#i hang dry over half of my stuff so while everything goes in the washing machine with no descrimination i sort after to decide what goes in | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pjm-com · 3 years

Text

unbound | m.

- a/n : a big thank you to @ksj-com for helping with the plot hehe

- pairing: kim taehyung x reader - genre: smut, forbidden love! au, slight angst - warnings: sex, cursing, fighting, boys being boys - word count: 11.4K - summary: years after being under the sharp eye of your brother, taehyung finally returns your feelings. of course, jungkook is wanting to protect you from another vicious heartbreak after yoongi, but taehyung will find a way to see you. with or without jungkook's permission.

“Fuck this date.”

You slammed the door shut, tears rolling down your face. You’re glad your parents went away on some kayaking trip, cause the entire house shook. You hang up your purse, not even stopping to look at the outfit you had just wasted. A simple spaghetti strap dress. You had curled your hair for once too, considering it was usually in a bun, or you just left it alone. Not to mention, you had to borrow makeup from a friend considering you rarely wore any.

To put it simply, this was a waste of your fucking time.

You stomped up the stairs towards your brother's room, knowing you’d be able to confide in him. It’s something he’s been doing heartbreak after heartbreak and it gets a little easier every time. His best friend Taehyung would always weigh in too when he could, and they always knew what to say. You’re afraid that this time, they’re gonna want to do more than give advice. If they didn’t kill him first, you’d be able to milk an apology out of the date.

Slamming the door, you sniffle loudly. “Sorry.. can I come to hang out?” Your voice sounded clogged from the drive home. Not one, but two pairs of eyes land on you. Jungkook nods in an instant, patting the open space on the bed. Taehyung’s eyes are glued on you out of pure shock, following you closely as you fall face-first into the bed. The warm palm of your brother's hand on the low of your back. For some reason, it makes you cry even harder.

God, you were pathetic. You haven’t cried over a boy in so long, but this one hurt a little more. You guess you figured that he had liked you, so maybe that’s why it was a little sore right now.

“What's wrong?” Jungkook’s soft voice rings through the room as their game goes on pause. He continues to rub your back in huge circles to calm your breathing while you find a stopping point to the sobbing. You pick up your head, wiping your eyes the best you could, laughing angrily.

“Sorry about your comforter…” Jungkook waves it off. “It's just— I get all dressed up in t-this, which we all know I don’t dress to impress. Then, Mr. Min fucking Yoongi shows up, fifteen minutes late might I add. He barely even looked at me all night.” The boys share a look that is quick, eyes wide.

“Kook, Don’t Namjoon and Hoseok know him?” Taehyung sounded surprised, while your brother nodded.

“Namjoon was who introduced them I think.”

You nod to both of them, playing with a loose string of Jungkook’s blanket. “Yeah, that and we have study hall together.. not that it matters anymore…” You trail off, upset. You were having a good time with him too, even if it was for a few class periods every week. You hated feeling this way, showing weakness in front of your brother and his friend. You couldn’t help it. Guys were assholes.

Shifting into a sitting position, you lean against your brother's shoulder. “Then, he was like ‘so when are we going to fuck’, and lewd stuff like that.. Like— like how do you just say something like that? I feel like an idiot,” You whined, tears falling freely again. You sniffled again as Jungkook brings you in for a hug.

Your brother groaned. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” you scoffed. “I went in there thinking he was interested in me. Not my body. It seemed like he only cared about sex. He even told me he had second thoughts coming, but… I can only assume he came in case he was gonna get laid.” Your voice dropped off as you let it out, crying into your hands. Boys were cruel and that was more than evident. Jeon Jungkook was horrible at many things. He couldn’t cook, he once swallowed a puzzle piece and got put on house arrest once. That being said, he’s still your brother and you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. He’s an idiot. You have so many other options, he doesn’t even deserve your time.”

Taehyung seconds Jungkook’s words. “For real. You’re funny, you are talented at a lot of things… and I guess you aren’t that ugly.”

You snort softly as you look up from Jungkook’s arms, wiping your eyes while you three laugh. It’s the oldest cliche in the book, but hearing that from Taehyung makes your heart flutter. You continued to look at Taehyung for a bit, cheeks red as you looked at your own feet. You don’t know when you even started having a crush on the older male, but you hate it. As much as it pains you to say that. Jungkook made it crystal clear that he was off-limits, while Taehyung had made no effort to try and make a move. You left it dormant.

You smile. “Thanks, Tae.” You sigh, wiping your eyes for hopefully the last time. “Sorry for crashing, well— whatever this was.”

Jungkook shakes his head, tone firm. “We weren’t doing much of anything. Did you want to join us?”

You look over to his counterpart, the look on Taehyung’s face inviting as you decided. If you had another second alone with yourself, then you might as well just cry for the rest of the night. Nodding, you excuse yourself to change into some regular clothes and take a moment to wipe off your makeup. Your phone lights up, reading Min Yoongi. The infamous senior who everyone wanted to be with, despite being a nonchalant asshole.

He seemed genuine at first, he did. You wonder why you put yourself in these situations, but you can’t find an answer. At least not one you want to admit. Stepping back into your bother’s room with fresh sweatpants and a tight hoodie, you move towards the boys. Sitting on the bed, you pull Jungkook’s fuzzy blanket over your body and relax into the headboard.

The exhaustion stops you almost immediately, eyes closed as you slump against the pillow. Your mind washes away all the worries of a couple of hours before.

You dreamt about your future. Working a dull nine to five, a decent car, a nice house in a quiet neighborhood. Wasn’t ideal, but your husband in the dream was making everything with it. That being said, you couldn’t make out his face, the blonde blurry to your eyes. You enjoyed his company, or at least you did according to the last strings of your dreams.

You make quick work of getting ready, pulling on jeans and a hoodie considering the temperature had dropped today. Once ready, you brush your teeth and floss quickly before you grab your bag and make your way downstairs. You cursed to yourself as you barely had touched your homework. A nerve-eating parasite pinched the very core of your stomach, dragging yourself down into the kitchen with dread. Yoongi was the last person you had wanted to see. Unfortunately, you’d have to suck it up and face your day head-on.

You’re surprised to see Jungkook by himself at the island, choking on a bowl of Frosted Flakes as he dumped the plastic bowl into the sink, looking at you.

“Where’s thing two?” Not that you cared. Okay, you did, but you were curious. They went everywhere together and Taehyung was the last to wake up when he slept at your house. Your brunette brother shrugged, slipping into his vans and almost face planting as he did. He grabbed his keys, moving out the door with urgency. You deadpanned. “Stay up late?”

Jungkook snorted. “Yeah, till almost four. S’ crazy right? Trying to wake up Taehyung is like trying to wake up a cemetery. When I got up, he was gone. Maybe he went to school early?” You both shared a look before bursting into laughter.

“Yeah right,” you laugh as you lock your front door, trailing behind Jungkook to the car. “That knucklehead would never go to school early.. maybe had to shower or something.” You get into your brother's car, deciding you leave yours home for the day. You were coming straight home after school and nowhere else, and taking two vehicles to school was a little extra.

The ride to school was the same, Kook talking about whatever girl he was banging while you just watched the houses move by. You dreaded getting to school, but on the bright side, you wouldn’t have any distractions. You could get all your homework done for the weekend. You doubted Yoongi would even be there, considering all he did was sit in the bathroom and smoke weed.

You guess you kind of liked that, though. You lived a bit of a cookie-cutter life, and never had a taste of danger. Till you met Yoongi.

Finally, you were parked in the school lot. As soon as you stepped out of the car, Taehyung was jogging to you both. His brown eyes crazy and you couldn’t help but notice his knuckles were a bit red. Couldn’t blame him, considering it was the cold dry season.

The blonde fell into step with you and your brother, joining in on the regular morning banter. How Jungkook was a whore, and Taehyung was practically locked in a chatty belt. You thought it was sweet though. Taehyung didn’t have many girlfriends, and you thought it was refreshing how he took everything at his own pace.

“You guys are idiots,” you call, watching the twins wrestle as you open your locker. You shove some books in, only to take out the necessary ones as you wave goodbye to dumb and dumber. Taehyung smiles at you while he waves, and your return the action right back. The prettiest smile you had ever seen. It sounds gross to be gushing over someone who had grown up with you, but the childhood feelings were long gone. They grew up with you, less innocent than they were before. Not that you’d ever say anything.

Taking a seat, you set your books down on your usual table, the commons more crowded than usual. The bell rings and some kids scatter, but it was still heavy traffic in the heart of the school. Your stomach does flips into your fucking ass, almost dropping your headphones as half of the cafeteria watches with you.

Yoongi makes his way across the room, soft eye turned black. Chapped lip now split. It looked fresh too. Not a yesterday kind of bruise, it was more of a thirty-minute wound. He barely gave you time to process how close he was, but the tone was pitiful. Forced. Like someone was holding a gun to his head.

“I’m sorry.” It was dry and airy, but it was.. an apology? “I’m sorry for acting like an asshole. I'm not sure what got into me that night, but I shouldn’t have treated you like that. 's not right.” With that, without even waiting for an answer, he was gone. Anger filled your head to toe. You’re not even sure how it was possible. Who the hell had even beat him up? And was it related to your situation? You finish your homework, but with a clouded mind. So many questions and no answers. You figure it must’ve been Jungkook. Maybe that’s why he was so tired this morning.

You were gonna let him have it.

The rest of the day followed fast and suit as a Friday would. It had blurred by, probably due to the anger. You heated up even more as the car was unlocked, pushing your bag into the seat while Jungkook stared at you weirdly.

“The hell was that today?” The confusion is almost comical, eyebrows knitted as he starts the car. “Don’t act brand new. Yoongi came up to me this morning with his face practically smashed. He apologized to me.” Jugnkook laughed it off, turning on the car and backing out of the parking spot.

“Y/N, you give me too much credit. Mom would beat my ass if I beat someone else’s. Though, I do envy whoever did. Any other leads?” You shake your head as you sink back into the seat. This day felt too long. “I mean, we told Joon about it, but he’s cool Y/N you know him. Doubt he’d do anything so drastic.” You were at a dead end. The drive home was silent. You had no more energy for talking or doing anything else. It seemed so crazy.

You know what though? At least he apologized. Whether he meant it or not, he had to drag his sorry ass through the commons after getting it handed to him, and he had to apologize. You could take a decent nap on that note alone. Although, it still burns in the back of your skull that someone had done it for you. Or at least you thought.

You’re still unsure if the two were related.

“You want a sandwich?” Jungkook offers it up as you both enter the house, dropping your bag as you nod. You honestly forgot to eat today, hunger pangs banging on the wall of your gut. You sit at the island, opening a Gatorade as you watch Jungkook pull out the sub bread and the other fixings to the “world-famous” sub he made. Honestly, it was pretty damn good, and you could eat a whole one right about now.

“So.. you feeling better?” You sigh at the question, chin rested on your hand as you shrug.

You weren’t too sure. “I guess. I'm glad he apologized, but it still racks my mind. Why was he all banged up?” Jungkook halts a bit, before shrugging normally. Jungkook wanted to let the situation blow over, so he decided not to say anything. “Wasn’t you, wasn’t Namjoon, and it wasn’t Taehyung? So… I don't know. Who cares. Enough bout that asshole... What are your plans for tonight?”

Jungkook was glad you had dropped the topic. “The usual. I think the boys are gonna come over tonight if that’s okay with you? I don’t know if you wanted a quiet night or something, but. Jimin wants to play Mario Kart, and Hoseok is going to raid our fridge... You know the usual,” he laughed. But nothing more was said. You happily ate the sandwich, watching the brunette crack out his chemistry book to finish his homework before the boys came over.

You retreated to the bedroom, changing into some sweatpants and one of Jungkook’s old ratty hoodies. The moment your head hit your pillow, you were out like a light.

Honestly, when you woke up, you felt a thousand times better. Your body felt relaxed, you had finger marks on your cheeks. It was probably the best damn nap you’ve had in a while. You rub your eyes, not surprised to see a couple of snap chats from your friends considering you had been asleep for a couple of hours now. You’re almost tempted to go back to sleep before you hear faint yelling from downstairs.

You didn’t mind going to spend a little time with them, laughing as you see Jimin tackle Jin over the coffee table as the raven took first place again. Jimin was no match for the taller male, however, Jin pushing the brunette over the table and straight on his ass, laughing.

“Hey,” you said softly, grabbing a water bottle from the hallway stash, sitting on the edge of the counter.

“Y/N did you see that, Jin’s a cheater!” Jimin wailed throughout the house, making everyone roll their eyes.

Jin’s face only read malice. “Just like your last girlfriend.” The boys all winced at the comeback, laughing a little once they saw Jimin wasn’t phased. “Too soon?” The two start wrestling again, making you laugh. You move past the four-year-olds on the floor, pulling out a small bag of pretzels from the pantry. You open them, turning on your heel before you almost bump into Namjoon. He was a bit of a refresher. He was kind through and through, and always put everyone before himself. Even when your mother forced your brother to let you come with when you were younger, Namjoon always made sure you were included and cared for.

“Woah! Sorry,” you laugh, ready to move past but Namjoon blocks you.

You can read on his face that he’s a little guilty, but you’re not too sure what for. His mouth opens like he’s finding the words, before his lips purse again.

You laugh. “Namjoon, stop sweating. It’s okay, I’m okay.” Namjoon doesn’t buy it. He pulls you into a hug, lips pressed to the top of your head. He was really like an older brother to you, right under Jungkook.

“It’s not... I just. I don’t know. I feel— you never would’ve met him if it wasn’t for me. And I just—“ He cuts himself off. “No one should ever be told those things…” He sure sounded guilty. You did, however, accept the hug.

“Hey, seriously... It sucks, but it’s not your fault. I would never blame you for something like that. Seriously I mean it.” You smile up at the raven, and he finally smiles back. He’s relieved, but you had another thing to get off your chest. “Hey, speaking of him… did you happen to see who beat him up? When he apologized, he looked… busted,” You laugh, Namjoon follows suit.

Unfortunately, Joon shakes his head. “Nope.. figured Jungkook did that, but no. I wish I had an answer,” he shrugged, a frown on his features before Jungkook is calling you both over. You suppressed the curiosity, for now, wondering if you’d ever get an answer. You roll your eyes as your brother referred to you as stinky, laughing as you snatch the controller from Hoseok who was losing anyways.

“Let me show you guys how a real match is played.”

All the boys got their remotes ready. Honestly, you had fun playing the few rounds you did. You kept winning first place against Jimin who was definitely in the lead. You hand the controller, relaxing back into the huge couch. You’re surprised it's taken you this long to realize that Taehyung wasn’t even here. He was always over, so you wondered why he was missing right now. You pull out your phone, checking his location at his own house.

You decide to text him, phone screen tilted to Jungkook couldn’t see.

hey, loser. why aren’t you kicking everyone's ass on the wii?

You watch the text bubble start typing on the screen, and for a few good minutes, it’s going. You’re ready to see a keyboard smash or something considering it was taking a while for the text to send. Just like that, it’s gone. The hell? It wasn’t like Taehyung to not respond, or to take long at all. Something felt off, but you knew Jungkook’s rules. He would be curious as to why you were going over to his house.

“Hey kook, I’m gonna.. get some ice cream. You want any on the way back?”

Jungkook shakes his head. “Nah, we’re gonna go get food after this round. Check-in with me at eleven!” You rolled your eyes, slipping on your slippers as you said goodbye to the boys. Unlocking your car, you got in and pulled out of the driveway as soon as it was warmed up enough. It wasn’t a far drive to Taehyung’s house, only a couple of streets over from yours. You knew the route by heart, all the countless nights of you and your brother sneaking out of your house. You high-tailed it to the blue suburban at the end of the cul de sac, only to be dragged home by your mother.

When you finally arrive at the house, you park on the street noticing the house was pitch black. Save for the basement window, which was Taehyung’s window. You kill the engine, shutting the door quietly as you trek up to the front of the house. Tipping the potted fern out front, you grab the hidden spare key, unlocking the front door gently. You close it behind you, taking off your shoes as you sneak down to the basement, not wanting to wake his parents.

You tap the ‘man cave’ sign that the idiots painted for good luck; a tradition you all had. It doesn’t take long to spot Taehyung slouched against the headboard, hand in a chip bowl as you hear the opening credits of SpongeBob. Oh lord.

“Hey stranger,” you call softly, watching him mope around as he paused the show, sitting up.

His face showed that he seemed a little annoyed. “What do you want?” You’re thrown off by the tone, but you can tell he’s upset. Or that he’s in a mood, even though he quickly backtracked. “I’m sorry... I’m just. I got a lot on my mind.” Your eyebrows knit, looking at the expression. Whatever it was, it was kicking his ass.

“It’s okay,” You sigh, voice soft as you move to sit on the end of the bed. Taehyung is jumbling around words in his mouth, shrugging. He wants to avoid it, you can tell. He didn’t want to say whatever was obviously on the tip of his tongue, but it was going to eat him up one way or another. “Hey, the boys aren’t here.. Say what you need t—“

“I’m sorry, okay?” Your eyebrow raised at his words, but you didn’t even have to ask. “I’m sorry about Yoongi.”

You rolled your eyes. “God— what is it with you guys? You and Namjoon both. You don’t need to be sorry, he apologized. It sucks, but it’s over with.” You were starting to get a little irritated at how everyone was walking on eggshells around you. This wouldn’t be the first time your heart broke, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last. Taehyung groans like he’s at war with himself, leaning back into his bed.

“I was the one who beat him up… to get him to apologize.”

The silence that follows is deafening, your eyes wide at the words. Finally, you’re relieved that the whole ordeal is solved. But—

“Why?” You were grateful, truthfully. “What if you get in trouble?” Taehyung had a perfect record, and it wouldn’t sit right with you if he ruined it because of Yoongi. You weren’t going to lie, it did make your heart flutter a bit.

Taehyung sat up, eyes not meeting yours. “Cause, Y/N. I did it cause it's not fair. Yoongi shouldn’t get to walk around with a chip on his shoulder after saying what he did to you.” The blonde sighs, eyes finally looking up. “I pummeled him hard enough, I doubt he’d rat me out. I'm tired of seeing boy after boy come through and break your heart. It’s not fair to you.” Your cheeks burn at the words, sitting silently as you cross your arms. You couldn’t be mad at that, not when he was crusading for you.

“I'm surprised Jungkook didn’t rat me out. He knew… and he knows I like you.”

Now you’re super confused.

“Jungkook knew? That little shit,” you grumble. “I asked him. All-day I was trying to find out what the hell happened to Yoongi. But he knows you like me?” Taehyung nods, defeated as he holds one of his pillows against his chest. You have hit another dead end for maybe the fourth time today. It was unspoken between you two, but you already knew the deal. You can’t go after him. Even if you want to open that damn basement window and scream to the streets that he had finally liked you back.

“It doesn’t even matter,” he whined, eyes looking down at the floor now. “He doesn’t want to be in the middle or pick sides if we were to break up.” You nod, knowing that was Jungkook’s whole problem. It would be impossible for him to pick between his lifelong best friend and his sister. He couldn’t, and he doesn’t want to.

Taehyung on the other hand feels like a fucking idiot. Exposing his feelings, and to him, it seems like you’re dodging it head-on. Relief floods him.

“I like you, god I do,” You mumble, thumb brushing over the scar on the side of his face. “I don’t want to come between you and jungkook.” Taehyung shakes his head, holding your face in his hands.

“I don’t care anymore. I don’t,” he whined, moving closer. It felt like literal years before his lips touched yours and when they do, it knocks the wind out of you. His hand on yours as he practically smashes your lips together and god does it feel good. It feels so fucking good to kiss him. Like you’re finally breathing fresh air. You return the force of the kiss, hand on his shoulder as they mold together. His lips, they’re soft save for the tiny spot that's chapped. He had on cherry-flavored chapstick, making you smile a bit. It tasted weird.

“I don’t care.” Taehyung breathed against your lips. His hand held your face, thumb moving over your bottom lip. It gave your stomach butterflies, to say the least, while he kissed you again. Too slow for your liking, laughing as you bumped noses. You fell back into the bed, the blond following suit. If he didn’t care, then neither did you.

His hands stayed holding your head, jaw tilted in place as you made out slowly. Strings of soft, loving kisses that had years behind them. Decades.

“I guess it doesn’t hurt to keep things under wraps,” you mumbled, feeling his lips wander to your neck. An innocent kiss turned deviant.

You’ve never received a proper hickey before, and god was it making your head spin. The difference between a harsh bite on your neck was massive compared to what Taehyung was doing. His tongue was moving slowly over your skin, pinpointing the spot. Kissing it, mentally marking it before he started sucking on it carefully. Your eyes fluttered shut, letting him do as he pleased. The sensation heightened even more as his hand found yours. He laced the fingers together, before pinning it to the bed.

“Don’t make it too big,” you breathed, tightening the grip on his hand. The laugh that came from his lips was sinister, cold fingers feeling under your hood but stopping at the dip in your back. He held you close as his lips returned to yours, teeth tugging on them carefully before he was kissing you. Like he wasn’t just sucking the blood out of your neck.

Taehyung pulls away, calm. “How was that?” His mood, a whole one-eighty as he sported a lopsided grin. A new glint in his eyes. “I like that..” His thumb pressed over the spot he was just working on before pulling you up with him. The kiss he pressed to your foreheaD? God, everything about him was addicting and you only had him for mere seconds.

“You’re an idiot.” Your face, no help as your cheeks light on fire. Taehyung grinned, his infamous smile as he kissed you again. Honestly, you’re about to fall back into the bed before your phone rings. You’re snapped out of the honeymoon phase as you quickly read the screen. “Shit— I gotta go! Jungkook is so gonna kick my ass!”

You scramble to gather yourself, picking up your keys as you almost hurdle up the stairs. Your arm is yanked back, almost out of your damn socket. You’re flung back into Taehyung’s body, the lips finding yours for one last time before he’s pushing your ass out the door.

“Text me when you’re home.. let me know Jungkook didn’t skin you.”

You both share a nervous laugh, your own feet leaving behind a dust trail as you eject into the car. The engine races to life, pulling out from the side of the street only to speed home. The drive is uneventful and gut-wrenching. You almost clip the mailbox as you pull into your spot in the driveway. You shut your car door softly, fingers not even having the chance to turn the knob before the front door flings open. Jungkook standing there, your stomach falling into your ass.

He knows.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Getting ice cream.” Y/N, you’re a fucking idiot.

Your brother pulls you by the hoodie gently so he can shut the door and lock it. “Cut the bullshit, I have your location dumbs. You’re not doing a good job of hiding that hickey on your neck either.” He’s whisper yelling, which lets you conclude that his friends were still in the living room. The brunette grumbles, popping his head in to make sure his friends were still entertained. “When did you and Taehyung start fucking?” God, the way he spat it out was malicious. But you had to defend yourself.

“Can you watch your mouth kook? We aren’t, we just— kissed,” you groaned. “I know it sounds bad, but it didn’t start until tonight.”

“So you are fucking?”

You roll your eyes. “No, we aren’t. What's the big deal anyway? We kissed a couple of times, Jungkook. Grow up.” You kick off your shoes, turning to the stairs but you have Jungkook’s hand to keep you in place.

“Y/N, I told you the deal. You’ve known the deal. I don’t want you with him, I can’t be a mediator. I won’t have my best friend dating my little sister.” Jungkook’s voice was low but firm. He was dead serious.

But so were you.

You rip your arm out of his grip. “Then don’t be one, and mind your fucking business. I don’t need your approval on who I date.” You want to move up the stairs, but you had to get the last word. “You know, at least he gives a shit. At least he cared about everything that happened with Yoongi. He straightened him out, made him apologize while you barely lifted a finger! If it comes to that point, then it’s between me and Taehyung, not you.” You storm off to your room, Jungkook grumbling.

“Then tell your fucking boyfriend that he can forget about our fucking friendship.”

You slam your door at his words, back pressed against it as you tried to cool off. You yanked your phone out of your pocket, texting Taehyung.

he’s such a fucking asshole. he just blew up on me for no reason.

You fall back into your bed, huffing angrily as Taehyung responds.

ya. he txted me n told me to find another ride to school tmrw. guess he was srs bout cutting me off

Fuck Jungkook.

...

You never saw yourself doing pretty much anything that surfaced within the two months after you and Taehyung started seeing each other. Secretly of course.

Even if the idiots called quits on their friendship, Jungkook would still kick Taehyung’s ass if he saw you together. You’ve been lying to Jungkook about where you go after school. He was still giving you the cold shoulder, suspecting that he blames you for their friendship ending. You couldn’t care less.

You had snuck out for the first time, to meet Taehyung at his house, and you would still be doing it even if Jungkook approved or not. It was his damn fault.

You still would’ve been in the busy part of the town’s bowling alley, Taehyung all over you. You weren’t really worried. The crowded part of the lot made it easy for the town’s druggies and smokers to do it safely, and no one would suspect a thing. Same with others like you and Taehyung. Thank god he had snatched the last spot in the corner of the asphalt lot.

“Ow!” You yelped loudly at the tug of your hair, Taehyung’s elbow leaning heavily on it. He pulled away from our neck, already looking mangled with the same crazy grin you’ve fallen in love with these past few weeks. He moves your hair safely out of the danger zone, offering a small ‘sorry’. He dives back into your skin, tongue lapping over the expanse of your neck before biting harshly. You sigh lazily, hand moving up into his hair as he placed the final kisses over his hickies.

He surges up to kiss you, falling right in line with him as your other hand makes quick work of feeling his naked body. Both of yours together, save for the underwear you both had on. You feel how toned he is, each muscle moving under his skin as he adjusts himself again between your legs, making you bite your lip.

Euphoric as you feel, you’re curious.

“Do you miss Kook? Be honest.”

Taehyung groans, head coming up from the trail he was leaving right above the hem of your bra. “You’re killing my boner, Y/N. I don’t wanna talk about your brother while I’m bout to fling this bra to the front seat.” You snort, laughing into your arm as Taehyung does the same. You grab his hand, lacing together your fingers as you bring his actions to a stop.

“babe, I'm serious. I just— I feel guilty sometimes.” You know that you shouldn’t, but it eats at you. “You’ve been friends since the third grade. I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.” Taehyung pulls away, a more serious expression on his features.

“I know. I do love kook— I always will, but it's his fault. If he can’t support us being together, then he’s just not a real one.”

You snicker at the phrase. “Just please let me know, okay? I understand, but I dunno. I always thought you guys would be each other's best man. Stupid things like that,” you hum, the fingers that were traveling up your back landed on your hip, playing with the band on your thong.

“I will. I’ll probably apologize to him soon, but not yet. I don’t want him watching my every move.” He grinned as he kissed you, trailing down your jaw. “Plus isn’t it fun like this? I think it’s a little sexier to fuck you in private.” You rolled your eyes, his cock hard against your thigh now as your face turns red.

“You’re so embarrassing,” you mumble, rolling over mentally. You’ll let the argument sit for tonight, hands resuming the schedule of moving down his navel until your nails hit the spot just under his boxers. Taehyung hums, rolling his cock into your hand.

Taehyung shrugs. “Stop acting so shy, you’re not a virgin,” he protests, hand on the back of your thigh as he brings it up against his hip, rutting into you like he was actually fucking you. “Not anymore at least.” Your face reddens as he mentioned it, remembering how you both had your first time together. But this wasn’t it. This was less innocent than you had been in the past.

You let out a soft moan at the action as he did it again, hand pressing to the fogged window as he grinned. He loved grinding against you, getting you more than riled up, his hand moving up your sternum. He’s quick with removing your bra, hickies from past endeavors laying on the skin of your chest. Taehyung has to lean back down, tongue lapping over your nipple, knowing he’s going to remark his territory.

It’s like electricity every time, your body hot against the cool leather of his chevy malibu. You love the way he toys with your nipples, biting them just enough to tease you, and not hurt you. He leaves a trail of open-mouthed kisses to your ribcage, fingers dangerously low on your hip before they’re moving over your underwear. His fingers press against you through the fabric and you can start to feel it dampen as he rubs it slowly up and down.

“Fuck,” you whine, bucking into his hand. “Stop teasing.”

Taehyung’s eyes are shining with a new temptation, pulling your underwear down a bit to twist your clit between the pad of his fingers. His cock was definitely awake now, a dangerous grin on his face as he leaned over you.

“mmm, I think you should beg, like how you were doing last time.”

Your face bursts into flames at the reminder of how you were acting the last time. You’re not sure what the hell had gotten into you, but Taehyung was making you do a lot of embarrassing things. A part of you didn’t mind if it was pleasing him.

“Shut up,” you mumble, instantly whining at the loss of his fingers. He pulled your underwear back up to your hips and leaned back.

“So should I drive you home and drop you off while you’re pussy is dripping, or are you going to beg as I asked?” Fuck. You groaned, pulling him back. You definitely couldn’t go back home. “Did that hit a spot? You would be screwed if I made you go back home. You’d have to ride something to get rid of all this tension right here.” His fingers are moving the thong to the side, middle finger in down to the knuckle. You arch a little, his words making your head spin.

“Something to satisfy that greedy pussy like I do, and you can’t do that when your brother is in the next room, so I suggest you start begging, brat.”

You moan again, hand holding his forearm, nails digging into his skin. You loved it when he got like this. Dominant and demanding, god it made you crazy.

But begging was so embarrassing. “Fuck.. please—“

“Please, what?”

The blonde barely gave you time to even respond as he demanded another answer. You look up at him innocently, at least as innocently as you could with two of his fingers pumping your pussy.

“f-fuck me, please,” you begged, hips pushing down on his fingers eagerly as you bite your lip to muffle the noises. “hhh please fuck m-me into the seats, please.” You can tell he’s not satisfied. You wanted to curl and die from embarrassment. You knew you’d have to get lewder, his fingers working into you just right as your hand gripped the seatbelt dangling over your head.

“I dunno if you really want it,” he hummed normally, fingers coming out of you, glistening. He wastes no time sticking them into his mouth, cleaning them off.

You whined. “Please, I’ll d-do anything.. I’ll let you fuck my face against t-the window to sh-show everyone just how big your cock is— daddy.”

“Ohoho,” he laughed, not halting any actions as he pulls off your underwear to deposit it behind his head, pushing his boxers low enough to let his cock fall heavy on your slit. It wasn’t nearly enough, to feel it pulsing against your clit. “Keep going.” You can tell he’s living for the way you’re talking, eyes lidded as he’s fucking his cock up and down your folds, not daring to go inside.

“D-did daddy enjoy t-that name?” You try to act coy, but it fails. The bratty demeanor drops as his hand runs between the valley of your breasts, right onto your neck, applying force. “please... I want to feel y-your cock in m-my stoma—“ Taehyung watches your face as your words drop off, his cock moving into you at once until he physically couldn’t go anymore. You both were breathing heavily, the blonde unable to wait as his thumb moves over your lips.

“God you talk— so fucking sexy Y/N.” He pushed the thumb in your mouth and you immediately sucked on it, eyes watching him as he pulled out. He pushes his cock back in even harder, your back moving against the leather as his hand slips from the window to hold the back door handle. “You’re such a good.. a good girl when you b-beg for my cock.” The words light your stomach on fire. The past two times you guys had done anything, it was never like this. It was intimate and lustful sure. But it was pure. Right now, it was lust drive completely, Taehyung’s pupils blown out as he glared at you. You had never called each other names before, but you definitely reacted to what he said.

“m-move,” you choked out, lips running dry from how fast you were breathing. He grips your neck like a handle, hips snapping into yours as your leg moves off the side of the seat. “M-my fucking god… feels so fucking good.” Taehyung grins, leaning down to kiss you sloppily, licking into your mouth. You catch his tongue the best you can around the moans, his hips meeting yours every other second it seems. The soft radio plays tame impala in the background, but it doesn’t drown out the sound of his hips slapping your thighs, and the way he’s groaning.

It’s low enough to turn into a growl, the blonde’s eyes watch as he can see the faint outline of his dick in your stomach. The skin moves with him, and he’s fascinated by the hit, only fueling him to go deeper.

“Fucking look at that— fuck,” he moaned head tilted back a bit before he’s hovering over you. His chain dangles in your face as he fucks you hard enough that you’re convinced there’s gonna be bruises where he’s holding your hips for dear life. “Taking m-my cock like it’s the o-only thing you know how to do, and I bet it f-feels good in this tummy of yours huh?” You nod helplessly, whimpering as he grabs your hand and laces the fingers, pinning it to the leather behind your head.

“s-shit, hhh, it feels— god daddy it f-feels good,” you moan, voice cracking as he starts to move even faster. “D-do you l-like that name?”

He nods, eyes shutting for a bit as he looks up to the ceiling of the car, enjoying how tight you are around his cock. He takes the hand off of your neck, pinning both hands over your head as he absolutely drills you, making you whine.

“I do, fuck I do.. the way you say t-that and my fucking name—“ he chokes, pulling your legs up so he can get in at a deeper angle. “I h-have half the mind to fuck your f-face into this god d-damn seat.” Your eyes shut at the words, your high approaching dangerously close considering how deep he was in you. Eight inches didn’t go sparingly, rubbing against the best part of you, making your toes curl.

“t-then do it,” you challenge him, arching up into his chest as he kisses you to shut you the hell up. His head was spinning, loving the way your body reacted to him and opened up to him. He’s quick to forget about your hands, which are on him almost instantly as he regains the position on your neck.

“Y-you think I won’t?” God you fucking loved that voice. The low baritone sound of his words made you a mess. “T-think I won’t make you c-call Yoongi right now wh-while I slam this tight cunt into the ground.” You whined at it, his pace increasing as you gripped the seats, barely able to breathe as he choked you harder.

You’re honestly ready to cum, but as soon as the pleasure reached its peak, Taehyung was pulling out. You can’t even figure out which way is up before he’s grabbing you from between your thighs, flipping you over. It starts as soon as it stopped, his hand on the back of your neck as the side of your face is smushed to the seat.

Taehyung grins lazily, too fucked out for his own good as he slaps your ass loudly. You yelp at the action, jolting forward at the collision. “Look at this fucking ass.. n-never have I wanted to bury my cock into some—something so bad before.”

The blonde pushes his thumb into your wet cunt, spitting violently into your pussy, watching it drip. He followed it with his dick, filling you up instantly as you arched into the seats. His hand is twisting in your hair, wrapping around his fingers before he’s forcing you to look at the ceiling.

“I s-spit in that fucking cunt— cause it's mine,” he groaned, and you nodded the best you could. Your throat was tired, every moan bouncing with how hard he was fucking you, thighs trembling.

“taehyung— my god, tae,” you moaned, turning back a bit to see his ab muscles working overtime, moving tautly under the skin as he drilled you. “G-god I'm gonna—“

“Good girl,” he praised, watching sickly as his cock disappeared into your wet folds, watching your ass bounce with every thrust. “Cum on my cock, baby girl, please.” Now he was the one begging, voice getting whiny and airy, thrusts getting sloppy as he tried to keep hitting the spot he was. You couldn’t even think anymore, the slow climb to your climax was irritating almost, before you feel two pads against your clit, rubbing it side to side. You definitely weren’t going to last now, hips bucking as you tried to warn your boyfriend.

“g-god fucking damn,” Taehyung whined, feeling you squeeze him airtight before you cum hard on him.

You’re moaning over and over again, and a little too loudly for taehyung’s own liking, hand covering your mouth as he finally had come inside you too. He cursed loudly, not even fucking you anymore. He buried himself in you to let out his cum, groaning as he felt it flood your pussy.

“Jesus Christ,” you breathe, wanting to slump against the seat but Taehyung’s hand is keeping you steady. He pulls out his cock, whining at the feeling as he spreads your lips open to watch the cum fall out. You swat his hand away at the action, trying to catch your breath as you flip onto your back, pulling him gently by the chain to come to lay with you.

“You’re tight as hell,” he breathed, making you laugh loudly, still out of breath. He kissed your forehead softly, followed by your entire face, making sure you were okay. This was always the best part. The aftercare, and feeling how much he really cared for you as he cleaned you both up the best he could before forfeiting to exhaustion.

“You’re such an idiot,” you mumble finally as he lays with you again, kissing him slowly on the lips. “I love you.” Taehyung smiled at the words, turning you back as he kissed you back, holding you close. You didn’t care about Jungkook anymore. You loved him and you wanted him. No matter what that came with. You wanted to be with him.

“I love you too,” he mumbles, right against your lips before kissing you again. You wanted it to stay like this forever. Care-free, enjoyable. You know that once you get out of this car and return to your own, you’ll have to face your brother again. You’d have to keep facing him every day until you could come clean to him, and who knows how long that’ll be. For now, you relax into Taehyung’s arms. Who knows when you’d get a chance like this again.

The next morning was, as usual, the usual glow of sex on your face. You may have been a little sore, but you couldn’t care less. The night, any night with Taehyung, had you on cloud nine. You could tell he wanted you, not your body. He had worshipped you as no boy had done before. Your head was over the moon.

Even as a relief, it was still irritating to receive your period the next morning. You shuffle through the locker, grabbing the emergency tampons and shoving them into your pocket. The locker shuts and you’re ready to break it to the bathroom, but you’re almost clotheslined by an arm.

“Nice vampire bite.” The voice is venomous and sour. You already knew it was Yoongi before you ripped your eyes to meet his. “Another guy who is just using you.” You scoff while trying to move past him, but he’s larger than you. Encasing you to the lockers.

The laugh is evil. “You’re a fucking pussy, Y/N. You were sooo hurt by my comment that you had to send your brother's bitch of a lap dog to come ‘straighten me out’ huh?” Your heart is pounding in your ears, scared of what he was going to do next. You doubt he was going to do anything so drastic.

“Guess it didn’t stick with you, huh?” You retort quickly, watching as others were crowding the hallway because of the previous bell.

For that reason, he leans in. “If someone says they’re with you, for any other reason than fucking you? They’re lying.”

Your eyes water, failing to meet his gaze. You have half the mind to slap him, but you’re not even sure what you’re going to say next. Not when a flash of a blonde is grabbing the menace by his collar, pushing him back into the locker. The grip Taehyung has on his shirt is deadly, the usual pink hue to his knuckles are white out of anger. He pulls the raven-haired senior off the wall just to slam him again, teeth bared. Eyes narrowed, not backing down from the challenge. Any other day, you would’ve found this extremely hot.

“Say one more fucking thing about her.”`

Yoongi snorts. “Sorry, bitch boy, did I hit a nerve? Surprised you’re defending her after all the sneaking around you’ve been doing.” Taehyung didn’t even know how the fuck he knew about you guys, but he didn’t care. Taehyung was seeing red right now, taking every ounce of restraint he could muster to not crack his face. “Haven’t gotten tired of her yet? You will soon.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Taehyung snaps. “Why do you even care? It’s been almost two months.” Yoongi’s eyes snap over to you, noticing Jungkook right by your side as he tries to guide you away. You’re frozen.

“Why do you care? You aren’t even together— all you are is Jungkook’s bitch.” Taehyung couldn’t keep it together anymore, ready to wind back his arm before he notices the crowd, his former best friend front, and center. He backs as quickly as he tackled him, ready to walk to his next class. “Right, wouldn’t want to expose our little secret? Cause what the fuck is she to you?”

Taehyung turns on his heels, arm pulling back as he wound up to hit him before a large hand is holding his. It was the school security, pushing Taehyung towards the office. He turned to check on you, eyes wide as you and your brother were absent. The blonde had to sit in the office and listen to an hour of scolding, finally getting off with detention. He doesn’t even bother going home, immediately making his way to your house.

He thought a lot about what had happened, a pit turning in his stomach. He probably just confirmed any of Jungkook’s suspicions, watching him freak out over you like that. But the blonde didn’t care. Part of him was hoping you weren’t home facing Jungkook’s wrath, and another part of him was proud of what happened today. If anything, that showed Jungkook how much Taehyung really cared for you.

None of that mattered. Jungkook would still pick his own side.

The said raven was watching you sleep peacefully. He couldn’t believe that two boys were fighting over his little sister, one being his best friend. It was so idiotic and pointless. He’s a little relieved that Taehyung was there for you, but he couldn’t ignore what Yoongi said. ‘Your little secret’? He suspected they were meeting up behind his back, and that only enraged him even more. He didn’t want to have to deal with another boy breaking your heart.

