#i have drawn more in the past few weeks than i have past five years combined no joke

[omppupiiras]

drawing käärijä once a day keeps the doctor away

#käärijä #when will i be free #i have drawn more in the past few weeks than i have past five years combined no joke #my stuff

[mrsjellymunson]

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman

A Valentine’s Eddie Munson 5+1 fic

Pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader, Eddie Munson x gn!reader, Eddie Munson x masc!reader, Eddie Munson x you

Summary: The Valentines 5+1 that nobody asked for (not even me 😆) Five times you get to give Eddie a kiss, and one time he kisses you back

W/C: ~2.1k

C/W: SFW, FLUFF. Kissing, a pet name. This is pure fluff, but my blog is generally 18+ so I’d prefer it if you were over 18. Reader wears lipgloss. Reader and Eddie are both over 18. Inspired by this supersweet fic by @hellfirenacht which I hope it’s okay for me to mention! I wasn’t planning to write for Valentine’s, but here we are, so thanks for the inspo. Also, I should probably mention at this point that I have no idea how candygrams actually work 🫣

To anyone looking from the outside, you’re a preppy honours student, but you have a dark and curious side. You’re usually all pressed shirts, woven fabrics and tweed, but you’ve sometimes been known to wear those starched shirts pulled a little too tight, and you occasionally add a chain belt or some chunky boots.

You don’t tell anyone that on the weekends you like to experiment with heavy eyeliner and leather accessories. Or that you’ve been spending a lot of time recently staring at one fellow student in particular a little more than is absolutely polite.

So when you accidentally overhear a private conversation about a certain metalhead, and the opportunity for helping out with the school’s annual Valentine's fundraiser presents itself, you sign up as fast as you can.

Once a year the school allows students to organise cards and candygrams to be sent around for Valentine’s Day. It lasts the full school week, and the premise is fairly simple. The pink and red fliers have been floating around for weeks already, declaring:

MONDAY Send a lipstick kiss on a heart shaped card $1 TUESDAY Add a lollipop $2 WEDNESDAY Send a card and blow them a kiss! $3 THURSDAY Send a card, plus a kiss on the cheek! $4 FRIDAY For when you’re really serious! Send them a card, and a kiss on the lips! $5 Sign Up In The Cafeteria!

Only the week before, Eddie Munson had been on a tirade in the lunchroom about the commercialisation of human affection, and the unrealistic expectations of binary, monogamous relationships.

You think perhaps he shouldn’t be one to talk, given the content of that conversation that you eavesdropped on involves Eddie's band mates knowing he’s never been kissed. They’ve pooled their resources and plan to surprise him during Valentine’s week.

Everything’s anonymously ordered, so no one knows who’s sending things. And you’ve finagled a position on the volunteering committee that allows you to choose which volunteers deliver which messages. Handy.

You’ve also invested in a new red-tinted, strawberry flavour lipgloss. It’s all going well so far. The only thing you can’t predict is whether or not Eddie Munson likes strawberries…

Monday comes around quickly. Kisses on cards day. Quite a few have been ordered and there are lots to get delivered around the various classes, so there’s four of you from the fundraising committee delivering them to his class.

Thanks to your position on the committee, you know it’s your lipgloss on Eddie’s card. When you sidle past his desk to deliver it to him you watch him pull back slightly, his eyes open wide, shocked that anyone would send him anything. You guess he’s more used to pranks and jokes than any genuine affection, and it hurts your heart.

You want to give him a hint as to whose kiss is on his card. Trying to be as subtle as you can, and making sure he’s watching you, you catch his eye and bite the side of your lower lip ever so slightly. It puffs your lips out a bit and you see his attention is drawn to your mouth. Success?

There’s a general clamour in the class as recipients and observers alike wave their cards and ponder the potential senders, but Eddie’s quiet for once. He’s tentatively running his fingers over the edge of the card, not picking it up or pulling it towards him, treating it like it’s a potential threat. Just before your group leaves to attend another class, you see him subtly runs his fingertips over the shiny stain.

You don’t know it but later, when he’s alone, he brings the card up to his face to get a closer look at that lipgloss kiss, and he swears he can smell strawberries…

Tuesday means lollipop day. You and your fellow volunteers have more cards to deliver, this time accompanied by little heart shaped candies on sticks. Again, quite a few get delivered, and again, you make sure you’ve got Eddie’s.

As you enter his classroom for the second day in a row, your face is coy and you give him a little smirk. You make your way around the class, distributing cards and candies.

To Eddie’s ongoing surprise, you stop in front of his desk again. As you hand Eddie his card, there are a couple of whoops and hollers from his friends behind him. It’s not part of the deal, but you can’t resist, and before you pass Eddie’s candy to him you press one flat side of the lollipop to your lips, handing it over quickly afterwards, saying, “Enjoy your candy, Eddie.”

