she walked towards his position. 

“Seems to me I have competition Jackass.” Hellen’s chuckled as Jack turned to face her.

“I don’t suppose this one could work.”

Hellen slipped between the fence gaps as she examined the mare. She lifted her hooves, checked her teeth, and examined her back. “This one is well conditioned. Probably one of the handler’s horses. Still, we’re going to need a saddle and the gear. I’m going to check the tack area. I’ll be back.” And Hellen pecked a kiss on Jack’s lips as she went towards the building again. Seeing that Jack was alone with the horse, he leaned on the fence, his mind thinking about the recent few months he and Hellen had been together, and asking himself, why is he here? Why didn’t she come home sooner? 

Minutes later, Hellen came back carrying a saddle with a bridle with a snaffle bit on top of the saddle’s horn. An old red blanket was held from underneath the saddle as well. Jack managed to grab the woolen horse blanket as it slipped in between when Hellen hoisted the saddle upon a railing to keep in shape. She slipped back into the pen and grabbed first the blanket and the bridal. Wraping the mare’s neck with one of the split rings, Hellen kept her in control as she gently pushed the head down to have her thumb into the corner of it’s mouth, where the horse’s mouth opened and Hellen snuck the snaffle into the mouth and positioned the bridal. Testing the horse’s ability to ground tie, to which was successful, Hellen took the woolen blanket, folded it around to a half as big as the saddle and positioned it onto the horse’s wither’s in the correct position. She then grabbed the saddle and placed it upon the blanketed back. Hellen first handled the front chinch before the rear, and to finally finish bu adjusting the breast collar. Hellen then took each of the strips, measured them by comparison to her arm, and fixed them to the correct length. Hellen patted the mare’s neck, she led her to the gate. Jack opened the gate allowing them to walk through. The sound of the horse’s shoes echoed on the brick pathway. 

Hellen grabbed the horse’s mane and hoisted herself into the saddle. “I suppose you’d never rode a horse before.” Hellen asked.

“Only when I needed to. A few times while I was in India. Knew how to drive a carriage though.” Jack answered, feeling slightly embarrassed. 

“Get on the fence, I’ll side pass this horse to you so you can rise double. Thank the heavens above she’s a strong looking mustang. Big for her average height.” Hellen used her legs and slight in and out of the pressure on the reins to have the mare’s legs cross over each other as Jack climbed the fence. As Jackcarefully packed himself behind Hellen, he wrapped his arms around her waist, making her sink into his chest. 

“Better not tempt me Jackass, or we both will fall off this...”

“Oy! Jesse! Marcus is dead! And the tack storage was opened! Check the horse pens!” 

The sound of a man’s shouting echoed into the darkness. Lanterns were lite, and moving towards the area.

“Hold on tight Jack. Not sure how fast this gal can go with the two of us, but we have no choice.”

Hellen soured the mare into a short trot transitioning into a gallop. The sound of hooves on brick echoed in a familiar pattern Jack knew in London at times when Jacob would drive. The difference being feeling the moment of this valiant’s beasts mussels as she left those behind the dust. Then suddenly, without warning, he felt Hellen leaning forward with him following as the mare jumped over a broken part of a vacant pen. Hellen steamed past other workers, with Jack kicking some of them whop tried climbing onto the beast. When they escaped the area, Hellen ran the horse for a good distance for a mile, until they stopped at the base of the Missouri River. 

The River looked so peaceful and still, that it never seemed to have a current. Hellen later explained to Jack that the Missouri was actually more deadly when entering in, known for the under toes and deadly looking driftwoods. As Hellen guided the horse towards the docks of a farrier rafts, Hellen pointed towards the upper part of the river. “Collin told me a story once of how he and my pa almost got a rich templar on a mission on a steamboat called the Arabia back in ‘56. Unfortunately, the Templar escaped due to a stuck of bad luck on his part when the boat struck a tree stump floating in the river, Sad that the only victim in that was a mule. That and loads of cargo meant for many towns. Might be a kings fortune.”

When Hellen halted the mare, Jack slipped off, feeling rather tender in the thighs, but managed to stand upright. He turned and held the horse for Hellen as she dismounted. They walked to the assumed farrier, an older gentleman with a grizzled beard and blue eyes the color of ice. “What can I do for you kind folks?” He asked in a southern accent.

Hellen pulled out some silver dollars and handed it over to the man. “We need to cross to the Missouri side as soon as possible!”

The man looked at the money then back to the couple. “Funny for the woman to talk matters of sales instead of your man here.”

Before Jack could say anything, Hellen slightly tabbed his boot with her own, signaling him to keep quiet. “He can’t speak sir. His tongue was cut off during the war with the red skins.” 

“Is that so?” The man asked, looking at Jack with a questioning look. “What she say is true boy?” Jack nodded. “Did you lose it before or after this lovely bride of your allowed her horse out of the barn?”

 Jack gave a glare and gave him a hard punch, causing the man to tumble into the banks of the river. He stood back up, blood and water dripping. Hellen held Jack back with her hand, giving a secret wink. “Now darling, you know the man is possibly a loose canon on the tongue. Oh!” Hellen gave a gasp. “Jack I’m so sorry, that was uncalled for! Forgive me?” Jack smiled, and gave her a gentle kiss. This kiss was the softest Hellen experience, not that it was for the facade, but genuine in tenderness. When they parted, the man was pressing a handkerchief on a blood spot on his cheekbone. 

“I begin your pardon ma’am, and to you sir. Your very blessed to have a gal to speak for you.”

Jack responded with a nod.

“So yes. I can get you two and your Hoss to the other side. I can tell you two must of just took the train in order to buy a horse.”

“Yes we did. And I must say, she’s worth a steal.” 

Jack smiled at the joke Hellen made secretly for their situation.

The couple lead the mare to the large raft big enough for a covered wagon and a team, and the man guided them through the currents. Hellen left a little uneasy in the stomach as they made the passes, but ignored the small discomfort as they grew closer to the Missouri shores. 

Home.

For the first time in over thirteen years. She was back in her home state

#awakening of the death #jack the lad #jack the ripper #Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed Syndicate #hellen patterson #kansas city #missouri #kearney #homestead #jeremiah patterson #assassin #templar