Would Taehyung ever do that?

Jungkook is startled out of his thoughts at the sound of the doorbell, opening it to see Taehyung. Both of their stomachs are wrenching in their core, the still silence is unsettling. Never in his life did Taehyung think there would be a sour moment, yet here it was.

“She’s asleep. What do you need?” The tone hurts. It’s sour and stern, and foreign. A tone that he’s never heard come out of Jungkook’s mouth, and it makes him lose his train of thought. His fingers play idly with the strings on his sweater.

He inhales. “Dude, look. I know— I fucked up, and I’m sorry. You know I would never hurt her like that. Even if I did, I know the consequences.” Taehyung wanted to roll over and just apologize, but he needed to stand his ground. “What has you so bent? You know me, Kook. What’s so bad about us being together if we’re both happy.”

Jungkook shakes his head, arms crossed. “That’s not the point.”

“How is it not?”

“You went behind my back and got with her, even after I told you not to— the one thing I ask you not to do, and you do it. It puts me in an uncomfortable situation, and now it is for her too.”

Taehyung scoffs. “Because of Yoongi? What the hell did you want me to do? If you were there and heard him talking that way about her, you would’ve done the same.” Taehyungs anger is boiling now, thinking about the situation. “But you weren’t, so I had to do your job and take care of it.”

Taehyung immediately regrets saying that, considering the door slams in his face. He groans. I’m a fucking idiot.

The Blonde trudged back to his own house, head full. He knew all of this was a bad idea, hence why he was hesitant to be with you in the first place. Unfortunately, once he had been with you, the want was overbearing. To just give it up over one stupid day? He couldn’t just let you go.

Taehyung finally feels some weight drop as he falls into bed, more exhausted than he’s ever been in a while. The frame on his bedside tables hurts the familiar faces of you and Jungkook alongside the blonde on his sixteenth birthday. He had the biggest crush on you ever and to be honest, he’s not sure he’s stopped ever since you bandaged his knee in the third grade. It sounds so fucking dumb, but he can’t help smiling at the thought.

It makes sense why none of his other relationships worked out, considering he was always looking for you in other girlfriends. That's why He can’t let you go, and it’s why his heart leaps when he sees you calling.

“Hey,” he breathes, relief flooding his body. You take a bit to respond, chewing words around in your mouth.

“Hey... I heard you and Jungkook outside so.. thank you, for dealing with Yoongi.”

Taehyung stammered. “You’re not mad?”

“Well,” you sigh, laying back into your pillows. “I don’t agree with how you handled it, but.. you did it for me, and I love you for that.” Taehyung’s heart restarts as he sits up, a dorky smile on his face.

“I love you too, Y/N…” You smiled, butterflies as you sighed. It made you happy to hear that. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna talk to Jungkook and see why he’s really bent. Maybe I’ll change his mind.”

You shrug. “I dunno if he’ll ever get over it, it really irritates him.” You could not pinpoint why, and it irritated you even more.

“I know, but I have to try.” Taehyung groaned. He was a simp. “Imma see what the real reason is.”

Even as you two talked on the phone, it lifted your mind. After everything with Yoongi today, your mind racing as it finally relaxes once you settle into bed. Taehyung’s voice runs through your ears and you think about the couple of months you’ve had with him. A little carefree and mischievous. You just wanted to go back, and not have to face anything tomorrow.

The morning is lonely for Taehyung. A morning where usually it would be him and Jungkook, it was just him. No texts, no screenshots from the game last night, no sitting in his car while all of you sang horrible karaoke. It just wasn’t the same, and he hated pretending like it was. He finally got to school, opening his locker. The day was just as dull, sitting alone at lunch while you and your brother sat with his friends. You wanted to sit with him so badly, but you knew that Jungkook and Taehyung had to resolve things before you could be together. And it was so dramatic, and for what?

You stabbed at the pasta your mom had cooked last night, eyeing the devils incarnate across the room. Yoongi’s eyes were on you and you wanted to do nothing more than shoving his face into his cold pizza. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. You didn’t want to start more drama. You wanted to go home and have a nice calm weekend… texting your boyfriend… who wasn’t yours but, it’s all the same.

The day gets duller as it goes on for both parties. Taehyung is mulling through the last period of the day. Of course, it was math.

He gated algebra and it blows that it’s the last fucking class. He feels refreshed once the last bell rings, but the walk to his locker is just as lonely as the last month had been feeling. Taehyung unlocked his locker, ready to just leave already. He would be angrily shoving books into his locker now before a picture falls freely out of his locker. He can barely recognize the interior of his car before it feels like everyone is staring at him.

His throat is so fucking dry, he can barely breathe. He picks up the photo, stomach-dropping into his fucking ass.

His brown eyes round the hallway, seeing everyone has received the same picture, and everyone was staring at him.

He had never run so fast in his life once his brain had processed what was happening. He rounds the corner, to see your locker and you’re not there. But it’s wide fucking open, thousands of copies scattered on the floor and the metal door. Jungkook stood, motionless and silent, as he looked at the photos. A million pictures of his best friend and his sister— making out in a car. Taehyung, who was still stumbling over his shock, had watched Jungkook slam the locker shut and approach him. God he was ready to shit his pants, for his life was about to flash before his eyes. He braced his muscles for any form of attack. It doesn’t come.

“Open your eyes, shit head.”

Taehyung blinked an eye open. “You aren’t gonna kick my ass?”

“No,” he grumbled. Taehyung wanted to laugh considering that nickname from him sounded so good. Like they were back to normal. “Now isn't the time to be worried about you and my sister, fuck. that. I’m not worried about this, I’m worried about what fucking prick would send this shit around, she’s a fucking minor.” There, Taehyung can see it. Jungkook’s scared. He’s scared for his sister, and if they had switched places, Taehyung would feel the same way. He can understand where Jungkook is coming from now, with his entire argument. He wanted to protect her from assholes like this, and as much as Taehyung could argue with him; he’ll never understand what it was like to have a baby sister.

But he drops it to save his ass. Taehyung remembers to breathe once his shirt gets dropped, but he’s still being pulled back towards his locker. Jungkook collecting all the pictures he can, shoving them deep into the trash. Cause fuck this. Jungkook hated the idea of them together, and truthfully he has no clue why. He wants to protect her, but there’s another layer. That aside, they were gonna find out who the hell did this.

“Kook. you need me to spell it o—“

Jungkook slammed a poor kid into a locker to grab the picture from him, ripping it in half. “The moment I find out who the fuck this is, I’m gonna smash his face into the fucking ground.” Jungkook was filled with rage, disposing every last picture he possibly could before dragging Taehyung out to the lot. He shoved his bag into the backseat, holding the raven in place.

“Bro,” he said calmly, looking at his best friend. “Who else? it’s Yoongi. he was talking all that shit in the hallways, like who else?” Jungkook nodded. it made sense. Yoongi was a prideful person, but who else would go through the trouble of humiliating her like this.

“So what now?”

Taehyung shrugged, leaning against the hood of his car. “The only thing I’m thinking of is that we go kick his fucking ass.” Jungkook rounded the car quickly as they both got in, engine revving.

“Sounds like a plan.”

The drive to Yoongi’s hangout was silent. It was a little bittersweet that they were going to kick his ass in the same parking lot where those pictures took place. Taehyung was admittedly a little nervous. He knew you didn’t like fights or conflict and this was the opposite of everything you didn’t like. If he wanted to make a point, that’s a decision he’d have to live with.

Jungkook grumbled irritably. “God, the moment I see him I’m gonna rip his head off. What a fucking— oh my god.” The raven’s voice cut off as they pulled up to the bowling alley, noticing Yoongi there with three of his friends. The two shared a look, and they were both scared shitless.

“How are we gonna beat them? Four against two ain’t fair,” Taehyung whined, Jungkook throwing the car into park. Jungkook was trying to strategize in his head, but the only conclusion he had was to face this shit head-on. They both exit the car, rounding the lot to meet the four sitting on the edge of Yoongi’s car.

Yoongi’s the first to notice, jumping a bit but posing like he was a threat once his friends noticed.

“So, it is true that you’re his lapdog?” Yoongi laughed. “I was right about you, and in the hallway, I bet you wanted to kick my ass huh?”

Taehyung stepped forward. “I want to kick your fucking ass right now. Where you the one who printed out those pictures?”

“Yeah.”

He admitted it effortlessly, the plain smirk on his smug face was seriously pissing Taehyung off.

“What the fuck for?” Taehyung’s fists were balled as the elder boy stepped closer, unable to resist punching him in the face.

Yoongi shrugged. “‘Cause I wanted her to see that every boy she’ll ever meet wants to fuck her; nothing more, nothing less.”

Taehyung wasn’t sure if that was a backhanded compliment or not, but Jungkook was the first to jump. His fist connected with Yoongi’s jaw followed by a loud crack. That’s when the fight broke out.

You sat in your bed, bundled in your brother's sweatshirt as you flipped through Netflix on your mac. You were barely paying attention considering you were chewing off all your nails. You hadn’t heard from Jungkook or Taehyung since you had left school. You were a little distraught, but honestly, there was a big event every week at your school and you prayed this would blow over. You knew it was Yoongi anyways and you kind of figured that those two idiots would have done something by now. Or maybe Jungkook still wouldn’t forgive him after this. Maybe they would still be mad— maybe they weren’t even together.

Your head was swarming with thoughts but you were too exhausted to pick up the phone. You turn to another episode of some random crime show, laying back into the mountain of pillows before your stomach lurches at the sound of a car door. Two doors to be exact, and they slam shut. You spring from the bed, racing to the top of the stairs. Your eyes meet with two boys.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Taehyung laughs, wiping the blood that’s dripping from his nose while Jungkook’s laugh rings through the previously silent house. It was like music to hear them laughing together, shoulders bumping as they made it into the entryway of the house. It takes a bit to realize that they’ve had their asses kicked. Like they were jumped.

You race down the stairs. “Oh my god. what the hell happened?” Jungkook’s lip was split, eye bruising slowly as he limped over to you. “Did you two idiots get hit by a car or something?” The two laugh in sync, fist-bumping each other as Jungkook waves off the concern.

“Believe it or not, we won.”

You snort. “Won what?” Taehyung kicks off his shoes, holding his sleeve to his nose. You notice his eyebrow is split as well, knuckles bruised.

“We went and kicked Yoongi’s ass. He had some randoms with him but we came through in the end,” Jungkook breathed. “I’m glad you were there with me, bro.” You let your heart warm for them. You knew they were hurting, watching the two boys hug. You knew they meant it, them both pulling away as Jungkook hugged you as well.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do more when Yoongi was first acting up. I should’ve straightened him out the first night you told him about us.”

You shake your head, hugging him tighter. “Shut up. You just got your ass handed to you, don’t apologize.” You three laugh and god, it feels good. It feels normal until your eyes linger on Taehyung slowly. You wanted to hug him and kiss him, despite his face being bloody. You’re ready to retreat to the kitchen, but Jungkook stops you. He pushes you towards the blonde while he starts to rummage the fridge for ice.

You’re hesitant and so is Taehyung, but once you felt it was okay, you moved. It felt free and honest, holding his face in your hands to kiss him. He returns it with equal force, slow and meaningful. He pulls away, pressing his lips to your forehead.

“Yoongi won’t be a problem anymore,” Taehyung breathed, hands on your waist.

You laugh sadly, thumbing over the mark on his eyebrow. “You barely made it out alive, dork… but thank you. Seriously, both of you,” You mumble, eyes looking to your brother. You’re ready to start a speech but Taehyung cuts you off, the blonde practically trembling next to you.

“I know this may be weird, but I’m sorry for sneaking around with your sister. This is gonna sound so formal and cheesy, and it’s making me want to puke, but I love her a—“

Jungkook groans. “God just shut up.” Jungkook was doubled over, fake puking noises coming from his mouth. You laugh a little, a thousand weights off of your shoulder as your fingers lace with Taehyung’s. “I was a little mad in the beginning cause you’re my baby sister… and you’re my best friend. That put’s me in a difficult spot.”

He continues. “Even so, I can tell that it won’t be an issue. Taehyung cares about you, I can see that now. Especially with how hard he was kicking that idiot’s ass—“ You snort, punching Jungkook’s arm. But he shrugs. “I’m serious. I’m fine with you guys. I want you to be happy and if that’s with each other, I can live with that.” You hum happily, pulling them both into a group hug. The love you felt from both of them was radiating.

Of course, Jungkook had to ruin the moment.

“I better not see you guys making out, or I will throw up on you, got it?”

You and Taehyung swear to him, laughing as you three trailed to the kitchen so you could start healing their cuts. Jungkook, however, falls behind. His heart feels heavy and before he had no clue why. He watched you two kiss, the hand on your waist making his stomach drop. He knows now why he didn’t want you guys to be together.

He didn’t want to share Taehyung with you for a specific reason. One he’s not ready to admit yet.

He knows it’s resentful and jealous.

#bts #bts smut #kim taehyung #kim taehyung x reader #kim taehyung smut #taehyung x reader #taehyung smut #v x reader #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jungkook

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Text

Demonic Intervention (Indruck)

Prompt for the 7th: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” - The Tempest (William Shakespeare). This fill is NSFW

It can't get much worse.

Indrid is barely scraping by. He can count his friends in town on one hand. He’s gay in a tiny, rural community and one of the few men like him is a goddamn priest. His house is a mess. And his every waking moment is filled with the demons of his past or the devils lurking in his future. There are so many of them in his present too, roaming the streets of Kepler.

What’s one more in the mix?

He lights the stubby black candle by the bed, scratches the symbols on the floor, and retreats into his cocoon of blankets to wait.

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

Duck hates when it’s his turn on the summoning shifts. All this ancient knowledge and power and he’s stuck waiting to see if some yahoo in a graveyard or a wannabe cult leader will call him up into the world.

He has brambles that need pruning, damn it.

His name isn’t well known among humans, so he only gets summoned if someone is just rooting around for a demonic entity without caring who they get. He’s only been summoned twice in the last hundred years. The tingle in his horns tells him it’s about to be three.

The room he arrives in is gloomier than any graveyard; the lights are off, the curtains are shut, and the place looks like it got hit by a tornado with a grudge. By the light of the candle, a pale-haired head emerges from the blankets of the small bed. A hand reaches for the floor, comes back with a pair of red glasses.

“Greetings, infernal one. Thank you for answering my summons.” The man’s voice is flat.

“Even demons got manners. So, uh, what’s the job?”

“There are so many dishes in the sink that the thought of doing them is an insurmountable task. Please do them for me.”

“...You realize I’m takin somethin’ from you for this, right? Like a piece of soul or a month of your life?”

“Mmmm” The man rolls over and says nothing else.

“A day of your life for this.” Duck feels like he should haggle more, but then he’d had to pretend he actually thought a higher price was fair.

“I accept your terms.” A crackle of green and black electricity flickers in the air in the form of Duck’s signature and the other man’s name: Indrid Cold.

“Pleasure doin’ business with you.”

Indrid says nothing. Duck is sure to wash and dry before he goes.

The next day he’s summoned to the exact same room, in the exact same state of depressing mess.

“Greetings, infernal one. Please clean this room.”

“Same terms?”

“Mmhmm” Indrid is just staring at the ceiling.

“You gotta say you accept.”

“I accept.”

Duck snaps, turning on the light, and gets to work. Technically he could do all this with a wave of his hand. But then he’d lose his chance to learn a little more about the guy who’s settled on demonic deals instead of a maid service. It’s the opposite of the usual problem he has in these kinds of situations, where the humans reveal their deepest secrets, desires, and fears within five minutes of meeting him.

The records he stacks near their player, the clothes all go in the hamper to be magicked clean, then are hung in the closet; they’re loose and soft, not a scratchy fabric to be found. Tarot cards and candles abound, as do art supplies, and under a pile of drawings he finds magazines featuring muscular, hairy men in various sexual positions. Some of them even look like his preferred human form, the one he’s wearing now.

He glances at the bed; Indrid is on his side, facing him, must have been watching him at some point but has dropped into a restless sleep. The blankets are slipping, showing a The Sonics tank top hanging off skinny shoulders. Right, that was one of the bands in the record stack.

Duck doesn’t tend to pry into souls or auras or shit like that; there are whole heaps of trouble that lay that direction. But as he flicks the dust from the bookshelf covered in paperbacks, he feels the edges of Indrids and nearly falls on his ass from the wave of exhaustion and loneliness.

When it’s time to go, he pauses to pull the blankets back up around him, sets his glasses on the bedside table, and turns the calendar on the wall from “September 1974” to “October 1974.”

When he’s summoned right back to Indrid’s room the next evening, he spots the same tank top on him as he sits up in bed.

“Greetings infernal one.”

“You can just call me ‘Duck’. It’s a nickname.”

“Oh” Indrid blinks, perplexed, “very well. I, ah, there are some bills that need to be paid to keep the lights on.”

“You need the money for them?”

“No, just for someone to fill out the forms and checks and put them in the mail.”

“Okay. But my fee’s a little different this time: you gotta tell me when you last ate.”

“I accept. I ate this morning.”

Duck snaps his fingers

“Two days ago!” Indrid yelps, then slaps his hands over his mouth. He glares, “why does it matter?”

“Because while I’m payin those bills, you’re eatin’ dinner.”

“Everything in the fridge is disgusting and I can’t go to the store.”

Duck takes the short trip out to the kitchen, opens the fridge to the new sound of Indrid’s footfalls behind him.

“You got lots of decent stuff in here; could make you some eggs?”

“No, thank you.” Indrid shakes his head, looking a bit ill.

“Well, what do you want? I can summon it up.”

“I’m out of Lucky Charms.” The humans says sheepishly, staring at his bare feet.

A fresh box of cereal appears on the table, Duck pulling out the half empty bottle of milk. He thinks back to the drawings he saw yesterday and conjures a bowl covered in a pattern of brightly colored moths.

He gathers the stack of bills of while hearts, stars, and horseshoes rattle into the bowl. After a few moments of crunching he hears, “May I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Why is your nickname Duck? Does that word mean something else in demonic speech?”

Duck stuffs paper into envelopes, “Nah. It’s, uh, kinda silly but, uh, most demons learn how to take on an animal form. When it was my turn, they asked me which I wanted and, uh, I said I wanted to try bein’ a duck. Liked it so much I stayed that way for three months.”

There’s an odd, strangled sound that makes him look up; Indrid has one hand over his mouth and is shaking with little squeaks. He’s laughing.

“I’m, I’m s-sorry but, but I, I cannot get over the image of you as a little, feathery waterbird.”

Duck smirks, “Only part that ever gave me trouble was the quackin’; always came out too deep.”

He just manages to pull the envelopes back as milk comes out the human’s nose and he giggles uncontrollably.

“Ow, ow, heeh, oh g-goodness, I’m s-sorry I, I just haven’t laughed in so long, ugh, there’s milk on my shirt-”

“Guess you’re gonna need to shower now too.”

“Nono, I can just change-”

Duck waves the bills back and forth, “Uh uh, if you want me to actually put these in the mailbox, you gotta agree to shower.”

“But that’s changing the terms!”

“Demon.” Duck grins.

“Very well. Let me finish my dinner first.” Indrid scarfs the rest of the cereal, pads back towards the bedroom while Duck cleans the table. He waits to hear water running before going to the mailbox. When he gets back he sticks his head into the steamy bathroom.

“I’m gonna go now.”

“Oh, alright. Thank you again.” Indrid pokes his head out from the shower curtain and Duck resists the temptation to make the whole barrier disappear just for a peak. What can he say? He’s always liked his humans a bit unique looking.

He draws a special sigil in the steamed-up mirror and heads for home.

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

Indrid sets the candle on the table, lights it, adds the symbol he found in the mirror, and then starts unpacking his groceries.

“Lookit you doin’ chores.” The whiff of burnt pine needles accompanies Duck’s voice and draws the tension from Indrid’s shoulders.

“I’ll have you know I swept today as well.” Indrid turns and crunches the bag of potato chips in his fists; Duck hasn’t put his horns or claws away, and his shirt is half unbuttoned.

“Caught me while I was gardenin, which is why I ain’t as put together as normal. What can I do for you?”

“This may sound strange but, ah, what is the fee for just talking with you?”

Duck’s eyebrows shoot up and then he chuckles, “You’re full of surprises, little moth.”

Indrid touches the luna moth on his shoulder; how much had Duck studied him when he was here? Did he like what he saw? Does he give everyone he makes deals with nicknames that come out in a drawl like summer honey?

“Hows a little nibble of the old soul sound?”

“I accept. Ah, would you like some cookies? A friend of mine brought them over to me.”

“Sure. The fella on the fridge bring ‘em?” The demon indicates the picture of himself and Barclay, the one he can’t bring himself to throw away.

“No. My friend Dani, she’s in charge of the gardens for the little co-op in town and when the bakery has seconds she often drops them off for me.”

He really needs to stop staring at Duck’s chest, even demons probably find ogling rude. Duck’s eyes--one blue, one brown-- catch his own and suddenly claw tips are undoing the remaining buttons. Indrid goes pink but manages to get the cookies and two glasses of water on the table without incident.

“You know, you never told me why you stayed a duck for so long.”

“It’s the least demonic thing you’ve ever heard but, uh, I just thought it was nice. Bein’ out in the woods, paddlin’ on the lake and watchin the world go by. Sleepin under the stars. Just makes you feel like you’re part of somethin’ bigger than yourself. Now, I got a question for you; why go to all the trouble of summonin’ me just to do your chores?”

Indrid bites his lip, “I knew I was in the kind of mental place where I could not manage it myself. And it felt safer to ask you than to ask my friends. Not that they wouldn’t help me. It’s just, when my mind is like that it turns so inward I can’t conceive of a world that might contain things for me.”

The demon says nothing for a moment, sips his water with a thoughtful look. Then he sets down the empty glass, “Glad you’re feelin a little better.” He tilts his head to indicate the sketch on the counter, “that new?”

“Yes” excitement bubbles up in his chest, “I was reading about--ah, well, it’s, it’s sort of a long story, I don’t want to bore you.”

Duck kicks his feet up on the spare chair and gestures for him to continue. So he does, tells the demon about reading every book he could find on the mythology and folklore of the Mexico and the American southwest, about his new inspiration for a series of drawings, his worries that no one will like them or purchase them and he’ll be stuck running his little psychic side business until he dies

Duck, in turn, tells him about life as a forest demon, about his hellcat, and about the fact he routinely comes up to the human world for french onion soup because the stuff made in his realm never tastes right. When Indrid next looks at the clock, it’s well after midnight.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”

“No complaints here. But I oughta get home and feed Winnie before she shreds my cabinets again.” The demon stands, rounding the table, “gotta get my fee first.”

“Right. How should I…” Indrid stiffens as Duck bends forward, wondering if the sharp teeth that smiled at him all night are about to pierce his skin.

Warm lips meet his forehead and he sighs at the tenderness in the gesture. Duck, however, moans as he pulls back, then quickly covers his mouth.

“Uh, that, that’s a totally, uh, totally not, uh, un-normal reaction, uh, fuck, see you around.”

He’s gone with a campfire crackle, leaving Indrid to wonder how a demon can be such a terrible liar.

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

“Sweet fuckin hell.” Duck gasps as his living room forms around him. His lips still tingle from kissing the human’s forehead, from the sheer force of the want and yes that came when he took that sip of soul. It’s never like that, never comes so willingly and eagerly, like the soul is searching for someone to look after it.

Technically, there’s nothing stopping him from zipping right back up there and pinning Indrid to his bed while he takes what the human seems so happy to give.

Duck takes five deep breaths, then ten, and then goes to retrieve Winnie from the cabinet she clawed her way into.

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

When Barclay suggested Indrid find someone to confide in, Indrid’s going to guess he didn’t mean, “routinely invite a demon into your house to play cards or listen to music.”

Most times, Indrid isn’t even summoning him; they have two standing dates a week, plus a game night with Dani and her new girlfriend, Aubrey (who Duck seems to know but refuses to say more about how). Duck will sometimes drop by unannounced, and he hardly ever collects a fee these days. When he does, it’s always a taste of Indrid’s soul, taken via a kiss on the cheek.

Indrid would let him take it any way he wanted. He’s well past denying the fact Duck is type in all his forms, that he’s gentler than most humans, and that he’s so charming Indrid would eat out of his hand.

Duck even goes out with him, like the boyfriend he wishes he had. When he puts on his human form to accompany Indrid around town, he radiates enough residual, demonic energy that the people who normally make Indrid’s life a living hell stay far, far away. In fact, tonight is the first night in months he’s had something close to a disaster, and it was mostly an accident. He’s peeling his beer-soaked shirt over his head when he feels mis-matched eyes on his back.

“Have a little too much fun bartendin’ tonight?” Duck holds out his hand, rendering the shirt fresh and clean when it touches his palm.

“Some caveman hit on one of our regulars and would not back off when asked. She threw a full pint of beer on him and I happened to be standing right behind him when she did.” He wiggles out of his jeans, let’s Duck give them the same treatment he gave the shirt, “ugh, I need a bath, I smell like Rheingold.”

“Allow me.” Duck waves his hand and steam wafts from the bedroom, goes into it and grabs the bubble bath from under the sink as Indrid follows him in his underwear. Duck’s constant glancing at his crotch and legs makes him bold.

“What’s the fee for such excellent service?”

“No fee, little moth. I’m just doin’ a favor for my friend.”

“And what if your friend wants to repay you anyway?”

When the demon looks up from the tub, his eyes are glowing, “Only if he’s doin’ it because he wants to and not because he owes me.”

“I want to, so very badly.”

In a flash Duck is in the tub, beckoning Indrid to join him. Indrid tests the water with his finger just to be safe.

“Mmm, nice and warm.”

“Hellfire, sugar. Now get your cute ass into the tub or--oh fuck yeah.” Duck growls as Indrid strips and climbs in with him, drags him into his lap and traces his claws up his sides while Indrid yanks him into a kiss.Curious, Indrid reaches one hand up to rub the base of his horn, the dark brown curls like smooth bark beneath his fingers.

“Fuuuck” Duck groans, “feels like gettin a back-rub.”

“Then I better keep at it. Oh, oh my” Indrid sits back to admire the vines of green appearing in Duck’s skin, “you’re absolutely beautiful.”

“Kinky little thing, you like that I’m a demon.” Duck scrapes his teeth along Indrid’s shoulder, “that really why you summoned me? You were hopin I’d have my, uh, demonic way with you?”

“N-no, I, I, it’s no secret I’m attracted to you but I, you make me feel so happy, I’m so safe when I’m with you, and, and if all your care and affection towards me has been part of some malevolent plan please, please just tell me because I, I think I’m falling in love with you.” He kisses Duck with far more force than before, forestalling the inevitable confession that this was all just a game for his soul and his own, pathetic admission that he’s not sure that changes anything.

“Oh, sugar” Duck keeps brushing their lips together as he speaks, “First time I tasted your soul I knew I was fucked. Knew I wanted to keep seein’ you, even if you never gave me another goddamn thing.”

Indrid buries his face in Duck’s shoulder, letting out shuddery sighs as Duck pets his back. He’s never leaving this spot, Duck is just going to have to carry him about while he does his infernal business and his housekeeping.

“Tell me what you want, little moth.” Duck kisses the shell of his ear. It still tingles, even when his soul stays put.

“Please fuck me? Oh! Oh that’s very efficient and extremely strange.” He squirms in Duck’s lap as his ass turns slick and stretched, like someone has pulled four fingers from it.

“Do it the traditional way some other time” The curved head of a cock bumps his ass, “you wanna feel just to be sure you can take it?”

He flails in the water a moment, finds a warm, responsive shaft with four, bumpy ridges leading to the head. It’s no bigger than the one toy he splurged on during his last trip to the city.

“Yes, certainly, oh, oh, AHHhnnnn yes.” The cock is hotter than his body as it slides in and he wonders if it will just melt him from the inside out, if Duck’s cum will be just as warm, how it will feel on his tongue and down his throat when he drags the demon into his bed.

“That’s it sugar, take it all the way. Fuck, been jerkin off to the thought of you on my dick for months.”

“Nnngh” Is his eloquent reply, the ridges of Duck’s cock making his toes curl and his fingers dig into Duck’s skin.

“You like that idea, little moth? Knowin I could be out temptin anyone I wanted to and instead I was in bed thinkin’ about you?”

“Mhhmmm” He whines, the desire pouring off the demon wrapping around him and soothing his insecurities.

Duck slows the thrusts of his hips and his voice is gentle when he whispers, “Course I did; no one can compare to you, ‘Drid.”

“Ohgod, Duck, please, please, please, want to be yours, always yours-”

“Careful,sugar, that sounds like you’re anglin’ for an infernal marriage.”

“A, a what? OHhhhnnyes” He moans as claws knead his ass.

“It’s a special kind of deal where a human agrees to marry a demon. Soon as they’re dead, they go straight to their spouse, no other options provided.” Duck cups his face, holding it steady so he can look into his eyes, “but there ain’t no need for that right now; way I see it, we can do this like we were just two normal fellas for now.”

“But it sounds fun.” Indrid offers a teasing pout and gets an adoring kiss in return.

“Yeah? What if I tell you a lot of demons mark their spouses by piercing these” He pinches Indrid’s nipples, the pain making him bounce more determinedly on his dick. His demon growls, drops one hand down to thumb at the head of his aching cock, “pierce here too. Won’t even do it in public like you’re supposed to; do it at home so no one else will see just what a sweet, needy thing you are for me--whoah, fuck, did not expect you to cum just from playin with this nice dick a little.”

“V-very sensitive” Indrid gasps against the green swirls in Duck’s shoulder, his orgasm such a surprise he’s still registering it, hips twitching and tongue threatening to loll out of his mouth.

“Keep that in mind for next time. Might even bring a cage so you don’t cum too early and spoil my plans. Now, hold tight, little moth.”

Indrid clings to the warm bulk of Duck’s body as his cock pounds up into him, the demon easily holding his hips up and his ass open so all he can do is whimper and writhe on it. When he cums it’s hot enough that Indrid squirms

“Don’t hurt does it?” Duck pets his sides, concerned.

“Nono, it, it’s nice, just very strange.” Indrid winces as Duck pulls out, watches him wave his fingers to clear away the mess. When the demon makes no move to let go, Indrid looks up, “you really meant what you said? About wanting me as a boyfriend?”

“Damn right I do. Now c’mere, lemme get the beer outta your hair.”

Indrid hums as Duck scrubs his scalp and runs warm water over his skin, talking all the while about how they should go camping as a first date so no one will bother them, says he’ll even turn into a duck to make Indrid smile.

Indrid says he knows just the spot, let’s his boyfriend dry them off and bundle them to bed and then, for the first time, falls asleep with a devil in his arms.

#indruck #promptober #indrid cold/duck newton #Demon AU #monster boyfriend

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rosemary-writes · 3 years

Text

What are you afraid to see?: Part 4

(Dwayne x GN! Reader)

AN: I’m sorry this took so long. College is really rough at the moment

Word count: 1.9k

Warnings: none

“Wait, I almost forgot to tell you my address.” you quickly said before either of you could hang up. Quickly you told him your address and on the other line you heard the sounds of pen on paper.

“Got it.” he replied and quietly said goodbye. You could hear the line click. Gently, you set the phone back on the receiver and turned to your guests.

“So, something tells me that you have a hot date later.” Richard said with a beaming face.

“It’s nothing serious. Most likely, we will simply go to the boardwalk.” you replied, going to the kitchen to grab some cups. You could see Richard nudge Alice.

“If it’s nothing serious, then would you mind if I gave him my number?” Richard asked, walking over to the kitchen counter. You whipped around and gave him a glare, “Don’t.”

“They waited almost a week for him to call.” Alice said, putting some tapes on the table.

“You waited that long?” Ruth asked, looking at you from the fridge. You nodded. “Honestly, if it was me, I would’ve gone and found someone else.” She said, peering around. You rolled your eyes.

“Well, I think he’s very handsome and nice.” you replied, going into the living room. You set the glasses down on the table and went to your tv to mess around with it.

“Just because he’s nice and handsome, doesn’t mean he is a good person.” Chris interjected from the couch. There were hums of agreement though the house.

“Well, I will be able to figure that out, later tonight.” You responded.

“We could shadow your date. Y’know, in case he turns out to be an asshole.” Richard said, sitting next to Chris.

“You could. I won’t interject because I can’t control you.” You replied. A smile reappeared on your face as you finally got the tv on the correct setting.

Chris whispered to Richard and the girls came back to the living room.

“Okay, the tv is ready for vhs and we can eat or drink whatever we want.” you said, standing up,“However, tonight I will not allow drinking.”

The room erupted into groans of disapproval.

“Thankfully, I brought good movies and good snacks.” Richard said. You smiled as you picked up the rented films.

“Yes, Rich, I can tell you brought good movies. I also can tell that you want us to watch Labyrinth for the thousandth time.” you said as you carefully put the vhs down. He quickly began to sputter about how he liked the plot.

“It's okay Richard. You can say you like to watch it because of David Bowie’s tight fitting pants.” Ruth commented. You smiled and continued to look over. After a while you all decided to start with a recent movie.

You set it up and went to turn off the lights. All of you decided to get all bunched up on the couch and there was a mutual agreement to add comments when necessary. Richard eventually squeezed his way next to you.

About half way through, Chris spoke up about the film.

“Y’know, I saw a kid that looked just like Corey Feldman.” he said, grabbing a soda can off of the floor.

“You so did not.” Ruth replied from next to Alice.

“I so did too! He works at that little comic shop.” Chris said looking at Ruth.

“Do you mean the one thats run by those two brothers?” Richard asked, turning his head towards Chris.

“Yes! They hardly ever talk to someone unless they have intense comic book knowledge.” Chris said, turning his body toward Richard.

“Oh my gosh, I know exactly who you're talking about! They once grilled me about a comic I was going to buy for your birthday.” Richard replied.

“Did you tell them that you knew nothing about it and that it was for a friend?” Ruth asked, peering over.

“No, I left because I felt like an idiot.” Richard mumbled.

“Why did you let them embarrass you? They’re like twelve years old, man.” Chris said with a hint of laughter at the end of his sentence. Richard groaned and buried his face into a cushion.

“Oh come on, they can’t be that bad.” You interjected, looking over at Chris.

“They are!” Richard cried, moving his face from the cushion. “I’ve never felt so embarrassed in my life. All because I didn’t know which comic was which.” he said, rolling his eyes.

You kept the random comic book store in mind for another time.

“Okay, can we continue the movie?” You asked and everyone agreed. Then Alice had to put in her two cents about getting tired.

After a few movies and many minutes later, you had to get ready to meet Dwayne.

“Are you sure about going out this late with a guy you’ve only met once?” Richard asked, while cleaning up your living room with Chris. You were in the kitchen with Alice, cleaning off some plates.

“Well, you were the one that encouraged me to go on the date with your whimsical motions.” You replied.

“I think what he means is, are you going to be safe? There are a lot of missing people lately and we are in California.” Alice said, drying off a plate.

Oh yeah, there was that. That made you stop and think for a moment.

“Uh, well, I guess I hadn’t thought of that.” You said, setting a plate down in the soapy water.

“No! Don’t say that to them! It’s too late to get cold feet!” Ruth snapped, jolting from the couch. You turned to her and watched her pull something out from her purse.

“I’m going to give you these.” She said, pulling out pepper spray and a long nail file. “When I go on dates with people I've hardly met, I always take these incase the situation goes sour.” She continued, setting them down on the counter.

“I won’t take no for an answer, you are going to keep these on you.” She said seriously. You looked at the items and dried your hands.

“I guess I'll put these in my jacket pocket when he picks me up.” You said, going to inspect the objects. The nail filer was long and sharp. It looked like a miniature knife. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Richard say something to Chris.

“It’s 10:11, you should go freshen up.” Alice said, coming behind you.

“Yeah, I don’t want him to think I lazed about all day.” you said, going to your bedroom. You changed your clothes and pulled out one of your favorite jackets. The pockets were deep and they had buttons on a little flap so no one could pickpocket you. You grabbed it and then headed over to your bathroom.

You brushed your teeth, washed your face, and made yourself look nice. When you decided you looked nice, you exited the bathroom and went back into the living room.

Your friends were all gathering their things to leave and were quietly talking amongst themselves.

“So what are you guys going to be doing for the rest of the night?” you asked, slipping on your shoes.

“I don’t know, I have to pack up my stuff to go back home for the summer.” Richard said, zipping up his jacket. You hummed at the idea. You were going to miss them when they went home. Alice lived the closest to Santa Carla, but she was still a ways out.

You looked over at the clock again and it read 10:20. Ruth mumbled something about grabbing late night snacks. You went over to the counter top and grabbed the nail file and pepper spray. Carefully, you placed them into the pockets and buttoned them up.

“We’re going to head out. Call us when you get in and I want to know all of the details about your fancy date.” Richard said, grabbing his keys.

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything about it.” You said, as they all stood up to leave. Everyone said their goodbyes and they left in their separate cars. You sighed and went to go sit on your couch. Your mind began to drift back to what Richard said. If he was a bad person then you had a way to defend yourself.

You bit your lip in anticipation. You really hoped he wasn’t horrible. Carefully, you reached to pull out the nail file. You were carefully inspecting it and noticed how it looked more like a small knife. As you were looking over it, you heard the sounds of a motorcycle pull up in your driveway. You put the file back into your pocket, grabbed your house key and wallet, and put them in the pocket as well.

Awkwardly, you stood in your living room. You anticipated going out to meet him but that thought was cut off with a few knocks on the door. You walked over to the door and gently opened it to be met with Dwayne.

“Hey.” You said, as a smile crept onto your face. You noticed how he had a necklace on with seashells.

“Good evening, it’s nice to know that I got the address correct.” He said, looking you up and down. The small action made you a bit self conscious but it went away as he spoke again.

“So, where would you like to go?” He asked, moving to walk to his bike. You closely followed him.

“I was thinking about the boardwalk. If that’s alright with you?” you asked. He turned around to look at you.

“Yeah, the boardwalk is fine. I can show you the good things.” He answered.

“Good, I’ve only been there once or twice.” you replied and Dwayne smiled at you. He sat on his bike and turned to you, “Well, come hop on.”

You walked over to his bike and sat down behind him. As he started it up, you wrapped your arms around him.

“Please be careful.” You said as he began to drive. You could feel him chuckle at that. Before you could blink, he sped out of your neighborhood. Your grip on him tightened as he began to head to the boardwalk.

It was exhilarating if you were being honest with yourself. Dwayne wasn’t going too fast and you were thankful for that. You had never ridden on a motorcycle before so this was new.

As he drove, you noticed how the night felt different. Maybe it was because you were going on a date and you had first date jitters. You couldn’t tell and part of you wanted to keep the mystery to it.

Dwayne stopped at a red light and you leaned forward to talk.

“So, how long have you been driving this bike?” you asked as the wind started to pick up.

“For a while, I guess. I can’t exactly remember when I started driving it.” he replied, as the light turned green. You didn’t continue the conversation since you didn’t want him to get in a wreck.

Dwayne continued to drive carefully and at a decent speed. After a few more minutes, you two arrived at the boardwalk. He parked his bike and gently helped you off. You thought it was sweet that he was being such a gentleman.

“So, what would you like to do first?” He asked, standing next to you.

“I don’t know. You probably know your way around here better than me.” you answered.

He chuckled and held out his arm for you to take. You hesitated for a second before you took his arm.

“Have you ever played one of the games?” He asked as you two began to walk.

“I tried a few but, I never actually won anything.” You replied.

He chuckled, “Well, I can win you something. If you’d like that?” He asked.

You smiled, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

#the lost boys imagines #the lost boys x reader #dwayne lost boys x reader #dwayne the lost boys #dwayne lost boys #rosemary writes #The Lost Boys #the lost boys 1987

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seanfalco · 3 years

Text

Cooking Lessons | Misfits Timeline Anomaly’verse

an oc x oc collaboration between @seanfalco & @super-unpredictable98

Word Count: 3.2k Warnings: Language, Smut, a teeny tiny cooking related accident Summary: Lydia teaches Win in the kitchen and they get up to a little more than just cooking. a/n: This chapter is mostly Win/Lyddie.