Wednesday - blow a kiss day. There’s fewer orders for this service, so only two of you today. You blow a couple of short kisses to others in the room, making it quick and perfunctory.

Again, Eddie’s shocked when you stop in front of his desk, seeming to look to each side of him in an attempt to work out whether you’ve really chosen him again. You pass him his third card, and when you blow Eddie his kiss, it’s slow and seductive, your lips pursing and smacking against your fingers, and you blow across them long and slow, making sure your breath reaches his face.

His classmates erupt, and Eddie’s certain he smells strawberries again…

Thursday. Kiss on the cheek day.

There are fewer orders today, and you're the only volunteer delivering to Eddie’s class. It’s a little awkward and you feel very ‘on show’, but as soon as you see Eddie is in class your desire to put your plan into action overrides any awkwardness.

You give one girl a peck on the cheek, she’s cute and blushes before saying a quiet, “Thank you.”

A jock on the other side of the room is next. He’s less gallant and tries to turn his head at the last moment, but you’re wise to such tricks and he doesn’t get the lip contact he wants, earning you a scowl from him and a round of applause from his cronies.

You can see Eddie’s friends almost vibrating with excitement as you turn and step towards him.

His cheeks flush and he squirms as he realises you’re stopping next to his desk. Again.

You try to reassure him, and say quietly, so almost no one else can hear, “Don’t worry, Eddie. I’ll be gentle with you.”

You bend at the waist, puckering your lips and slowly bringing them to his soft, milky white skin. You plant a slow, strawberry-scented peck to the side of his face, leaving a shimmering red stain just next to where you know your favourite dimple resides.

He turns almost the colour of your lipgloss, and the cheers of his classmates serenade you as you smile to yourself and leave the class for another day.

Friday - kiss day!

You’re thrilled that you’ve managed to wrangle everything so that you get to do a ‘five dollar’ delivery with Eddie. Your planning couldn’t have gone better.

You’re more excited than you would ever admit, a heat collecting in your belly as you try to walk as calmly as you can to his classroom.

He’s the only recipient today, making this a really big deal in front of the entire class.

There’s a couple of whistles and yelps as you enter, some of his classmates clearly aware of what’s to come.

You decide to tease the rest of the class a little, walking around the desks for effect, as everyone’s wondering who it’s going to be.

Eventually, you stop in front of Eddie’s desk. His friends are yelping the loudest, but the whole class is emitting a low chorus of ‘oooooooh’s.

Eddie holds his hands up, palms out in front of him, and, giving you - and, you suspect, him - an out, he mumbles quietly,

“Whoa. You know you don’t have to do this, right?”

He starts stuttering something about the patriarchy and antiquated societal notions of romantic expectations and subservience, but you’re barely listening, your concentration fully focused on his lips, practically salivating at the thought of finally getting close to those delicious, plump, pink pillows.

You give him what you hope is a reassuring and soft smile as you clasp your hands behind your back and begin to lean forwards.

Eddie leans back as you move. It must look comical to the outside observers as you lean in, eyes closed and lip pursed, as he moves backwards at the same rate, eyes as wide as saucers and doing a great impersonation of a rabbit in headlights.

Eventually, his back against his chair and his chin pulled down as far as it will go, he has nowhere left to run.

You keep leaning forward, the fronts of your thighs connecting with his desk helping to stabilise you.

Feeling your nose gently bump his, you turn your head almost imperceptibly and continue forwards, allowing them to slide past each other.

Your lips finally connect.

A tiny amount at first, barely touching, you feel your lower lip press against his, and then your upper.

His mouth is warm, his lips velvety and soft, not chapped and rough like some others.

It feels so good.

You press forwards a little more, connecting more of your flesh with his.

The whoops, hollers and whistles from the classmates fade from your hearing. You do however hear a tiny whimper from the boy in front of you, and you don’t know it but he’s closed his eyes.

You stay like this for a moment, you enjoying the sensation you’ve been dreaming about for weeks, Eddie sitting stiffly in front of you.

But then, with a soft moan that only you can hear, you feel Eddie’s lips relax and purse, and suddenly he’s kissing you back, gently and subtly, your lips moving in harmony, hot breaths mingling and surrounding you in a warm cloud.

After what feels like a delicious eternity, you hear the teacher loudly clearing their throat behind you, and you realise your time is more than up.

Although it’s probably only been about five seconds, it feels like it was long enough for your whole world to tip on its axis and stop spinning.

Reluctantly, you break the kiss and slowly stand back up, rolling your lower lip inwards a little and feeling your cheeks, and other areas, heating.

Behind him, Eddie gets slapped on the back by Jeff and Dougie, and Gareth is clapping loudly and shouting affirmations.

The room has erupted into a clamouring, yelling mess of applause, but neither you nor Eddie are paying much attention.

His lips roll inwards too, and the very tip of his pink tongue peeps out as if to taste you.

He gifts you an incredulous half smile, that dimple you love so much almost making an appearance.