[ masterlist ]

——

"So, Lyddie's gunna actually teach yeh t'cook for real, huh?" Win's Nathan asked, leaning against the counter as Lydia helped Win tie the cute yellow apron she'd gotten for her around her waist.

"Yes," Win answered testily, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Good luck with that," he exclaimed, looking past Win to Lydia.

"Thanks, Natty," she gave him a quick kiss. "I believe in her." Or at least she really wanted to...

"So, what would you like to make? A dessert or maybe some fresh pasta... I have all sorts of family recipes," Lyddie sighed. "Sorry, I can't get over how adorable you look in that apron! But I'll try to focus, I promise."

Win's face lit up and she swung her hips, making the apron swish like a dress. "You think I'm adorable?" she asked innocently.

"Focus, Lyddie," Nathan teased, getting up from the counter to press a kiss to each girl's temple before heading out of the kitchen to go find his clone.

"Focus Lyddie..." she repeated in a mocking tone. "I'm absolutely focused!"

As he left she took another look at Win and couldn't help but smile. "You're more than adorable though," Lydia wrapped her arms around her girlfriend. "You look like every childhood crush I ever had."

"Oh?" Win asked, craning her neck to look at her over her shoulder. "I guess we were meant t'be then."

"Yeah, I guess so... God, I love you!" Lydia smiled, pressing her lips to Win's forehead. "So, what are we cooking today? Dinner is on us tonight."

Win smiled as Lyddie kissed her before sobering, thinking hard about what they should make. She wanted to impress her girlfriend, but she also didn't wanna choose something too hard and bungle it horribly. "Uhm... you said something about dessert? Maybe a pie? Though that doesn't really help with dinner..." Win mused with a frown. "Do you have a favourite recipe?" she asked instead.

"How about we make a dinner pie?" Lyddie shrugged. "My mum has this great recipe for cheese chicken pie. Plus I get to feel like we're in Waitress."

"That sounds really good actually," Win agreed. "What do you need me to do?" she asked, going to the sink to wash her hands.

"Cool, first of all... I need you to get the chicken, the cheese, and the butter from the fridge," Lydia instructed, turning to open the cabinets. "I'll get the rest of the ingredients."

"Yes, ma'am!" Win exclaimed with a grin, turning to go to the fridge. Leaning over to find what Lyddie'd tasked her with, she pulled out the cheese, butter, and chicken before spinning back around to shut the door with her hip.

"Very good! See, you're already learning..." Lydia teased as she grabbed the remaining ingredients. "Okay, since the dough will need some time to rest, we should start with that first. I need you to cut the butter into cubes, Winnie."

"Right, I can do that," Win exclaimed, hyper focused on her task as she reached for a nearby knife from the block and got to work, the tip of her tongue peeking between her lips as she cut the butter.

Lydia watched with a grin as Win put her heart and soul into cutting the butter -- it was too cute. "Nice, now here I mixed flour and salt, I need you to take the pieces of butter and mix them in there with your fingers until it looks like wet sand," she instructed.

Win nodded, taking her cubes to the flour to work into with her fingers. “This feels weird,” she giggled as she worked, glancing over at Lyddie.

"Yeah, I know, but you gotta trust the process..." she laughed. "It's like making sandcastles, but we can eat it." Lydia held Win from behind, watching over her shoulder and humming the melody of "I Love You Like a Table”. This was really turning out to be her Broadway fantasy.

“What’s that you’re humming, hmm?” Win murmured, swaying slightly to the music as she worked.

"It's um... It's from Waitress. This musical doesn't even exist yet and I'm already geeking out about it," Lydia rolled her eyes. "It's one of my favorites, and there's a lot of pie making in it."

“You’re adorable,” Win exclaimed. “You’ll have to take me to a musical sometime. I’ve never been to one.”

"YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO A MUSICAL?" Lydia's surprised shout echoed all over the flat. "Oh my God, I have so much to show you!"

Win jumped slightly at her exclamation before a smile returned to her face as Lyddie began to sing softly. “It sounds nice,” she mused.

"It’s such a cute song," Lydia mused as she poured cold water into the dough to give the right consistency. "It goes: I will express this if I'm able, I love you like a table. My legs were carved for you, I love you like a table. I'm wood and you are glue, cover me with stuff..."

Lydia thought for a moment. "Yeah, I do love you like a table... whatever that means,” she murmured as she watched as Win kneaded the dough. "I think we have it, the texture looks right."

“I love you like a table too,” Win murmured, raising up on her toes to press a kiss to Lyddie’s jaw. “So, what’s next?”

"Since I'm nice and all, I'll chop the onions and garlic, while you grate the cheese," Lydia handed Win a bowl and a grater. "Careful with your fingers, I would hate for something to happen to them..."

“If I hurt myself you can kiss it and make it better,” Win teased, though she carefully put the cheese to the grater.

"Yeah, I suppose... but you need those fingers for extracurricular activities," Lydia laughed as she worked on her task.

Win’s grin turned wicked. “Oh, and what extracurricular activities do you mean?” she murmured innocently.

"Well, you gotta play your guitar, and be able to text me good morning messages when I'm at work, and... finger me," Lydia's voice nearly disappeared as she neared the end of the sentence.

“What was that last part? I didn’t hear you, Lollipop,” Win asked cheekily, pausing in shredding the cheese to look over at her.

"Yes, you did..." Lydia countered, trying not to laugh. "To finger me," she repeated louder, her face turning red and she quickly looked down at the counter to continue what she was doing.

Win’s grin grew as she saw how red Lydia had turned. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want me to not be able to do that anymore.” Not looking at what she was doing suddenly she hissed, bringing her finger to her mouth. “Fuck...”

"Oh okay, very funny Wi..." Lydia rolled her eyes, but when she realized it was serious, she dropped everything. "Baby! Aw, Winnie, let me see!"

She took Win's hand to analyze the damage, luckily it wasn't that bad, but she felt terrible anyway. "You gotta be more careful, sweetheart," she gently kissed her finger.

“Sorry,” Win chuckled ruefully, going to the sink to clean the scrape, “I was a little distracted,” she said pointedly, exaggeratedly running her gaze up and down Lyddie before drying her hands and returning to the grater.

"It's okay..." Lydia sighed, somehow she knew something like that was gonna happen. "You're just too cute to get hurt, I worry about you." Lydia glanced over at Win as she got the chopped onions and garlic in the pan with some olive oil. "Here, I'm just gonna cook the chicken first, then you can mix in whatever you want really."

“Aww, I worry about you too, babe,” Win murmured, coming behind Lydia to wrap her arms around her, pressing her lips between her shoulder blades. “It’s probably a good idea you didn’t let me have a big knife,” she laughed.

"Yeah, seems I'm the only person in this house that can be trusted with a knife," Lyddie let her head roll back, trying to concentrate on the recipe. "Okay, so, you have to cook the chicken all the way, but you already know that, salmonella and all...."

“Right right, salmonella bad,” Win agreed, releasing Lydia and coming to stand by her side, not wanting to distract her too much. As much as she wanted to tease her like the last time they’d been in the kitchen together, she did actually want to learn something, to prove to the Nathans that she could do this.

"Yeah, don't recommend it," Lyddie laughed. "On the same note, that's why I don't eat raw cookie dough anymore... It was Simon's fault, he said it was safe." She added the cheese, some seasoning, and a can of corn. "I know it looks kinda weird, but trust me, it's delicious."

“It looks delicious, my mouth is watering already,” Win replied, peering into the pan.

"Here, we always have to try it to check if it needs anything," Lydia handed Win a spoon. "Be honest, huh?"

Win took the spoon from Lydia and took a bite, savouring the taste. “Could use a little salt?” she wondered.

"Alright, why don't you do that for me while I roll out the dough?" Lyddie smiled before stealing a quick kiss and turning back to the counter.

Win stood still for a moment, watching Lydia as she moved away to fetch the dough, smiling softly to herself before shaking herself out of it and adding a little salt before tasting it again. “What do you think?” she asked, holding out the spoon for Lyddie to taste.

Lyddie tried the filling and cocked an eyebrow with a cryptic look before softening her expression. "It's perfect, babe. See? You're getting the hang of it... can you turn the oven on for me? 230, please, but be careful, for the love of God."

Win’s face lit up at her girlfriend's praise and quickly turned toward the oven. “I’ll be careful,” she insisted. “I had one little accident, Lyds, I’m not gunna burn the apartment down,” she teased.

"Yeah, yeah... I trust you, you just can never be too careful." Lydia quickly transferred the sheet of dough to an old cake pan. "When you're making the crust, you have to make sure it's not too thick or it won't cook all the way, nor too thin or it will burn, about half an inch is good."

Win watched carefully, still in awe that Lydia could do all this on her own. “So, do we put the filling in now?” she asked.

"Yeah, just make sure it's not too hot or the crust will get oily and gross," Lydia felt so proud of Win, she seemed to be really interested in learning the recipe. It had been so long since Lyds had a student, she missed being a teacher sometimes…

“Gotcha,” Win mused, checking the temperature of the filling before transferring it to the pie crust and spreading it out evenly. “Now what, babe?” she asked, her stomach rumbling.

"Now we sprinkle a little more cheese on top," Lydia finished it off and quickly popped the pie into the oven. "Forty minutes and we're done!" she pulled Win into her arms.

“Sounds good!” Win exclaimed, snaking her arms around Lyddie’s waist. “Now what can we do for forty minutes?” she mused, a cheeky grin twisting her lips.

"I can think of many interesting things to do in forty minutes..." Lydia bit her lip, pressing her forehead to Win's. "You were amazing today, you know? I can't wait to see Nathans’ face."

“I didn’t do all that much, you did most of the work,” Win pointed out humbly. “I still have a long way to go before I’m cooking all by myself.”

"Shhhh," Lydia put one finger on Win's lips. "You did great, I was just your assistant for the night," she chuckled, lifting her girlfriend up so she could sit on the counter.

Win laughed as she pulled Lydia closer, smiling against her lips as she kissed her. “You’re too sweet, what did I do to deserve you?” she murmured fondly.

"That's funny, I ask myself the same thing every day..." Lydia shook her head, letting her hair fall down her shoulders. "How did I get so lucky?"

“I’d like to think it was meant to be,” Win said, running her fingers through Lydia’s hair.

"Yeah, not even the laws of physics and the fabric of time and space could keep us apart," Lydia sighed, placing a kiss to Win's neck.

Win hummed, melting as Lyddie‘s lips pressed to her skin. “You’re gunna turn me on if you keep kissing me there,” she murmured, though she knew Lydia knew that.

"We've got forty minutes to kill... So if you want to..." Lydia didn't move from Win's neck, biting her gently. "But if you want me to stop, by all means, let me know."

“Don’t you dare stop Lollipop,” Win moaned.

"Yeah, that's what I thought..." Lyddie giggled, grabbing Win's thighs to slide her closer. "You deserve a reward for being such a great student, what do you want, Winnie baby?"

“Oh, hmmm,” Win thought. “Do you still have that strap-on I used on you?”

"Don't move a muscle," Lydia threw her apron on the dinner table and disappeared into the room, coming back a few seconds later with the toy her Nathan had made especially for them.

“Would you like to fuck me against the counter, Lyddie?” Win asked, slipping down to help her put the toy on.

"Yes," Lydia moaned softly, starting to feel quite aroused herself. "Let me know if I'm doing it right, okay? I've never done this before..."

“I thought you might,” Win mused, a grin playing at her lips as she unbuttoned her jeans to slide them and her knickers down. “Don’t worry, babe, I’ll guide you. Now, do you want me bent over or sitting on the counter facing you?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"I wanna see you, I love watching you come for me," Lydia wet her lips teasingly before catching Win's lips, slowly circling her clit with one hand while the other was buried in her hair. It felt very odd to have a cock between her legs, but at the same time it made Lyds feel powerful in a way.

Win moaned softly as Lyddie touched her and she slid back up atop the counter, spreading her legs and scooting down to the edge. “You look good with that on,” Win said, tilting her head to kiss Lyddie’s neck roughly, hoping to leave a mark.

"Not as good as you," Lyddie gasped softly, feeling her entire body tense up from the way Win kissed her. She was equally turned on and nervous as she thrusted slowly into her girlfriend, not wanting to hurt her or anything. "Does that feel good?"

“Oh,” Win breathed as Lyddie slowly slid into her, filling her with the toy, “yes baby, just like that,” she said, stroking the other woman’s face. “Nice and slow at first, stretch me out Lollipop.”

Win's praising words sent shivers down Lyddie's spine, so that's how they feel... It was amazing! Why has she never tried it before?

"Hmmm," she watched carefully, glancing down at the action and back up to watch Win's face. At first, she moved carefully, pulling out and teasing her entrance to make sure she was wet enough.

Win leaned back against the cabinets as Lyddie teased her, watching with a pleased grin. “You can be a little more rough with me if you want,” she purred. “I want you to fuck me babygirl.”

"Anything you want, Winnie," Lydia had no idea how she managed to sound like a bottom as she was fucking her girlfriend. Obedient as she was, Lyddie made her thrusts faster and deeper, building up a rhythm as picked up her pace.

“Oh fuck, yeah, yeah just like that babygirl. Oh, you’re a natural,” Win exclaimed, her chest heaving as Lyddie’s thrusts rocked her. “You’re so fucking hot like this, love!”

"Yeah? You like when I fuck you like this? You like it when I'm rough with you?" Lydia groaned, each word filling her with confidence. "Moan for me, baby, I wanna hear how good you feel."

“Oh Lydia!” Win cried, knowing that was bound to draw the boys’ attention, but she was past caring. “Oh shit baby, you make me feel s-so good,” she continued, her voice catching with each rough thrust, her back digging into the cabinets. “I’m getting close, Lyddie, please let me come,” she begged, quite aware of the dynamic switch.

"Aww, you wanna come for me?" Lydia cooed softly, bucking her hips firmly as one of her hands slid between then to rub Win's clit. "Go ahead, baby, come for me, let me see what I can do to you..." Lyddie was getting some friction, which only made her wetter, but she was way too focused on her girlfriend's pleasure to care.

“Oh Lyddie—“ the rest of Win’s exclamation dissolved into a whine as her mouth fell open and her head fell back against the cabinet doors, her whole body tensing as she held onto the edge of the counter as she came.

Lydia held Win against her chest as they both recovered from what just happened. "You were so good, baby..."

"Jesus!" a voice from behind them made Lyddie jump and nearly pull Win with her, which would've landed them both on the floor. The two Nathans wore nearly the same exact expression, surprise mixed with arousal.

Panting, Win collapsed against Lydia, her eyes fluttering shut as she wrapped her arms around her, coming down from her high. At the sound of Nathan’s voice and Lyddie’s sudden lurch Win jerked awake. “Oh... hey guys,” she murmured, a small grin playing at her lips.

Lyddie's Nathan gaped at the sight of his fiancé looking like that, if he had any doubt he would like to give that a try... now he knew for sure.

"So, um... that was a nice cooking lesson," Lydia swallowed nervously, her cheeks growing red. "Dinner should be ready any second, you guys hungry?"

“I’m very hungry,” Win exclaimed, sliding off the counter to retrieve her clothes. “Thank you babe, you’re the best teacher,” she purred in Lyddie’s ear, pressing a kiss to her cheek before pulling her pants back on.

“Jesus, you two have t’be the horniest girls I’ve ever met,” Win’s Nathan exclaimed with a laugh.

"Well, I have the sexiest girlfriend on the planet, so you can't blame me for that," Lydia shrugged, still pretty much embarrassed, but trying to sound relaxed. "Hey, baby," she whispered as she was taking off the strap-on, “after dinner I would love to see you wearing this for me..."

“Whatever you want, Lollipop,” Win replied, stealing a kiss. “I’ll wear anything you want any time.”

When the pie was ready, Lydia quickly ran to take it out of the oven, she didn't even wanna think about Win getting hurt again.

"Okay, guys, the jokes about Winnie being a bad cook are about to be over," she smiled as she served the food. "Because she completely nailed it."

"Not t'be technical here, but I think you're the one who nailed somethin'," Lyddie's Nathan snorted.

Win swatted at him, though she wore a grin. “Don’t let her fool you, she did most of the cooking,” she exclaimed. “And she definitely nailed me good.”

"I take credit for one of those things," Lydia rolled her eyes. "I couldn't have done it without you, baby." She sat down and kissed Win's cheek before picking up making her own plate. "Eat up, guys."

——

Tag list: @magic-multicolored-miracle @midnightseance @messengeronthemoon @the-freckled-luba @firstpersonnarrator @xenteaart @gurlimtired @phoenixhits @nightingale-rose @salvador-daley @forenschik @a-ghoulish-tale @love-is-dirty-baby @captainsheeballs

#misfits #nathan young #nathan young x oc #nathan x win #nathan x lyddie #otp: green apple lollipop #collaboration #timeline anomaly’verse

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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scandeniall · 4 years

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wash day head canons (black!reader)

kuroo, sakusa, atsumu, iwaizumi x black f!reader

Now this is hella self indulgent for my fellow black bbys on here with 4 of my top 5 boys helping on wash day. Now reminder babies, our hair is beautiful. It doesnt matter if your 3a high porsity or 4c low porosity (like me oop). And any of these clowns would be blessed for his bby to have your hair!

Kuroo

He’ll help if you ask. You just want company? He got you. He the bf you ask to go get the scissors so you can cut the braids shorter and you actually trust him to not cut your hair.

Hes gentle when taking the braids out, not really commenting on how dirty it might be

But hes ass at the pre-poo stage

Like this mf will MISS sections

And will be like “damn thats crazy my bad” when you tell him. But it happens EVERY time

He lets you wear one of his tshirts the first time you ever spent your wash day with him, and it just becomes your official wash day shirt

He the bf that’ll go get you food if your hungry, bc theres no way in hell youre going out with only half of your braids in

Hes sweet though and kisses you before he goes.

He’s annoying and like “let me hop in the shower w/ you” (partly to see you naked, partly bc them products smell good)

I can just see him as the type to be deadass mesmerized by shrinkage and the type to just play with the bouncy coils

Now listen, he is NOT washing my hair but he can look. He’d try work through sections but will tangle tf out of your hair

Anyways, once your’e out at this point hes tired (shit me too), so just kinda vibes out in the same room while you do your hair

Once he asked to help you post wash, and you say why not, and he go to apply product and he will be the “quarter size amount” type

“Kuroo- what are you doing with that”

“Uh about to put it in” and he look at you like DUH

“Damn my hair about to be dry af” you have to help that boy out.

But he also the type to know how expensive hair products are bc he listens to you when you talk and is just like ????

Idk i love kuroo, he wouldnt be terrible help, but not professional helper status

Sakusa

Now listen here. This mf is NOT helping with the takedown process. He saw you do it once and saw the built up dirt and said “yeah ima head out”

Plus, he’s not about to touch all that fucking braid hair

You: Yoomi do you wanna help me-

Him- no

But alright once you're actually washed he’s better.

Since wash day take the whole day, and if its a day where he doesnt have v-ball stuff hes more than content to just sit and turn on something for you both to watch for the day.

Your arms hurt from detangling post wash? Yeah you not about to rest your wet ass head anywhere

He hates the feel of your products, but if you ask with the right look and tone of voice (grossly sweet), he’ll take over a section with product application

Apply generously? He got you.

If the product works for his hair too, he IS the type to buy products for the both of you

Anyways back to him helping post wash/condition. Hes good at finger detangling

Yall know i hc him as having a secondary love language of touch-

Anyways on that note, at that point he’ll let you sit between his legs in front of your big ass floor mirror and yeah when he feeling extra soft and domestic, kisses on your temple

You put him on to bonnets lets be real here (he got a collection bc he washes his way more than you do LMAO)

Atsumu

Now hes USELESS

Type to tease and be like “this mean I can go out to the club without you”

He would not help your ass at all during the takedown

Once he tried (and actually tried) and almost cut your real fucking hair

“C’mon babe, I won’t do it again”

“Absolutely not”

Another “let me join you in the shower ass mf”

He’s hot so um yeah ima just get on my knees at this point. He don’t even gotta ask

“This is a good time for ya to let yer deep conditioner sit”

“Don’t tangle my hair even further” you gotta redirect his hands though

Anyways when thats done, don’t trust him with a comb near your scalp at ALL

He doesn’t mean to be rough, but this man is impatient

Hes annoying and just sits on the bathroom counter while you just going through it

The type to mess around with your products

Another boy you put on to the magic of scarves and bonnets

His shit already deep fried with that dye and he cant afford more damage

Hes headass and wants yall to have matching ones

Iwaizumi

Yeah hes the best

Whatever you want baby, he got you

You can trust him with the scissors

Once you told him about the importance of being gentle when taking the braids out and stuff, he makes a conscious effort to make sure hes gentle

You say you can’t hang out bc its wash day? Yeah he’s right there with you

He’ll gather your stuff for you if you asked. Wide tooth? He got it. Spray bottle? check

If you listen to music while you take your hair down, he’s just vibing, whether its with him helping or keeping you company

Now I hate doing my hair and would be a simp for someone who does like this, so yeah lemme get a distraction smooch

He indulges for a little bit, maybe a few little touches and gropes until

“You’re gonna complain all night if you don’t get this done today”

Then back to business

He wont hop in the shower with you unless you ask

But once you come out with your hair mask sitting and shit, he’d have a snack for yall

Scalp massages!!!!

He got the oil, the love for you and everything

He’s just the right amount of rough that it feels good, but not to where it’d damage and frizz up

Iwaizumi perfect boyfriend thank u

a/n: now this sucks and ive never written actual hq headcanons, but i dont have the brain power to write full lengths rn and this is a mess of words and i want someone to luv me and my hair LMAO. (i was gonna do akaashi bc he rounds off my top 5 but im lazy). Also idk i wanted to write something and had ZERO ideas

#hq x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #kuroo x reader #sakusa x reader #iwaizumi x reader #atsumu x reader #hq x black!reader

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prettybuckybaby · 3 years

Text

don't be afraid; i am the satellite and you are the sky; chapter one

Leia can't sleep because of monsters. Peter helps scare them away

part eight of single parent peter parker

masterlist

read on ao3 here

Peter is sat at the kitchen table in their apartment in Queens, chemistry textbooks thrown across the surface, frantically scribbling down notes when Leia stumbles into the room.

“Daddy?” She whispers, tugging on his pyjama pants and climbing into his lap. Peter startles, sighing when he notices the redness of her eyes.

“It’s nearly midnight, princess,” He replies quietly, glancing at the time on his phone before wrapping his arms around her. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Monsters, Daddy,” Peter coos softly when tears start falling down her cheeks. He stands up slowly, rocking her gently until the tears dry up. “Scary,”

“You know,” He starts when she calms down, just letting out little sniffles into Peter’s neck. “When I was smaller, just a little bit bigger than you, Uncle Ben used to make a monster spray to scare the monsters away. Do you think making one would help?”

“Monsta spray?” She lifts her head, looking up confused.

“Hmm,” He hums. “You mix all the ingredients together, and then you spray it in all the places monsters like to hide. You know, under the bed, in the cupboards, behind the curtains. It scares them away,”

“And the monsters leave?” Leia asks, looking hopeful. She sniffs once more, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Peter pulls a face.

“They should do. Do you want to make some? We might have to go shopping, though,” He muses softly.

“Now?”

“Yeah,” Peter laughs. “Night-time adventure, yeah? We used to have lots of them when you were tiny. We’d go out in the dark and go shopping in our pyjamas and we’d just walk around until you fell asleep.”

“We went out in our pyjamas?” Peter laughs at the confusion on her face. “But Aunt May says pyjamas are only for wearing in the house,”

“Well. What Aunt May doesn’t know won’t hurt her, hey?” Peter smiles down as the confusion grows on Leia’s face. He laughs. “Go grab your coat, baby. We’ll go and get everything we need.”

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

Leia giggles when they enter the store at half past twelve. Peter has a large smile on his face when he crouches down to be eye level with her.

“Okay, Leia. First thing we need is a bottle. With a spray nozzle on it. Where do you think they will be?” Leia takes his hand and pulls, running her way up and down the aisles, dragging Peter behind her. She skids to a stop when she’s in front of the plastic bottles. She looks up at Peter. “Take your pick, sweetheart,” He smiles when Leia bites her lip, looking at all the bottles the store has to offer. She eventually picks up a light blue one, holding it up to Peter.

“This one?”

“Sure thing, tesoro.” He grins, taking the bottle and placing it in the basket he has picked up. “Next! We need to find something strawberry scented,”

“Why strawberry, Daddy?” Leia frowns as she takes Peter’s hand again and starts pulling him through the aisles. Peter hums, trying to make up an excuse. Really, he picks strawberry because he knows it’s Leia’s favourite smell, mostly because they both use strawberry shampoo.

“Uncle Ben told me once that monsters don’t like the smell of strawberries. Real strawberries will make you all sticky though and I think you’re too tired to have a bath before you sleep now,” Peter grins as he sees Leia try and hide a yawn. “So, we’ll just have to get a special strawberry oil.” He steers them towards where he knows the bath products are. When he sees the essential oils on the top shelf, he picks Leia up and points up to the glass bottles. “Pick one of those up, Princess,”

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

They spend another half hour going around the shop picking out ingredients for the monster spray. Peter has to bribe Leia away from the glitter, insisting that glitter will shine and encourage more monsters to hide in her bedroom. She frowns and pouts, tries to change his mind, but gives up easily when Peter offers to buy her a new teddy to be her bodyguard.

By the time they get to the checkout, the basket in Peter’s hands is full and Leia is dragging her feet across the floor. Peter tries to stifle a yawn as he puts the basket on the counter.

“Hey, Parker,” Peter’s head snaps up when he hears his name, confusion that was on his face clearing.

“Oh, hey, Clark,” He smiles tiredly, slipping the backpack off his shoulder and handing it to Leia, before picking her up and settling her on his hip. “I thought you’d quit, dude,”

“I did,” the kid replies, scanning the items slowly and handing each one to Leia to put into the backpack. “Then Chloe lost her job and couldn’t find another, so here I am,”

“That sucks, man,” Peter frowns slightly. “I’m sorry,” Clark waves him away.

“Don’t worry about it, man. Mom’s helping us out for now. Plus, it’s all worth it when I get visits from my favourite people,” He reaches over the counter and taps Leia’s nose. He grins when she giggles and scrunches her nose up. “Mom says you haven’t been round to see Ned for a while,”

“Aunt May’s been working out of state for a while, and then she went on a trip to Italy, so we’ve been staying with family out of town. We’re back now though, so we’ll go round at some point, say hi,” He smiles, rocking slightly.

“Good. She misses you both,” Clark finishes scanning the items, holding out the spray bottle to Leia. “What’s all this stuff for?”

“We’re scaring monsters ‘way!” Leia mumbles from where her head is resting on Peter’s shoulders. Clark nods.

“So, you’re making a monster spray?” Leia smiles sleepily. “Ned used to have monsters under his bed, and we made a monster spray. A week later, they had all disappeared!”

“F’rever?” She looks up hopefully. Peter laughs quietly.

“Ned hasn’t seen any monsters since. And that was years ago,” Leia nods and puts her head back on Peter’s shoulder, closing her eyes. Peter smiles as he takes the bag from where it’s slipping out of her fingers, slinging it across his shoulder.

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

When they get back to the apartment, Leia squirms in Peter’s arms, trying to get down.

“Thought you were asleep, princess,” He says as he puts her down. He closes the door quietly behind him.

“Just did’t wanna walk, Daddy,” Peter laughs and bends down and starts unlacing Leia’s shoes.

“Cheeky,” Leia giggles when Peter tickles one of her feet. “Come on, take your coat off.” Leia shrugs her arms out of her jacket while Peter kicks off his own shoes and holds it out for him to hang up. “Okay, go and wash your hands and then we can get started!” She toddles into the bathroom, using her little step stool to reach the taps and washes her hands. When she walks into the kitchen, Peter has laid a sheet over the table and set all their ingredients on the top. He lifts Leia up to stand on one of the chairs.

“Uncle Ned had monsters?” She asks him while he washes his own hands. Peter hums and reaches for a towel.

“Lots of people have monsters, sweetheart,” He smiles and slips one of May’s aprons over Leia’s head and folding it a few times before tying it, so she doesn’t trip over it. “I used to have monsters. Uncle Ned did. Aunt Emmy probably scared all hers away because she’s very scary,”

“Did Uncle Tony have monsters?” Peter smiles as he gets a measuring jug out of the cupboard. He places it in front of Leia, hands her a bottle of water, and holds his finger about halfway up the jug.

“Pour this into the jug, up to my finger,” She struggles slightly unscrewing the bottle, but manages and begins to pour. “I haven’t spoken to Uncle Tony about monsters before, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t,” She finishes pouring and hands the bottle back to Peter. He replaces it with another of the bottles that they bought and moves his finger a little bit higher.

“Okay,” She smiles easily. They talk quietly while they continue making the spray, Peter telling her stories of all the monsters he used to have in his room before he and Uncle Ben sprayed them away.

“Right,” He says as he pushes the jug towards the end of the table. Some of the pink liquid spills over the top and onto the floor. Leia giggles. “Oops. Oh, well. Okay, now we need to decorate!” He hands Leia the bottle, along with the foam letters, stickers, and glitter glue. Peter lets Leia do this part on her own, only helping her with the spelling.

By the time she’s finished, Peter decides that the spray has had long enough to sit. He pulls a funnel out of the cupboard and holds it out to Leia.

“This part might get messy, alright?” He asks her, smiling when she nods rapidly. “You’re going to hold this in the bottle, and I’m going to pour, okay?”

“Yeah, Daddy,” She grins. As she’s concentrating, her tongue pokes out of her mouth. Peter smiles fondly as she holds the neck of the bottle tightly with her two hands. He pours the liquid quickly before he takes the jug and the funnel over to the sink. He screws the lid onto the spray bottle quickly and hands it to Leia.

“Come on then, munchkin,” He laughs as he takes the apron off Leia and lifts her down. “Let’s go and spray the monsters away,”

They start in Leia’s room. Leia takes the bottle, spraying under her bed and in the bottom of her wardrobe before getting behind her door. Peter picks her up and places her on his shoulders so she can get the curtains and the top of the wardrobe and her cupboards. Peter lifts her off his shoulders and puts her down on her bed. He goes to take the bottle out of her hands when she makes a wounded noise.

“What’s up, baby? You don’t think we got everywhere?” He frowns.

“We gots t’ do your room, ‘Addy,”

“My room?” He asks, stroking her head. “I don’t have monsters, sweet,”

“Gotta,” She demands, eyebrows furrowing and beginning to frown. “Please, Daddy. Just ‘n case,” Peter smiles as he sighs dramatically.

“I guess,” Leia giggles as Peter lifts her back up. “But after this you’re going straight to sleep, okay?” She nods happily and makes sure to spray every inch of Peter’s bedroom until Peter laughs and forces the bottle out of her hand. He puts it down on his desk.

“I think you got it all. I’ll be super safe,” He smiles, moving Leia from his shoulders to his hip. She yawns and tucks her head into his neck as he walks back into Leia’s room. “Let’s get you to sleep, yeah?”

“’Kay, Daddy,” She doesn’t protest this time when he puts her down on the bed, lets him tuck her in. She reaches behind her head until she grasps Bearbear. Peter tucks him in, too, as well as the new teddy she got tonight.

“D’you think there’s monsters in Uncle Tony’s tower?” She mumbles as her eyes flutter shut.

“I don’t know, Princess,” He smiles as he crouches down by her bed. “We can go and visit after school tomorrow if you want? Get all the monsters out of your room there as well,”

“And your room. And Harls and Uncle Tony,”

“Of course,” Peter laughs softly and kisses her head before he starts running his fingers through her hair gently. “Goodnight, sweetheart,”

“Gots t’ save them from the scary monsters, Papà,” She murmurs, trying to fight her eyes falling shut. “Love you.” She whispers, breathing evening out.

#peter parker #harley keener #single parent peter parker #peter parker fanfiction #parkner

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passivenovember · 3 years

Text

@coffeeandchemicals (I’m doing all three because ily) asked: For the drabbles, 55 or 60 or 72 with harringrove! Please and thank you!! 💙

60. Before you decide to murder me, let me explain.

Strain Through a Clean Napkin.

The tiny wicker cabinet is all but hidden from view because, well. It’s hideous.

Turquoise, and like. 70s vibrant. Janky and scuffed, covered in glued-on seashells and so not what Mrs. Harrington allows to orbit their perfect world. It clashes terribly with the cheerful pink walls of the powder room, and.

It’s handmade--has Steve written all over it from the way the wicker door on the left hangs a little bit crooked. He imagines Harrington sat on a wooden bench, googly eyes and pipe cleaners littering the table in front of him as he constructs a treasure chest. The contents unknown. Some of the seashells have fallen off over time and leave wax stepping stones in their wake.

Billy almost misses it the first time he jerks off before their study date just to be safe and instantly falls in love.

He washes his hands in the sink, not bothering to dry them before wrenching the doors open and snooping through its many shelves and hidden corners.

He expects to find, like. Q-Tips, maybe. Nail clippers. Lube if it’s a good day, but. Instead comes face to face with lotions and potions and little bottles full of magic.

Glass jars with handwritten labels stretching as far as the eye can see.

Billy wipes his hands on his pants before lifting them to eye level, because. The labels, they.

Say things. Cute, disgusting things like, “Hair Milk: Lavender and Honey,” things that Billy can’t even begin to understand on a good day.

He gives the first jar a quick shake, watching mesmerized when the contents float and swirl in the pale yellow liquid. Dried flowers, maybe? Rosemary and something softer, something like--

Billy pulls desperately at the cap. Yanking and tugging gently, so as not to shatter the jar or like, spill Steve’s potion on the ground and burn a hole halfway to China. “Come on, useless piece of shit.”

He bites down on the pretty round topper.

Pulls at it with his teeth until the bottle gives way. The yellow liquid sloshes down his chest, tangling with the wiry patch of hair he’s got going, and--

“Fucking, shit.” Billy grabs a wad of toilet paper and scrubs. It smells yellow. Summertime peaches, melted ice pops, vanilla and orange, and fucking.

Steve.

It smells exactly like Steve. Billy lifts the bottle to his nose, eyes falling shut in a crescendo of soft, breathy sighs as he takes greedy gulps of this fuckin. Steve concentrate.

And okay. He jerks off in this bathroom two times a week before settling in for three torturous hours of Steve’s thigh pressed against him and Steve running his hands through his hair while he reads over the notes and Steve licking his pretty pink lips.

And, yeah. Billy just came, but. He’s is holding Steve in a bottle, and like.

Billy will take twelve.

He can’t get his hands in his pants fast enough. Billy gets the zipper down, wrapping his hand around himself, and. Yup. Works himself over with the vial shoved up under his nose like a fucking. Insane person. Considers sneaking it home, this bottle of magic.

Storing it in his pocket for safekeeping after tacking the pretty round cap back on, nice and snug so it doesn’t look like he’s pissed his pants when he sits on the overstuffed couch in Steve’s den to go over their chemistry homework.

Billy startles at that, hand stalling mid-stroke.

He’s been helping Steve with Chem for fucking.

Months.

Twice a week, Stetson’s orders, so the kid’ll actually pass this time and here Steve is. Mixing chemicals in his bathroom like some kind of.

Scientist, or. Witch. Something.

“Little shit,” Billy murmurs, but it doesn’t. Burn, doesn’t. Sizzle like it usually does. He thinks about taking his hand from his pants. Thinks about, like, pulling them all the way off. Bending over the sink and switching things up a little when someone knocks on the door.

Bangs on it, more like.

Billy starts, pouring half the bottle on his dick from fear. It’s cold. Colder than it was before.

Steve clears his throat from the other side. “Billy, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m--”

“You sure? Was worried maybe you fell in.” Bambi jokes, and fucking. Jiggles the handle. As if Billy would be stupid enough to leave the shit unlocked.

With his pants around his ankles and Steve’s name burning through his tongue on every stroke.

“Yup, hold on a sec and I’ll be--”

“It’s just. You’ve been in there for a while and I. Need help with this equation?”

Billy scrambles. Turns on the faucet, soaps up his dick to get rid of the Steve which burns because. “Who has peppermint wash in their restroom after Christmas, fuck.”

“My mom likes the smell--”

“Jesus Christ--I know, Steve.” Billy must make some kind of noise. Must wince in pain, or swear or bang his fist on the counter because Steve’s jigging the handle again, voice tight with worry.

“Bills?”

He winces. “Yeah, just gimmie a minute here, I’m uh. Allergic.”

Silence. Steely and cool, and.

“I’ll be right back.” And then he’s gone.

“Oh shit.” Billy swallows around something. Fear, or like, arousal from the fear of Steve barging in here while he’s got soap dick and a bottle of Steve wetting his skin from sternum to groin.

He waddles around the room.

Tries to pull his pants up, winces because yeah. The mild allergic reaction, kinda. Makes it impossible to slip in and out of skintight denim.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Billy waddles some more. He searches the cabinets for a robe, maybe. Settles on a towel hung loosely around his hips just as the door swings open and Steve’s there with a packet of oatmeal and a little white pill in his hands.

Looking windswept and pretty, and.

Pissed.

He takes in the room. The peppermint soap, and the open cabinet in the corner. The three additional seashells that fell off when Billy was tearing the place apart looking for a robe, and.

The empty jar of lavender honey hair milk.

Those brown eyes finally settle on Billy. On the towel poorly concealing his erection, because. Anaphylaxis be damned, apparently.

Billy shows his palms. “Before you fucking murder me, let me explain--”

“You didn’t think to read the bottle?”

Which. “Huh?”

Steve shakes his head, “The soap. You didn’t read the bottle before. Doing whatever it was that gave you a reaction?”

He shoves the pill into Billy’s open palm before he can say anything else. Stalks over to the sink and fills a cup with water. “Here,” Steve says. “Drink it, dumbass.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Billy swallows the pill, wincing as the rough fabric of the towel grates against his erection.

Steve hasn’t stopped staring, and.

Billy hasn’t moved to hide it, so. “Sorry about your bathroom.”

“Eh, is what it is.” Steve starts putting the place back together. Wetting a hand towel and scrubbing at the water on the carpet. His head is bent over the sink when he says, “Wanna tell me why you were digging around in my cabinet?”

Like Billy wasn’t just relaxing into the hilarity of the situation. Billy sits on the edge of the tub, opening the packet of oatmeal with his teeth.

“No, not really.”

“Don’t think that information’s important if I have to drive you to the hospital?” Steve leans against the counter, a pretty soft smile tugging at his lips, and.

It does nothing to help the tenting of Billy’s towel so he turns on the faucet in the tub. Dumps the oatmeal in and like, goes to town on trying to make sure the temperature won’t burn his dick off.

“Don’t wanna tell me why you were taking a bath in my hair milk?” Steve leans over, trying to catch Billy’s eye. He grins when Billy ducks his head. “I use that stuff everyday. Got an extra tub whipped together, so. I can forgive you this time.”

“I know, I.” Billy’s cheeks are on fire. He shrugs his shoulders. “Smelled good.” He says, because. It’s the truth.

Steve blinks. “That’s it?”

“Yup. That’s it.” Billy says. He runs his fingers through the water, mixing until the surface turns murky from the oats.

Steve hums. Pushes off the counter and digs through his little wicker cabinet for a knife, or maybe that nightmare bat Billy’s seen tucked in the corner of every room in this house at least once.

Billy pretends to be interested in filling the tub to the right level, eyes sharp on the give and take of the water when---

“Not allergic to aloe Vera and Chamomile, are you?”

Billy shakes his head. Steve hums again and settles in next to him, thigh pressed against Billy’s as he removes the cap from two short vials and dumps the contents into the water.

Steve leans back. Billy leans forward, because.

He turns on him, eyes narrowed on Steve’s face. “How does everything about you smell so fucking good?”

Harrington’s face lights up. “Oh, I smell good, huh?”