You back away, bashfully, spinning on your heel before you turn back, almost forgetting the final part of your job, and add,

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Eddie.”

It’s the end of the week, and you’re in the parking lot after school. You’re standing with a gaggle of other volunteers, laughing, giggling, discussing how well the fundraising has gone, exchanging horror stories of some really bad kisses, and one person even trying to shove their tongue in.

Eddie waits until you’re on your own, heading to your car.

He steps beside you just as you reach your door.

“Hey, Candy.”

You turn, leaning back against your car, and you can’t help but smirk at the cheesy nickname.

“Hey, Eddie. Did you have a good Valentine’s Day?”

“Uh, yeah. I did, actually. Thanks to a certain someone. I mean, I know you can’t tell me who sent my gifts, kisser-client confidentiality and all that. But, I just wanted to say thanks.”

Your belly flips. He continues, waving a hand nonchalantly,

“You know, for all your hard work. With the fundraising, I mean.”

“Oh right, of course.”

For a moment you’re disheartened. You thought he might mean something else.

But then he steps closer, into your personal space, one of his large boots slotting between your pumps.

“I’d like to know if I could, uh, make another donation? How many kisses can I get for, say, twenty dollars?”

His warm, broad hands come up to ever so gently cup your cheeks, his thumbs tracing your cheekbones and his eyes flitting between your eyes and your mouth.

Your breathing stops as his face moves towards yours.

He pauses, and looks into your eyes one more time, as if waiting for your permission. When you hold his gaze and smile slightly, he moves his mouth until it’s over yours, slowly, gently connecting your lips again. It’s soft, sweet, delicious.

Unexpectedly, you feel the tip of his tongue gently skimming across your glossed lips, but you willingly part them to allow him access.

His tongue pushes past your lips and enters your mouth, slow, tentative, gentle. You hear him moan slightly again, and feel the vibrations against your lips.

Your tongue comes to meet his, your lips and tongues sliding comfortably and dancing together. It’s in the oh-so-romantic situation of the parking lot, but neither of you care.

You reach to grab at his belt loops, pulling his hips flush against yours, just as he breaks the kiss and looks at you, smiling. His lips are glossy and glittering with your lipgloss, and you both smell of strawberries.

You like it.

Breathily, you smile at him, as your arms come up to hook around the back of his neck, and say, just before he leans down for another kiss,

“For you, Eddie? There's no charge…”

Thank you so much for reading!

Please reblog if you enjoyed this.

A/N & disclaimer: I don't agree that peer or societal pressure should be used to coerce or force anyone into doing anything they don’t want to do. And absolutely no one should have their first (or indeed any) kiss forced upon them in public. But this idea burrowed into my brain and I had to run with it. This is fiction - I cannot stress that enough - and if anyone demands you do anything like this with them, in public or private, without your full and ongoing consent you can and absolutely should refuse.

Also, I have an ‘Everything Taglist’ now, so if you’d like to be on it to see more stuff by me let me know!

Taglist: @joejoequinnquinn @jamdoughnutmagician

#eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x gn!reader #Eddie munson x masc!reader #eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson x reader #joseph quinn #valentines fic #valentines fluff #kissing fic #candygram #eddie munson x you #Eddie munson x f!reader #Eddie munson x m!reader #kissing Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson imagine

[arealphrooblem]

Terms of Surrender Part 6

Synopsis: The queen of a doomed city makes the deal her husband refused to make with the conquering warlord outside her city's gates

Part one Here

Part five here:

CW: violence, mentions of blood

A few weeks passed by. The air started to thicken, the summer heat starting to roll in like a fog. The Queen became intensely grateful that propriety no longer dictated the heavy, cloying dresses befitting her former rank. The linen shifts and simple braid kept her cool enough; some days she didn’t even bother changing out of her nightgown, throwing on her lightest housecoat when the Warlord visited.

Such improper dress did nothing to phase him; he responded in kind, showing up some evenings in flowy linen pants and short sleeved shirts. In fact, the heat did not seem to phase him at all. The sun loved him, darkening his tawny skin until it glowed sepia in the setting rays. His hair shone like a raven’s wing.

In the growing humidity it had started to curl and the Queen found her gaze catching on his fingers when he ran his hand through it, wondering how soft his hair might feel. It was one of many distractions and they left her win-loss record in chess in shambles.

“Does something trouble you?” the Warlord asked as he tipped over her king. “You have played rather abysmally as of late. Each of my victories are becoming more and more embarrassing.”

How can she explain that the sight of his bare forearms as he reaches across the board, the elegant grip of his calloused fingers, the errant curl that sticks out above his right ear, is  driving her faintly mad?

“It is the heat,” she said instead. “I don’t see how you remain so unbothered by it.”

He smiled. “This is nothing. It gets much hotter back home.” Then his brow furrowed. “Are you uncomfortable? Is there anything you need?”

“I am the most comfortable prisoner in the world,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head.

“So you say. But I have a feeling you would not tell me if you weren’t.”

The Queen laughed at this. “Are you worried you’re a bad host to a prisoner of war? Everything I have is more than anyone in my position deserves or receives. It’s absurd that you should worry so much for my sake.”

He opened his mouth to retort and then closed it with a pensive look. “You’re right. Yet I seem to worry anyway.”

The warlord’s brow furrowed, as if this thought bothered him. She could only guess at the possible discomfiture at feeling guilty over a necessary imprisonment, the price paid for owning what he took. A potential weakness.

She would not want him to dwell on it, for multiple reasons.

“Do you miss home?” she asked.

He pondered over a rook. “Sometimes. Home is so entwined with my father and his rule that it hasn’t felt like mine. I’ve always been drawn to this place, though, and not just because none of my ancestors managed to successfully capture it before me. It’s a beautiful city, with much to envy. I visited once as a child and could never stop dreaming of it.”

“You came here?” she asked, surprised. “When?”

“I was but a boy — perhaps nine or ten years old. I came with my father and grandfather.”

He is not so much older than her that she wouldn’t remember this. But the past remains vague in her memory. She vaguely recalls such a visit, the peculiarity and anxiety around it, as his country and hers did not often have cordial visits after so much history of war.

“I must have met you but I don’t remember,” she said softly.

The corner of his mouth lifted up. “I didn’t either at first, but I do now. We met only once, at the first dinner. You were very shy and I didn’t speak your language so well then.  Your father sent you and your mother away for the rest of my trip. I think we made him nervous.”

The memory began to crystallize in her mind. She could recall a dark-eyed boy in strange clothes sitting across from her.

“Did I . . .help you ask for more water?” she says slowly, trying to grab hold of the memory before it slipped through her fingers again.

“Yes, And a smaller knife.”

She gasped. “I remember that. That was you?”

 It changed things, somehow: that he could have been a familiar face that night in his tent. That he recognized her even now. That she knew him before war had changed him.

“Is that why I’m . . . here?” she asked.

“You’re here for a number of reasons,” he replied. “But I can’t . . .discount that memory as a factor. You have not changed much from the kindness that I remember.”

“It was not kindness so much as common decency,” she pointed out, uncomfortable with the flattery.

He gave her another smile, this one tinged with sorrow. “You are not common. Not in my experience.”

More and more often the Warlord brought her matters of state to gather her advice on. He kept the specifics vague; she often did not know who he was dealing with. But she informed him of past decisions her father and husband had made, how they affected commerce and politics, the successes and failures that she could predict. It flattered her that he valued her insight so much; it also gave her hope that such value would become a guarantee to continue living.

Each morning her fears diminished. She found peace and contentment in the quiet monotony of her days. With no husband to monitor, no divided court to appease, no ever-shifting responsibilities, no appearances to keep up, the Queen experienced true happiness for the first time in her life.

Perhaps that was why she failed to notice the new face among her guards that day, or the way he slipped in her rooms after the maid delivering dinner stepped out.

“Come, my lady. We have little time,” he said, stepping close.

The queen blinked, uncomprehending.  “What?”

“The Warlord is on his way to join you. We must leave before he gets here.”

He took her wrist and tugs her towards the door to her bedroom. She resisted, planting her feet, her other hand gripping the back of the chair.

“Who are you? Where would you take me?”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “I’ve been sent by a friend of your husband and we are running out of time. Would you stay in this captivity until he executes you? Or would you have your freedom and take your country back?”

Her freedom. She could almost laugh in his face. What freedom could be found in becoming someone else’s pawn for the throne yet again?

The guard did not wait for her to answer. He gripped her roughly and dragged her across the room. She allowed him to take her as far as the door between her room and the Warlord’s before she threw her entire weight backwards, hard enough to send her tumbling to the ground and breaking his grip.

She scrambled to her feet and dashed back towards the sitting room, but the guard was both stronger and faster than her. His hands closed around the back of her dress and yanked her backwards, the neckline choking her. In an instant he had her pinned against the wall, wrists twisted behind her back, knife at her throat. The blade nicked the skin of her neck.

“You have sat in a gilded cage while your peers have suffered and foreign filth taints our home. You may be content with that, but they are not. I am taking you to the resistance by force or by choice, but I am taking you nonetheless.”

His bruising grip did not lessen as he led her through the Warlord’s chambers, out of the servant door and into an empty hallway. The queen debated fighting again, but she knew these halls more than him. It would do better to wait for a better opportunity to slip away.

That hope dashed to pieces when the guard pulled her into a scullery filled with at least six other men. She could run from one man, but not all six.

“Watch her,” the guard warned as he locked the door behind them. “She has sold her kingdom out for a pretty cage. She will run at the first opportunity to return to it.”