Billy holds out a palm. “Lemme see that shit.” The vials, when Steve hands them over, are lime green and pink with residue. The liquid is smooth, silky like it was spun fresh this morning. Billy makes a face. “How’d you get it like that? You a witch?”

Steve chuckles, soft and sweet. He leans in close, watching the water fill the tub with dainty pink bubbles. “Nah, just. Strain it through a napkin, is all.”

Billy tosses the bottles at Harrington’s head. “You don’t need my help in chemistry, do you.”

“Nope.”

“Then why am I wasting my two nights off stuck here with you, Harrington?”

Steve turns to look at him, tongue swiping along his bottom lip. “Because you’re cute. And I like having you here.”

Oh.

Billy feels like he’s on fire. Searing a hole through the carpet, already halfway to china when Steve cups his cheek and fucking.

Pulls him in. Separates Billy’s lips with his tongue and makes soft noises that almost get drowned out by the roar of the faucet next to Billy’s head.

When Harrington pulls away his cheeks are pink. Like bubbles, like secret potions. He grins. “Got lots of stuff in my cabinet.”

“Oh yeah?” Billy sounds out of breath, even to his own ears.

“Yeah.” Steve tugs at the towel hugging Billy’s waist. Doesn’t even notice the hives, which. Okay. Billy forgets all about it when Steve leans in close. “Mind if I join you?

#harringrove #so okay #I have no fucking clue what this is #kellie I swear to GOD every freakin time #.every time I write something for you I legitimately never stop #I hope this is fine #maybe gives you some haha's on this tuesday night #ilysm

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seaaitch-getalife · 3 years

Text

Roger Taylor x reader 1973 (SMUT)

Summary: It´s 1973, London. You just started working in the recording studio of an old friend, who so happens to record Queens newest album.

Pairing: young!RogerTaylor x Freader

A/N: In this chapter is a lot of smut going on... so uhh be warned. But the storyline finally starts to unfold.

Words: 4559

Warnings: smut, swearing, alcohol, cigarettes, dom/sub, hate fucking, degrating, fighting, unprotected sex, age difference (reader is 18 and Roger is 24), public sex, oral, over stimulation, Roger and reader being assholes to eachother

IF YOU ARE A MINOR DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS 18+ STORY

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

Chapter 3 – What is his problem?!

A week went by, a week after the party, a week after... „it" happened... we haven't talked about it. Nobody said a word about it, not even when they saw us the next day, Roger with his many scratch marks and my hickeys that I tried to cover up. It didn't work.

He acted like usual, like nothing ever happened, so I did the same. We were bitching all the time again.

Today is the 27th of August 1973, I had the closing shift. It was once again an exhausting day where I answered phone calls, argued with Roger, and helped the band with basic stuff. Now Rick and all members of Queen went to a pub but me? I stayed behind to clean after them. I played some songs so it wouldn't be so boring.

Once again I was dancing around moving to the rhythm of the music when someone yells „Your sense of rhythm is shit!" I quickly turn around „What the fuck are you even doing here?" I ask with a bit shaky voice. „I forgot my...Uhm... k-keys" Roger slurs while walking towards me. „Bloody hell how much did you drink?" he grabs my hips pulling me close „What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" I yell at him. „Ugh can't you shut up for once woman?" he growls with a dark voice. I feel his warm breath on my neck, I could smell the liquor, cigarette smoke, and sweat. It sends shivers down my spine. Suddenly he starts moving my hips in the rhythm of the song. Nobody dared to speak, I just lean my head on his shoulder following his motions. He then turns me around and pulling me close to him again. „That's it just like that," he said in a seductive voice that made my panties damp. I let out a small whimper which made him chuckle. That's when I felt it... something hard brushes against my ass. I blush like crazy and turn my head around to look at him, my hips still in his iron grip. „God calm your dick!" I break free and stand in front of him. He looks at me like usual, pissed. „Can't you just go along? I know you liked it". I blush even more, he is right but no way in hell I would admin it to this drunk asshole. He notices my madly blushing face and a smirk crept onto his face, his bright blue eyes clouded with anger maybe lust or both. „OooOh, I see what's going on" he steps closer again. „Wha-what do you mean?" I say, my voice cracking. „I bet.." he chuckles darkly „I bet you little slut get off to the thought of me fucking you, aren't I right?" his devilish grin only grows when he steps even closer, grabbing me before I hit his drums. „Do I turn you on this much?... You truly are pathetic" he starts to laugh. I finally find my courage again and speak up with a confident voice „Me?! You really think that I... Oh my god this can't be real!" Now I start laughing and he went silent. „You were the one who started it at the party and now you're trying to push it once more! So tells me I'm the one who's desperate!" He growls „Well it's not my fault that you're once again the best next thing". Now I get angry „Suck your own stupid dick!" he thinks for a second, smiles, and grabs my ass, pressing me against his body. „Or you do something useful with that pretty mouth of yours for once" before I could reply he kisses me, harder than the first time he did. A moan escapes my mouth, he takes it as an invitation. Now I can taste the strong liquor he drank at the bar, it only turns me on more. I grab his hair pulling him closer to my face, our breath is unsteady and heavy. He starts to tuck at my shirt wanting me to pull it off... so I did, pulling off his as well. We continue to make out, meanwhile he unclips my bra starting to play with my boobs. „Bloody hell your titts are so amazing..." he says under his breath, probably not even realizing he said it out loud. I blush more and start moaning softly when he starts sucking on my nipple. I am surprised that he wasn't as rough as he once was. But that's when he gets dominant again, he pulls away and grabs my shoulder, and pushes me down on my knees „Oh god..." I thought when I see his erect cock through his jeans. I watch him unbuckle his pants, pulling them down with one quick motion. He takes a seat at his drums that were right behind him. He places one hand on my head pulling me closer to his already hard cock that aches to be touched. It twitches when I put my hand around it. He feels my hot breath on his sensitive head that leaks pre-cum. „Come on now, I don't wanna wait for the whole ni-" I cut him off when I take his head in my mouth. A shaky breath escapes him when he throws his head back at the sudden sensation. I start to suck and lick his head, swirling my tongue around it and licking up and down his shaft before I take his whole length... or most of it in my mouth. He starts breathing heavily, pushing my head up and down fast. He starts twitching and more pre-cum spills onto my

tongue. He moans soft but stops when I suddenly pull away from him. „Why did you stop?!" he yells but the disappointment in his voice is audible. I get up and bend forward against him, pulling him close by his shoulders. I lean in and whisper „I need you to fuck me... please...". His smile grows and he gets up so I can sit down. He pulls my jeans off aggressively, not wanting to wait another second. He carefully places me on top of the chair and leans me on his drums, not wanting me to break anything. After I was placed safely on them he grabs my legs put them over his shoulder and thrusts into me without a warning. I scream for a second at the sudden force.

He is in his own world, Roger doesn't care about me it was only to satisfy him. „Fuck you feel so good..." he says under his heavy breathing, his head thrown back. I just lay there, like a hot mess, my hair is tangled, I am sweaty and my lipstick is smeared across my whole face but I couldn't care less. I hate to admit it but he was the best shag I ever had and he knew that which only boosted his enormous ego.

„Go harder!" I yell at him. He is shocked and looks down at me and what he sees... an image that will never leave his memory. He sees my half-lidded eyes, my sweaty forehead, blushing cheeks, how drool trips out of my open mouth, my bouncing boobs, and all this over his beloved drums. He could have cum right then and there but he tries to hold it back. When he finally snaps out of his thoughts he starts thrusting even faster and deeper. I can't take it anymore „Fuck I'm gonna cum... ROGER!!" I scream his name at the top of my lungs, the whole studio could have heard it but luckily we were alone. The feeling of my walls strangling his twitching cock almost makes him cum but what sends him over the edge is me screaming his name. „Ah fuck..." he moans while cumming hard inside of me. He rides out our orgasm before slowly pulling out, I whimper at the feeling of emptiness. He tries to catch his breath but it's hard when I'm laying in front of him like this, his seeds leaking out my wet flower. „Uhm... could you maybe... bring me something to clean up..?" I ask quietly, breaking the silence and his stare. „Oh uh sure..." he gets up, pulls his pants back on, and goes to grab some paper towels, that he gives to me. He turns away from me and searches for his keys. When he finally finds them I am already dressed again. He walks past me „I still think you're a stupid bitch!" and with that he leaves the studio, leaving me behind to clean up his mess!

I feel dirty and hate him even more. And myself... „Why did it happen again! One time was bad enough but two times?! I even screamed 'more'... god what is wrong with me?! He's such an asshole!" I just want to go home, so I quickly clean up and pack my stuff. I don't even have the energy to take a shower so I just fell into my bed and went off to sleep.

- next day -

My alarm clock starts ringing, I turn that little sucker off and get up. When I look at the mirror I see how messy my hair is, my ruined makeup from last night, the new marks all over my cleavage... I decide to call Rick to ask him if he could pick me up on his way to work, luckily he agrees. I hang up and strip all my clothes off, stepping in the hot shower, washing away the sweat and shame from yesterday. I feel a bit better. I wrap my body and hair into a towel stepping out of the bathroom to pick a nice outfit. Blue jeans and a plain grey shirt. Right after I finish drying my hair Rick already knocks at my door. „Wait a second I'm almost done!" I yell back at him, throwing on my clothes as fast as possible, grabbing my jacket and cigarettes before storming out the door to greet him. „Hey, Rick thanks for picking me up" I smile softly while putting on my jacket. „No problem" he smiles back at me. „Uhm was yesterday everything okay?" I freeze at his question „Uh... yeah why are you asking?". „Well Roger forgot his keys or something in the studio and I know the two of you don't really get along..." he explains on the way to his car. I open the door and enter it. „Well he was a bitch like usual but nothing happened" I lie and force a smile. He nods and starts to drive.

We arrive at the studio, walking in, Brian and John are already here. We greet each other and chat a bit. They told us that Freddie will be a bit late but Roger should arrive soon. They joke about him having a big hangover. I giggle and say „Yeah he's probably in his bathroom throwing up and trying to get his latest nightly visit out of his apartment" my and the others laugh was disturbed by Roger „Yeah she was pretty bad." he looks at me with disgust in his eyes so I just shut up and get back to my seat.

After two hours we finally had a break so I went to the toilets. Just when I finished washing my hands someone tries to open the door. „Wait!" I yell at the unknown person, but when I open the door I stare back into those blue eyes. I want to step aside but he holds an arm up to the doorframe, I look at him a bit shocked. „Why does he trap me now?" I think to myself, that's when he steps closer, he grabs my ass pushes me back into the room while kissing me. I push him off „What do you want Taylor? One second you hate me and in the other shit like this happens!" he looks at me before speaking in a low but soft voice „Just enjoy it while it lasts" with that he kisses me again, more passionate than rough. I hate him but he is a damn good kisser and I couldn't resist his touches any longer. Near seconds later he pulls our pants down, bending me over the sink, and thrusts into me. I try to stay quiet as well as possible but it's almost impossible. He puts his hand over my mouth and goes faster while telling me to stay quiet. His deep voice sends shivers through my whole body. He starts thrusting faster and faster telling me he's about to cum. I open my eyes and look at him with pleading eyes to wait for me but he ignores me. Pulling out and cumming over the sink. I look at him pissed but he just leans forward, grabs my chin, and says „Meet me after your shift outside." he then opens the door for me. I was frustrated that I didn't get off and had to wait a few more hours.

To calm down I step outside smoking, trying to understand what's going on with him. It just makes no sense! I turn the cigarette off and step back inside, where I see the others mocking Roger where we both were, he didn't know what to say but that's when I step in „I was in the supermarket across the street grabbing something to eat. I don't know or care what he was doing. I'm not his babysitter!". They suddenly shut up and got back to their place, getting ready to record. Roger looks at me thanking me silently. I give him a nod.

For the rest of my work, I couldn't concentrate I was way too busy puzzling together what his deal was... and well I still didn't get off! But my shift was almost done, 10 more minutes.

It feels like an eternity. But finally, after what felt like years, we could all go back home. I step outside and light a cig, I wish everyone walking past me a good night and then he finally steps out, he gives me a nod and starts walking. I follow him silently, not sure if I should say something. He got into his car waiting for me to get in. He then turns to me „Where do you live?" „Uh... at the moment I stay the hotel „Zaloda"... why?" he looks at me a bit annoyed „Are you really that dumb? I thought you wanted to finish something, but if you don't want to..." I interrupt him „No...no let's go" he smirks and starts driving.

We step out and walk up to my room, my legs are shaky, my mind was spinning „What is even going on! God, you're so stupid! Make him go now! He's an arrogant asshole! He doesn't give a shit about me so why would you bring him here?!" I got ripped out of my thoughts when we arrived at the room. I look at him unsure before opening the door. He steps in first and looks around „It's a nice hotel" „Mhh" I hummed back shy. He throws himself on the big bed before chuckling. „What's so funny?" I question him a bit annoyed. He speaks up after a few seconds of silence „Someone like you in a fancy hotel like this? It's just a bit funny in my opinion". I look at him with a „are you serious" look on my face. He then walks up to me „Can't you understand any kind of joke?" he places his hands on my hips pulling me close. I turn my face away „Yeah I do! But you making only fun of me doesn't make me laugh!" I say with an undertone of anger in my voice. He doesn't say anything but instead kisses my neck and shoulder softly. My breath stops for a second and I forget every kind of anger I just felt. I lean into his soft touch. „Maybe he's not that bad after all?" I think to myself. He starts to travel down my breast, stomach and stops at the waistband of my jeans. He nibbles at the button of it before opening it slowly. He looks seductively up at me. Those blue eyes that could melt everyone's heart... I place my hand on top of his soft hair watching his every move. He pulls my jeans off, painfully slow, I whimper needing to be touched. He tells me to lay on the bed, so I do it. Roger grabs my legs pulling my crotch down to his face. He looks up at me while placing his soft lips on my pussy that is still covered by the thin fabric of my pantie. I breathe deeply begging him to touch me but he ignores me once more. He licks over my covered entrance which made me shiver. „Please..." I couldn't take this torture any longer. Finally, he pulls my panties off, the cold air hits my wet folds. His face immediately back in place, without wasting another second he starts licking all over my entrance. I throw my head back and put my legs over his shoulders. He holds my waist, pulling me closer while he starts to eat me out. I was once again a moaning mess trying to hold my orgasm back. He eats me out like he's starving, his tongue licking around and over my sensitive clit while sucking on it. He notices my heavy breathing and knew I was very close, to send me over the edge me he sticks two of his fingers into me while continuing sucking on my nob. His fingers that pound in and out of me with his tongue stimulating me as well, is too much to handle for me. The knot in my stomach released and I cum all over his face. He pulls his fingers out, licking me and his fingers clean.

He gets back up and lays on top of me starting to kiss me, making sure I would taste myself.

He unbuckles his own pants, keeping his boxer on. I could see and feel his hard member against my soft skin. He kisses me passionately, one hand on my face the other one placed on my hip. I wrap my arms around his neck pulling him closer. He starts to slowly pull off mine and his shirt, unclipping my bra. Roger plays around with my boobs, squeezing them softly while placing lazy kisses on my neck. It feels good but I want more so I throw him on his back, sitting on top of him. Clearly, he was surprised that I took control over the situation but he doesn't mind.

I kiss him all over his neck leaving a few hickeys here and there, his breath getting heavy. While I kiss, suck, and bite his neck my hand moves to his cock, touching it. He lets out a small moan „Please..." was all he said with his sexy deep but quiet voice. I want to take him right now but I need to be a bit more patient. I leave his neck alone and sit up, my heat pressing against his. The room is filled with his heavy breathing and soft moans. He looks like artwork to me. I started kissing him again, unable to resist this desire. I didn't notice how he removed his boxer but I clearly felt it when he starts to enter me, slowly this time. I moan softly and lean my head next to his neck. He grabs my hips and starts to move me up and down for a while, but suddenly he holds me still just to thrust into me with full force. „Oh god, Roger!" I moan in his ear which made him only go faster. My walls already squeezing him, which not only made him go deeper but also made him moan „Fuck... Y/N you're so tight...". Hearing him say my name like this made me cum, he even slowed down, so I could catch my breath. He grabs me again, pulling out of me, „Sit on my face", I swallow loudly before doing what he told me to do. He once again starts to lick me, I felt like I was on cloud 9. My eyes are closed and I enjoy every second of it. Right before I'm about to cum once more he stops, I climb down off of him looking at him confused. „That's mean!" I say to him like an upset child, which made him snicker. „You already came a few times now is my turn!" he tells me quietly before adding „Go on your knees, like the time at the party." I blush but do as told. Head down, ass up. He smacks my ass hard before placing his dick at my entrance, not pushing it in. I turn my head around to look at him „Well? What are you waiting for?" he smiles at me devilishly before saying „Beg for it slut" with that he smacks my ass again. „Come one... please..." „Please what?" his smile only growing. I sigh „Please... fuck me..." the last part was whispered. „Sorry I couldn't hear you?" He pretends to be deaf, his hand was at his ear and his body leaning forward. „Bloody hell just fuck me already!" now I yell at him, getting unpatiened. „Your wish is my command." his smile big and toothy, then he pushes his whole length into me, going fast, not planning on slowing down or stopping. He hit my g spot every time. I screamed, twitched under his touch, if his grip wasn't that strong I would have lost my balance and broke down. He digs his fingers in the side of my hip and ass. I can hear him moan, saying something neither of us could understand. All you could hear were moans, screams, heavy breathing and skin slapping together. I am so close... He is too, his thrusts getting sloppy and loses his rhythm. „Roger!... Oh fuck I-I'm..." „Me too..." a few more hard thrusts and he cums inside of me, the feeling of his seed exploding into me send me over the edge once more. After a few more slow thrusts he pulls out, inhaling sharply. „Fu-uck..."

I collapse on the bed, trying to catch my breath, he lays next to me, still breathing heavily. He gives me a big smile before pulling me close and putting a blanket over us. „Is... is he really cuddling with me now? What's going on?!" before I could worry more about what was just happening I drift off to sleep, hugging Roger back.

- next morning -

I open my eyes having a near heart attack when my alarm clock rings. I turn it off and look next to me „Good mor-".

He... he was gone. „Roger..?" I got up, looking around, maybe he was in the bathroom? But no... he just left me. I try to fight the tears in my eyes... I didn't even know why I was crying but I couldn't stop. So once again I showered off all my regret, shame, sweat, and whatever else.

When I arrived at the studio I didn't even care that I was a bit late. I try to be polite and greet everyone like usual, but he, Roger, doesn't even look at me. Not saying a single word.

I wanted to get up and scream at him! Cry! Ask him what his fucking problem was! But I couldn't I didn't even want to hear his stupid excuse! I just want this day to be over...

- two weeks later -

Everything went back to normal. We didn't speak for a whole week, not even argued over something stupid. It was quiet. After 7 or 8 days of total silence, we at least started yelling and bitching at each other again. It was like nothing ever happened...

It was almost the end of my shift when Brian asks me if I wanna join them all. They want to go to a pub down the street. I agreed, not caring about what Roger might say. I just needed to get out again and I could bond with the others more.

The end of our shift came and we start walking to the pub. I talk with Brian about all the different planets and stars. It was a beautiful night, the stars shining almost brighter than usual, that's what started our conversation. We step into the pub sitting at a big table, Brian and Freddie are next to me, John and Roger on the opposite side. I chat with the boys, drinking every round with them, so I was quickly pretty buzzed. John then asks me to have a dance with him, he was equally as drunk. I agreed of course. We start to dance, if you can even call it that. We laugh and have a great time. Because of all the alcohol, I grab his shoulder to prevent me from falling. That made us giggle and we pretend to dance seriously, like the waltz. I place my hand on his shoulder and he put his hand on my hip, our free hand holding each other.

It was great until... Roger decided to come up to us, he grabs my arm and pulls me with him. I yell at him „What is your fucking problem!?" he doesn't answer my question but yells back „Why are you dancing like that with HIM?!". I completely snapped „Because I can do whatever the fuck I want with whoever I fucking want!" He wanted to say something but I cut him off right away „Before you dare to speak back, let me finish!" he shut his mouth and stares at me. „You used me whenever you pleased and I was stupid enough to let you do it! And then you just fuck off and pretend I'm not here?! I don't know what sick game you are trying to play, but I'm not part of it! I hope you go to hell Roger Taylor!" with that I turn around, grab my stuff and go outside. I broke down behind the next corner. I hear someone yell my name, it wasn't Roger but Brian. I carefully look behind the corner, where he spots me. He comes up to me and pulls me into a hug where I just start to cry. All the emotions I bottled up for the last two weeks finally escaped. He didn't say anything, he just let me calm down on my own.

After I calmed down a little we went for a walk where I explained to him the whole situation. He was a good listener and it made me feel so much better like a heavyweight was lifted off of me. He even walked me to my hotel. I thank him for listening to me and walking me here but I also apologize for ruining his night. „Oh don't feel guilty because of it, you needed a friend and I'm glad you told me. If you need someone to talk to again, I'm here for you." I hug him one last time before going to my room to go to bed, getting ready for tomorrow.

Next chapter

#RogerTaylor #rogertaylor #rogerTaylorxreader #rogertaylorxoc #rogertaylorsmut #freddiemercury #brianmay #johndeacon #queen band

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suntrastar · 4 years

Text

abstract: chapter 1

chapter 2!!

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Artist!Reader

Summary: Wait- Bucky Barnes attends your art class? And you didn’t even recognize him?

Word count: 7k (i am insane i know this!! you can also find this fic on ao3 !!)

Author’s note: hello! attempting to upload a fic on here for the first time ever! do i understand this website’s format. perhaps not. but am i going to try? perhaps yes! anyways hope you all like it :) likes and reblogs are very much appreciated!!! umm idk how this works if you wanna follow me you can?? do follows exist on tumblr dot com i think they do. hope they do. love you all. this is a long chapter buckle up (BUCKle up lmao i am not funny)!! enjoy ;o

“Hey, can you come look at this?”

You teach three classes a week- Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The latter two are enjoyable in their own right, but Mondays are definitely your favorite. Instead of teaching kids, who are funny and creative but so messy, and so loud, you get to teach adults. People your own age or usually older, putting you in a position of authority, valuing your opinion, wanting you to come look at things.

It’s a delightful power trip.

You turn away from the window to see who’s speaking.

It’s Steve.

Of course it’s Steve, your star student, staring at you with a worn, weary intensity, wiping a paintbrush on a paper towel. He’s already pushed his sheet of paper across the table, bumpy with water and watercolor paint, cream-colored edges starting to curl. He leans away from it, reclining in a seat that’s adult-sized but dwarfed by his frame, looking so forlorn, like the paper just abandoned him, moved to the opposite side of the table by itself.

You stifle a laugh.

“Sure,” you say, and make your way over to his table.

Steve fidgets in his seat as you look at his painting. You try to keep your jaw in check.

It drops anyway.

As always, it’s beautiful. He’s painted a sky, swirling with purples and pinks, and careful clouds, flickering in and out between layers of paint, elegant and pale yellow-orange. And the sun- it’s off-center, and you’re sure it was unintentional, but that adds to the effect, because it’s hot red, and dazzling, and slowly seeping into the still-wet sky. Tendrils of red like real sunbeams, pushing through the clouds like a real sunset.

You don’t know why Steve even takes this class. Half the time, you feel like he should be the one teaching.

“It’s gorgeous,” you say eventually, once your words come back to you. “I love how you painted the sun- the red, oh my god. You’re seriously a natural.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, and you push the paper back towards him. He looks down at it, still tense, brow furrowed, and you almost laugh again, until he looks back up at you. “I wanted to know what you thought about it.”

Power trip.

“I love it,” you say, giving him a reassuring smile, which he hesitantly returns. You might be laying it on a little thick, but Steve still looks distressed, and you genuinely like the guy enough to try to help him.

When he walked in with his friend for the first class, you were floored. People like Steve don’t attend classes like this- classes like this are attended by regular people. Not people that walk like dancers, all grace and light steps, not people that are extraordinarily jacked, with jutting shoulders and rippling muscles, not people that have a weirdly authoritarian air around them, like a politician, but less shrewd.

Still, you welcomed them and made awkward small-talk and tried not to stare at their arms and hoped you came across as a somewhat decent person. It’s your first time teaching adults, you explained, and Steve gave you a smile so sincere and reassured you that you would do great, boosting your confidence to the point where you actually did.

Steve is lovely. He’s passionate about art and has a good eye, a better eye than you, really, and he always tries so hard with whatever he does, and he’s funny in a dorky way, and completely unaware of it. He always wears a baseball hat and tucks his shirts into his pants and called you ma’am once, and looked so surprised when you burst out laughing and told him to call you by your first name. With him, two classes have flown by, and now, during the third, he’s warmed up to you enough to talk to you like a friend.

The friend he brings with him, though?

A total douchebag.

The night to Steve’s day, the rain to his sunshine. It’s obvious that Steve brings him along as some sort of moral support, to make himself look less out of place, which is fine, except the guy always treats you like you’ve perpetually offended him.

And maybe you have, maybe one time you did something that’s worthy of his eternal dislike, but you wouldn’t know what it is, because he’s never brought it up, because he barely fucking talks.

You don’t think he’s a naturally quiet guy. He definitely looks like he has a lot to say, but no matter what, he only ever talks in single-syllable bursts, quiet enough that half the time you miss what he’s saying.

He doesn’t ignore you, either- he listens to everything you say and lets his judgement flicker over his face- which is way worse. A glare is a slight misstep, a shake of his head means that you’ve just said something that he finds stupid, a scowl is a catastrophe.

You don’t even know his name. He’s never introduced himself, and always writes his name in a shaky, illegible scrawl on the sign-in sheet, and by now you don’t care enough to look it up.

Still, you’re nice to him, polite. It’s okay if he doesn’t like you. You don’t need to be liked- being noticed is enough.

You shift away from Steve to his friend, sitting next to him at the table. He’s staring at you in a way that you can only describe as violent, and you flinch, and then plaster your smile back on.

“How’s it going?” You ask, expecting no response, stealing a glance at his paper. He’s painted the entire sheet a watered-down blue, and you want to congratulate him, for actually participating this time, but you don’t say anything. “The watercolors working out for you?”

Your heart goes out to the poor paintbrush in his hand. It’s barely been used, is steadily dripping water, and is being throttled in his gloved grip. He always wears one glove- it’s weird, but you’re not going to pry.

He catches you looking and a whole myriad of emotion plays over his face; irritation and shame, a creased brow and a scowl. You have the feeling that you’ve taken a massive overstep, even though you haven’t said anything else, even though you’re not looking at his hand anymore, just at him.

His hair hangs over his eyes, glossy and carelessly wavy, which you would find pretty, maybe, if he wasn’t looking at you the way he is. Like you’ve just done something terrible.

“Sure,” he says, and that’s it.

Even when you turn away, he’s glaring.

You hate it, so you pretend it’s not happening.

Steve gives you a sympathetic glance before you head back. You wave it off.

“Shonna,” you call, to the fiftysomething woman hunched over her painting a few tables down, “how’re the flowers looking?”

***

Thirty minutes before your fourth Monday class starts, you arrive at the studio to find Rina washing paintbrushes in the sink.

“Hey,” you call.

She turns to you and gives you a surprised grin. “Oh, hey! You’re here early- come help with these brushes.”

You set your bag on the counter by the wall and join her at the sink. You’ve known Rina for ages- ever since you were roommates in college. The class before yours is taught before, some advanced painting thing that she is extremely overqualified to teach.

She’s kind of famous. And kind of self-absorbed, and a little bit pretentious, but maybe that’s just what happens when you’re as successful in your field as she is. No matter what it is, you can’t complain- she’s the one that helped get you this job in the first place.

“A couple of people in my class like to get here early, so I just try to arrive before them,” you say. She passes you a clean paintbrush. You reach around her and tear off a paper towel from the dispenser. “Did you dye your hair? It looks so pretty.”

“Yes!” She shakes her head, letting her hair sway. Last time you met her, she had dyed it pink. Now it’s mahogany red, straight and sleek and falling just past her shoulders. She looks a little unreal. “How’s your class going? Are the people okay?”

“Yeah, most of them are pretty nice.”

She passes you another paintbrush to dry. You consider bringing up Steve’s friend, but decide against it.

“That’s good- and you’re welcome, by the way. But okay, listen. Do you remember that one guy I told you about a while back, Dustin? So yesterday I was just sitting at home, and then he texted me…”

With the formalities out of the way, she launches into a story about someone you definitely don’t remember. Still, you humor her, listen to what she has to say, chime in at the right parts and say “really?” and “no way!” too many times. The minutes tick by.

When all of the brushes are washed and dried, you take them, since you’re going to be the one using them next, and start setting up for the class. Rina walks away and grabs her stuff from the counter. She lingers by the doorway, door already propped open, aimlessly scrolling through something on her phone, hesitant to leave for a reason you don’t know. Maybe she has more to say- if that’s even, like, possible.

You set the brushes in a container at the center table, and head over to the shelves on the far wall to pull out more supplies. Unfortunately, today’s class is revolving around watercolor again. It’s drudgery, such a boring medium- dull, unsaturated, painstaking when it comes to detail. You bring out a stack of paper, the least-depressing palettes, and then mason jars for holding water.

You’re setting the last jar on the table when Rina shrieks.

It startles you, making your hand slip.

The jar wobbles over the edge of the table and then falls, shattering into cloudy glass pieces at your feet.

“Shit,” you curse, and look over at her. “Rina, what the hell?”

Standing across from her in the doorway, having arrived early for class as usual, are Steve and his friends, two shades more flustered than usual. Rina is gawking at them.

Okay, they’re attractive, but not that attractive.

Not shriek-worthy attractive.

You sigh loudly and carefully step over the glass, making your way over to them. “Hi, Steve,” you say, and he jolts, like a scared cat. He’s blushing, stepping back into the hallway, hands awkwardly dangling at his sides. His friend is staring at Rina like he’s about to murder her, and you’re staring at him like you’re about to ask him to pass you the broom behind the door.

Because you are.

“Sorry about… that. There’s a broom behind the door, could you pass it to me?”

He opens his mouth to say something, and you are desperate to hear him, even if he’s only going to utter a simple yes, but Rina buts in.

“You did not just ask the Winter Soldier to pass you a broom.”

Who?

“Girl, what?”

All three of you turn to her, cornering back into the wall. She looks even more unreal, eyes blown wide, red creeping up her neck, giving her hair a run for its money, still gawking. You resist the urge to reach out and pull her chin back up, to close her mouth.

She alternates between looking at Steve and at…

“That’s the Winter Soldier,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself, or you, and then steps closer to Steve, who instinctively takes a step back. He’s fully in the hallway, now. “And you’re Captain America.”

Steve’s jaw clenches. He stays silent, and you feel bad for him, that’s all you can feel, really- you are confused beyond reason, halfway convinced that Rina is losing her shit, still awaiting the broom, still awaiting Steve’s friend’s words, racking your brain for any image of Captain America or the Winter Soldier that you might have- and coming up completely empty.

You don’t watch the news, like, ever.

Little details float back to you. Steve’s dressing sense, his manners, his muscles…

The baseball caps that both of them are always wearing...

His friend’s glove…

Oh, fuck.

“Are you?” You ask dumbly. The question is meant for both of them, but you only look at one of them while speaking. A glare meets you back- a slight misstep.

You can’t even see your feet, in this situation. You’re walking blind.

Steve crosses his arms and looks at you sternly. He doesn’t look angry, but as close as he can get. “Yes,” he says, completely guarded and unfriendly and not lovely at all. “I thought you knew that.”

You are so stupid- how did you not know that?

“I didn’t,” you say, and you don’t sound convincing at all. Not much fazes you, but you are absolutely, positively fazed right now, and starting to spiral out. “I had no idea- I thought you guys could have been, like, bodyguards, or something, not actual Avengers, oh my god. I’m so sorry, shit, thank you for your service?”

You’re going to end it all- this is so embarrassing.

Steve’s mouth twitches. Rina is scarlet-faced. The Winter Soldier, god, looks so tense, like he might shatter, too, into silent, grumpy pieces all over the floor.

“You’re welcome,” Steve says, and marginally relaxes. He stays in the hallway, the Winter Soldier by the door- you should have paid more attention in your tenth grade history class, what is the guy’s name?

Rina peels herself off the wall, and you start to get nervous. There’s a painful silence, with lots of staring, where you’re still trying to coax a few rational thoughts out of your brain, and only coming up with one- Rina needs to leave.

You try to tell her that with your eyes, with a pointed look, but you’re not great at this whole communication-through-expressions thing, so she doesn’t get the hint, or does and just ignores it.

“So, let me get this straight,” she says, tearing the silence like a plastic seal, voice starting to rise, from wonder to excitement, from painless curiosity to danger, “there’s two Avengers taking your class? And you didn’t even recognize them?”

“Nope,” you say, looking away, at a stain on the wall, at the distant glass shards still unswept away on the floor.

“That’s…”

She trails off before she has the chance to call you stupid, because the Winter Soldier gives her a pointed look of his own. Low brows and dark eyelashes, blazing blue eyes- she has no choice but to listen. Your staring was irritating, but his is intimidating.

She scampers away, mumbling something you can’t catch and brushing against Steve as she leaves.

This whole thing is so unprofessional, but at least you can breathe again-

“Here,” the Winter Soldier says, and a broom handle comes into your view.

Just one word, but you’ll take it with open arms. You take the broom from him, give an unreturned, unfamiliarly sheepish smile and head back to the broken glass on the floor.

The broken glass is swept up and tossed in the trash. You avoid looking at the doorway, focusing on other useless tasks instead. Rearranging the supplies on the table, fiddling with the window blinds, chatting with the rest of the class attendees as they start to file in.

Then the class starts and you’re swept back into your demonstration, talking and teaching and showing off different techniques that can be done with different types of brushes. You only look in their direction once, right after showing off some technique you barely remember from art school with a fan brush- they sit at their table near the back, Steve paying attention as usual, his friend silently reacting, as usual.

So they decided to stay- that’s good. Great, even.

Until the next part of the class starts, when everyone gets to work on their own paintings, when you have to stop talking.

You mill around the room, searching for a conversation to join in on or a comment to make, but find none. Then you take a sheet of paper and hopelessly try to draw- search for a distraction and a spark up of an idea, something, anything, and come up completely empty. It’s just...

How famous are they? Like, A-list celebrity famous? Are they offended that you didn’t recognize them- should you start treating them differently? You don’t keep up with this stuff. You have an impossibly long list of other things to worry about- you don’t have the time to worry about this stuff. The Avengers aren’t something you think about ever, because why should you?

If you opened any newspaper or magazine you would find something about them- a charity gala they attended, some recent threat they neutralized, the latest gossip surrounding their personal lives. But those lives are so far detached from your own that you’ve never bothered to look.

You simply don’t care. You’re not a native New Yorker- it’s not like these people are your hometown heroes, that you grew up idolizing them. They save the world time and time again and society is forever indebted to them and all of that, but what are you supposed to do about it?

And most importantly, what is the Winter Soldier’s fucking name?

Enough of this chaos goes on in your mind to make your head hurt. Fuck it, you decide- you’ll face it. You straighten your shoulders as you stand, trying your best to look purposeful as you walk to their table, like you have reason to go over there. Yeah, they’re strong. Genetically enhanced and all of that, and they’re important: they’re Avengers.

But they’re taking your class.

You slide into the chair across from the Soldier without taking the time to gauge their reactions.

“Do other people here know?” You ask.

Steve startles, eyes widening, and then considers the question while swirling his brush in green paint. He’s working on a landscape today, you think. “Shonna might,” he says, not rudely. “But nobody else.”

So maybe not that famous. Or maybe the people here are just like you and don’t care.

But it still doesn’t make sense. “Then why did you think that I knew?”

“Because you talk a lot,” Steve says, like it’s the most obvious thing ever.

“Well, yeah, that’s part of the job-”

Steve cuts you off, and fuck, you hate getting interrupted. But he’s smiling, and you can’t bring yourself to get upset over it. “You talk a lot to us.”

Us?

More like to him.

You take it in stride, don’t let your confidence slip. You’ve purposely angled your head away, and you know the Winter Soldier is staring at you- you can feel it on your cheek, on your shoulder, on every nerve in your face. You don’t look back at him. This revelation hasn’t made him any less unpleasant.

“Yeah,” you say, like it’s just as obvious, “because you’re a nice guy, Steve.”

Steve raises his eyebrows so high that they disappear under the brim of his hat. You smile at him as nicely as you can, sugar-sweet, until he can’t take anymore and drops his gaze back to his painting. You turn back to the nameless man across from you.

Winter Soldier.

“Hi,” you say, only to him, and prop your elbows up on the table, resting your face in your hands. “I love the little pattern you have going on with your painting.”

It’s random splotches of black paint- calling it a pattern is an exaggeration. But you carry on.

“This is probably a bad time to ask, and it’s kind of a dumb question, but, like, what’s your name?”

He just barely raises an eyebrow, allowing for a fraction of surprise, before schooling his expression back into his usual mix of anger and boredom, a casual glare and slight frown. For a moment, you wonder what he looks like when he’s happy.

“You don’t know his name?” Steve is in disbelief, and then he winces, and you think he’s been kicked under the table. Abruptly, you laugh.

It rings out. A few people turn and stare, but you brush it all off with another smile.

He’s still staring. You don’t mind it.

The paintbrush in his hand is suddenly unsteady.

“My name is Bucky,” he says, slowly and loudly enough for you to make out the sound of his voice, for the first time ever.

He is definitely bothered by you asking, his mouth drawn tight, and you can’t even take the time to appreciate how cutesy his name is compared to his demeanor, because oh hell. It’s going to be difficult to keep up this whole dislike thing, if his voice sounds like this, low and rough and gritty like sandpaper, pleasantly grating over you and your skin…

You have to consciously remind yourself to keep on smiling.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky.”

Things should feel different, but they don’t. Nobody really reacts- everything resumes as normal. Steve focuses on his panting, adding delicate brushstrokes to the branches of a tree. You linger for a moment, and then get up from the table and flutter off to someone else.

For every class, you wear this kitschy apron, paint-stained, with strings tied in a hasty bow against your back that Bucky always aches to even out. Someone tells you something, and you respond eagerly, fully phased out of the past incident.

He stares until he realizes he’s staring, and then drops his eyes back down to his paper.

Steve wanted to attend this class for a number of reasons- he was bored and wanted something to occupy his time, he wanted to revisit an old hobby, he wanted to learn from you- some hip, emerging artist he’s a fan of, whose work he’s been following for a while now, who is seriously talented, although you have yet to prove it. He wanted to go do something separated from the events of his regular life.

So much wanting. Bucky wants to know why you’re so indifferent.

He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing that you didn’t know his name, or that you didn’t flinch or gasp or accuse him of something, or pointedly look at his left arm. Should he be thankful? Steve is clearly thankful, already loosening up, freed of any lasting tension.

Bucky just feels wary. You’re unsettling.

You come back over to their table one more time. The sleeves of your shirt are pushed up, and there’s a smear of something dark on your forearm, ink or paint. On one wrist you’re wearing a bracelet made of braided leather. On the other you wear a bulky digital watch.

Practical.

“Everything okay?” You ask, as if something not okay could potentially have happened, in your forty-five minute absence.

Steve fixes you with a friendly smile. Bucky can’t ever bring himself to do the same.

“Yep,” Steve says, and you nod your head, clearly relieved.

“Great!” You glance at him for a spare second, and turn away again.

Everyone he knows is so guarded, walls built high and doors barred shut. Except for you, if Bucky can say that he knows you, the perky art instructor, Steve’s favorite artist. You’re confident and flippant, and that should be a bad pairing, but somehow you can carry yourself within it just fine. Always purposeful in the space you occupy, not reacting to the knowledge of his and Steve’s major, momentous identities.

Bucky wonders, idly, as he blots water over what you so generously called a pattern, why you didn’t.

It’s not like he wants you to acknowledge it, wants you to call him a war criminal or a Rusisan spy. He just wants you to-

He doesn’t know.

The class goes on. An older couple sitting a few tables away have caught your attention, chattering on and on about their personal lives.They have a pet cat that their landlord doesn’t know about, and when they retire they want to move to the seaside in Italy, and in May their son is going to graduate high school.