The hopeful expressions of the men disintegrated into something ugly and resentful. They surrounded her on all sides as they led her into the back kitchen gardens. By now the late evening sun had slipped behind the castle walls, keeping the gardens in rapidly growing darkness.

With every step her hope of escape died a little more. The list of men who were both honorable and counted among her husband’s friends was short and full of the deceased. The thought of being turned against the one man who had never seen her as a tool made her sick, and the thought of marrying another power hungry fool made her want to draw blood.

“I think you have something of mine.”

The sound of the Warlord’s voice, soft and quiet, stopped everyone in their tracks. The sounds of swords yanked from their scabbards followed quickly after. Out of the shadows the Warlord stepped forward, almost as if they had borne him.

“She was never yours, you filthy, sand-stained mongrel,” growled the guard who took her, shoving her behind him. “And we will not let your heathen ways taint her any further.”

The Warlord’s eyes flickered to hers. Even in the fading light the coldness of his gaze froze her to the spot.

“Do you feel tainted, my lady?” he asked mildly.

She wanted to scream her denial all the way up to God. She wanted to fight and shove her way to him. But the look in his eyes dried up every word before it could escape.

It was a look of death and ruin.

Countless stories of the Warlord’s terrifying, blood thirsty ways circulated viciously during the war. None of it could compare to seeing it in person. Despite the odds, the dying light, the Warlord cut down each man with brutal, excruciating efficiency. And when they all lay on the ground, he stuck his sword through each of their heads through the eye.

It was over in a matter of seconds. The Warlord stared at her, blood in his hair, dripping down his neck, soaking the front of his shirt and none of it his, and terror quite unlike anything she had never known seized her.

“Explain,” he said.

Fear had stolen her words. She couldn’t piece them together, couldn’t stop shaking.

He took a step forward and she stumbled backwards. Blood coated the blade of his sword.

“I will not ask you again,” he said. His voice shook with barely repressed rage.

“I — I didn’t go willingly,” she said hoarsely. “He came in with — with dinner. He said he was with a friend of my h-husband. He took me. I - I didn’t know how to get away.”

Her voice broke on the last word. And the cold fury of his gaze shattered into heartbreak.

“You are a fool for thinking I would believe that,” he said sadly. “But I am a bigger fool for wanting to.”

He did not take her to the dungeons himself. After his men appeared to collect her, he did not spare her another glance.

Part 7 here

Taglist:

@cesspitoflove@aprilraine@talesofurbania1@sarcasticlittlebook @hasel-anne @weaverofbrokenthreads @prismaticpizza @tantive404

#hero x villain #enemies to lovers #fantasci tumblr #writeblr #my writing #terms of surrender

[basicallyahedgehog]

Right Over Left

Happy Trans Day of Visibility! I wrote this fic for the @magicaltrans 2022 Trans Comfest and then it just sat languishing in my docs drive for months. I figured that today was the perfect day to bring it back out and share it.

This fic is technically standalone but does include a canon character who has changed their name. The previous fics in this series can be found here.

Read Below or on AO3

Harry entered their room to find Eltanin cross-legged in front of their mirror, their eyebrows drawn together as they moved sections of their hair this way and that. He settled quietly on his bed, knowing that El would talk to him when they were ready. In the meantime, he enjoyed the time to admire his partner. 

In the weeks since they had come out to Harry, Eltanin had been openly growing their hair out. Where it had barely passed their ears two months ago, it was now falling past their chin, and Harry had noticed them getting increasingly frustrated with it in class. 

Last week El had stolen one of Luna’s headbands, only to return it the same day, complaining of the headache it caused. Harry had teased them about their big head, but not before he had soothed the ache with soft fingers in his partner’s hair. 

If Harry was pressed, he might admit that he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Eltanin’s hair.

After the failed headband experiment Harry had bought El a variety of hairclips, which his partner had immediately stuck all through their hair like an excited five year old. They had continued to use the clips every day, however Harry had noticed in Defence earlier that the clips didn’t really hold against vigorous movement. 

Apparently Eltanin had made the same discovery, as they repeatedly attempted to weave strands of hair together on the back of their head. 

After what could have been minutes or hours — Harry regularly found himself lost in time when watching his beautiful partner — Eltanin dropped their head into their hands with a groan. 

“This was so much easier on someone else’s head!” 

Harry slowly moved from the bed, careful to make just enough noise that Eltanin would know he was there. 

“Can I help?” he asked as he settled himself behind Eltanin, his hands already slipping into the silky strands. 

Eltanin tilted their head further into Harry’s hands, their shoulders relaxing as the tension bled out of them. “Not unless you know how to braid hair.”

“That isn’t currently part of my skill set,” Harry chuckled, a plan forming in his head. “But I’ve been told I give good head rubs.”

------

“I need your help.” Harry tried not to show his nerves as he awaited Pansy’s reply. Sure, the eighth years had all become closer over the last three months, but he had never spoken to Pansy one on one before, and he couldn’t deny that he’d always been a little afraid of her. 

“I’m assuming this is about Dr-Eltanin?” She fixed him with a piercing stare, but Harry was relieved at the tiny quirk at the corner of her mouth. 

“I want to learn how to braid hair. They said they learned from you.” 

Pansy’s gaze softened. “Is this about their hair in defence?”

“Yeah, even the clips didn’t hold it well enough. I went up to our room earlier and they were trying to braid their hair, but they said it was easier on another person.”

“So you thought you’d learn to do it for them.” Pansy smiled at him. “You know, I was a little worried when Eltanin told me you were dating. You two have always had the ability to hurt each other more than most. But I’ve never seen them as happy as I have during these past few weeks.”

Harry blushed. “I don’t think that has anything to do with me. It’s a lot easier to be happy when you can be yourself.”

“Which they wouldn’t be able to do without you.” The piercing stare was back. “Meet me in the old Charms room after dinner. I’ll teach you how to braid.”

------

“Right over middle. Good. Now left over middle. No no over middle, not under. Good. Now again.”

Harry hadn’t really thought about how Pansy would teach him to braid, but he had to admit that he wasn’t expecting this. 

Ginny and Luna sat on the floor, leaning against a transfigured couch. Pansy had her hands woven through Ginny’s hair, demonstrating the braid while Harry did his best to replicate it on Luna. He had a bad feeling that his friend would be left with a lot of knots, but she was being endlessly patient with his tugging and twisting. 

“Oi, Potter.” Pansy’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Less daydreaming, more braiding. Right over, left over, right over, left over…”

------

On Monday morning Harry stepped out of the shower to find El aggressively clipping their hair back, muttering to themself. 

“Stay there you stubborn motherfucker. I’m not going to lose the mock duel again just because of my hair.”

Harry resisted the urge to laugh, and stepped up behind his partner. 

“Come and sit over here, darling.” 

He led a bemused El over to his bed, gently pushing them to sit on the floor in front of him. Removing the clips — while ignoring El’s protests — Harry hummed as he started to braid. 

“Right over, left over, right over, left over…”

“Where…how…why??” Harry could hear the emotion in his partner’s voice, and paused to run a soothing hand over their cheek. 

“You deserve to be comfortable in class, so I learned for you,” he shrugged, lifting his hand to continue braiding.

Instead he ended up with a lapful of wiggling, happy Eltanin, who pressed flurries of kisses all over his face. 

If he could make them this happy just by braiding their hair, he’d do it every day for the rest of his life.

#happy trans day of visibility #this is just pure fluff #because we all deserve some happiness and softness in our lives #drarry #trans harry potter #nonbinary draco malfoy #magical trans comfest #my writing

[wardenparker]

Starting Over - Chapter 11

Marcus Pike x female reader Co-written with @absurdthirst​

Recently arrived in Texas and only slightly removed from his divorce, Marcus finds himself smitten with the women at the housewares store that is helping him furnish his new Austin condo. It becomes a more complicated situation than he could have expected, but Marcus has never been one to shy away from a challenge when love is on the line. ✨This fic takes place *before* the events of The Mentalist.✨  

Rating: Mature Word Count: 14k Warnings: *Blanket warnings for this fic will include divorce, past abusive relationships, deceased mothers, father issues/family trauma, unplanned pregnancy.* Cursing and food mentions, unplanned pregnancy, pregnant reader, discussion of divorce and adultery, *false* domestic abuse allegations, angst and anger, lots of drama. Summary: An initially unwelcome visitor turns out to be the answer to your biggest problem, but it won’t happen quietly or easily. Notes: We have one more chapter and an epilogue after this! Thank you all so, so much for coming on this journey with us 💖 This story has been such a labor of love for us and we have loved having all of you with us every week!

Ch 1 ~ Ch 2 ~ Ch 3 ~ Ch 4 ~ Ch 5 ~ Ch 6 ~ Ch 7 ~ Ch 8 ~ Ch 9 ~ Ch 10

On the first day this week that Amanda hasn’t been at work with you, things are a little easier and the weight on your shoulders is a little less. There have been a few enthusiastic comments about how everyone seems to like her that you have just smiled and nodded during, not wanting to be the one to point out that she’ll show her true colours soon enough. She always does. But for now, you’re out on the sales floor with your team, fluffing pillows and straightening in between helping customers and assisting with customer service issues. It’s just a normal day and thank god for that.

Walking into the store, Andrew Packard looks around, taking in the scene. It hadn’t been hard to get a complete background history on you and where you work. He even has a recent picture, so he knows what you look like. His heart hurts, knowing he might not have ever known beyond social media since his son wants nothing to do with him. However, he wants to know you. To meet you without prejudice and he needs to help Marcus get out of this mess. Several people look up, but he spots you and starts making his way towards where you are fiddling with displays without being too obvious that you are his target.