“High school?” You gasp, loud for no reason. “I hated high school.”

Before the class ends, you take your position at the front of the studio, and talk some more. He knows it’s part of your job, but you are excessive.

There’s an art exhibition going on at some museum, and one of the featured artists is an acquaintance of yours, and on Saturday the admission fee is discounted, and if anybody is interested, you have a stack of flyers on the center table. And you hope that everyone has a good week.

You look at Bucky while finishing up your little monologue, giving a half-smile that’s for the whole class, but seemingly only directed at him. He blinks slowly, and when he opens his eyes again, you’re looking somewhere else.

***

“Morning, pal, you ready to go?”

Steve gives him a hopeful smile as he peels an orange.

Bucky’s hair is still wet from his shower, dripping water onto his shirt. It’s early, too early to go anywhere. He doesn’t even know why he’s awake- usually after his wake-of-dawn runs, he falls back asleep, or lies down and just stares at his ceiling, thinking, until he grows restless enough to get up and do something. But today, the restlessness came much sooner, so he got up much sooner, and it might already be a mistake.

He takes a seat at the kitchen island, next to Sam, trying to think of something that Steve might have had planned for today, and coming up completely empty. “Go where?”

Steve looks hurt, for a brief second. “The exhibition at the museum, remember?”

Oh.

That.

“I’m not going to that,” Bucky says, harshly enough for it to be dropped.

Steve does not drop it. “Hey, come on. Just look at it.”

From his back pocket, Steve pulls out a flyer, one of the flyers you had out on Monday, folded up in a neat square- when did Steve pick one of those up? He holds it out, and Bucky, wishing he was asleep again, takes it.

He unfolds it, and the words are written in tiny letters, and the few photos on the paper are in color but too grainy to make out, and it gives him a slight headache, but he pretends to look it over. Sam leans into him to see it, loudly crunching cereal in Bucky’s ear.

“Looks cool, Rogers,” Sam says, and Steve grins, and now Bucky is the bad guy in the situation, for not wanting to go, even though Sam isn’t going either.

Bucky passes the flyer back without reading a single word.

“I’m not going,” he says, again.

But Steve is relentless. He sets the orange peels aside and gives him a look, and Bucky can already feel his resolve starting to crumble, and it’s kind of pathetic, really. Does he not understand that Bucky is already doing as much as he can?

“Why not?”

He picks the easiest answer.

“I don’t want to.”

Steve’s brow furrows as he splits the orange into two, giving half to Bucky. Sam slurps the milk from his cereal bowl.

They’re all blissfully silent.

“Come on, Bucky,” Steve says suddenly, almost begging. “I really want to see it.”

“I don’t-” He falters, he’s losing the battle. “How many people are there gonna be?”

Steve lights up. Bucky tries to stay indignant, tries to keep his face twisted in dislike, but it’s difficult with Steve. He’s always so full of optimism, has so much of it that it spills out through the seams, rubs off onto whoever’s closest.

“Not that many,” Steve says, like a promise, shaking his head. “That’s why we should go now.”

“Will she be there?”

Sam perks up.

Steve frowns. “No? Or wait, maybe. It’s a public place- I don’t know. She could be.”

It’s miles off from the answer he wants, but again, for Steve, he’ll take it. Bucky ignores Sam leaning across the counter like an idiot and asking “who’s she?” and eats his orange slices in silence.

***

Huge, bulbous heads, and beady little eyes. The limbs are long and wavy and contorted in the weirdest positions, seas of arms and legs and joints, women twisted over each other in gnarled embraces, a man with his arms twirling over and over again around his own torso. And the colors- a complete eclectic mess of everything- blue, red, yellow, green, purple. Everything.

You walk through the museum floor one, two, three times. The paintings on display are unsettling and ugly, and you’re on the verge of tears.

They’re gorgeous. Pain thrown on a canvas, told through canvas. It’s overwhelming- you’re overwhelmed, and you can’t do anything else about it. The museum just opened and there’s barely any people around- you can wallow in your sadness as much as you want to, for now.

Or maybe you’ll wallow in your frustration, instead.

This… you want to create like this.

But you don’t have it.

It being an impossible, nearly unattainable type of pain, or misery or anger or any other emotion so strong and visceral that you could translate it into something like this, something that evokes something else from other people. From an audience.

You might have had something like that once, but that’s all too far behind you now. Forgettable. What you need right now is an idea, a spark of inspiration, a single coherent thought. A confirmation that you aren’t completely lost.

You wander back to a painting in a far corner, all alone in a small alcove. A red woman, with her head nestled in green grass and legs wrapping around the sun, quite literally head over heels for it. Her mouth is wide open, gaping, calling, wailing, maybe. She has a hooked nose and a mole on one of her arms, and her white dress has fallen down to pool on the grass, and her legs are lithe and unshaven, prickly like the grass, just like the yellow spikes of the sun, drawn almost comically.

How do you even- how do you even come up with things like this?

By living an interesting life, probably. Through not being boring.

You stay there for a while. Long enough that more people start to file in, pretentious art students wearing all black, eccentric people with awesome haircuts, tourists. They peer over your shoulders, awkwardly, waiting for you to move. When you don’t, they leave you to be, giving you a rude look or two that you pay no mind to. There’s space on either side of you, if they’re so desperate to see. Sidling up right against you is kind of weird, but you’ll excuse it, for this painting.

Eventually, you realize that you should probably get going.

You’ve been standing so long that your legs are starting to ache, and there’s countless other Saturday errands you have to run- doing your laundry, buying groceries, calling up your mom- boring Saturday things to do.

You leave the red woman, regrettably. The fabric of your sleeve comes back dry when you wipe your eyes, even though you feel fully washed away, feel like you’re floating as you drift over to the elevator.

The doors slide open and a few people file out, and then it’s empty, thankfully. You step inside, press the button for the ground floor, wait for the doors to fully close-

“Wait,” a voice calls.

You’re not rude- you press the button to hold open the door.

When it fully opens, Steve steps inside, followed by Bucky.

You’re still out of it. You don’t even realize who they are, not until the doors have slid shut and the floor jolts as the elevator starts its descent and they’ve been staring at you for a solid five seconds.

“Oh, hi,” you say, after too much silence. You need to get yourself together. “You guys came!”

Put a little pep in your step! And more joy in your voice- nobody wants to listen to someone so drained.

Steve shrugs. “I wanted to see it.”

Bucky just smolders, clearly saying with his silence, “I didn’t.”

“Did you like it?”

Steve considers your question. The elevator stops at another floor and the doors slide open, but there’s nobody waiting to step inside. You wait for Steve to gather his words together, sure that he’s trying to come up with a nice way to voice whatever he’s thinking, which is definitely not nice. There’s no way that he liked the art, not one chance.

“It was… intriguing,” he says, at last. Neither of them are wearing hats today, because the museum doesn’t allow it. Even in this artificial light, his hair shines, golden-blond. “Did you like it?”

“Yes,” you say, without wasting a second. “The one of the red woman- it’s probably the best thing I’ve seen all year.”

“It’s only January,” Bucky grumbles.

His voice shocks you, sends an ice-cold jolt up your spine that you definitely dislike.

Steve turns to him, peering over your shoulder, surprised and disappointed. The two of them have a silent conversation with their eyes and you stand in the midst of it, waiting for the goosebumps to settle back down, waiting for the chill to go away.

It’s difficult- he clearly doesn’t like you, either- and even if he has his own troubling little backstory, which you don’t care enough about to google, it’s not justified.

But…

It almost makes his aggression... amusing.

“It is January,” you say politely, dismissing him. “Great observation.”

The elevator reaches the ground floor and the doors side open. You exit in step with Steve, with Bucky right on your heels.

You all stand around in the museum lobby, a wide hallway down from the giftshop and a small cafe.

“Are you headed out?” Steve asks. He puts his hands in his pockets, feet planted wide.

Bucky crosses his arms. He’s wearing all black. If it were anyone else, you would make a joke- he could almost pass off as a pretentious art student, if the outlines of his body weren’t so visible through his clothes, all taut muscle and sharp angles. His hair curls over his shoulders, prettier than anything you’ve seen on any girl.

These guys are Avengers, you think, and proceed to push the thought away.

They look so… un-Avenger-y.

“Um.” You press a hand against your forehead, trying to formulate a response. Chores suddenly seem miles away, the last thing you should be doing. You have all of Sunday to complete them, anyway.

“I was going to get something to eat from the cafe first,” you say, nodding over in its direction. “You guys wanna join me?”

You don't know why you look at Bucky when you say it

“Sure!” Steve says, all cheery, still standing alongside you. He smiles and his teeth are pearly white.

Of course his teeth are pearly white. Dentists everywhere are probably cowering, clutching their little metal instruments for dear life.

Then he hesitates, and turns to Bucky. “If you have nothing else to do, I mean.”

Bucky pauses. You and Steve both stare him down.

“They have these raspberry-almond muffins that are to die for,” you say, like it’ll convince him.

He rolls his eyes. Bored and still gorgeous- if only.

“I’m free,” he says, and you don’t know why he looks at you when he says it.

You pay the bored teenager working the cash register with cash. He gives you your change, and when he turns away to prepare your order, you shove half of the bills and all of your coins into the tip jar.

Bucky sits at the farthest table with Steve. His knees can barely fit underneath it, and the tabletop is sticky, and he’s now willingly spending more time here, and with no disguise there is no way that he isn’t going to be recognized by someone, and he doesn’t know why he hasn’t fully booked it yet.

Because…

He doesn’t know.

Maybe because you’re not asking for anything from him, aren’t minding that he’s sullen or unapproachable or anything else- his presence seems to be enough for you, which is bothersome, and at the same time, mildly exciting.

“Are you having fun?” Steve asks, while you smile at the teenager handing you plates of muffins, little glasses of some milky-espresso-coffee drink.

“What do you think?” Bucky asks, while you start your journey back to the table, and Steve opens his mouth to respond, already bothered, and Bucky’s already guilty, but then Steve hops up to help you carry everything back.

You sit down laughing. Steve is laughing, too. The corners of your eyes crease and he can see all of your teeth, and you look at him for a split second, and then turn away before he can get a read on your expression.

He sits in silence, while you and Steve trade jokes and stories and easy banter, talking about art and local politics and all types of things he can’t bring himself to care about, things that Steve is relishing in. You’re witty, apparently, or at least quick enough to get a few quick laughs out of Steve, and Bucky would never say it, he’s barely thinking it, but he appreciates you for it.

And the muffin isn’t quite to die for, but it’s okay.

During a lull in the conversation, you break your attention away from Steve and turn back to Bucky. You look concerned, almost, still smiling but without showing all of your teeth, leaning towards him like you’re about to tell him a secret.

“I never apologized for before,” you say, and Bucky immediately sits up on edge.

Even Steve goes wary, eyes narrowing.

You suddenly give a long, weary sigh, and press a hand against the back of your neck, like whatever you’re about to say is going to be so tedious. “For my friend flipping out when she saw you guys- she’s literally crazy, she’s always doing too much- but on her behalf, I’m sorry.”

The silence following afterwards is deafening.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, after a long moment, while you’re still looking at Bucky- your eyes make his skin itch, and he doesn’t say anything else. “She’s not the worst that we’ve gotten.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, great,” you say, and you slump back in your seat, looking away, back to your half-eaten muffin. You pick off an almond from the top and eat it. “Glad we got that out of the way. I just thought it would be weird if I didn’t say anything.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, so polite, even though you’ve done nothing to deserve his thanks. “Have you known her for a long time?”

“Yes, oh my god,” you say, and readjust yourself in your chair again, accidentally bumping your knee against Bucky’s, but not apologizing for it. He glances underneath the table, at your entire bare knee, visible through a rip in your jeans. “Rina- her name is Rina- was my college roommate for a while.”

“You went to college?” Steve asks.

“I have an art degree,” you say dryly, “which was… an okay decision, I guess. Sometimes I think I should have just dropped out and done, like, stand-up or something.”

You clearly don’t want to discuss it, leaving the last part as some sort of rhetorical joke. Steve takes the hint and nods, already closing the chapter, and you take a sip from your little glass, finally silent. The foam on the top of the drink sticks to your mouth until you lick it off. Bucky replies to it anyway.

“Why stand-up?”

You turn to him so fast that he almost misses you faltering, and give him a dazzling smile. He thinks of your bare knee under the table, and tries not to sweat. “Because I’m funny, Bucky.”

He doesn’t like how his name sounds when you say it. “Tell me a joke.”

“Oh, okay,” you say, and clasp your hands together. Steve is watching, rapt at attention. “Let me think real quick- oh, I have one. Which beverage has a black belt in karate?”

Bucky waits.

You wait, expecting something from him.

It’s Steve that has to say, “I don’t know, which beverage?”

“Fruit punch,” you say, exaggerating the last part, and Bucky just keeps on waiting.

Steve cracks a small smile.

“Let me tell you another,” you say. “What type of phone does a piece of fruit carry?”

Steve takes a few wild guesses. He’s enjoying this, and you are too, both of you feeding off of each other. “A phone-fruit. A fruit-phone. A frone?”

You shake your head. “A blackberry.”

Bucky doesn’t tell you that he has no idea what you’re talking about.

“Tough crowd,” you say, when he doesn’t react. “Don’t worry, I have more. Where do you go on red and stop on green?”

“Where?’ Steve asks, waiting, leaning forward in anticipation.

“When you’re eating a watermelon!”

It is not funny, it’s painfully unfunny, and maybe that’s why you and Steve burst out laughing. Bucky steals a glance at your watch, since he doesn’t wear one of his own. It’s nearing noon- how has so much time passed? Why is he still even here when he doesn’t even like you?

“Why are all of them about fruit?”

You look at him like his question is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. “What food is the best listener?”

Bucky just sits. All the foam in his little espresso thing has dissolved, having been left untouched. He doesn’t like the taste of coffee- too bitter, and caffeine doesn’t work on him, anyway. Maybe he should drink it, because you paid for it, and because you didn’t make a comment about old-fashioned manners or chivalry when Steve offered to at first, just shrugged and got in line.

He knows that you won’t care.

The drink sits on its own, glass beading with condensation.

“Corn is the best listener,” you say, without waiting for Steve to throw his questions or guesses at you, without waiting for Bucky to spit out another sentence. “Because it’s all ears.”

“That wasn’t funny,” he says, and glares at the spot beside your head.

You nod sympathetically, and he thinks again of the rips in your jeans. “I know. But it was about a vegetable.”

Oh.

You stare at him straight-faced, crossing your arms over your chest. Steve does the same, and then he realizes- the two of you are a bunch of kids, punks, juveniles- mocking his stature, pretending to be serious, somehow not offending him.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says. “You’re…”

He can’t even help it. He looks back at you and his face works on its own. He gives a single, dry chuckle, but he’s smiling, and dragging his hand over his face, scrubbing it off just as fast, but you still see it, and smile back and gently nudge his knee again underneath the table, and then turn back away again, and he’s still staring at your hair while you take big bite out of your to-die-for raspberry-almond muffin, already back in conversation with Steve.

63 notes · View notes

vikingpoteto · 4 years

Note

27, 9, pick any two bats

To no one’s surprise I pick Jason and Tim + cleaning wounds + “Listen, I know it’s hard, but I’m not going anywhere.”

Red Robin looks around his kitchen and tries to list 5 things he can see. The pictures of his friends held by magnets on the fridge. The pile of dirty mugs in the sink. The unread papers spread on the table. The closed window. The trail of blood leading to the counter where he’s sitting. He makes a mental note to clean that up in the morning. Before that train of thought leads him somewhere else, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 4 things he can touch now. The leather of his cowl that he slowly peels away. The cold surface of the counter. The hard wall behind his back. The needle between his fingers. Another deep breath. 3 things he can hear. The clock ticking against the loud silence. Traffic and distant sirens. His mildly ragged breath. He opens his eyes, hoping he doesn’t have any cracked ribs. Another deep breath. He can smell antiseptic and also something coppery. He licks his lips. The one thing he can taste is the bitter pang from the antibiotics he took.

Tim Drake glares at the needle. This isn’t the first time he had to stitch himself up. This isn’t the first time he had to take care of his own wounds.

However, this is the first time he’s the one and only responsible for it.

In another life, he would do a patch job, emergency stuff only, and then get to Alfred as soon as he could for a double check. In a time that felt like a dream now, he would have the latest health tech available and Cissie hovering over his bed while Cassie fussed about how he irresponsibly hurt himself, Bart made a joke out of everything and Conner, of all people, would be the one getting Tim proper care. Less than a month ago, the most deadly organization of the world was making sure Tim was getting the best care available. While his trembling fingers put the thread in the needle, he thinks of the almost healed scar from a damn splenectomy. He doesn’t know what Ra’s people had done to him, but he’s been recovering unnaturally fast, especially considering his immunity.

Tim bites his tongue and looks down at his battered outfit. He could go to Leslie’s clinic. But it’d be stupid to go all the way there for a couple of bruises and a wound that would probably take less than five stitches. Tim could go to the cave, but… No. He puts the needle down and starts pulling his shirt out. He can’t completely muffle a pained groan and he hates the way it echoes in his empty kitchen. It’s been less than a week since he left Dick, Alfred and Damian. He’s an emancipated adult by all means. Bruce trained him to be independent. He can do this.

Except… as soon as he reaches for the antiseptic, he hears a noise coming from the living room. Tim freezes. You’ve got to be kidding me. Of all the nights to have a robber breaking into his apartment, tonight? Did it have to be tonight?

Painstakingly, he jumps to the floor and reaches for his staff. He has half a mind to get his cowl, but he thinks Tim Drake defending himself with what could’ve been a broomstick is easier to explain than Red Robin just hanging out at his place. If he’s lucky - and, after tonight, he feels like the universe owes him - he’ll knock out the robber before they see him.

The most ridiculous thing about all this is that he feels like crying. He doesn’t know why. He barely remembers the last time he cried. Probably right before he realized Bruce could be alive. As much as he’s in pain now, this is no reason to cry like a baby. Especially not in front of a robber.

Tim silently hides by the side of the fridge and listens. The person in his living room is good. He can barely hear their steps. He can tell there is only one of them, however, and, judging by the way the sound become louder, they’re coming towards the kitchen. Partly to focus on his hearing, partly to ignore the way his eyes are glazing over, he closes his eyes, listens and waits. He waits. He waits a little more.

Ignoring the way his muscles ache in protest, he swirls around and aims for the gut, hoping to knock the air out of the robber. Gloved hands grab his staff and the invader takes a step back before recovering his balance.

“Woah,” he says in a familiar voice, “easy there.”

Tim raises his gaze to face him. Red Hood lets go of the staff in order to remove the helmet, revealing Jason Todd’s frown. Tim feels his shoulders slumping.

“What the fuck, Jason?” Tim hisses. He feels his voice will break if he tries to speak up.

“I should be the one asking that.” Jason puts his helmet aside. He takes one second glancing around until he finds Tim’s medical supplies. “Is this sanitary? Shouldn’t you be doing first aid in your high tech basement?”

He should. It would’ve been more practical than getting the whole first aid kit and bringing it up here. However, using his medical bay for the first time… It would make it all too real. Too definitive. Tim can’t tell Jason that.

“Medical bay isn’t finished. Kitchen or bathroom were my best options,” he lies.

“Hm,” Jason says as though he doesn’t believe him.

Tim could lie to Batman if he needed to, but, for some reason, Jason seems to always know the truth.

Without another word, Jason takes off his gloves and leather jacket. He drops them aside and walks to the sink. Tim doesn’t ask Jason how he knows where Tim lives - he won’t insult Jason’s detective abilities like that - but he does frown at the older boy as he strides through Tim’s kitchen like he owns the place.

In fact, Tim doesn’t want to ask anything. He wants to scream at Jason to go away. He wants to lie down on the cold floor and not move for days. It’s comical in a twisted way that Tim had been just thinking longinly about the time in which he wasn’t alone, and, now that he has company, he wants nothing but to go back in time and hide inside the cupboard until Jason goes away.

“What are you doing?” Tim croaks.

“Washing my hands,” Jason says simply. He turns to Tim and waves at him to come closer.

It’s a testament to how miserable Tim feels that he does it without questioning. Jason arches an eyebrow at him and points at the counter where Tim had been sitting not long ago. Tim doesn’t move, even as Jason wipes his hands dry with paper towels and reaches for the hand sanitizer in Tim’s medical kit.

“Jason,” Tim insists. “What are you doing?”

Jason sighs. “One of my guys told me this new vigilante, this Red Robin guy, took an ugly beating near the harbor while he took down one of Sionis’ turfs.”

“It wasn’t an ugly beating,” Tim mumbles.

“Wasn’t it?” Jason asks, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Was it easy to fight fifteen guys at the same time, Superman? Did it feel wise to bring a freaking staff to a knife fight?”

“I won!” Tim says.

“Yeah, and which victorious mighty hero is bloody and purple all over?” Jason barks. “Sit your ass down, Replacement!”

Tim flinches and… freaking hell, his eyes are stinging again, which is the most absurd thing ever.

Jason sighs one more time, but this time he sounds… Well, annoyed isn’t quite the right word. He does sound somewhat irritated, but there is something else in his tone. Discomfort? Embarrassment?

“That’s not… Ugh, I’m sorry, alright?”

Except that’s actually worse.

Moments ago, Tim wanted nothing but to be seen. It was pathetic. He wasn’t even that hurt and tonight hadn’t been special. It was just the first time he went out for patrol since he moved into his new apartment. He didn’t stop Poison Ivy, didn’t get into a scuffle with Harvey Dent. He just put away a bunch of low level henchmen even if he miscalculated how many of them would be there. Such a small feat, but there was a part of him that wanted someone to acknowledge that. To see all the bruises and bloody scabs, to pat him on the back and tell him he was great for how hard he was working.

How childish.

Now that there is someone and he seems to be fully aware of Tim’s misery - enough to apologize for speaking a little too loud - Tim only feels small and stupid. He should’ve hidden it better, he shouldn’t be in this sorry state at all.

The last time he saw Jason, they made amends. Just returned to Gotham after his mishaps with the League of Shadows, Tim found him to let him know he was aware that Red Hood was active again. Jason had said - albeit not in so many words - he lamented trying to kill Tim one year ago. Tim had told him it was water under the bridge by now and they agreed to work around each other, even if Jason still didn’t meet Dick eye to eye after last year. Then Tim had promised himself he would become strong like that. Jason had been through hell and back so many times and he always bounced back on his own. Why couldn’t Tim?

Maybe that’s why it felt like rubbing salt to the injury when Tim glares at Jason, the boy he was supposed to replace, the man whose shoes were too big for Tim to fill, and Tim’s vision is blurry with tears and his voice is overflowing with frustration when he asks yet again:

“What are you doing here?”

Jason meets his gaze. His brown eyes show clear unease, but he doesn’t look away. His brow is furrowed as though this is painful to admit, but he finally says:

“I heard you were probably hurt like that,” Jason gestures at Tim’s bare torso. “I knew you weren’t going to the cave for aid, so I brought the aid to you.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because if it were me, I wouldn’t go there either,” he states simply.

Tim bites his lip. “You dealt with your wounds alone after you came back.”

“Yes,” Jason says. He gestures at the counter again. This time, Tim sits. “I know it sucks. You ever tried stitching your own back? It’s really fucking hard.”

Tim looks down and doesn’t say anything. Jason brings a damp cotton ball to Tim’s wounds and stats methodically cleaning them. Tim doesn’t flinch, even when it really stings. Even when he feels like shame and guilt are all going to drown him.

“How did you do it?” Tim finally asks.

“The back stitches? A mirror and one of those grabby claw things, whatever they’re called…”

Tim glares at him.

“So serious,” Jason complains. Then, in a calm voice, “I did it the same way you were doing before I got here. If I didn’t I’d die. Guess I wanted to keep living. You’d be impressed with the things people do when they have no other option.”

“You’re incredible,” Tim admits quietly. “I’m not like you. I’m not strong or… I gotta do this alone. I don’t know how.”

He doesn’t know why he’s saying out loud all the things he struggled to keep hidden for so fucking long. Jason doesn’t seem surprised with the confession though. He keeps calmly checking Tim’s injuries.

“Not strong, huh? Which one of us took fifteen guys in a fight and won?”

“You know what I mean, Jason.”

“Yeah.” Jason grabs the needle Tim picked earlier and checks it before starting to work. “I know. Except you don’t gotta do anything, Timbers. And I don’t mean the vigilante thing. Fuck, I know none of us can quit this fucking life. We’re in too deep. I meant you’re not supposed to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. That’s what fucked up the old man. That’s how you lose yourself.”

“What’s that?” Tim scoffs. “You sound like a shrink.”

Jason looks up and smirks. “Maybe I have a shrink.”

Tim frowns. “Who?”

“Guess.”

“Jason.”

He chuckles. “Okay, so… I know it seems crazy, but she found me and asked me to join my crew in exchange for taking off this explosive thing that Amanda Waller put in her. And she’s crazy competent, so…”

“No,” Tim interrupts him. “You did not let Harley Quinn join your crew.”

“Actually, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy,” Jason has a shit eating grin even as he finishes his stitch job. “They’re a package deal. Ivy showed up a couple of days after Harley and I couldn’t get her to leave so…”

“You’re working with Harley Quinn and letting her give you therapy sessions,” Tim says. “Am I on a parallel Earth? Have those guys killed me and I’m hallucinating?”

“A lot changes in a year, Timbers, you’ve been gone for a while,” Jason shrugs. “People change too.”

“Not that much!” Tim protests.

“Is that so? Then how come you gave me, what now, three, four second chances?” Jason glares at him.

That catches Tim off guard. He takes a moment to realize what he’s talking about.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Tim asks, genuinely confused.

“I came back, I tried to kill you. You let it go. I get arrested, you help me to break out. I thank you by losing it after seeing B’s clusterfuck of a testament. You come back like it was nothing and tell me you hope to do business in the future. And you think I’m insane for giving shelter to an abused lady?”

“I’m not saying you’re insane for helping her. I’m saying I wouldn’t trust her advice,” Tim corrects. “Besides I know what you’ve been through. I understand, even if the others don’t. You’re still a hero. Why wouldn’t I help you get back in the game?”

“Because I could hurt you again, you moron,” Jason frustratedly points out.

“You could also be helpful. I decided it was worth taking the chance,” Tim states.

“Yeah, you did,” Jason whispers, using the bandaging as an excuse to avoid Tim’s gaze. “You’re the best of us, Tim. I’m not letting you crash like I did so many times.”

Tim just stares, his lips parted in shock.

That’s when he feels the dam breaking and tears finally start to stream freely down his cheeks. He sniffles and makes that horrible choked up sound of someone vainly trying not to cry. Jason keeps tending to his injuries even as Tim’s body shakes with barely contained sobs and Tim doesn’t know if he’s ignoring the meltdown out of mercy or because he simply doesn’t know how to deal with it. It’s probably both.

By the time Jason finishes wrapping up Tim’s many scrapes and rubbing medicine on countless bruises, Tim has managed to contain his sobs and is gingerly trying to wipe his face and pretending he doesn’t feel like he almost drowned.

“Listen, I know it’s hard, Baby Bird,” Jason mutters, a tad awkwardly. “But I’m not going anywhere. It’s not just you against the world.”

“Then what, is it the two of us against it?” Tim tries to quip.

“Maybe,” Jason says. “You did a lot for me. It’s about time I start deserving it.”

“I didn’t do it because I wanted you to pay me back.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m here, dumbass,” Jason takes a step back. “I’m done. Go get changed into a pair of sweatpants or something. I’m gonna introduce you to the wonders of 2am cereal.”

Tim lets out a chuckle. “I’ve eaten cereal at 2am before, Jason.”

“Not mine, you haven’t. Chop, chop, kid, we don’t have all night.”

Tim listens to him.

He should know better, after all he had experienced new beginnings before. All of them inevitably lead to crashing and burning, some rather spectacularly too.

However… There are a few firsts here. This is the first time someone truly understands. This is the first time Tim doesn’t feel like he’s entering a challenge, that he has to earn his place as Robin, as Young Justice’s leader. He feels like his place had been earned, like there’s a small beacon of hope after a long struggle.

Tim lets himself accept it.

#wingsdingsandpurplethings #jason todd #red hood #red robin #tim drake #red bros #batfam #poteto writing #sorry it took me so long leaps

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loptrcoptr · 3 years

Text

The Basic Bitch’s Guide to Doing Laundry in Shared Spaces

I’ve had some weird times at laundromats over the years. I haven’t had to pay for laundry in a year and I had this kind of visceral, gut-clenching reaction while cleaning the filter today when I realized that, if I get my way and my life is back to normal in a year, I’ll be back to pulling pube-hairballs out of laundromat dryers soon. Too many times random male strangers have approached me and asked me to tell them how to do their laundry. Too many times I have returned to take my load out of the dryer only to find that someone else removed my stuff, still wet, before the cycle was done and put their load in instead.

So, since clearly most people’s families don’t teach them the basics of laundry etiquette, here are the general Do’s and Don’ts of laundromat/apartment complex basement/residence hall laundry behavior.

1. ALWAYS check the lint filter in the dryer before running it. (It’s usually located in the front or top of the machine, accessible after you open the door). Lint buildup is a serious fire hazard, it’s just a giant pile of fuzzy tinder waiting to go up in flames if it overheats, there’s a spark, etc. Ew, you say, I don’t want to touch other people’s hair and clothing fluff and pet fur, disgusting! Yeah, it is, which is why you should always remove your own lint after you are finished using the dryer. so:

2. ALWAYS remove your lint from the filter after you dry a load of laundry. If it skeeves you out to touch your lint, or someone else’s leftover lint, use a paper towel/dryer sheet/the eraser end of a pencil/a stick you found outside to scrape the lint out of the filter and into the trash. Ta da, now the building is less likely to catch fire with you in it, and you have saved the person after you the trouble of lint cleaning.

3. this should go without saying but: throw the lint in the trash/bin. Don’t shove it down a drain, don’t leave it on the nearest counter. Don’t be a nasty gremlin.

4. If the machine says “don’t use x” then don’t use x, man. Most machines can handle detergent in powder, liquid, or little cubey-dealy forms, but some old things can’t so just read the instructions and don’t break the damn thing, because your landlord will probably make you pay for it. If you’re at a laundromat or in a residence hall and you find out your detergent doesn’t work with your machine, check with your front desk to see if they have some extra you can use. If you’re in your apartment building and it has no front desk, ask a neighbor or anyone who is also doing laundry if they can spare a little detergent.

5. If you forgot your detergent/can’t get the right kind from somebody, run a cycle without it. There is usually enough leftover soap in communal washing machines to get your clothes decently clean in a pinch without you having to add any more of your own.

6. A little goes a long way. Basically, again, just read the instructions on your detergent and on the machine. Once, an elderly man asked me how much soap he should put in. He was using powder detergent, which I don’t use, so I told him to just use however much the box advised. He said “I’m going to use half the box” and I said “that’s gonna be way too much”, but he insisted he knew what he was doing. Folks, twenty minutes later there were so many suds in his machine that it broke down from the pressure. Just a wall of white, you couldn’t even see bubbles or clothes anymore. If you don’t want to pay for repairs, remember that less is more.

7. Don’t touch other people’s stuff. If you were in a library, and someone got up and went to use the bathroom and left their stuff on a desk, would you go and move all their shit to another desk and then claim the desk for yourself? Of course you wouldn’t. So don’t move people’s laundry. If someone’s cart is in your way or something, say, “hey, would you mind scooting this back?”

8. Maybe the most important rule: NEVER remove people’s clothes from a machine. Doesn’t matter if they’re wet or dry, wait your turn. So someone’s cycle is over but they haven’t appeared to get their stuff yet and it’s been ten minutes, and you’re in a hurry. Bummer (don’t do laundry in a hurry, give yourself a solid three hours’ buffer). Doesn’t give you the right to touch their belongings. But I even know whose stuff it is, I can put it back in their laundry basket, you say. No, dude. Don’t touch strangers underpants. Duh. Would you like it if you come back a few minutes late from running to grab a coffee around the corner and you find a pile of your soaking wet clothes sitting on a counter? no, you wouldn’t, so don’t be a shady fuck, ok?

Did your parents not teach you how to do laundry? Has your wife been doing it for years? Here’s the basic rundown:

WASH

1. take a look at the machine, see where the slot is for the kind of detergent you will be using. Check the detergent for advice on how much to use for how big a load/what kind of materials. Also fabric softener and detergent are not interchangeable, fabric softener isn’t soap. Think of detergent like shampoo and fabric softener like conditioner.

2. Wash darks/colors with darks/colors, and whites with whites. Your favorite red buffalo check flannel might bleed onto your white underwear if you wash them together. Your jeans will absolutely bleed all the fuck over white shit, sometimes even after years of washing.

3. make sure each item can, in fact, be machine washed and check what kind of cycle the garment recommends. Some clothes can only be hand washed or dry cleaned. Some clothes benefit form being washed cold, no heat. Bras and underwear, and anything else you’re worried about should be washed on a ‘delicate’ setting.

4. don’t fuck with bleach, it’s not worth it. Bleach is not to be messed with until you’re super comfortable with doing your laundry. Bleach is only for white stuff, and you can still ruin white things with bleach. If you are determined to try and bleach a white garment, please wash it by itself so you don’t hurt any other clothes and, crucially, make sure the washer your using can actually use bleach, otherwise you could break it.

5. once your load is in and you know what temperature/cycle to use, hit the corresponding button/turn the knob to the setting you know you want. The machine will generally flash a time at you (30-50 min, usually, depending on what you’re getting done). Wait until your time is up, and voila, washing done.

DRY

1. if you do not have access to a dryer or a clothesline, there are nifty clothes hangers that look kind of like a baby’s mobile that you can hang outside your window or on a balcony. Barring that, hang your clothes on coat hangers and hang them around your tub or shower, or even your sink, to drip dry. Once they are barely damp I like to lay them out on towels or hang them on door handles in a room with a fan or radiator inside.

2. make sure you use the right setting on the dryer. the dryer is a fickle little bitch and she will ruin your stuff without a moment’s hesitation. After you clean the filter (you can do it, it’s not as gross as it seems [if lint affects some manner of phobia of yours, or if sensory stimulation of that variety is difficult for you, ask someone else to do it or use one of the aforementioned long objects to scrape it out]) check the labels on your clothes to make sure they can all go in one cycle together. Colors don’t matter in the dryer, but fabric type does. High heat for items high in polyester or spandex– like leggings, sports bras, some shirts, and most jeans– is bad. Heat will shrink lots of things, so make sure your clothes don’t say “low heat”, or “ no heat”, or anything about not putting them in a dryer at all. Absolutely never put a sweater or other knit wear in the dryer, that shit will come out looking like a doll’s sweater afterwards. I have lost many items to shrinkage over the years and as such am a coward and dry my stuff on low or no heat, which usually takes twice as long, but then I’m less likely to find a hole burnt into a shirt or a pair of pants that I can’t pull up past my thighs anymore. Fragile items like blouses, mesh stuff, lacey stuff, should generally be allowed to drip dry to avoid any issues, and I know a lot of folks who put their “unmentionables” in dryer-safe bags to keep them from getting tangled up or otherwise ruined, but I am lazy and don’t have any nice lingerie so I chuck that shit in on low heat with everything else.

3. Wait until the cycle is done (beep or flash, usually) and let the barrel slow its roll to a manageable speed before opening the door, or you will get clothes flung in your face. Old machines might be a little hot on the inside, be warned, and remember to take your lint out of the filter before you leave (!!).

That’s it! Nothing to it. :) Go out into the world and do your laundry without fear and with good manners, friends.

#sorry for some reason my brain said WE"RE GONNA BTICH ABOUT LAUNDRY TODAY so here I am #laundry #/rant

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aloysiavirgata · 4 years

Text

Petrichor

Title: Petrichor

Rating: Explicit

Summary: He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross.

Spoilers: Early S7

Author’s Notes:This is a casefile inspired by many things. The Season 7 timeline is a mess, I don’t know what else to say about that.

Early November in the temperate mountain valleys of southern Appalachia. The ground is carpet-soft with plush moss, and the hidden pools are still riotous with life. Ree needed only a pullover that morning, her doll Cordelia peering out of an old tote-bag stuffed with scraps of bread and feed corn. Her mother sent a lunch for her too, tucked in with her books and binoculars and a thermos of hot chocolate.

Ree in faded jeans and a lavender sweater picking her way over rocks and pine needles and fallen leaves, watching for the birds she can name and trying to mimic their calls. She points them out to Cordelia, who stares solemnly with blue-glass eyes. There are foxes, but they hide still. Ree dreams of befriending them. She can lure some of the deer within twenty feet now, and wishes she were Fern Arable, from Charlotte’s Web.

She takes a right instead of her customary left, wanting to test her new binoculars from a different vantage point. She skips over tree roots and rocks like a mountain goat, scarcely needing to look at the ground to keep her footing. The path curves sharply for a hundred feet before Ree finds herself at the edge of a wide pond, dense with duckweed. It is bordered with stands of ancient pine, with mossy boulders and half-sunken logs furred with algae. The silence is deep, but not frightening. It feels holy, like church. Godlight filters through the evergreens, the color of new peas. Somewhere, not far, falling water.

“Ohhhh,” Ree whispers to Cordelia. The beauty makes her chest hurt a little. She fumbles in the bag for her binoculars, laying Cordelia on a rock. Bread crusts and pencil ends spill from a loose seam. A rattle of deer corn on the stone.

Binoculars in place, Ree spots a heron across the pond, squirrels peeping from between the gold and red leaves of elm and sugarberry. She recognizes a deer she’s seen many times before, with a wide white blaze down her nose. Sudden movement catches her eye - a slim figure with long hair moving among the trees. Ree adjusts her lenses but cannot focus properly; the figure is blurred, always moving among the evergreen boughs.

The heron again. Squirrels. The deer now much closer. Then a pale ankle, a woman’s laugh.

“Helloooooooo,” Ree calls, braver than she feels. “I’m just lookin’ at birds and stuff! I’ll go if you want.”

Silence.

She chews her lip, uncertain. The woods don’t belong to anybody on paper, but there are chancy folk out here with their own laws. “Cordelia?” she whispers. “What do we do?”

Cordelia offers no opinion. Ree grabs a handful of corn and climbs onto a flat boulder. Just beside it is a little patch of grass, and she hopes the doe will come into it.

The laugh again and this time it’s much closer, just to her left. Were those fingers at her neck? Ree turns to look but tunnel vision sets in, the binoculars slapping hard against her chest when she drops them. The strap twists at her throat and she gasps, her hands springing open in surprise. She slips on the fallen corn and goes down hard on her spine against the rock.

The deer steps into the glade, her unusual face cautious but curious. She knows Ree will not make sudden movements like the others do.

Ree, dazed, watched the deer nibble the corn with her velvet lips. She tries to sit up, but it’s like her brain will not connect to her body. Her feet seem very far away.

Something pulls her hair and she manages a thin cry of pain. She’s freezing suddenly, the world glassy and distorted. Ree opens her mouth to call for help but she can’t; the greenness of the glade is in her throat now, and behind her eyes and inside her blood. The laugh again, so pretty, and then long arms are wrapped around her and Ree thanks Baby Jesus for saving her but oh!

Such teeth.

***

A quick glance in the rearview confirms once more that his hair’s pretty well grown back from the surprise birthday neurosurgery, and at thirty-eight such victories cannot be taken for granted. He tries to peer around the tight curve along the mountain road, but can make out only shadows. The bag of sunflower seeds ran dry twenty minutes ago, but he’s got a couple more in the trunk.

Beside him comes a rustle of paper. Scully’s printed out directions from MapQuest, checking off turns like a shopping list. “Still another three miles before the access road,” she says, not looking up from her trim navy-blue lap. She takes a sip of coffee.

Mulder coughs, says nothing. Things aren’t strained exactly, it’s not that. It’s more a liminal space. Everything’s fine, he tells himself. Everything’s fine.

He checks his hair again.

***

The town is shabby but proud; the roads are clean and there are no cars propped up on the trimmed lawns. On this block a hardware store, a stone church, a fire station, and a bakery. Despite the Fannie Flagg charm, Mulder expects the local homeowners are dying for a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s. There’s a billboard advertising a newly opened Cracker Barrel, which must count as progress to some.

The Ross home is a small, weatherbeaten clapboard in a stretch of small, weatherbeaten clapboards. Many of the houses have elaborate neo-classical porticoes taller than the actual roof. At the Rosses’, the mailbox is shaped like a dog, with a moveable tail instead of a flag. There are purple balloons hanging limply from its neck. Mulder noses the Crown Vic up the cracked asphalt of the driveway, engaging the parking brake before turning the engine off.

Scully gathers their files, straightens the picture of Rhiannon Ross paperclipped to the manila envelope. Her little face is joyful in the school photograph. She wears a sweater with purple hearts and has sun-bronzed skin. Her big hazel eyes are laughing, framed by golden braids.

“You ready?” he asks Scully.

She sighs. “Are we ever, with kids?”

“Nope.” Mulder straightens his tie. So strange to do these little rituals again, to convey authority and professionalism through a strip of ornamental fabric.

“You sure you’re okay?” Scully asks him again, fussing with a Post-It. “You know I still don’t think you should have been cleared for this, Mulder. You’re scarcely three weeks past severe trauma, and you haven’t even been back to the office.” She looks up, concern furrowing her brow.

He could tell her that when the gyre widened and spun out, it was she who held the center for him. He could tell her that the cool silver stream of her unvoiced voice stemmed the hellish tide of thoughts and premonition that threatened to drown his sentient mind. He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross.

Instead he crunches on a peppermint LifeSaver, washing it down with the rest of his cold coffee. “I get in the most trouble when I’m left to my own devices. You should be glad for a federally mandated excuse to keep an eye on me.”

She smiles at that. “Fair enough.”

They leave the stale air of the car for the fresh autumn breezes of northeast Alabama, the air so crisp it tastes like spring water. Mulder, a devout New Englander, is wary of the South, but cannot deny this to be a beautiful patch of it.

He puts his jacket on as Scully clips several paces ahead of him, bandbox fresh as always. He joins her on the little porch, and the front door opens before they have a chance to knock. Before them is a lanky blonde woman in worn jeans and a striped blouse. The shadows around her eyes look like bruises, lips papery and dry. For 26 years, these mothers have always been his mother, their homes his house in Chilmark.

“Y’all the FBI people?” she asks. Despite her stretchy vowels, brittle tension suffuses her voice.

“Yes ma’am,” Scully says. They display their badges for her perusal.

The woman nods, then ushers them in. She gestures to a floral couch, taking the chintz armchair across from it. Mulder settles at one end of the couch while Scully, less leggy, perches at the edge of the other. She is a slim smudge in the pastel room.

“I’m Iona Ross,” their host begins, rubbing a chewed thumbnail across raw knuckles. “I’m Ree’s mama.”

Behind her, on the wall, are family photographs. Ree has three older brothers. The largest photograph shows the four children arranged on a park bench, smiling in white shirts and blue jeans. Ree is missing her two front teeth.

A man enters the room, rawboned, with the same wheat colored hair as his wife. He’s got on a gray sweater beneath Carhartt overalls and carries a coffee tray. He has big hands with ropy tendons standing out, and it's clear he’s not used to playing host. His face is haggard.

“This is my husband Wyatt,” Iona says, as he puts the tray on the small table between her and the couch.

Mulder looks at the pristine coffee cups and saucers. He guesses this is their wedding china, only brought out for “best.” That it will be carefully placed back into a breakfront after hand-washing.

Wyatt sits in a blue La-Z-Boy, relieved to be finished with his task. “They told us y’all were the best ones to find Ree,” he says in a choppy voice. He reaches out to grip his wife’s hand.

Mulder, as he always does, longs for this to be true. “I can promise you there is no one at the FBI who will work harder for you,” he says.

Scully smiles sadly in his peripheral vision. “We have the police report, Mr. and Mrs. Ross. But it’s always better if you can walk us through the events yourself.”

“Iona and Wyatt, please,” Wyatt says. “Anyhow, it was Sunday morning and Ree had just got new binoculars for her birthday on Saturday. She, uh, she’s nine now. Real smart little thing, likes nature and all, really likes birds.” His voice breaks. He scrubs at his face with his hands.

Iona takes over, voice raw but steady. “Well, she packed up her little bag with some bird food you know, and her binoculars and some nature books and all. Her doll Cordelia of course, and I made a lunch. She’ll go out for hours in the woods. And whatever, uh, happened it was before she ate ‘cause all the food was there.”

Mulder glances at his notes, just to look at something other than Iona’s desperate face. “The police report says her doll and her bag were found by a pond with the lunch still inside, but her binoculars were missing. The items were found Monday morning by a search party. That’s correct?”

“Yes sir,” Iona replies. “And there was algae all over Cordelia and the bag and the food, even though it was still wrapped up. It was even in the hot chocolate in the thermos.” She looks eagerly from Mulder to Scully. “Y’all think that means something, the algae being on closed-up food? I never heard of it. Maybe it’s like a, whaddya call it, an MO.”

“Unusual details are always good details,” Scully says in her gentle way. “Unusual facts can certainly help narrow things down, Mis- Iona.” She leans forward now, palms splayed over her sharp knees. “I know this next question is painful, but I do need to ask. It says that the pond was searched and that neither Ree nor any of her clothing have been found. But, from the photographs, it seems like there’s a bit of debris in the pond. Logs and large rocks, mostly, and lots of algae and duckweed. Is there any chance that Ree would have gone into it on her own?”

Wyatt gets to his feet. “She ain’t stupid,” he snaps, pacing. “She didn’t do nothing wrong, and despite what you may think, we’re not backwoods morons too ignorant to raise children.” His pain seeps a dark aura into the air, ink through clear water. “Our other three are still fine, you notice. Police report say that?”

“We don’t doubt you at all, sir,” Mulder says. “No one is trying to blame Ree or your family for her disappearance. Agent Scully and I just have to review all lines of questioning to make sure the police have done everything they can thus far. We want to make sure we’re starting from a helpful place as we take over the investigation.”

Wyatt leans against the wall, looking hollow. “Jenny Greenteeth,” he mutters.

Iona, with shaking hands, pours four cups of coffee. “Wyatt,” she hisses. “Not now.”

“Jenny Greenteeth?” Scully repeats, writing it down. “Is that som-”

“It’s an old story,” Mulder says, surprised. “A nursery bogey.”

He is met by three blank stares.

“A nursery bogey is a story created by adults with the specific goal of making children avoid certain behaviors, or to encourage generally good behavior,” Mulder says. He is intrigued by Wyatt invoking the name. “The Namahage of Japan, the Scottish bodach, Russia’s Baba Yaga - all of these legends are about mythical beings who will in some way harm misbehaving children. Sometimes they get specific. Jenny Greenteeth, like the kappa and bunyip, is said to snatch children who venture to close to dangerous water.”

Wyatt is staring at him. “How’d you know all that?”

Mulder spreads his hands in a vague gesture. “These kinds of stories have always interested me.” He feels it best not to elaborate.

“He’s an internationally recognized expert,” Scully chimes in, rather generously. “Can you tell us why you mentioned this particular legend?”

“Don’t mind him,” Iona says, passing around the coffee. “We’re just both about to fall to pieces.”

Wyatt scowls. “I’m telling you,” he says stubbornly. “It’s her.”

Mulder adds cream to his coffee and takes a sip. It’s worlds better than the gas station dregs he just finished. “I know the story of Jenny Greenteeth comes from the north of England and from Scotland. This area has a big Scots-Irish influence, doesn’t it?”

“Yessir. There’s a big Scottish festival hereabouts, and both our families are Scottish from way back. Ree’s named after my Granny Rhiannon. You think that means something?” Iona’s voice is strained, hungry for any morsel.

Mulder shakes his head. “No, not necessarily. Probably not, and I apologize for getting off topic. Wyatt, tell me more about this, uh, theory you’ve got.” He finishes the coffee in a long gulp.

Wyatt rubs his face. “Well, listen. I know how it sounds to me, and I reckon it sounds even crazier to y’all. But growing up around here, every kid knows about the little pools in these hollers. Real deep ponds will spring up practically overnight, I guess ‘cause the ground is weak from all the mining. In the spring you get these real fast streams from the snow runoff. So kids run wild through the woods but they know to be careful. All the meemaws tell ‘em if they aren’t careful, Jenny Greenteeth’ll grab ‘em at the water. She’s got, you know, long black hair and real long arms and green teeth.” He shrugs, a bit sheepish.

“And you think this, uh, this creature took Rhiannon?” Scully asks, managing to sound both compassionate and deadpan at the same time.

Iona and Wyatt exchange a glance.

“Well, there’s a bit more than that,” Iona says, turning her mug in her hands. “Over the summer a woman moved in out in the woods. She, uh, took over some old hunter’s shack not real far from where Ree went missing. Her name’s Tallulah Church. She’s real tall and skinny, probably at least six feet, and I’ll be damned but she’s got green teeth.”

“Green teeth,” Mulder repeats, intrigued. He glances at Scully, who’s scribbling.

“Pale green like jade,” Wyatt says, warming up to his subject. “The kids are all scared of her, call her Jenny Greenteeth ‘cause they know the story. They say the dogs won’t go around there even.”

“A few hunting dogs have gone missing up that way,” Iona adds, her reluctance clearly fading. “Tallulah comes into town every month or so in her station wagon, gets some supplies, then rattles back up into the mountains. She seems okay I guess, just never really talks to nobody.”

“She gives every kid around here the evil eye,” Wyatt asserts, returning to his recliner. “She’s bad news. There’s things going on with her.”

Iona shoots him a hard look. “I’m sure the FBI isn’t interested in a bunch of mountain superstition.”

Scully pipes up. “When you say there are things going on with her, is there anything specific you can point to? Anything stand out in your memory?”

A glance between Wyatt and Iona. “Just gives me a bad feeling,” Wyatt says. “You ever meet people like that?”

Mulder is curious as to what they won’t tell him, but decides not to create conflict just yet. These things always out themselves, but for now it’s clear he’s learned all he can.

He exchanges a quick nod with Scully, who has already closed her notebook. “Wyatt, Iona, we’re going to do our best to find out what happened to Ree. It sounds like talking to Tallulah Church may be a good start. If she lives nearby she may have seen something or someone involved in the disappearance.”

Wyatt snorts. “The police already talked to her. Doesn’t know a thing, they say. Search parties are still out though, and we’re heading out again when we’re done here.”

Scully gets to her feet, and Mulder follows. “Thank you for talking to us,” Scully says. “We’ll review all of this information and be in touch as we can. We’ll let you get back to the search.”

The Rosses rise, hands are shaken. Iona runs her fingers through her hair before crossing her arms tightly back across her chest. “Please bring her home,” she says. “Even - even if…” She trails off, weeping.

Wyatt draws her close, and Mulder and Scully slip past them, barely noticed.

***

It’s just past six by the time they get to their motel, but the sky is black. The parking lot gravel smatters against the fenders as Mulder parks in front of the little office. He gets out to contemplate a luggage cart when Scully emerges. She promptly turns her ankle on the uneven ground, but Mulder manages to grab her by the upper arm before she falls.

“You okay?”

She stares up at him, her breath quick.

Scully glances at his hand and he remembers to let go. She looks away, tests her footing on the gravel. “I’m good,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“Scully fine, or regular fine?”

She smooths her jacket. “How’s your cranium?”

Mulder goes to the office at that, and retrieves their room keys from the drowsy clerk. A part of him hopes the reservation got messed up, that there’s only one room. But both are available, a queen en suite for each. They’re on the first floor around back, next door neighbors, the clerk says. Mulder swipes the bureau plastic and heads back out to Scully, who has found safer footing on the sidewalk.

He passes her the key. “You want to get some dinner? I saw a Cracker Barrel back yonder.” He drawls for her amusement.

“Sure. I want to take a shower first though. Give you a call when I’m done?”

“Okay.”

He wants to kiss her but won’t. He wants to suggest a joint shower to conserve water, but won’t. Her eyes do a quick scan of his face, perhaps reading these thoughts. It would only be fair if she could, really.

Scully grabs her bag and heads to her room. He waits until her door clicks shut before heading to his own.

***

Mulder thought of Jenny Greenteeth in the shower, of skeletal arms grasping at him through the drain. It made the tops of his feet tingle, and he hurried out to towel off.

From what he’s read, Rhiannon Ross seems like a steady, responsible child, unlikely to go haring off through dangerous parts of the woods, or testing the limits of a slippery embankment. And the algae troubles him, the presence of it on her belongings.

Mulder dresses in jeans and a t-shirt, pulling a parka on for warmth. He forgot his hair gel, and his head looks a bit like a startled sea creature. Scully doubtless has something in her portable salon.

She meets him in front of the car, Scully-casual in grey slacks and a black sweater. Her hiking boots put her shoulders about level with his ribs, and he is reminded that the love of his life is built on a songbird’s frame. Mulder recalls the fine velveteen skin at her inner thigh, like the breast of a chickadee.

“Nice hair,” she says.

“Thanks, I’m trying to channel Lyle Lovett.” He strums an invisible guitar.

She slouches against the rough brick of the building, backlit by neon. At her feet are bunches of plastic flowers jammed into the white quartz around the ragged boxwood hedge. “So. Cracker Barrel, huh?”

“Sure, I figured we could sit in the rockers and talk about the old days. Those kids with their jazz and soda pop, am I right? Spit some chaw, vote Republican. Besides, it seems to be either that or a dubious establishment called A-1 Panda Kitchen. The diner closes at 7.”

Scully wrinkles her nose. “Cracker Barrel it is.”

***

There’s a MISSING! flier of Ree on the table, dog-eared and slipped into a plastic page protector. It’s sporting the same school photo from their dossiers. Mulder pushes it gently aside, feeling like he should apologize.

Scully frowns at the menu, taps at it with an immaculate fingernail. “I don’t see how anyone eats here regularly and lives long enough to reminisce about the old days in a rocker. Even the salad has fried chicken in it.”

He remembers when she would cheerfully put away a plate of ribs, but now she cares about fiber and antioxidants along with her tailoring. And her stupid bee pollen crap. “Aw, Scully, you’re citified. Surely you’ve got some kin in these parts. Hardy mountain folk descended from fleeing Irish potato farmers. You can hand le these vittles, little lady. It ain’t possum.” He considers the chicken-fried steak with interest. It comes with gravy.

“Stop talking like you’re on Hee-Haw.” She looks thoughtful. “I suppose there probably are distant cousins out this way, but none that I know of.”

He blows a straw wrapper past her shapely nose, which she ignores with practiced dignity.

“Pork tenderloin, that seems all right.” Scully closes her menu with an air of resignation. She does not like being fussy with her ordering.

The waitress comes by and he commits to the fried steak over Scully’s clear distaste.

“Re-myelinating,” he assures her, handing over the menu.

“That’s not-”

“Shhh.”

They amuse themselves with several rounds of a little peg game, and Mulder decides to purchase one before they leave.

“Mom was pretty calm there, don’t you think?” Mulder drums his fingers on the table. He doesn’t really suspect the parents, but the sad fact is that they’re most often the perpetrators. It at least bears discussing.

Scully shrugs. “Police don’t seem too concerned. Growing up in a house with four kids, I remember my mom keeping her cool in completely insane situations. Charlie had a compound fracture once, when my dad was away. His femur was poking out the front of his thigh, he was in shock, and mom just handled it like a skinned knee until the ambulance came.” She shakes her head, remembering.

“Must be a dominant trait.”

She squeezes lemon into her water, then picks out an errant seed. “Hardy mountain folk. So there’s no body in the pond, she probably wouldn’t have wandered off without her food and doll, and there’s no ransom demand or strange footprints at the site. So where the hell did she go, Mulder? Where’s Ree?”

“I think she was in the water at some point.”

Scully narrows her eyes, suspicious. She twirls a peg between her fingers. “At some point? Not terminally?”

“You know I hate to speculate, Scully,” he says, in tones of wounded innocence.

She snorts. “At last we come to Jenny Greenteeth.”

“It was Wyatt’s idea,” he reminds her, chewing his straw. He is excited by a new monster to mash with Scully.

“Sure, blame the other kid,” she says, with a kind of weary amusement.

“I’m withholding judgement until we talk to this Tallulah Church tomorrow. I’m interested in those teeth.”

“It’s always teeth with you,” she says. She captures two pegs, then looks up at him. She is well pleased with herself, smirky and bright-eyed.

He doesn’t want to say anything. He wants to find Ree, dead or alive, and go home. But he feels pretty sure he can’t do that until unburdened. Holman Hart’s repressed emotions may have controlled the weather, but Mulder knows his own can control the fate of this case. He brushes his fingers against her palm. “Scully.”

Her expression tightens, but she doesn’t respond.

“We have to talk this out.” He is concerned with where it may lead, but this particular truth is in her. He no longer doubts her feelings at this juncture, only her willingness to do anything more with them.

Scully sighs. She toys with a sugar packet. It amuses and aggravates him that she can pore over dead infants and handcuff mutants to her bathtub with little discomfiture, but talk about emotions and she squirms like a kid in church.

“I don’t think there’s much to talk out, really,” she says, terse.

She wouldn’t, of course she wouldn’t, and there are times he could wring her swan-like throat.

“Well, humor me then,” he says, with exaggerated patience. “Because you woke up in my bed two weeks ago wearing nothing but smudged makeup, and we’ve been avoiding any real mention of that. And now that I’m properly back to work, I’d kind of like to know what the hell we’re doing.”

She looks around, like anyone’s listening to two weary Feds on a Wednesday night. “I really don’t see any reason to have this conversation right now, Mulder.”

The waitress delivers their food and, sensing tension, scurries away.

In the past few weeks he’s thought back to that hellish summer when a bee had saved Scully from addressing the fact that she’d clearly been willing to jump his bones before skipping town. Well, anaphylaxis wasn’t going to rescue her this time. “Why are you being like this?” he asks, as though she’s ever different.

She leans forward, piqued. “Like what? Not wanting to talk about my… my… personal life in the middle of an Alabama Cracker Barrel while looking for a missing child?”

Her personal life, Jesus fucking Christ. “You’ve been avoiding me other than some medical check-ins since you left that morning, so I’m trying to figure out what happens now. Come on, Scully. It’s not like I left those underwear on the desk for you before we headed out here.”

She blushes, bless her, and talks to make him shut up. “I can tell you that I don’t regret what happened.” Scully applies herself to the tenderloin with an intensity usually reserved for the mysteriously deceased.

Mulder knows it’s the best he’s likely to get from her at the moment, that he’s pushing her to give him something he can’t even define. But he remembers with longing the intricate ocean of her thoughts, the fractal beauty of them as they wove into his own. He was still bathing in the quantum entanglement of her when she’d checked his pupils that evening, when he’d kissed her in the certainty that she’d drop both her little flashlight and her guard.

Scully had kissed him back like a mermaid with a half-drowned sailor.

He looks at her again, knows that he sees only the surface of her now. “Scully, I’m not asking you to go steady.”

She laughs a little at that, looks up at him with wary interest. “So what do you want, then?”

It’s a damned good question. He has general ideas of lying in bed with her while she declaims on the marvels of the quadrupole ion trap. He would like to map her freckles, like a star chart.

“For now I’m just glad to know you don’t regret it,” he hedges.

She searches the ceiling for inspiration before returning her cool gaze to him. “It was absurd of me to act like nothing happened, to treat you like any other patient since you weren’t back at work. It was easy to ignore what we… what happened. I’m sorry, Mulder.”

She still can’t say it, he notices. But it’s something. “Your other patients are dead, Scully. So I’m a special case no matter how you look at it.”

There is warmth in her eyes. “You really are,” she says.

***

Scully’s got their peg game in a Cracker Barrel bag on her lap. Mulder had wanted to stockpile cheese blocks and sausages against future car trips, but she had put her foot firmly down. “Do you think we’ll find her, Mulder? Her remains, probably, but still. It would be something for the family.”

He shrugs. It’s hard to separate hopes from expectations sometimes, especially in their line. “I really don’t know. We need to get a better look at the area she went missing, and I’m pretty curious about this Tallulah woman.”

“Children can have green teeth if their mothers took tetracycline during late pregnancy,” she tells him. “It crosses the placenta and binds to the calcium in the fetus’s developing teeth.”

He grins at her. “Only one alternate explanation? You’re slowing down in your old age, Scully.”

Scully bares her little fangs. “Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.”

“Attagirl.”

***

He parks around back this time, right in front of their dreary rooms. “I figure we’ll head out around 9 or so tomorrow,” he says. “Let the air warm up a bit before we hit the woods.”

Scully nods, yawning. “Pond first, or Tallulah?”

He considers this. “I think it’s best if we have the lay of the land when we talk to her.”

“Okay.”

Mulder turns the car off, but they stay in their seats with the inertia of food and time difference and mental exhaustion. Even the lost children they manage to bring home are haunted afterwards. It’s hard to imagine a good outcome here.

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, turns to him with sleepy eyes. She yawns again, then reaches out to muss his hair. “Come by in the morning,” she says. “I’ll help you out.”

She goes to her room then, the bag dangling from her fingertips. She doesn’t look back at him before she shuts the door.

***

He stretches out on the bedspread, mulling over her words at dinner, and annoyed at himself for the distraction from Ree Ross. What could he have expected from this, though? Scully’s not Diana. Scully wouldn’t flaunt their shared bed to other agents, wouldn’t drape herself over his desk while reading grimoires and classified documents. Christ, he could marry her and she’d probably think a wedding band was unprofessional at work, his uptight darling.

It’s strange for Diana to be dead. He’d stopped trusting her in the final hours of her life, but he didn’t want her dead. She was a rare and capable creature, however dangerous. She was solitary and sleek and fast.

He recalls the choices he’d made what she glided back into his life, her ruthless intellect and legs as long as a midwinter night. He recalls Scully’s face when he swore Diana was playing a long game, all for a nobler cause.

He recalls the dusky labyrinth of her mind and what he saw at the center of it; a beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

***

Diana slips through his dreams again, but not in bridal white, not with the round belly of Taweret. She is dead, but not the dead of his other visions. She is weeks dead, greying and skeletal. He can see patches of bone through her ragged dress but her eyes, her eyes are vivid and whole and the color of cabochon emeralds. They are luminescent in the nightmare forest of his dream, beckoning him. It is a leafless forest, bleak, with bony-armed trees looming over him.

He finds her in a blackwater creek, standing in the middle of it as the water surges past her calves. She smiles at him with too many teeth. “Hello, Fox,” she says. She bats her lashes. “I apologize for my appearance, but they didn’t embalm.”

“Do you need help?” he asks her, casting about for a long branch.

She shakes her head, hair still lush and glossy. The water rises up her legs.

“Is this real? I mean, are you a ghost or is this all in my head?”

The water whips around her thighs. “What’s real?” she asks. “Perception is reality. If you believe it to be true, it’s true enough for government work.” Diana laughs at her own joke.

A white deer walks up to him, with softly furred antlers like fresh snow. It looks at him with black-irised eyes, wet and bottomless voids. There may be constellations in them. Mulder reaches out to stroke its muzzle as Diana looks on. The deer opens its mouth and dried corn comes pouring out.

The water swallows Diana then, before receding fully. She lies on the bank as he remembers her, whole and striking. Her dead eyes are their usual smoky blue, her dress no longer decomposed.

He wakes up when the ground swallows her.

***

Morning, bright and chilly in the mountains with light of a purity that never touches DC. He remembers a dream with Diana, with water and deer and a general sense of Jungian dystopia. It’s nice to see his subconscious branching out from its usual reruns of family fare.

Wary of fungal spores embedded in the matted carpet, he steps into his untied dress shoes and clomps to the bathroom wearing nothing else but his boxers. He brushes his teeth in the tiny sink, then wets his unruly hair.

There’s a knock at the door and he groans. “Just a minute!” he yells around the toothbrush. He hopes it’s someone with the extra towels he asked for.

Mulder clomps back towards the door and, lacking a peephole, he pops it open a fraction to accept his linens. Instead of the housekeeper he’d been expecting, he finds Scully kitted out for a hike, brandishing a canister of mousse.

Cold air sweeps in with her laugh.

“Good morning to you too,” he grouses, ushering her in. He secures the chain when he closes the door.

“Nice outfit,” she says brightly. “What’s with the shoes? Is this a formal hike? I wasn’t sure because you’re not wearing pants, but…”

He scowls, sitting on the bed. “You’re mighty chipper. I’m trying to avoid athlete’s foot, if you must know, and I couldn’t find my socks.”

Scully rummages through his bag for a pair of thick socks, which she tosses to him. She gestures at the bed. “May I?”

“Not if you’re going to be mean.” He kicks the shoes off and tugs the socks on.

Scully sits beside him, shaking the can of mousse. “Thought I could do your hair before we prank call some boys. French braid?”

Mulder stands to pull his jeans up, and the weight shift makes her bounce a little on the mattress. “Let me have that mousse.”

She gestures for his hand, then sprays a lilac-scented pouf into his cupped palm.

“Thanks,” he says, and scrunches it into his hair. He styles himself before the dresser mirror while she watches, amused.

“You left before my beauty regimen last time,” he remarks.

In the mirror, Scully shakes her head but doesn’t seem bothered. “I made some calls this morning about Tallulah Church. There’s no phone or plumbing up there, but the sheriff’s office said she’s usually right around her home. And the motel clerk drew me a map of how to get to the pond from the access road, then how to get to Tallulah’s.” She waves several crumpled papers.

He pulls a t-shirt over his head, then a fleece. “Aren’t you a busy little bee? Looks like someone’s getting her cartography badge this week.” Mulder returns to the bed to put his boots on.

“I’ve got evidence vials too,” she says, producing them from her pockets. “We’re going to find out what happened to Ree.” Her eyes are big and solemn.

Scully masquerades her tenderheartedness as honor, but Mulder didn’t need a God Module to know why she took that terrible dog in years ago. The depth of cold Dr. Scully’s compassion would shock their colleagues, and he likes this secret knowledge about her. Even Skinner, who reveres her only just below the Constitution, underestimates the fierceness of her empathy.

“What?” Scully asks.

Mulder cups her splendid jaw, thumb at her sphenoid bone. He kisses the space between her eyebrows, and she makes a small noise.

“We have to go,” she breathes, and is outside before he can stand.

***

Not a word about it in the car, just miles of silence broken only by Scully giving directions. The drive ends in a flat patch of dirt by the forest’s edge, a scrubby path poking out from the ferns and overhang.

“Our little forays into the forest never end well,” she observes. “But at least tick season is winding down. After you, Mulder.”

He pushes into the woods, holding branches back so Scully doesn’t get smacked in the head. “Been a while, though. We’re tougher now. We’re hardened woodspersons.”

“And I have a lighter,” she adds.

He grins. “Show off. Hey, how far is it?”

Scully consults her map. “Well, we’re coming at it from a different angle than Ree would have probably taken, but this is the most direct. Looks like maybe a hundred yards up ahead before it opens into a clearing.”

The path unfolds as she said, and suddenly a storybook pond is before him. Squirrels frisk in the branches and birds call to each other across the glen. The surface of the water is velvety with duckweed, like a perfectly clipped baseball field. Shafts of sunlight illuminate red and white mushrooms at the bases of oaks, the feathers of golden-green ferns. He sniffs the air, lush and tannic.

“Oh, wow,” Scully says, coming up behind him. “Mulder, this is unreal. It’s like a Waterhouse painting.”

They pick their way down to the edge of the pond, startling several fat bullfrogs and a garter snake. “Imagine being a kid here, Scully.”

She shakes her head, admiring. “It’s a Wonderland. I’d be out here all the time too.” Scully crosses her arms, staring upwards with a rapturous expression. “From what her dad said, Ree’s a lot like I was as a kid. I didn’t have my own binoculars though. Had to steal Bill’s.”

“Fuck Bill,” he says cheerfully. “You deserved them.”

They circle the perimeter, looking for...what? He never quite knows. The pond makes gentle rippling sounds as the local fauna heads for deeper water under his scrutiny.

Scully pauses at a section of churned-up dirt. She squats for a better view, pokes delicately at the earth. “They made a mess of this, Jesus. At least they had enough sense to band their shoes.” In the dirt, distinct tracks marked with horizontal rubber band lines around the soles distinguish the CSI team’s prints.

Mulder crouches bedside her, spots something golden half-buried in the soft ground. “Tweezers, Scully?”

She passes them over and from the ground he plucks a kernel of deer corn, half coated in dried algae. “Mulder, look. There are more of them, maybe twenty, all pushed in or smashed on this rock. And most of them have algae on them.” She frowns. “The footprints on the ground over it, they’re not marked and they’re too small for an adult.”

Sure enough, there’s a mess of kid-sized sneaker tracks all over where the greenish corn is, muddy smears on the rocks adjacent. They’re algae-covered as well, and too far from the water for such a coating. He stares, thinking.

Scully, meanwhile, is labeling tiny evidence jars in pencil, filling them with samples of algae and earth and corn. She finds the cap of a glittery marker. “Who processed this crime scene? Ray Charles?” She seals it up, tags it.

“No kidding. Hey, look. There’s a gap between those two big boulders over there. If you wanted to watch someone and hide, it would be a good spot. You think they searched it?”

She snorts with derision.

“Me too. I’m gonna go take a look. You stay here. Sit on that rock there, it’ll put you at about Ree’s height.”

Scully passes him a few vials and a pencil, settles on the rock. “I think this is where she left Cordelia, based on the photos, though they were mostly closeup. I don’t remember any good overviews.” Some algae remains on the rock, and Scully looks sad.

Mulder jogs around the pond as best he can, but the bracken is heavy and he has to climb over a few logs. Is it really so crazy to think Ree tripped and fell out here, slipped quietly into the pond and snagged on a submerged rock or branch? Lots of little nibbling things in the water; it happens.

His mind returns to the algae. But if Ree went in, how did it come out? Who stepped all over that deer corn?

He’s between the boulders now, with a clear view of Scully across the way. He walks a little grid by the boulder, looking for bits of trace evidence. Snagged hair, footprints, forgotten belongings, anxiously chewed nails. But there is nothing. Either he misjudged the hiding spot, or the perpetrator has been very mindful of Locard’s Exchange Principle

“SCULLY!” he calls, setting off flurries of birds.

“MULDER?” She scans the area where he’s hidden.

“CAN YOU SEE ME?”

“NO!”

He climbs up one of the rocks, waves to her. She waves back from her perch. From atop the boulder, he scans the ground below. There aren’t any footprints but, squinting, he can see trails of dried algae along the edge of the ferns, where the rocky area begins.

He calls Scully over, and she moves through the forest as lightly as the squirrels. He points at his finding when she arrives. “That’s weird, right?”

She scoops some up in a vial, the holds it to the light. “Maybe she was playing at the edge, got her hands dirty, went to wipe them, and slipped.”

Mulder shakes his head. “That doesn’t explain the algae on the unopened food, Scully.”

“It could have been simple contamination. Her parents say she’s out here all the time. If she uses the same thermos and bag, brings the same books and toys, it’s not exactly far fetched to think some of it remained from last time and grew in the sun. Busy mom with four kids, how thoroughly is she going to scrub everything down for a kid who’s always outside? Algae are extremely tenacious, and it was out here in the sun for about 26 hours.”

He gazes at the duckweed, lets his vision swim until everything is a green blur. “Maybe,” he says. “But I want to talk to Tallulah.”

“Greenteeth was my delight,” Scully sings, appallingly off-key. “Greenteeth was my heart of gold.”

“You’re a riot,” he says dryly. Delightedly.

“Exposure to copper or nickel,” Scully says, clambering over a log. “Septic cholestasis.”

He might marry her after all.

***

Tallulah’s little shack looks old as the mountains, with log walls and a shake roof. There’s a tiny porch tacked on the front, and a wall of firewood being gnawed by two spotted goats. They stare at Mulder with their rectangular-pupiled eyes.

He reaches out to pet them and startles when they bleat loudly at his overture. They scamper off behind the house.

Scully pokes the toe of her boot into a plastic bucket, rights it. “Her car seems to be here,” she observes, indicating a battered old Volvo wagon.

“A European car, no wonder everyone here hates her.”

Scully smirks.

They walk up to the house, Mulder withdrawing his identification. It generally gets a snappier reaction the further West and South it travels, but Mulder is also wary of a demented libertarian streak that runs through the country at odd intervals. Seams of it appear throughout Appalachia, and federal agents of various stripes have been fired on by feistier residents.

Scully, thankfully, is a quick draw and a dead shot.

They don’t get the chance to knock before a woman who must be Tallulah Church stands before them on the other side of the screen door. She’s close to Mulder’s height, thin to the point of emaciation, and pale enough to make Scully look freshly tanned. She has beautiful black hair to her waist, and eyes the color of ferns. They seem too bright in her gaunt, colorless face. She’s dressed in a Huck Finn ensemble of castoff men’s work clothing. On her hands are faded canvas gardening gloves.

Mulder shows her his badge and introduces them. Scully wordlessly displays her own identification.

Tallulah grins widely, her teeth perfect and straight and pearly green. “Well come on in,” she says, turning back into the house. Her feet clomp loudly in their heavy boots.

Mulder glances at Scully, who still seems taken aback by this gawky apparition. He holds the door open and they follow Tallulah into the house.

The little shack creaks with every step, and smells of woodsmoke and earth and herbs. The interior walls are the same weathered gray as the outside. The whole thing is just one room, with a bed in one corner and a kitchen consisting of a fireplace, a dry sink, and a table with several mismatched chairs. Tallulah is occupying a black metal one, and her impossibly long, thin limbs make Mulder think of Jack Skellington. He can’t tell if she’s twenty or fifty.

“Sit down, please,” she says. “The table’s not much but I reckon it would be weird to offer you the bed.” She smiles again. Her voice is as drawling as everyone else in town, but there’s something different about it, something strangely polished and almost British.

They take their seats. “Miss Church,” Scully begins.

“Tallulah, please.”

“Tallulah. Agent Mulder and I are investigating the disappearance of Rhiannon Ross. She went missing on Sunday morning. Given that you live not far from the area where her belongings were found, we wanted to ask you some questions.” Scully opens her file folder, pen poised like a hovering dragonfly.

Tallulah levels her remarkable eyes with Scully’s. “No ma’am. I know who Ree is, it’s a small town and she’s out here a lot, but I didn’t see her that day. Real nice little girl though. She feeds the deer sometimes.”

Mulder perks up. “Yeah? We saw some deer corn out where she went missing. Did you see her feeding them that morning?”

Tallulah sighs. “No, I’m sorry. As I’ve told the police, I didn’t see a bit of her on Sunday. Which is sort of odd itself, because she’d always be out on a day like that. Too shy to come up to the house, but she liked to watch the goats. They’re not even mine, but I leave them food and water, so we’re friends now.”

Behind her, on the dry sink, Mulder notices green smears of moss or mildew. Or algae.

“I know you’ve spoken to Sherriff McLeod already,” Scully continues. “So we appreciate your patience.”

“It’s a terrible thing for a child to go missing,” Tallulah says, shaking her head. “I wish I did have something to tell, but I just don’t. I’ve seen the search parties around - I guess they searched the pond.”

“You say you knew who Ree was because it’s a small town, but I got the sense you didn’t mingle much with the good townsfolk,” Mulder observes.

Tallulah chuckles at this. “No sir, not much, which suits them and me just fine.” She lifts her hands to eye level and wiggles her bony gloved fingers. “They think I’m spooky.”

Mulder smiles in spite of himself. “I know a little bit about that. So tell me, Tallulah, you from around here?”

She shakes her head. “Not from anywhere, really, but I was raised outside Savannah in a rich ladies’ orphanage. That’s why I sound like Dixie Carter.”

“An orphanage?” Scully repeats.

“Yes ma’am. I was left at the Baptist Ladies’ Home when I was a day or so old. Nothing with me but a plastic laundry basket and a gingham tablecloth. They said I was a frightful looking little thing.” She smiles ruefully, showing them her green teeth again.

Scully, true to form, tackles that bull head on. “Tallulah, I’m also a doctor, and I’m compelled to ask about your teeth. Do you know why they’re green?”

An expansive shrug. “Oh, the doctors that saw us there had all kinds of ideas of what was wrong with me, but I never got anything official. Marfan Syndrome, that was one.” She snorts. “‘Course, the other kids heard Martian and with the green teeth they decided I was an alien.”

“There’s a genetic test for it now,” Scully says. “You could find out for sure.”

Tallulah chuckles again. “Thanks, Doc, but it doesn’t matter much. I feel just fine. Always have, and I don’t plan to have any kids. I’m twenty-six and haven’t had anything worse than a cold.”

Mulder watches the Doc jot this down and he returns to the subject at hand. “So you moved here over the summer. Where’d you live before this?”

“Oh, gosh, just lots of tiny towns like this one. I find these empty little cabins, you know, and stay for a while. Then I move on when I get restless.”

“The Rosses said you come into town every so often to get supplies and gas. May I ask where you get the money for that?” Scully looks up to ask this.

Tallulah looks sly. “I don’t know that I want to discuss that with the FBI,” she says.

Mulder exchanges a glance with his fellow narc, who nods imperceptibly to any eye but his own. “We’re just here to find Rhiannon,” he reassures Tallulah. “Not do the DEA’s job for them. Neither Agent Scully nor I wish to fill out extra paperwork.”

Tallulah considers this, glancing between them. “Well,” she says at last. “I reckon you could say I’m real good with plants; I can coax anything to grow. And in boring little towns there’s, uh, a lot of people who like plants.”

Scully looks unimpressed by this attempt at euphemism. “Plants,” she repeats.

Tallulah shrugs. “I’ve said as much as I’m going to on that subject without a lawyer. But anyhow, what’s that got to do with Ree?”

“Just trying to get to know a bit about you,” Mulder says. “Sometimes we find witnesses have seen things they don’t even realize they’ve seen, and talking generally can help.”

“I know everything I’ve seen,” Tallulah asserts. “You live out here like this, you don’t miss much. It’s not like I have a lot to distract me.”

“What were you doing last Sunday morning, then?” Mulder asks.

She shrugs. “Woke up, ate, got dressed. Went over to the pump for some water.” She gestures at some distant point through the back wall. “Then I went looking for some mushrooms and things to eat. Eggs. Lots of greens out there.”

Scully narrows her eyes. “Ree was in the woods that morning too. You’re certain you didn’t see or hear anything?”

Tallulah scoffs. “The woods are pretty big. Might as well say we were both in Alabama.”

“Wyatt and Iona are under the impression that you don’t like children,” Scully says. “Have there been any particular incidents that would make them feel that way? Any encounters with Ree? It must have been irritating to have her running all over the edge of your property.”

“No, she’s all right and besides, it’s hardly my property. Scared of me like the rest of them, but all right. I like the way she is with animals, real gentle and all. Got a kind heart, that girl, and I wish more were like her. But here’s the plain facts. My mama didn’t want me, none of the parents who came to the Home wanted me, the other kids thought I was an alien, and I learned to just keep mostly to myself because I can take a hint. I go walking outside a lot, do some fishing in the little ponds and all, and that’s how I know who Ree is. You know the kids call me Jenny Greenteeth.”

“We’d heard that, yes,” Mulder says, feeling uncomfortably sorry for Tallulah. He knows empathizing with suspects is his weakness, and that it drives Scully up the wall.

“It’s not the first time, won't be the last. But I know Ree’s daddy thinks I hurt Ree. He’s pretty disapproving of my...plant business and I think he half believes that stupid old fairy tale.” She rolls her eyes.

“I saw you had a whole lot of firewood,” Mulder says, shifting gears. “You staying here all winter?”

“I never know, but I’d like to. Doubt I will though, with this, uh, situation.” She picks at her gloves. “People can start to get unkind.”

Mulder gestures to the dry sink. “Seems kind of damp. Looks like you have some mold or something growing over there.”

The three of them follow his finger with their eyes, where bright green streaks the wall and sink. Mulder sees that there is far more than he originally noticed, spread over much of the wall all the way to the bed.