“Is there anything I can help you with today, sir?” There’s something familiar about the tall older man with the salt-and-pepper hair that you can’t quite put your finger on, so you brush it away and give him a beaming smile. He’s probably just an infrequent repeat customer or he loosely resembles some actor on a tv show. Either way, you slide the pillow that was in your hands back onto the shelf and turn to give him your full attention.

In person, Andrew is immediately aware of what had drawn his son in. You – despite being perfectly professional – radiate warmth and kindness. It’s not just an act for you. Nearly sixty-five years on this earth and most of it working to maintain a changing company, he’s well versed in reading people. “Yes, I—” He gives a look around the store. “I am looking for a wedding present.” He decides.

“Oh, fantastic!” Fiddling with your own engagement ring a little makes your smile grow, and you’re still trying to figure out why this man looks so familiar to you. “Does the couple have a registry with us? If they don’t that’s okay, I’m just going to ask you a few questions about them instead.” After years and years with the company, you’re fairly decent at reading relationships from your customers, and this guy feels like an emotionally distant relative if ever there was one. Probably a workaholic. He’ll either be stingy because he doesn’t know them well or overspend out of guilt - you just can’t tell which yet.

“I don’t actually know.” Andrew admits, reaching up and scrubbing at the back of his neck. He’s not dressed in his normal business suits, having decided that this would be better as a causal thing, and it’s almost as if he’s missing a vital piece of armor. “I must admit that I don’t have the closest relationship with them.”

“That’s okay.” Nailed it, you give yourself a mental pat on the back and give your customer an encouraging nod. “Do you prefer to give functional gifts or indulgent ones?” Leading him toward the housewares department, you’re fairly confident that you can help this guy pick out a nice gift with ease. You’ve done it hundreds of times before, after all.

“Functionally indulgent?” Andrew jokes, enjoying the way that you are treating him as if he were no different from anyone else. Something that would not happen if you knew his name, he is sure. “Something that they wouldn’t be able to just throw away.”

“Sounds like some quality cookware or maybe a machine?” You wonder if he has any idea at all if this couple he’s buying for cooks for fun. “Not just a set of champagne glasses that will sit in the cupboard.”

“Machine.” Andrew decides. “Something that someone would want and not buy for themselves?” He turns to you. “What would you want but never buy for yourself?”

It’s actually a question that you get more often than one would think. Customers use you and your coworkers as sounding boards for their ideas and ask for your advice all the time. Sometimes you’re dead honest about it, sometimes you’ll point people towards your favourite gadget, and sometimes you try to steer the customer toward an ‘old reliable’ style purchase. Nobody ever got mad at getting a KitchenAid mixer as a wedding gift, right? There’s something about this particular man that edges you toward dead honesty, though, and you chuckle a little. “For me personally? I’ve worked here long enough to have bought myself most of the kitchen toys that I truly want,” you admit. “The thing that’s been calling my name lately and that I think I’m going to start saving my pennies for, is one of our new pizza ovens. I just can’t think of anything more fun than turning pizza night into something fun and personal, especially if you’ve got a growing family.” If it sounds like a sales pitch, it’s only because you’ve been hyping yourself up for a few weeks now. The price tag on these suckers is extremely high but you know that you and Marcus would love it.

“Really?” Andrew raises a brow and is impressed by the way you pitch it. “Would you show me the one you are saving for? I’m sure you want the one with all the bells and whistles.”

“It’s actually kind of basic.” The outdoor entertaining and barbecue display on your sales floor is fairly big considering you’re in Texas and people cook outside all year long, but you show him the specific display with the pizza oven set up to be inspected by curious customers and all the various manufacturer-branded accoutrements like a cookbook, pizza peel, digital thermometer, and heavy duty pot holders. “My fiancé and I like to cook together, and pizza is definitely one of our favourites.” Even talking about Marcus to a perfect stranger makes you beam a little, and your thumb moves to play with your engagement ring again unconsciously. “And you can see from the price tag that it is a bit of a splurge. But this is top of the line.”

Andrew softens at that tiny morsel of information. It’s nice to know that his love of pizza had never waned. “That’s nice that you enjoy cooking together.” He hums, and nods. “Will you show me a bit about this?”

“Oh, of course!” The ins and outs of the machine are fairly easy to explain, and you end up pulling out the cookbook to show your curious customer a few recipes that you’ve been particularly enamored with and then getting into other things you can cook in a pizza oven besides just pizza. “We made this dip last week,” you flip open the book to the desserts section where it displays a very basic recipe for a cast iron skillet full of chocolate and peanut butter then covered in a layer of marshmallows, meant to be eaten with pretzels or Graham crackers. “We made it in our standard oven so of course it took longer than doing it in the pizza oven, but it was amazing.” Sharing personal stories is part of how you make your biggest sales, you’ll never deny that, and it’s been effortless since you met Marcus. Anything he loves, you’re more than happy to talk about.