“Oh, yeah, these places always are,” Tallulah says. “You can always find these old cabins if you look a little, but it’s hard to keep them snug. Part of why I move so much. They just sort of collapse around you.”

Mulder glances at Scully, and they agree in a blink.

“Well, I wouldn’t move any time soon, Tallulah,” Scully says in her Bad Cop way. “And I’d take a break from business until the situation - as you called it - is sorted out.”

Tallulah looks uncomfortable, but nods. “Yes ma’am.”

“Thanks for your time,” Mulder says. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

They rise from their rickety chairs and head out the front door. On his way past the bed, Mulder opens an evidence vial and scrapes it along the wall to gather a film of algae. If Tallulah notices, she doesn’t remark.

The sun feels over-bright after the dim cabin and, squinting, they pick their way carefully back to where they parked. One of the goats is on the hood of their rental.

Mulder is delighted by this, if only because he can write “GOAT ATTACK” on the return form. He hopes it will find its way across Kersh’s desk and make him chug Mylanta straight from the bottle.

Scully, far more vexed, begins throwing fallen pine cones at it.

“Nice arm,” Mulder says. “Try bringing your knee up next time.”

She glares at him, exasperated. “Where’s a chupacabra when you need one?”

***

They’re back at the Cracker Barrel, playing Pegs, with Ree’s flier propped up against the napkin dispenser. Scully is picking at an anemic salmon fillet, and eyeing Mulder’s chicken fried steak with disdain.

“You know you want a bite,” he says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes and gravy.

She looks irked. “I didn’t have time for a run this afternoon because I was on the phone with the eponymous Baptist Ladies.”

“I wasn’t going for leisure,” he says with an air of wounded dignity. “Talked to a lot of people while I was out and about. The crotchety old ladies on their porches love me, I’ll have you know. I’m charming, for a Yankee.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “They just thought you looked good in your running shorts.” She pauses, then looks mortified.

“Oh yeah? How about you; you think I look good in them?” She’s so easy to torment sometimes and besides, he’d kind of like to know.

“Your vanity needs no help from me,” she says primly. “So what did you hear?”

“Nothing official, of course, but there are rumors that the oldest Ross siblings, the twin boys, were getting weed from Tallulah, so Wyatt has it in for her.”

“Plants,” Scully corrects. “Geraniums, probably.”

“Doubtless. Some people think Ree stumbled onto Tallulah’s crop and Tallulah killed her, but given the fact that the geranium sales are an open secret, it’s pretty unlikely.”

“Plus I doubt Ree would know it if she saw it,” Scully adds.

“She might if her brothers are dope hounds with the reefer madness, Scully. Mary Jane. Grass. Wacky tobaccy. It’s ruining good Christian families.” He shakes his head somberly. “Ganja.”

“Devil’s lettuce,” Scully adds and, for whatever reason, this undoes them both and they dissolve into laughter.

This earns them startled glances from nearby patrons who seem to generally disapprove of their dark clothing and clandestine ways.

It feels incredible to laugh. Less than a month ago his head had been cracked open like an oyster while Scully and Diana played Spy vs. Spy. And here he was now in this awful little town, safely away from all major conspiracies, having had carnal knowledge of the enigmatic Dr. Scully, and he had just won at Pegs.

And Scully thinks he looked sexy in his shorts.

She is glaring at the peg board when he asks about her phone calls. “So what’d you learn, other than a tuna casserole recipe and how to tease your hair?”

“Weird stuff, your favorite.”

“Lay it on me, mama.”

Scully settles back in the booth. Delivering information is her comfort zone. “Well, Tallulah’s basic facts were right enough. She was left on the front steps of the Home in a white laundry basket. By the look of the umbilical stump, she wasn’t a hospital delivery. No one was ever able to identify her parents. But about a week before she appeared, a baby girl went missing from the Home. There were no signs of a break-in, and the baby never turned up. Everyone just assumed her parents had taken her back and the whole thing was swept under the rug.”

Some quick math, and Mulder realizes this wasn’t long before Samantha went missing. He frowns, and Scully’s expression makes it clear that she’s done the same calculation.

“It was April,” she offers gently. “In the South.”

“Go on.”

“The woman I spoke to said Tallulah did have lots of problems with other kids, but not just for her appearance. She did get teased for the teeth, but apparently she was an aggressive kid. Biting, pulling long hair. They went to the Y once a week for swimming lessons, and Tallulah would drag kids under the water under the guise of playing. She was banned from the pool eventually.”

“Jesus,” Mulder says. “Someone needed more time with Mr. Rogers.”

“Oh, is that how they addressed abandonment issues at Oxford, Dr. Mulder?” Scully asks, archly.

He grins. “Hey, the NHS budget isn’t unlimited. So how’d she end up here?”

“Well, apparently when a kid turns 18 they give them some money and set them up with a job in the community, which isn’t a bad situation. But Tallulah took off at 15, said she was sick of handouts. The Baptist Ladies put the word out, but Tallulah was good at hiding and was 19 before anyone found her. And only then by sheer accident - a former employee bumped into her in Macon, Georgia.”

“Were they able to tell you about her movements at all in the intervening decade? Places she’s lived?”

Scully shakes her head. “No, and there’s no records on her at all. No arrests for anything as minor as vagrancy or trespassing, much less dealing. Her fingerprints aren’t in the system. She’s like a ghost. I was going to call the sheriff’s office to ask about the weed, but I thought better of it. I don’t want to walk into anything unprepared.”

He sighs. “I’d like to look at missing child cases in the past ten years, ones where the kid went missing around freshwater. We’ll narrow it to prepubescent girls.”

She nods. “I’ll see what Danny can scrounge on ViCAP. The Baptist Home is supposed to be faxing Tallulah’s medical records, thin as they are, and I want to see what I can pull out. Oh, and here’s another thing. Marjorie - that’s the woman I spoke with - Marjorie said Tallulah was always going out at night to wander in the woods. Her bed and storage cabinet were always covered with green stains and - get this - what appeared to be gold dust. Her hair was wet and had algae in it, like she’d been swimming in a pond or lake. No matter what they did, she’d manage to get out. Eventually they gave up because she kept returning and it seemed to keep her violence down.”

Mulder considers this. He’s had an idea since yesterday that he’s been hesitant to voice, but what the hell? “I was thinking about her gloves when we visited this morning.”

Scully raises a non-committal eyebrow.

“Hear me out. All of Ree’s stuff was covered with algae, right? And there was algae where it shouldn’t be at the crime scene and all over Tallulah’s wall. She said she’s good with plants too, right? What if algae grows when she touches things? What if that’s why she was wearing gloves when we came by?”

Scully puts her fork down. “She’s an algae witch?”

He sighs. “I’m saying it’s maybe a...like a manifestation of something else. It’s something she can’t control.”

“Let me guess. You think the missing baby was taken by Tallulah’s unearthly mother and that Tallulah is actually a changeling left in her place. She’s from a race of some kind of evil water fairies, and has stolen Rhiannon Ross as her mother stole the other child twenty-six years ago.”

A slow smile spreads across Mulder’s face. “Scully, are you trying to get me back in bed?”

She reddens, rolls her eyes. “Textbooks could be written about your deviance.”

“Oh, no doubt. But details aside, you have to admit there are some weird details there.”

“All our cases have weird details. But the algae is notable. I’d like to take some samples from Tallulah’s cabin and compare it to the algae on Ree’s belongings. I’ll have to see what equipment the sheriff's office has. We’ll need to send some out for DNA testing to be sure, but I could at least do some microscopic analysis. It could place her at the scene.”

Mulder passes her the little vial he’d collected that morning. It’s fuller than he remembered.

“Sneak,” Scully says, approvingly, sipping at her Diet Coke.

“I know you like bad boys. Apropos of which, why do you think the sheriff has left Tallulah alone about this weed thing? I mean, this doesn’t seem like a hip and swinging town, does it?”

“I was wondering that too. And Wyatt never mentioned it either. I’m also wondering why, if we go with your hypothesis, Tallulah would steal a grade schooler rather than a baby. And Mulder, that cabin was one room. There’s nowhere she could have stashed a child. What’s more, shouldn’t some changeling child should have shown up by now? I mean, by your logic.”

Mulder wipes his plate with a roll. “I admit there are complex facets involved here,” he allows. He has ideas percolating, but they need more time to steep. “But whatever the reasons she may have had, there’s no one else who even seems remotely likely. No dubious strangers in town, no evidence of any kind at the crime scene. No one I talked to today indicated there were any grudges with the Rosses.”

Scully curls back into the corner of their booth, looking modish with her dark clothes and sleek hair. “I hate this,” she says. “Autopsies are so clear. Manner and mechanism. You just read the body and it tells a story. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but it’s always there. Missing persons are nightmarish, especially children.”

Mulder, as he is prone to do, thinks of Addie Sparks. “Missing still has hope, I guess.”

She looks chagrined. “I didn’t think, Mulder. I’m sorry.”

He hates that his missing sister has consumed her life too. Hell, Melissa was murdered and Scully’s moved on in a relatively healthy fashion. “No, don’t be. I just mean that there’s cruelty there, in that hope. Schroedinger’s crime, you know. That last heart of Roche’s is the end of someone’s hope, only they’ll never know.”

She reaches across the table to take his hand in hers. “The sense that an answer exists but isn’t knowable is a miserable feeling,” she says. “Especially if it’s an answer that could redefine one’s status quo if only it were revealed.”

He’s pretty sure she’s not talking about the case now, and traces her fingers with his thumb. “So you wanna kill this thing, then? Perform a post-mortem, write it up, and move on?” He doesn’t want this, but at least he’d know.

Scully draws infinite circles on his wrist with her nail, and gooseflesh rises over his body. “Hope doesn’t have to be painful,” she murmurs to the table. She looks up at him with her summer sky eyes in the fading autumn light.

Mulder’s heart squeezes hard, then expands. “It’s kept me going for a long time, even when it is,” he tells her.

She nods, lets go of him. “The motto of my first profession is hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. But I tend to forget the maxim that should drive the second one.”

He has a flashback to scanning the plasma-vivid mind behind that perfect face. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“Dum spiro spero,” she says.

“While I breathe, I hope.” He smiles.

They get the check and go to the car.

***

The drive holds the easy silence of a pizza hangover, the kind when they’re wiped out on Scully’s couch with half-eaten slices and paperwork on the coffee table and floor.

Scully has her feet propped up on the dash and her seat reclined. She has a manila folder on her face, her eyes closed.

He thinks, as he sometimes does of late, about what a shit he was to her after Philadelphia. He’s never asked if she knew then that she was dying, but he’s always suspected she must have.

All he’d known at the time was that she’d blown him off for a good-looking psychopath, let the man brand her like cattle, then poured her herself into his bed. He’d hated Jerse for the bruises on her face and body and psyche, but the man was under guard and therefore beyond his rage. He siphoned some of it onto Scully instead, for daring to need more than him and for seeking it. He wanted it to be about the desk because he could have given her the fucking desk. He could have easily fixed that without having to fix anything else between them. He could have kept going in a straight line instead of trying to make a map.

He thought of her in Jerse’s arms, in Jerse’s bed. Beaten by Jerse’s fists. He imagined the needle biting into the flawless canvas of her back and leaving that turning serpent there. He noticed that it went in a circle and at the time, he’d let that be about him too.

Later, when he understood that she was even more ephemeral than he feared, fits of self-pity left him wondering why she went for Jerse instead of him. Surely she knew he was available for emotionally destructive sex if that’s what she craved before dying.

But it turned out that sleeping with her had been like losing his virginity all over again. In twenty years or so, if they were still alive, he might find the balls to tell her that.

***

Scully yawns when he parks the car, batting the folder off her face. “I was awake,” she insists.

“Very convincing,” he assures her.

She swats his arm, straightens her seat. “I’m wondering if she was dealing elsewhere, maybe giving a kickback to LLE. Someone gets wind, she gets kicked out of town and moves along to another friendly hamlet. You know how these networks run.”

“Local law enforcement,” Mulder sighs. “The eternal bane of my existence. It would certainly explain a few things.”

“And if the Ross twins really are buying, you can see why Wyatt wouldn’t mention it to us. He can throw her under the bus without dragging his kids in too.”

Mulder rubs his eyes. “But how does it all come together? I mean let’s say Tallulah slides into these little towns, she deals to make ends meet. Pays some kickbacks. But why risk it on a serious crime like kidnaping or murder? This is the South, Scully. They do not fuck around, and kidnaping’s federal.”

She shakes her head, still frustrated. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for Danny, I guess. I’ll leave him a message when I get back to my room. The internet connection out here is a nightmare, so maybe he can dig it up while I’m at the lab.”

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, but makes no move to leave the car. She plays with the edge of the folder. “I know you said you weren’t looking to go steady, but now that I’ve put out I was hoping I could get your varsity jacket.”

He feels some of the tightness leave his neck at her willingness to play. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a pretty sweet jacket. That’s more than a one-nighter. Maybe if you swing by in a cheerleader outfit I’d think about it.”

She looks up, smiling one of her rare smiles that show her teeth. “I think my mom still has my high school uniform in mothballs somewhere.”

He tosses his phone onto her lap. “Call. Now.”

Scully laughs her throaty, chuckly laugh. “Good night, Mulder,” she says, opening her door. “See you tomorrow.” She passes his phone back and slips into the dark.

He grins all the way to his room.

***

Diana comes to him again that night. He finds her at the edge of a meadow on a large rock, a vivid rainbow overhead. She wears a floor length evening gown of shimmering gold fabric, and her flesh is whole. She pats the rock, inviting him to sit.

“Hello, Fox.”

He scowls, sitting. “As a manifestation of my subconscious, you could have the decency not to call me Fox.”

She laughs. “As an alleged manifestation of your subconscious, maybe you just want to be acknowledged as a fox by a desirable woman. How is Agent Scully this evening?”

“Spare me. Nice dress, Diana.”

She stands up and twirls. The gown flares out from her graceful waist into a narrow bell. Her feet are bare. “It is, isn’t it? It’s cloth of gold. Very Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think.”

“Is it heavy?”

Diana sits back down. “Oh, yes. Terribly heavy. And costly.”

He rubs it between his fingers. The fabric is stiff and itchy, like tweed. “Well, nothing’s too expensive when you’re dead, I guess.”

“Not expensive. Costly,” she corrects.

He furrows his brow. “Okay. What’s the difference?”

She shrugs. “It’s just that the cheapest way to pay is usually money. Some things cost much more than money. Surely you know that by now. But there’s no need to be dour, Fox. It’s beautiful out, and look at the rainbow.”

He does. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me,” he sings softly. Even in his dreams his voice is terrible.

Diana gets to her feet again, spinning in the grass. She starts to twirl faster, her hair whipping out around her. Her skin greys again, her face turning cadaverous, and little crawling things flying from her into the grass.

Mulder scuttles back from her on the rock, repulsed but captivated as she becomes a formless blur.

Then she stops, stares at him from her cavernous eye sockets. Her bony chest is panting.

“Diana?” he breathes.

She steps towards him and flickers back to her earlier smooth-skinned appearance.

Step.

Flicker.

Step.

Flicker.

He is transfixed.

“Is it real, or is it Memorex?” she muses.

Step.

Flicker.

He wakes up gasping before she can touch him.

***

He’d hoped this kind of shit would end with his neurosurgery, but apparently his subconscious is tenacious. Unless it’s not his subconscious, in which case he needs to get some tips from Scully, who sees an awful lot of ghosts for someone who doesn’t believe in them.

Yawning, he gets the in-room pot gurgling and clunking with whatever factory sweepings pass for coffee in the sticks. The room fills with an aroma reminiscent of burning tires.

A knock at the door distracts him and he opens it to find Scully holding two styrofoam cups steaming from their plastic lids. “Went for a quick run,” she says, stepping under his arm into the room.

He shuts the door.

“Mulder, prop that door open. It smells like wet asphalt in here.” She sets the cups down and turns the coffee pot off with a look of contempt.

“Ah, Scully,” he says, sipping from the cup marked M.

“You can take the car today,” she says. “Someone from the sheriff’s office is giving me a lift to the lab in Huntsville. It’s about an hour each way, so I doubt I’ll be back before dark. What are your plans?”

“I want to talk to Tallulah again,” he says.

“Watch out for those goats,” she warns darkly. “I think the little one cost us the deposit.”

“I’ll bring pine cones.”

Scully frowns, steps closer to him. “Mulder, you don’t look so good. Are you feeling alright? Maybe you should have them bring her into the station for questioning instead.”

He waves her off. “Bed’s not great,” he says. “I’m just tossing and turning some, but the coffee should perk me up.” He takes a large gulp. “Mmmm, perky.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re a liar, but if I try to actually examine you you’re just going to be cranky or perverted. At least make sure your phone’s charged so you can call me if you keel over or something.”

He pouts, preemptively deprived of the opportunity for a predictable playing doctor joke. Damn her. “You suck the fun out of everything,” he informs her, sitting on the bed.

She walks over to him, standing between his knees. She puts her empty coffee cup on the night stand, then grips his t-shirt with both hands.

He swallows.

“As your physician, I ask that you try not to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion,” Scully says. Her mouth is inches away. She shakes his shirt for good measure before leaving.

He goes to the shower and stays there for some time.

***

Mulder stops off at the farm store where Scully obtained the coffee. He selects a raspberry danish, then adds a loaf of fresh bread and some local milk in a quaint glass bottle.

“Five dollar deposit on the bottle,” the clerk informs him. Fahv dahlah dipawsit.

“What’s it made of, crystal?” he grouses, swiping his card.

“You that FBI guy?” the clerk asks suspiciously. “It’s pasteurized, it’s perfectly legal milk.You can test it.”

“It seems fine,” Mulder assures her. He’d had no idea that there was a black market in milk. He takes his bag and makes for the door.

“It’s not homogenized though,” she calls after him.

Mulder takes his unhomogenized, perfectly legal milk up into the mountains.

***

Tallulah’s chopping wood when he pulls up. She has on the same Carhartt overalls Wyatt did, and thick leather gloves this time. There are splinters and sawdust in her long braid. She’s not a bit beautiful, but has an appealing serenity.

“Hey,” Mulder says to the goats, who have come to sniff him. He scratches the big one behind the ears. The little one makes for the car.

Tallulah straightens up, wipes her wrist across her brow. “Mornin’, Agent Mulder. Where’s your partner?”

“She’s the science half of this outfit,” Mulder says. “She’s peering at things through microscopes and running them through unpronounceable equipment.”

“Like that algae you scraped off my wall?” Tallulah sounds amused.

“That would be one of the things, yes.”

She frowns thoughtfully. “You sure that doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment?”

“California v. Greenwood says I can search your trash,” Mulder informs her. “Besides, you invited us in.”

“Like vampires,” Tallulah observes, and adds the split wood to her growing pile.

Mulder holds out the bag containing the bread and milk. He ate the danish on the way up. “Here,” he says.

She takes his offering and peers in. “What’s this?”

“Call it a belated housewarming gift,” he says.

Tallulah looks at him for a long moment. “You know, some of the old mountain women believe it’s wise to leave a little offering of such homey treats to the Good Folk. Oh, they go to church of a Sunday and preach the gospel just fine, but come Saturday night, there’s little biscuits and butter at the forest’s edge, wrapped all in leaves.”

“I heard something about that,” Mulder says. “I guess it’s like wearing suspenders and a belt.”

She wipes down her hatchet with a faded bandanna, then puts it in a little storage bin next to the house. “Funny what people believe, isn’t it?”

“Funny.” He doesn’t take his eyes off her, even when the little goat jumps on the hood of his car.

Tallulah opens the milk and takes a deep gulp of it from the bottle. “That’s very good,” she says. “Now your partner would roll her lovely eyes at such a thing as you’ve brought, but she’ll kneel for wafers and wine.”

Mulder doesn’t ask how Tallulah knows this. “There’s a five dollar deposit on the bottle,” he says. “All yours, since you’re out of business at the moment.”

She smiles greenly at him. “Come in, Agent Mulder.”

He follows her up the steps and into the cabin, looking at her round-bellied stove, the faded patchwork quilt on the narrow brass bed. Mulder sees the appeal of this simplicity, a pared down life to strip away all foolish distraction. He recognizes his own romanticization of it, a rich boy with summer homes and an Oxford education wanting to play at Saint Jerome. He also considers that the Unabomber went to Harvard and lived this way too. Minimalism may not be inherently enlightening.

Tallulah is sprawled in a chair, her steel-toed boots kicked off. Mulder sits at the table across from her, bread and milk between them. A ham and a cleaver are out as well.

“You hungry?” Tallulah asks. “That ham is from Sam Oakley out by the grain elevator. Just delicious.”

Mulder shakes his head. “Can she come back?” he asks, without preamble.

“Agent Scully? Any time she likes, though I’d ask for more of that milk if she does. I’ll pay you the deposit.”

Mulder senses a shift in her demeanor. She’s not the friendly, country orphan any longer. There’s mischief rising in her, something tart and maybe wicked. Her posture is languid rather than awkward now.

“You know what I mean, Tallulah.”

She works on loosening her braid. It’s hard in the thick gloves. “You mean Ree. You still think I know something about that.”

Mulder realizes that she is enjoying herself, remembers that the fay are supposed to love riddles and wordplay. “Well, we can talk about something else. I heard the Ross twins are customers of yours.”

She laughs. “The thing I absolutely love best about people is that they make rules to stop themselves doing everything they long for, then do it anyway while pointing their lying fingers at the next fellow for the same. I don’t really need the money, but I do think it’s funny to watch these fine upstanding people condemn me with one hand and pay me with the other. It’s pleasurable money to spend, and it passes the time.”

Mulder’s anarchic soul cannot deny the schadenfreude. “I notice you used third person instead of first.”

“I don’t make those kinds of rules. I just sell the devil’s lettuce to all comers without judgement. I do like to watch them chase themselves in circles, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

Devil’s lettuce. His neck prickles. “No? What are you then?”

She smiles, and her mouth has too many teeth in it. They seem very thin now. “I’m the apple in the Garden,” she says. “This realm has made nothing but trouble for my folk, and I like to pay back mischief as I can.”

Tallulah slowly takes her gloves off and balls her hands into fists. She opens them and pieces of gold ore are in them. Closes her fists, opens her fists. She pours the gold onto the table and the pieces are streaked with algae.

He stares, awed. Shaken.

Tallulah holds his gaze. “Do you want some of it, Agent Mulder? Everyone else does, and it only costs a little. Can you offer me a most beloved child? The ring finger of each hand? All the memories of your sister?”

“Where’s Ree?” he chokes out.

Tallulah continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “Maybe there’s something else you want? A love spell?” She winks a green eye. “But you don’t really need it. She wants this as much as you, Mulder. When you kissed her she felt only relief and lust in equal measure. My god, she rode you like it was the Kentucky Derby, skirt around her waist and her breasts tight to your chest.”

Tallulah reaches up to stroke his cheek and he jerks his head away, appalled.

“How do you know all of these things?” His voice is scarcely a whisper and his stomach is lurching.

“A little ghostie tells me,” she says, and mimes an hourglass woman in the air. “Don’t think she realizes she does it though.”

Fingers trembling, Mulder retrieves three iron nails from his pocket. He’d pried them out of the floor at the motel, and now he brandishes them, hoping. Dum spiro spero.

Tallulah looks at them and hisses. “Cold iron!” she shrieks. “It binds my magic!”

Then she snatches them from his hand and eats them, laughing.

He is too shocked to be frightened.

“Don’t feel bad,” Tallulah says, consolingly. “You’re not the first. Listen, you’ve looked through lots of one-way mirrors, right? Interrogating?”

He nods, not yet trusting himself to speak.

“Okay, well, imagine stacks of it. If you were standing on a tower of it, shiny side down, you could see to the bottom.”

Nods again.

“Attaboy. Now, if you were under that tower, looking up, you couldn’t see through up to the top. Hell, you wouldn’t even know there was a tower. One layer or a hundred would look the same. All you’d see was your own reality reflected back.”

Something is starting to coalesce in his brain. “You… your people are looking, uh, through to us, but we can’t perceive you.”

“Oh, looking down is much more accurate,” Tallulah assures him. “Like how you know ants exist and find them interesting, but they have no understanding that you exist because they’re tiny and stupid.” She looks smug and takes another drink of milk.

“Why are you telling me this?” He hates her, but he still wants her to talk.

She reaches across the table, caresses his hands with gentle fingers before he pulls them back. “Because no one will ever believe you and so it amuses me for you to know,” she says sweetly. “You can see up through the worlds piecemeal, I think. Bits of the whole, like the Louvre through a keyhole. Your partner will say this was a hallucination brought on by recent brain trauma. Your superiors will laugh at you - at least aliens are masculine and slightly scientifically respectable. But fairies? Oh, dear.”

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, she wears Diana’s skeletal face.

Mulder feels hot bile rise in his throat, but forces it down. “Where’s Ree?”

“The sheriffs in these silly towns never even remember our bargains, of course. They harass for my little game with the ganja, but then no one can recall why I’ve been picked up, and they apologize and I go. Some like babies, to start fresh, but not me. I like to know what I’m getting. I only take one a year, and they’re good ones. Sweet girls who love the woods and water. I was nineteen before I could make the gold come, so that’s only seven. You’ve seen worse then seven. Remember Roche, Mulder?” She changes her face to remind him.

The bile does come then, and he vomits on her floor.

“Rude,” she says mildly, and water pours from her fingers to wash it away and out the front door.

He fights nausea and dizziness. “Give them back. Give me Ree, Tallulah. Just let me take Ree home.” His hair is soaked with sweat and he’s terrified it will be Goldstein all over again. He pulls his gun anyway. Can she turn it on him like Pusher? Scully will be very angry with him if so.

Tallulah is unconcerned. “I don’t hurt them, you goose. I take them up through the looking-glass, so to speak. It’s beautiful there. It’s safe for them. They deserve better than to live with the people who look the other way for thirty pieces of gold. A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Or is it a Catch-22? I’m not much of a reader.”

“Ree,” he grinds out between clenched teeth. He puts his finger on the trigger.

Tallulah grabs the cleaver and chops her hand off. There’s no blood. “Shoot me,” she giggles, and he passes out.

***

It’s still light out when he awakens in his car, just past two-thirty by the dashboard clock. There’s a glass of sweet tea and a slab of pound cake on the console. Feel better, reads a note in a fine copperplate. Sorry for the shock. Had to run an errand, but you should eat and drink before you drive or you might crash. Don’t worry - there’s nothing wrong with it. But no need to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion. Thanks again for the gift. I might return the favor.

Mulder eats and drinks. He figures if her food is poisoned or enchanted, he’ll be spared explaining to the Rosses that their daughter was kidnapped through an interdimensional portal as a sacrifice to the greed of public officials and the amusement of a wicked fairy.

The cheapest way to pay is money.

The snack is revitalizing and he sits until he feels his blood sugar level out. He wonders if Tallulah would have killed him if he’d met her empty-handed. He wonders if Ree is really alive somewhere, or if it’s just a game.

A headache has begun pulsing deep in his temple, like the throbbing brain of IT on Camazotz. Mulder fumbles his sunglasses out of the glove box.

He puts them on, filtering out the worst of the light. He breathes through his nose, massages his temples like Scully used to do when her tumor became rowdy. He begins to relax, the nausea and pain subsiding. His eyes slide closed as he digests the morning’s events.

“I’m sorry,” Diana says, her hand on his thigh.

He sits bolt upright and she’s next to him, her long legs cramped in the Scully-configured seat.

“I’m not asleep,” he insists to both of them, looking wildly around. Tallulah’s house, the mountain, the forest - none of it has the surreality of a dream.

Diana strokes his cheek gently with her cool grey fingers. “I’m going now,” she says. “I thought I was helping, making it up to you after a last betrayal. But it turns out…” she shakes her head.

“Diana, wait. Are we here or am I sleeping? Do you know where Ree is?” He hears his own panic and fights it. “Diana, just help me find her. Don’t leave yet.”

She presses her lips to his temple, murmuring.

“Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;”

Agent Diana Fowley fades away then, into the quiet peace of nothingness.

Mulder never feels himself waken, never feels a shift in consciousness. She’s simply vanished and he’s alone to finish the rhyme.

“Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?”

***

His drive back has a frenzied, febrile quality with saturated colors and echoing sounds. He is sweat-soaked and shivering when he gets back to the motel.

Mulder kicks his boots off and crawls into the bed. He draws the covers up under under his chin and falls away into the dark.

***

He wakes to her light fingers smoothing hair from his forehead. The sky outside is dark and starry, but it’s not even seven.

Mulder blinks, confused. “Scully?”

She’s sitting at the edge of the bed, in her dark trousers and a grey top. Her face is serious. “Mulder, I’ve been trying to wake you for an hour. You were burning up, but the fever seems to have broken. Did something happen?”

Everything. “No. I think you were right. I just came back to work too soon.” He gives her what he hopes is an appealing look.

Scully smells a rat but doesn’t push. She presses her fingers to his wrist. “I want you on antibiotics. I’ll call the pharmacy in the morning. They closed at five.”

He nods. “What did you find on the algae?”

She strokes his hair again and he feels like purring. “Nothing much. There were a few different strains at the pond but only one in her house. And a common one at that. It’s no good for linkage, I’m afraid, though I had them run a couple other tests. Nothing in the medical records they sent either - she’s as healthy as she says.”

“Well, did you get anything from Danny on disappearances?”

She stops petting him to get up and retrieve a piece of folded paper from her jacket pocket. “I found a dozen that look possible, and six that match the details of this case pretty closely.”

He pats the blanket. “Come back and show me some more of that famous bedside manner.”

She snorts, but returns to her perch. “Here, look. I highlighted the six that look best. Called them too, and gave Tallulah’s name and description to LLE. None of them recognized the name or description.”

Of course, Mulder thinks. Of fucking course. “Betcha we’d get a different answer if we asked people who live there.”

Scully frowns. “What does that mean? You really think police departments from 6 towns are all embroiled in an elaborate web to protect a very low level weed dealer? Mulder, come on. I know you love a nice sexy conspiracy, but I think the best answer is that there’s some kind of drifter active in the area. I say we turn the whole thing over to NCMEC and go home. You look awful and there’s nothing else we can do here.”

He presses his hands to his face. Fuck, fuck. He looks back at Scully. “I mean this lovingly, but please do not say anything condescending until I finish my undoubtedly insane rambling, okay?”

She narrows her eyes. “I should have let you sleep.”

Mulder props himself up against the pillows. He’s still chilly. “Okay, so there’s this concept of something called the Teind. It’s um…shit.” He stares at the bathroom door for a moment.

“Mulder, when you’re hesitant to share a theory, it gives me grave concern.” She scoots higher on the bed, crosses her legs. “But go on. The Teind.”

“So the idea is that there are other worlds - other simultaneous realms - that are layered over this one. Like a multiverse, okay? Like Schrödinger. You love Schrödinger, right? And Brian Greene?”

She purses her lips.

Mulder barrels ahead. “Okay, so. So one of these realms is what is sometimes called Faerie, or Elfhame. And our world, the so-called Christian realm, is constantly encroaching on theirs. Every seven years the Lords of Elfhame must pay a tribute to the Lords of Hell. This tribute ensures that the Christian realm with not destroy Elfhame and that the Lords of Hell will keep the Christian realm in check. I think that’s what these seven girls are - I think they’re tributes, or possible tributes. Maybe there’s a big pool created, I don’t know.”

Scully says nothing and it makes him nervous.

“Scully?”

She flops back beside him on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. “It’s a prettier story than drowning or murder or sex trafficking,” she says. “I mean sure, it’s essentially a complex pagan mafia real estate kidnaping scam, but it’s still better.”

He pulls the blankets up to his chin.

Scully turns, props herself up on her side to look at him. “What in the hell did Tallulah say to you, Mulder? Because I have to say, this is pretty far down the garden path even for you.”

He wonders if it’s even worth it. “She was able to conjure objects, Scully. Gold in her bare hands.” He has enough sense not to mention the cleaver.

Scully scoffs. “My dad could pull a quarter out of my ear.”

“She said that LLE knew she was taking these girls and she gave them gold for looking away. That the weed thing was just for her amusement, stirring the pot. So to speak.” He grins at his own unintentional joke.

Scully scoots closer. “Mulder, what am I going to do with you? Don’t you think it’s much more likely that this woman is part of a larger drug and prostitution ring, tasked with procuring children for those up the chain? I believe there could be payoffs - small town cops are overworked and underpaid. But payments to the Lords of Hell? Realms? If she did show you gold, she was probably trying buy your silence as well but didn’t realize you’re too incorruptible to even notice, you stupid noble idiot.”

He feels oddly pleased by this assessment. “Well, can we at least agree that she probably is involved?”

Scully runs her finger down the bridge of his nose. “Yes.”

“And that whatever the source of funds, there are payoffs happening?”

She traces his eyes, his brows, his lashes. “Yes.”

“And that 1977’s Elvis in Concert is grievously underrated in terms of both quality and significance?”

She strokes the corner of his mouth. “Absolutely.”

If he does have a brain infection, he couldn’t care less if it means dying in bed like this. “Get under the covers,” he demands.

She sits up. “I’m afraid not.”

“No, Scully, we were doing great while you kept saying yes to everything I said. Let’s try again and get back in the groove - can we agree that Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom was a tremendous step down from Karen Allen in Raiders?”

She smiles. “Not even negotiable. But really, I’ve got a fax coming in up at the office and you need to rest. If we get stuck here because you end up with some exotic encephalitis, so help me god.”

He takes her hand as she gets up. “So you’re really ready to hand this off?”

Scully sighs, squeezing his fingers. “Look, the fax I’m waiting on is from Danny. I asked for a ViCAP cross reference on any unsolved sexual assaults or attempted abductions that dovetail with those missing girls. If nothing else, I think there’s a real case there that needs to be put together. It was a good call, Mulder.”

“If I go to sleep like a good boy, will you let me have one more chance with Tallulah?” He bats his lashes at her.

“One More Chance With Tallulah sounds like a Barry Manilow song. I’ll tell you what - I’ll check on you later and if you still haven’t got a fever I’ll allow it.”

He crosses his heart and lets her go.

***

He dreams a memory.

Two weeks past, and he’s sprawled on his couch while Scully afflicts him with acts of medical science. She’s administering neurological tests, bruising him halfway to gangrene with a pressure cuff, and siphoning off enough blood to keep her bucktoothed sheriff happy.

“Scully,” he laments. “Your healing will be the death of me.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she says, with her usual bedside warmth. “You’re a week past a very serious brain trauma, and you refused to stay in the hospital because you’re an idiot. So you’ll put up with me and you’ll like it.”

He does like it. Looping into her mind with that fungus had been nothing like this. Her heart is an open wound that she constantly stitches back together to make it through another day. The amount of fight in her is enormous, and she channels into a broken and thankless world.

She loves him, and what surprises him is that it isn’t the inevitable pair-bonding of proximity and isolation. Scully thinks about that sticky June day in the hallway too. Finishes the thought, sometimes, pinned to the wall like a butterfly with his fingers in her hair.

Pretty hot, Scully.

She’s bent over him with her tiny flashlight to check his pupils and his tracking, a corner of her lower lip tucked behind her front teeth. She leans forward, her brow furrowed at some minute anomaly. He stares at the arabesque of her collarbones, the two lines that circle her white throat.

“Mulder, keep your eyes up,” she says in doctorly annoyance.

He does, and he doubts it takes psychic ability to read what’s onhis face

She runs her tongue over her top lip, and it’s like a circuit closes.

His hands are at the back of her neck, her waist, pulling her towards him as he sits up. He kisses her like should have ages ago, reckless and open-mouthed and decisive.

Scully drops the flashlight and kneels next to him on the sofa. She sips at his mouth with her cool little tongue, slides her fingers through his hair. She stops short at the bandage and pulls away. “Mulder,” she says, ashamed, and moves to get up.

He grabs her upper arm, far harder than he means to. She gasps, and not at all unhappily. He had not seen this in her directly, but he had suspected.

“Let me go,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re not well.”

She’s close enough for him to see her hard nipples through the silk, her dilated pupils. He keeps his eyes on hers while uncurling his fingers from her bicep.

She swallows.

He reaches out to undo the minuscule pearl buttons on her blouse. He’s always loved the high drama of women’s clothing, like a puzzle box.

Scully says his name again.

“Go,” he tells her, as her shirt falls open. He slips his hands under the fabric to plane her back and waist. He’d touched her here in Antarctica, but not like this. He tongues the tight stretch of her navel, breathes in the hot scent of the skin beneath her bra. It’s astringent with her tea-tree soap, sharp with her sweat.

She’s on her knees still, her fingers back at his stubbled jaw, his earlobes. She’s dipping her head to kiss his hair while she makes little animal noises.

“Go,” he repeats, and she doesn’t.

He unhooks her bra, a simple white satin affair, and she lets go of him long enough to pull it off with her shirt.

It is with difficulty that Mulder sits back to look at her. Her belly is flat and taut, her breasts full above them. They are lightly veined with the blue of her eyes, her nipples the color of late raspberries. Around them is the fine, crepey skin of her areolae, puckered tight. Her head is tipped forward, glorious flame of hair falling around her fine Roman face, full lips parted.

He’s hard to the point of pain.

Scully watches him watch her, reaches behind her back to unfasten her skirt. She laughs.

“What?”

“It’s stuck, Mulder. The zipper’s stuck.” She tugs more forcefully, her breasts shifting as she moves.

He half assumes this is the ghost of Ahab at work, denying the FBI the last vestige of his daughter. Mulder pulls at the zipper too, but it doesn’t budge.

Scully reaches under the hem of her skirt and works her stockings and underwear down. She tosses them away like snakeskin.

His cocks twitches in his jeans with seven years of potential energy. No pretending he hasn’t wanted her since she stripped down to her good-girl cotton panties in a panic, but it’s so much more now.

Pulls his shirt off, then tugs her onto his lap. She’s infertile and knows his medical records better than he does, but he asks anyway. “Condom?”

She shakes her head, runs her light hands over his chest. He could come from this alone, the weight of her bare ass on his lap and the sensory overload of breasts and hands and scent.

He groans when she sucks at the tender skin below his ear. “Scully, I’m pushing forty and I think it’s only fair to warn you that-“

She’s opened the fly of his jeans. Mulder raises his hips, Scully still on his lap, to work them down with his boxers. The cool air on his cock is torment.

Time slows, drips like honey, then stalls entirely. Scully’s eyes are wide, focused, as she moves herself over and around him. Her head rolls to the side, then forward. She sighs something blasphemous from flushed lips.

Mulder bites his tongue until it bleeds to ensure he’ll last longer than the average teenager. Perhaps her next thesis can be on the frictionless surface of her own body, the impossibly slick heat of it. He wants to taste her too, but that would require not being inside her and god help him, he hasn’t got the willpower for that right now.

Scully’s head is against his neck, panting humid nonsense into his ear while her breasts are flattened to his chest. He holds her at the hips, letting the sinuous flexion of her spine have its way with them both.

He’s embarrassingly close to ending this, and clenches his nails into his palm. Scully bites at his neck, his earlobe, and there’s no resolve left. He groans something mindless as he clutches her body, shudders and twitches as she squirms around him. Mulder holds her tight to his hips, grinding up into her with the kind of surging napalm pleasure he’d forgotten was possible. Her little bare feet squeeze his thighs, and the universe condenses to her hundred and ten pounds of exquisite physiology. His head falls to her chest and he slips out of her with a groan.

He could sleep for days, but instead reaches between them under her skirt to find her clitoris. She so wet his finger slips at first. Scully squeaks, a little chirp, and finds a rhythm with him that pleases her.

She arches her back away from him, her hips forward, and he is awed anew. Her hair tumbles between her shoulder blades, her breasts bouncing softly as he strokes her.

He says her name, sotto voce, and slips two fingers inside her. He shifts his thumb to her clitoris, presses his fingers to the ridged tissue of her g-spot. He writes his name there a dozen times.

She whimpers, and he leans forward to draw the hot little bud of her nipple into his mouth. He sucks at it, grazes it with his teeth. Scully comes with a gasp and falls against him, shuddering. She licks his neck, mouth on his ear and his lips.

He envelops her with his arms and draws the Navajo blanket around her narrow shoulders. He holds her, listening to her heart and lungs as they slow to normal. He smooths her tumbled hair.

She runs her fingers along his bandage again. “Are you okay?”

He has literally never felt better in his life. He feels like a lord of creation, like Adam striding through the Garden of Eden to survey his dominion. “I’m fine,” he says, in her snippy voice.

She laughs, burrowing closer. “You have a bed, don’t you?”

Mulder slips an arm under her legs and another behind her neck. He lifts her as he gets to his feet, carrying her like a bride. She’s such a central force in his life, the mass around which he orbits, that it is odd for her to be so light.

He kicks his bedroom door open and lays her out face-down on the comforter. “Let’s work on that skirt,” he says.

Somehow he’d forgotten about the tattoo. The burning red mouth that marked the beginning of their darkest times together, that portal to her lonely trip north. He pushes aside the memory of what he’d said, the photographic evidence that came home with her. There be dragons, the old maps say.

He kisses it and she flinches. He prays it isn’t shame. Or fear.

With careful maneuvering, he breaches the zipper and tugs the skirt away. She rolls to her back again, her body spilled across his dark blankets like a shaft of errant starlight. He is pleased to note she has eschewed the recent fashion for shaving oneself utterly bare.

He gets to his knees, pulls her to the edge of the mattress by her hard little ankles. She starts to speak, but he cannot hear once her thighs are tight against his ears.

In the morning, she will disappear with the dew.

***

Her cool palm on his cheek wakes him and it takes an unhappy second for the dream to snap away. He’s uncomfortably hard and rolls onto his side for some relief. It’s eight by the bedside clock.

“Hey,” she says, sitting down. “You okay?”

He clenches his left thigh until there’s pain, and it helps. She looks tired, he notices. Drawn and weary from too much bad coffee and too little proper sleep and feeding. He ought to make her take a vacation where she gets wrapped in seaweed and fed organic mangoes by beautiful castrati.

But for now, they’ll have to manage on motel moisturizer and takeout. “Do I smell pizza?”

“Indeed. Just wanted to see if the fever was gone first.” She squints at him. “You look a hell of a lot better. Did you take something? I might be able to hold off on the antibiotics; I know what they do to your stomach.”

He stretches. “Well, just in case, thanks for checking my forehead instead of going rectal,” he says. “Sometimes you have a slight sadistic side.”

“When was your last prostate exam?” she asks sweetly.

Mulder sits up. “I didn’t know that was your scene, but I’m open-minded. Let’s go.” He peels the covers back, feeling like he needs a long run to revive himself from the day. He hates being idle for so long, and his clothes feel stale.

Scully realizes she’s overplayed her hand and wrinkles her nose. “Let’s preserve the magic on that for now. You okay to get up, or should I bring the pizza here?”

He’s not freezing anymore, and his head isn’t throbbing. “I’ll get up,” he says. “I’m starting to

feel like one of those consumptive Victorian heroines.”

“Mmmm,” she says. “Maybe I should leech you and give you some cocaine for that.” Scully goes to the little table where the pizza box is sitting. She opens the lid, and hot greasy air wafts out.

Mulder gets up and walks over, scuffing his socks along the drab oatmeal carpet. He zaps her with his finger and she scowls.

“Ugh, go back to bed.”

He can’t help himself when she’s his favorite toy and part of his brain will always be an arrested 12 year old idiot. He flips the chair around to straddle it, resting his elbows across the back. “What’s that, mushroom and pepper?”

“And pepperoni on half for you.” Scully disdains the greasier meats herself, but will treat him on occasion.

Mulder realizes he’s starving and rolls a piece up like a burrito, demolishing it in four bites before Scully’s done blotting the grease off of her own.

“I’m not performing the Heimlich maneuver if you choke on that,” she says, delicately peeling off two slices of pepperoni that have contaminated her mushrooms. She holds them out to him.

Mulder snaps them out of her fingers like a trained seal. He rolls another slice up, gesturing with it. “So I’m cleared to go nose about more tomorrow, right?”

She tweaks his nose with her oily fingertips. “You’re certainly equipped for it.”

“Right for the gut. We can’t all look like we were carved from marble, I’m afraid. You’ll have to deal with my hideous deformity as nature presents it, Roxanne.” He eats half his pizza, then wipes his face.

Scully finishes her slice. “Did she really show you gold this morning, Mulder?”

He nods, swallows. “Yep. And you said that woman you talked to told she’d show up after nights out streaked with algae and gold dust. Maybe she was, I don’t know, developing her powers. You said she was missing for a few years.”

She considers this. “I think indicates that she herself was being abused or exploited in some way from a young age, Mulder. I mean, if you can access it, unmarked gold is a nearly untraceable currency and good in any market. They start giving her little cuts, get her dealing in her teens to build trust and rapport with kids. It’s a trafficker’s dream.”

He hates that she’s not wrong, and it’s got nothing to with defending his theory. He’s got a reputation as a bleeding heart in many corners, but would happily support supplying child predators as involuntary organ donors. Punching Roche had been a career highlight.

“You have to concede that the linkage between fairies and gold goes way back.” Diana’s rainbow suddenly makes sense to him, and he feels stupid. “I mean, leprechauns, of course. And Rumplestiltskin - who wanted a baby in exchange for gold, I might point out. The original story of Cinderella features bewitched golden shoes instead of glass. Jack climbs the beanstalk for a golden harp and a golden harp and golden coins; there are dozens.”

She rolls her eyes. “Mulder, for heaven’s sake. These stories are all about wish fulfillment. And gold was the ultimate wish, it’s a universal currency. Of course if people are going to create stories about strange, powerful beings with the ability to fulfil desires, those desires will be about financial freedom. I’d say those tales represent far more about human longing than fairy powers.”

“I saw her do it,” he says, but doesn’t press the issue. “You hear from Danny?”

“Yeah, nothing. It’s like whomever took the girls vanished along with them. No reported drifters, no unfamiliar cars, no uptick in petty thefts or break-ins.”

Mulder jabs at the table with a finger. “It’s not a drifter, Scully. We agreed on that.”

“Right, but if it’s Tallulah, then these girls have to go somewhere. She has to be meeting someone, she can’t just - I don’t know - keep them in her little cabins like a stray dog indefinitely, then drive out of town in her Volvo.”

“Well, on that point I cannot argue. I’m going to talk to her tomorrow, see if there’s anything else she wants to unburden. We need to touch base with the Rosses too, I guess.” He eats her discarded crust.

“I can stop by while you’re charming precious metals out of Elfhame.” She’s looking up at him through her sooty end-of-day lashes, the tip of a pizza slice between her teeth.

His stomach flips. Leave it to Scully to arouse him at the weirdest possible times. “Scully, why’d you leave?” he asks, because he wants to know and because she let him put a chip in her neck, and because she smells like tea tree oil and jasmine, and because he made her drink sardine juice to save her life, and because she shot him once, and because she saved him after having his skull drilled into twice, and because she tastes like saltwater taffy and the sea.

She frowns. “Well, you had a fever, and I wanted to-”

“That morning,” he clarifies. “Why’d you go?”

She sighs. “I suppose I knew this was coming,” she says. “Of course you couldn’t possibly be a gentleman and mind your business about it.”

He’s stung until he sees the smile in her eyes. “I’m only a gentleman in the parlor,” he says. “This is most definitely a bedroom.”

Scully leans back in her chair, crossing her legs. “It’s what I did after Dallas, don’t you remember? It’s what I did to Jack Willis, it’s what I tried to do in Philadelphia that time. My journal to you, when I had cancer, it was just a long Dear John letter, Mulder. When I was in med school, there was this man…” she trails off, staring at the cheap tile ceiling.

Mulder tries to process this. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Scully. You weren’t running after Dallas - they transferred you.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “That’s not what you said at the time. You said I was quitting. You said you would too, if I left.”

He winces inwardly at the memory of what he’d said. “Well yeah, but I was trying to guilt you into staying, so you have to cut me some slack.”

She laughs, throws a wadded-up napkin at him. “Is that all you were trying to do, Mulder? I remember something else, in the moment.”

He doesn’t tell her that he knows exactly how well she remembers. “You’re incredibly good looking,” he says, with an air of confession. “Sue me.”

She smiles, looking down at her hands. “Mulder, I left the way I did the other morning because I didn’t know how else to leave. I didn’t know what it meant, and I still don’t. Was I… were we supposed to eat breakfast in bed and clean our guns together?”

There’s something bitter in her voice that he sets aside for later. He reaches across the table to take her hands. “Scully, why does it have to be anything? We could have had some coffee, tracked down your underwear together. They’re still in my sock drawer, incidentally.”

She blushes and punches his arm for that.

He laughs. “But seriously. What good does it do to worry in advance about how things will go wrong? I mean, look at me. I’m a total fucking disaster by many metrics, but I get by. I wing it most of the time, sure, but I manage.”

Scully laughs, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Truly a ringing endorsement. But I don’t know what you expect me to say, Mulder. I was a physicist before I was a doctor, you know. So I guess I just leave before entropy can fully take over.”

“I know,” he says. “But you can’t fail at this. There’s no checklist. There’s no test to pass or form to fill out.”

She makes a noise of frustration. “Mulder, do you not understand that that’s exactly the part that’s impossible for me to handle? That I can’t ever know, empirically, if I’m doing all the things that...that...I’m supposed to?”

He stares at her in confusion. “That you’re supposed to? I don’t even know what that means. There’s no supposed to. You just do.” He says this with the confidence of a man whose six-month marriage hadn’t fallen apart, of a man who hadn’t had a one-night stand with a blood fetishist, or an extended disaster with a British sociopath.

Scully shakes her head. “I make lists and five year plans.”

He refrains from asking her how well that’s panned out. “Take your shirt off,” he says.

She freezes, startled. “Mulder, we’re on a case, I don’t-”

“Trust me,” he says, knowing she considers it the most dangerous phrase in his lexicon. “You’re stressed. You’re exhausted. I was going to rub your back.”

She smirks. “I think my mom fell for that and got pregnant with Charlie.”

“Indian Guide’s honor,” he says. “I’ll get the lotion from the bathroom.”

Scully eyes him suspiciously, but goes to the bed and smooths the blankets out.

He retrieves the little bottle of lotion and reads it. Scully will have to settle for “Alabaster Gardenia,” this evening. It occurs to him that Padgett would have referred to her as an alabaster gardenia and he rolls his eyes.

When he emerges, Scully is facedown on the bed, head on the pillow. Her smooth back is bare to the waist of her trousers, where the serpent lives, and her sock feet small and dark. Her shirt and bra are folded neatly on the night table, as though he is an actual masseuse.

Mulder straddles her hips, kneeling, and pours the lotion into his hands to warm it. Close up, he sees red marks from her bra straps on her shoulders and decides to start there.

“Wouldn’t this have been a nice morning?” he asks, working the lotion into her skin. “I could have done this for you. And with better lotion - you know I’m knowledgeable on the subject.”

“Shut up,” she mumbles into the pillow.

He feels deep, hard knots in her back and attacks them with his thumbs, following the muscles down the sides of her spine. He’s not sure it’s effective, but then Scully groans happily into the bedding.

He’s pleased, working back up to the delicate muscles of her neck and base of her ears. “Is this good?”

“Don’t stop.”

He refrains from innuendo, wanting to prove to her that this is about so much more than sex. He kneads the folded wings of her shoulder blades, her handspan waist. There is lotion on her trousers and in her hair, but he doesn’t think she’ll mind.

She’s dozy and pliant now, breathing slowly. He’ll pet her to sleep like this every night if it suits her, like a little feral cat.

“Mulder?”

“Hmmm?” He traces the tattoo again, trying to bond with it and love it because it’s part of her. The work is admittedly beautiful.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you when I left. I don’t know how to be easy with things like you are.” She turns on her side, an arm draped across her breasts.

“Well, one of us has to have a plan,” he says airily. “Poor Walter’s always been afraid of me corrupting you. I never felt like he was angry, you know? Just disappointed. My god, this would kill him.” He thinks Poor Walter might be more than a touch in love with her too, but keeps this to himself.

She turns fully onto her back now and, to his dismay, works herself under the sheets. “Well, Kersh just thinks you’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“Put it on my tombstone.”

“Of course you’d take that as a compliment. Lord Byron was really awful, but at least we got Ada Lovelace out of him. Mulder, why are you pulling clothes out?”

He hunts for his favorite t-shirt amid the wreckage of his suitcase. “I’m going for a run. I’ll be up all night otherwise.”

Scully frowns disapprovingly. “You really shouldn’t after today, Mulder. Can you make it a casual jog, at least?”

“Brisk trot. Leisurely gallop.”

“It’s AMA,” she warns him, but doesn’t argue further.

Mulder changes quickly while she drowses, limbering himself against the night table where her clothing sits. He opens the door, and the night air is invigorating.

“Hey Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t promise you anything, but I want to try to...you know. This.”

“Okay,” he says, and hopes she’s too sleepy to hear the thickness in his voice.

***

She’s out cold when he gets back, occasional little Scully-snores in the silence. He rinses in the shower, making excessive noise to alert her to his presence.

Mulder dries off and wraps himself in the undersized motel towel, putting his shoes back on against the dubious carpet. He walks over to Scully and strokes her hair.

“Mmmfff,” she says, bleary-eyed. “Am I still here?”

He holds out her shirt. “You’ll want this before you head next door,” he says.

She blinks. “Okay.” Then she promptly falls back asleep.

Mulder is not one to beg. He pulls his boxers on, toes the shoes off, and climbs in next to her. He is delighted to find that she has kicked her socks and trousers off, now clad only in her little grey bikinis.

He strokes the violin curves of her, from her shoulder down the sweep of her waist to her thighs. She sighs in her sleep.

He knows Scully would explain that he’s evolutionarily primed to be attracted to her full breasts and rounded hips. She’d tell him about how pelvic girdle width is an advantageous adaptation for such a melon-headed species.

He’d counter with the Golden Ratio. Sometimes beauty is its own justification.

Mulder snuggles in next to her. If he dreams that night he doesn’t remember. And if she wakes, she doesn’t leave.

***

His alarm goes off at six. Scully is an immovable lump next to him under the bedding, her exposed hair the only sign that she isn’t a heap of pillows or an extra blanket. He strokes the fine vellum of her belly until she stirs. “Time to get up,” he murmurs.

She pokes her head above the comforter and looks at him, confused. “What time is it? Did I spend the night?”

He smoothes her hair back from her brow. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Scully sits up, holding the sheet to her chest with one hand. “Where are my clothes?” She feels around under the blankets with evident agitation.

Mulder points at the night table. “I put your shirt and bra there, but I don’t know about the pants and socks. You lost those while I was running, but I can give you a hand.”

She puts a hand to her forehead and looks tense. “This is what I was afraid of, Mulder. This… this chaos.”

He rubs her thigh and doesn’t laugh at her idea of chaos. Scully may sometimes think of him as a giant untrained Weimaraner who is either destroying her life or nosing her crotch, but he’s also got a DPhil from Oxford and occasionally he picks up on social cues. He moves the blankets around, keeping her covered, and eventually finds her belongings wadded up between the pillows.

“Here,” he says gently, and hands them to her.

She nods, biting her lip. “I need to go.”

“Okay,” he says, and doesn’t touch her. “I’m going to get in the shower. Come back over when you’re ready?”

Here smile is lukewarm, but present. “I’ll bring some coffee.”

Mulder tosses her the keys. “Get me one of those raspberry danishes too, if you don’t mind.”

He turns his back to give her privacy, then heads into the bathroom. He must have missed it yesterday, but sees that Scully’s left her little can of mousse on the sink for him. When they get home, he’s going to buy some of those velvet hangers she likes, to keep in his closet. He thinks of Ree, holding out dried corn for her deer.

They’ve spent so long in the dark together it’s daunting to walk into the light.

***

Mulder takes a scalding shower, burning sweat and dead skin directly from the pores. He scours himself like a penitent until the heat becomes nauseating. When he steps out onto the little rug, the air feels nearly Arctic, and it perks him up. He feels purified of something nameless.

Scully’s lilac mousse in his hair, and he’s back in a suit for seeing Tallulah today. He thinks it’s best to remind her that he has a badge and a gun. He tries not to think about her hand, for once hoping he had experienced a hallucination.

He sits on the bed to tie his shoes when Scully comes back in, carrying a paper bag. She’s got on last night’s clothes still, her hair tucked behind her ears.

“They were out of raspberry, but I got you blueberry. Me too, actually. They looked good.” She holds out the bag, fragrant with coffee.

“Keep the change,” he says, taking the bag from her with happy anticipation.

“You should be doing stand-up, really.” She joins him on the bed.

Mulder passes her food to her, wishing he could make a breakfast-in-bed quip without sounding desperate. “So what’s your game plan today, then?” he asks around a mouthful of pastry.

She licks blueberry filling off her thumb. “Back to the lab, then I’ll see after that. We grew some of the algae samples at different temperatures to see if that could explain it being in Ree’s thermos in particular.” She blinks. “Oh! That reminds me! The lady at the store said to tell you not to forget about your bottle deposit.”

“Thanks,” he says, hoping it doesn’t incite further questioning.

But no such luck with his inquisitive inamorata. “What bottle deposit?” she asks, puzzled.

He shifts, rolls his steaming cup between his palms. “Brought some groceries up with me to Tallulah’s yesterday. I figured it might grease the wheels a little.”

“Hmmm,” Scully says, and sips her coffee. “Well, it does sound like she had a lot to tell you. Anyway, I’ll be in Huntsville for the morning at least if you need me. Then I figured I’d - we’d, depending on your schedule - touch base with the Rosses, see if the search teams have found anything that hasn’t made its way to us.”

“Sounds good.” He brushes crumbs off his lap onto the floor, and supposes the mice will find them sumptuous.

Scully finishes her danish, clearly pondering something.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he offers.

Scully scoffs. “I’ll add it to my tip. I was just thinking; I did a little research while you were asleep yesterday. Apparently the term name Jenny Greenteeth applies not only to the creature in the legend, but has been generalized in some areas as a name for duckweed. In can make a pond surface look like inviting moss to walk on, like we saw down at the pond where Ree disappeared. Why not just...I don’t know. Why not just warn your kids about drowning instead of making up a - what did you call them?”

“Nursery bogey,” he replies. “The prevalent theory is that most kids will overestimate their abilities against natural dangers. They believe they can swim across a pond, or navigate through a forest, or climb a very tall tree. But if the supernatural is introduced, children are less likely to believe they can overcome the danger. So the deterrent is more effective.”

She shudders. “What a grim way to parent. Though I suppose it’s all just a variant on ‘don’t do that or you’ll die.’ And not so different from the Tooth Fairy or Santa, I guess.” Scully drinks her coffee, musing.

He considers this. He always found Santa creepy in a Panopticon way. “But Santa doesn’t provide a specific deterrent from naughtiness, only a reward for good.”

She sets her cup on the night table, presses her hands between her knees. “Well, there’s Krampus.”

Mulder loves the deranged chaotic energy of Krampus. “Krampus is good.”

“When I was taking German we were, you know, learning all the cultural bits of Germany. And Krampus is a companion of Saint Nicholas, which I thought was just terrible. Saint Nick gets all the credit for presents and just has Krampus do his dirty work.” She shakes her head at the treachery of Bavarian Santa.

He grins. “Santa’s that shitty friend who makes him carry out all the bullying so he can keep his hands clean and be teacher’s pet.”

“Ugh, I always hated that kid,” Scully says. She drinks her coffee, looking dark.

Mulder is joyful. Talking with her like this is the brightest spot in any day and he doesn’t want it to end. But there’s still a lost girl to find. “Well,” he says, slapping his thighs, “we’d best be off.”

She nods, serious again. “Depending on how the lab results look, we might be able to bring Tallulah in for questioning.”

He doubts it will do a particle of good, but they all need something to cling to. “Keep me posted.”

Scully reaches over to pat his hair. Heat radiates from her, and the warm cotton smell of her skin. Her coffee-and-danish breath is sweet in his mouth. “You can keep that mousse,” she says.

Mulder clears his throat. “I’m going to,” he assures her. “So much hold, but not sticky or stiff.”

She kisses him, close-mouthed, and flicks his ear before leaving.

***

The car shimmies up the unpaved road, rattling spent sunflower seeds in the empty Quik Mart cup. He grips the wheel against the uneven drive, against his anxiety over facing Tallulah again. Scully had come undone with Pfaster, her hard varnish becoming brittle and crumbling in the cold. Mulder fears Tallulah may leave him similarly disarmed.

He pulls up the last stretch of road to the meadow below the cabin, and stares in confusion. Instead of the weathered shack is a tangle of kudzu, ivy, strangler fig, and splintered planks. Mulder parks and slowly gets out of the car. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead, picking his way up the path in gripless leather-bottomed dress shoes.

He crouches in the waist high grass, looking for...he’s not sure what. The floor of the cabin is utterly destroyed, existing only as a series of foot-long splinters. Large sections of the walls are collapsed inwards, algae-covered and snarled in woody vines. Tallulah’s few possessions, including her bed and kitchen furniture are gone. The big goat wanders over to chew on a section of the door.

Mulder stands again, circles the wreckage with his hands on his hips. “Son of a bitch,” he says, kicking at it. He puts his sunglasses back on and stares into the woods.

Typical, absolutely fucking typical. He wants somewhere to put his anger, somewhere righteous and useful, but there is nothing. He longs for the congested grittiness if DC, where he can yell at corrupt officials or aggressive drivers or at least a noisome pigeon. But here there is nothing except unspoiled beauty as far as the eye can see.

Looking back at the wreckage, he sees something glinting in the bright morning sun. He tugs at a swath of thorny vines hanging over the remains of the porch, and the milk bottle rolls out from beneath the greenery.

Mulder picks it up and sees a slip of paper inside. It slides out when he inverts the bottle. I guess we’re even, it reads, in a familiar hand.

He looks at the paper for a long time then, carefully, sets the bottle back on the ground. He begins running towards the tree line.

“Ree!” he calls. “RHIANNON!”

Birdsong and silence.

He shouts her name again and again, receiving no reply. Mulder stops to take in his surroundings, never once doubting his interpretation of the note. “REE!” he yells once more, and has only his echo for a reply.

He paces at the edge of the wood, looking, but there is nothing. Then, a hundred yards or so off, he sees a rock, like the one beneath Diana’s rainbow. He races towards it, loosening his tie.

She’s still when he gets to her, a small bundle wrapped in a quilt that Mulder recognizes instantly from Tallulah’s bed. He crouches beside the girl. Twigs and leaves are snarled in her cornsilk hair, and her face is hollow and dirty.

Mulder reaches out to touch her cheek. “Hey,” he whispers. “Rhiannon?”

She stirs slightly, then opens her eyes. They’re far greener than they looked in her school picture. He tells himself it’s the light

“Mama,” Rhiannon says. She reaches out a thin, filthy hand.

Mulder gathers her up in his arms, head tucked against his neck. She weighs next to nothing, and he wants to run but is afraid of internal injuries or losing his footing. He moves as quickly as he dares back to the car.

Ree whimpers softly the whole time, her dry little fingers clutching at his collar. She calls for her mother and father.

He comes to the ruined shack and wants to show it to the child, to ask her a hundred questions, but he passes it in silence and arrives at the car. Still holding Ree’s little body close, he opens the back door. She begins to cry and clutch at him when he tries to lay her down.

“Please,” she begs, he can feel his heart break anew when he pries her away, sobbing, onto the seat. Ree curls into the fetal position under the tattered quilt, mumbling to herself.

He’d have laid rubber if there were any road to lay it on when he peels off towards town. Steering with his knee, he fumbles for his phone to call Scully, but there’s no service. He swears, flooring the gas.

A thin, awful, wail from Ree and he thinks of Emily dying by inches, dragging Scully down with her to the grave again. Emily’s burning body in his arms, staring mutely at him with her mother’s eyes.

He squeals onto the main road, eliciting a chorus of angry horns, when he realizes he has no idea where a hospital is. Scully’s off in Huntsville and he isn’t qualified for anything beyond CPR.

Mulder remembers the fire station from when they first arrived, and runs several red lights to get to it. Someone throws a rock at the car, but it bounces away.

Ree wails again, sitting up to scrabble at the window. Mulder glances at her in the rear view as he swerves onto MacNeill Street. She is thinner than he realized, and very pale. He didn’t think to check her gums and wonders if she’s in shock.

He calls back a flurry of reassuring nonsense to her, but she seems not to hear him. “I’m with the FBI,” he repeats. “You’re safe, Ree.”

She claws at the glass, whimpering.

Mulder finally sees the fire station up ahead on the left. He swerves across oncoming traffic and pulls halfway into the engine bay, narrowly missing four guys cooking hotdogs on a flimsy portable grill. They rise, yelling and waving their arms.

He’s waving his badge when he gets out, shouting Ree’s name over their indignant bellowing.

“What the fuck do y-“

He opens the back door, catches Ree before she hits the ground. That’s all the conversation they need. The EMTs are yelling to one another, getting Ree in the ambulance, telling Mulder he’s a goddamn hero but he’d better get his fucking car out of the fucking way.

He backs out along the curb as the sirens scream. The ambulance howls past him, lights flashing, and disappears from view.

Mulder sits in his car for a moment, feeling strangely deflated. Then he gets his phone to call the sheriff with the good news.

***

Scully calls him from the hospital. She met the ambulance and the family there, figuring it was the easiest way to get the details for their report. Mulder is sprawled across the sagging expanse of his motel bed, propped up on one elbow. He is playing solitaire on his laptop as Scully fills him in.

“So anyway, she’d dehydrated and malnourished and had some bad bruises and scrapes, but nothing serious, which is impressive. They’re keeping her overnight at least for observation, but she seems fine, Mulder.”

He drags a queen of hearts across the screen. “Mmm. So is she talking yet?”

“Not much,” Scully says. “She’s still pretty freaked out. From the few things she has said, it sounds like she followed a deer into the woods and got lost. That’s why she didn’t have any of her things.”

In the background are the beeps and echoes of hospital noises. Mulder finds them strangely soothing. “Okay, so where’d her clothes go? Where’d she get that quilt?”

A frustrated noise from Scully. “Mulder, they’re doing their best to get her story, but she’s very traumatized right now; you should know that. Maybe she found the cabin all collapsed and dragged the blanket out. Maybe it’s a different blanket entirely - this one was pretty beaten up. There’s no sign of sexual or other physical trauma, that’s the main thing.”

He knows it’s the main thing, but still. Still. “Scully, you listed a bunch of conditions that would make your teeth green. Anything that does it to the eyes?”

“Mulder,” she says warningly. “Why?”

He rolls onto his back, abandoning the game. “When I found her, I noticed that -”

“No,” Scully says. “Absolutely not.” Her voice is hard.

Mulder closes his eyes. “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” he asks.

“Don’t you dare,” Scully says, her voice a hiss. “Mulder, go for a run or take a shower or make use of the lotion or whatever it is you need to get this out of your system, but I know what you’re thinking and I absolutely forbid you to say a solitary word on the subject.”

He can envision her pacing furiously, black and white and red against the soft hospital neutrals. He imagines holy rage on her Botticelli face. “I won’t say anything,” he promises her.

“Good,” she replies, mollified. “The family wants to thank you in person, if you’re game to head over. I’m hanging out for about another half hour to look at some test results.”

He really, really isn’t game to head over, because he’s afraid he will fail to keep his mouth shut. “Tell them I was recently diagnosed with cranial rectal inversion, and I’m afraid of exposing them to a flare-up,” he says.

“Hilarious. I’ll tell them you turned your ankle during your daring rescue and you’ve got it up on ice.”

Mulder knows the fib is for the family’s sake rather than his, but he’s still grateful. “How many Hail Marys is that lie gonna cost, Dana Katherine?”

“I got a special dispensation from the Holy See for matters involving you,” she says. “It’s like EZ Pass. I go into the confessional, show my badge, and the priest just tells me not to worry about it.”

He’s grinning. “Yeah? You think the Pope’ll write a note to Kersh for me?”

“Even the Holy Father has no oversight over Alvin Kersh. Mulder, I’ve got to run, but I’ll be back at the motel within two hours. Call around for a flight, would you? I really don’t want to spend another night at the motel. Everything feels sticky.”

He turns to his side and pulls his laptop over. “I’m on it,” he tells her.

She hangs up

“True enough for government work,” he says to no one.

***

Mulder goes for the run she suggested. His feet pound mindlessly against the pavement, past tidy lawns and mom-and-pop stores. He remembers the Samantha clones, the hive of identical girls who were in the world but not of it, and how he wanted to save just one of them. Scully would tell him that good works alone are not enough for salvation, that grace is required first. She might make a Catholic of him after all - he could use a little grace.

He glances through the window of the farm store and resists the urge to stop in. Past the church (CHRISTMAS BAZAAR BOOTHS STILL OPEN!) and two giggly teen girls. He’s coming up on the fire station when a hand claps him on the shoulder. He whirls around, reaches for the gun he didn’t bring.

“Whoa, hey, sorry,” says the guy who told him to move his fucking car earlier that day. “Just wanted to say thanks again.” The man’s about his age, more heavily muscled, and sporting a scruffy beard. His shirt reads VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER across the front.

Mulder holds his hands up in apology. “All good. I’m glad she’s home.”

“Owen Cylburn,” the man says, holding out a hand.

Mulder shakes it. “Mulder,” he says. “Agent Scully’s still at the hospital.”

Owen hooks his thumbs through his belt loops. “Yeah, I heard she was a doctor. Real nice of her to look in on our girl.”

“You family?”

“Naw, but I live a few houses down and she plays with my son Simon sometimes. It’s a small town, you know? Anyway, I heard she’s doing fine.” Owen looks like there’s more he wants to say.

“Anything else on your mind, Mr. Cylburn?” Mulder asks.

He looks sheepish. “Oh, uh. Well, I guess I heard some talk, you know, about whatsername up in that old shack? You don’t really think she was involved, do you? I mean, I checked in on her a couple times and all, made sure the stove was safe. She seems nice. Just sort of strange.”

Mulder considers this for a moment. “Even if she were, clearing her house of fire hazards doesn’t mean you were aiding and abetting, you know. You do anything else while you were up there?”

Owen’s face darkens. “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I’m a happily marr-”

“Not what I meant. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Owen says, looking confused. “No, just the stove.”

Mulder tries again. “What I’m asking is, well, I heard some rumors too. That Tallulah was selling a little weed to supplement her income. Now listen, I’m not looking to hassle anybody. I’m a legalize it man myself, just trying to see if people were heading up there with any frequency to, uh, go shopping. And if they might have seen anything while they were there.”

“Ohhhh,” is the reply. “No, not my thing but I think I’m in the minority. I reckon she could blackmail half the upstanding members of the town if she wanted to, one way or another. Them or their spouses or their kids.” He shrugs. “It’s a dry town, so…”

Mulder nods. “I get it. Like I said, just trying to see if anyone might have been around, might have seen anything. But not trying to make a federal case of it.”

“Mighty decent of you. But anyhow, all’s well that ends well, I guess. My sister’s a nurse up at the hospital, she says Ree looks pretty good, all things considered.”

“Yeah, that’s what my partner said too. She’s a real pretty little girl, isn’t she? Golden hair, and those big green eyes.”

Owen frowns. “All the Rosses have that hair, but I don’t think she has green eyes.”

“My mistake,” Mulder says. “Anyhow, you have a good one.”

He jogs off, thinking.

***

Scully’s getting out of a patrol car when he returns. There’s a German Shepherd in the back seat, muzzle against the grating.

“This is K9 Officer Jangles,” Scully says, introducing Mulder to the dog. “She’s new.”

Officer Jangles sticks her head out of the open rear window. Her tail is wagging and her ridiculous ears are tilted against one another.

“Brought Jangles up to see Ree,” says the cop. “She’s my niece. Ree, I mean. My brother’s girl.” He has the blonde hair of his clan.

“How is she?”

“Pretty good,” Officer Ross says. “Starting to talk a little more.”

Mulder is genuinely glad to hear this and says so. “It’ll be nice to have your green-eyed lassie home, I’m sure.”

Scully kicks him hard in the shin with her deadly shoes. “Officer Ross, thanks for the lift. Agent Mulder and I have a lot of paperwork to take care of, so I hope you’ll excuse us.”

The officer nods. “I can’t thank you enough, none of us ever could. Can we call your boss for like, uh, a commendation or something?”

Scully smiles. “That’s very kind, sir, but we’re really just doing our job.”

“Alvin Kersh,” Mulder calls, as Scully hauls him into her room. “Extension 44-”

The door slams shut.

***

She punches him in the arm. ��What is wrong with you?” she demands.

Mulder sits on her bed, which is identical to his. Her room smells nicer though, distinctly Scully-ish. “I’m sorry,” he says. He genuinely wishes he were different.

Scully sighs, rubbing her temples. She sits next to him. “I am covered in dog hair, I have listened to hours of conservative talk radio, and now you are in direct violation of the one thing I asked you not to do.” She leans over to sniff him. “And you smell like a stable.”

“I’m trying to keep my ass shapely,” he says. “I want to look sexy in my running shorts for you.”

She punches him again. “Go...go take a shower. I’ll call around for flights. Maybe we can get out of here tonight.”

“Done,” he says. “There aren’t any until tomorrow evening.”

Scully groans. “Please don’t tell me that. I need to get out of here. The water smells like pencil shavings, did you notice? Go shower though.”

Mulder turns and takes her hands. “I know that I am sweaty and disgusting but I think you’re going to want to hear me out before I go shower.”

“It better be good, Mulder, because you’re competing with Jangles right now.”

“So there’s a hotel near the airport with a day spa. It’s not exactly the Four Seasons, but the website looked pretty good. I thought we’d let Alvin spring for another night here, and we’ll luxuriate in Dead Sea mud.”

She laughs, crossing her arms. “Mulder, you can’t be serious.”

“I'm extremely serious. My treat. You know my policy on my father’s money.”

Scully rolls her eyes, mimes a little hand puppet with a talking mouth. “My paychecks are for living expenses, my inheritance is for my side projects.” She does a credible impression of his monotone.

“I’m glad at least some of what I say stuck with you. Seriously though, Scully. Let me do something nice for you.”

She considers this. “Mulder, your ‘side projects’ generally refer to subverting the government in some way or another. Are you trying to get me in bed again just to lob a stone in the eye of the government?”

“Yes,” he says. “You are my ultimate middle finger to The Man. That is literally my only motivation here. Come on, Scully. You once told Congress to go fuck itself - surely you’ve got room in your arsenal for a moisturizing salt scrub and Swedish massage.”

“We’re like Bonnie and Clyde,” she says, and bumps her shoulder against his. She’s right about the dog fur, he notes.

“Whaddya say?” he asks. It feels silly to have his heart in his throat over this, to worry that she’ll turn him down like a long-shot prom date. “Two empty hotel rooms in Hooterville on the federal dime while we sneak off to live it up on room service. You know you want to, Bonnie.”

Scully drops her chin for a second, then looks up at him, resigned. “What the hell, Clyde.”

He kisses her hair. “Attagirl. I’ll have you fully corrupted in no time. Soon you’ll be stealing office supplies and blowing off mandatory training seminars of your own volition”

She shakes her head, grinning. “Is this where you remind me that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step?”

He shakes his head. “No, this is where I point out that a journey of a thousand miles is pretty intimidating, so maybe starting with smaller day spa trips is more manageable. Hell, Scully. Even The Pretenders broke it into two five-hundred-mile walks.”

“Go take a shower,” she says.

***

When he comes out of the bathroom she’s sitting in his room with her luggage, looking like a waif at a train station.

“Jesus,” he says, flustered. “Glad I still had a few clean towels.” He rifles through his bag, looking for underwear. He wasn’t expecting an audience.

Scully looks politely away as he tugs them on. “I changed out of that be-dogged suit and figured I’d just pack up and we’d head out when you were ready. I already turned in my key.”

He notices now that she’s in a pair of leggings and a black sweater. Somehow she still looks chic. “You’re in quite a hurry to leave this charming hamlet,” he observes. “Or is it just the lure of the forbidden?”

“Mmmm, maybe both. Mostly it’s the lure of the sauna.”

“Fair.” He sniffs his jeans and, dismayed, pulls them on anyway. Fuck it, he’s a rich man. He’ll take them both shopping. Scully is an indulgence he’ll happily spend his father’s ill-gotten gains on. He’s long suspected some distant connection between his parents’ money and her chip; it would be poetic justice to spoil her.

She curls onto her side in the middle of the bed, watching him dress. “Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

When she’s ready, he knows. When she’s ready. Mulder ties his shoes, then retrieves her mousse from the bathroom. He styles his hair in the mirror above the dresser, waiting.

“Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“When I was a kid, my Aunt Olive would tell us stories about this farm she grew up on outside Killarney. She lived with her grandparents, pretty staunch Catholics you know, but they believed in a lot of the old stories too.”

He’s listening attentively now, but she has a tendency to be skittish when discussing the intangible. He pulls a pair of tweezers out and plucks at imaginary stray hairs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. After milking, Aunt Olive knew to leave a bowl of milk out for the Tuatha de Dannan. And a slice of bread from the new loaves.” She pauses, thinking. “I mean, I don’t know that they actually believed it, but you know how these things are.”

“Belt and suspenders,” he says.

She chuckles. “Something like that, yeah. Anyway, Mulder, I was thinking about that milk bottle. And then I started thinking about my Aunt Olive’s stories. And I wondered if maybe you bought Tallulah some new milk and fresh bread.”

Mulder puts the tweezers down. He joins her on the bed, sitting in the curve made by her body. He pets her side, her shiny hair, and savors the sheer pleasure of touching her. “It wasn’t super new,” he says. “It was pasteurized.”

“Oh, Mulder,” Scully says. She rubs his thigh.

He stretches out onto the bed, facing her. She has aged with obscene grace. Distilled more than aged, really, he thinks. Refined to a more essential Scully-ness. “Sometimes all that people need is to be seen,” he says. “I figured even if she’s just some weird transient hillbilly who sells weed and tells horrifying lies, she might appreciate a snack.”

Scully smiles and scoots closer to him. She strokes the bridge of his nose. “Fox Mulder, you big softie.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Should I take that as a personal indictment?”

“You’re a riot.”

He strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t know, when I was a kid I read To Kill A Mockingbird for school, and the part where Atticus said you had to walk around in someone’s skin to know them really resonated with me. I guess I wish I had been extended that courtesy.”

Scully smiles. “Mmm, I used to think about how I would have made Boo Radley come out.”

Mulder laughs, imagining a tiny, serious Scully laying artful traps. “Like Bugs Bunny?”

She laughs too. “Something like that, yeah. I guess I just connected with the idea of the unknown being concretely knowable if only the right methodology were applied.”

“Nerd,” he says.

“Always. You would have snuck into the house and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Radley. I’m Fox Mulder.’ No tricks for you.”

He probably would have, at that. “Yeah, but then comes my usual trouble. No evidence, no witnesses.”

She kisses him softly, bumping his nose with hers. “Maybe I need to walk around in your skin more. You say you got to walk around in my head.”

“I didn’t peek anywhere untoward,” he says, and wraps his arms around her.

She regards him seriously. “I trust you. But I do wonder what you saw. I’m not an angel, Mulder.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.” He runs his thumb over her lips, and she nips at it. “You’re incandescent, Scully. Like a lighthouse at the edge of a vast, nighttime sea.”

She looks pleased and shy. “Well,” is all she says. “Well.” She tucks her head beneath his chin.

He holds her there, in this bland little room in the heart of nowhere. Her body is warm and compact and trusting, her fingers soft on his neck. She doesn’t always believe in his ideas, he knows, but she believes in him, and it’s more than enough.

Eventually he rouses her, the promise of more luxurious accommodations his only motivator for breaking this gentle peace. They gather their belongings and head to the car. The sky is purple and orange around them and ahead, an infinite sea of stars. He drives west, towards the setting sun. Scully takes his hand and smiles; a flame in the dark.

#xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #season 7 #casefile #My fic

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