“For you or for your fiancé?” He asks with a grin, remembering the times he wound take Marcus to the beach and build a fire in the sand to make s’mores. Back before he started to hate Andrew, of course.

“We’re both s’mores addicts.” You admit with a laugh. “It’s nice to have simple things to share.” The Pike-ette had also appreciated it, seemingly forgoing your usual bout of nighttime morning sickness as a thank you for chocolate and peanut butter.

Andrew smiles, not mentioning how you have reaches down to stroke your belly several times. It was an action that Marcus’s mother had frequently done while she was carrying him. It makes his heart clench, remembering the amazing woman that he had honestly loved. He knows Marcus doesn’t believe that, but he had. “I have a bit of a sweet tooth myself.” He admits. “Stuffing strawberries with chocolate and dipping into the marshmallow stuff before roasting is my favorite.”

“That sounds amazing.” Your eyes widen almost comically before you can catch yourself. “I, uh…” it really does make you laugh, the way you nearly groaned at the sound of it, and you shrug. “Chocolate has been a pregnancy craving. I’m lucky it’s nothing too weird. But that sounds fantastic.”

Andrew pretends surprise, glancing down at your stomach, the one holding his grandchild and beams. “Congratulations.” He murmurs. “My wife –” he’s not talking about the woman he’s been married to, but Marcus’s mother, “she craved sweet and salty.” He laughs. “There was one day she wanted soft pretzels dipped in chocolate!”

“She’s a very smart woman.” Nodding sagely makes you grin again, and you glance down at your own belly under your loose shirt. You’ve gotten a little off point with this customer but that’s okay, it happens from time to time. “Don’t mind me. It’s new, still, so I get a little excited. Did you have any other questions about the oven, or want to take a look at other gift options?”

“No, I think that this is it.” Andrew tells you with a smile, happy to have gotten a chance to talk to you like this.

------

Marcus opens the door to the store, frazzled and honestly upset. Doing his best not to show it, he walks up to the counter and asks the associate there, someone that he remembers seeing a few times in here before, to page you.

The voice in your ear is very clear, snapping you back into reality with a harsh kick to your backside. It had been such a nice day before now. ’Hey boss, your fiancé is here and he looks upset’. You turn to your customer with a forced smile. “I’m sorry, would you excuse me for just a moment? I’m being paged, but I will have that pizza oven brought to the front counter for you. Excuse me.” You don’t even wait for him to reply, just turn and make the least frantic-looking dash to the front counter that you can manage. Marcus looks more upset than you think you’ve ever seen, and your arms go around him instantly. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

Marcus nearly cries when he sees you, reaching out and holding tight to you, as if you are his life preserver in a roiling ocean. “I— I’ve been sent home.” He murmurs in your ear. “Pending an internal investigation into accusations of domestic violence.” Turning in his gun and badge to the sympathetic but resolute director had been humiliating and soul crushing.

“What?!” You reel backward, searching his face for any trace that this is some kind of horrible joke. This has Amanda’s vengeance written all over it, you just can’t figure out how she intends to make those accusations stick. “That’s completely insane. Oh my— Jesus, baby, I’m so sorry.” You cling to him in that moment, willing yourself not to get angry on the sales floor in view of dozens of other people. “She’s not here, but I don’t know if she’s at home. Do you want to sit at my desk for a little while? I can see if I can leave early since I’m not the only manager here.”

His eyes close and he gives a pathetic nod, knowing that if she is there, he might actually do what she accused him of. “I—” his eyes open and shift behind you, his face immediately turning into a scowl. “What the hell is he doing here?” He demands, dropping his hands from your waist and stepping back.

“Who?” He is instantly on his guard again and you look behind you to follow his eyes but only find your customer standing a few feet away. “I was just working with a customer…?”

“Marcus, I—” Andrew steps forward, knowing that this could very well be the worst thing that could have happened, especially since he knows that particular look on his son’s face.

Marcus gives a small, dry chuckle. “That’s not a customer.” He tells you. “That, unfortunately, is my father.”

“Shit.” Shutting your eyes is more of an act of resignation than anything else, chastising yourself for being chatty and offering up information about your life to a stranger. Normally it’s a great way to make a sale. Today? Today it accidentally gave too much away, you fear. “I didn’t know,” you murmur to Marcus, just praying he believes you. You had never bothered to look up Andrew Packard’s photo. Why would you, when Marcus wants nothing to do with him? “You two, come with me.” Though you can’t bring them both back to your office - company rules - you can certainly force them back into your store’s habitually abandoned bath section so as not to be overheard.

Marcus follows, back straight and Andrew sighs before he too, follows. He had hoped this wouldn’t happen, but now there was nothing else to be done but face the music.

“You looked me up, I take it?” The question for Andrew is maybe harsher than it deserves, but considering the way he was just playing the jolly stranger with you, you’re not feeling to excited about meeting the man who is technically your father-in-law. “Did morbid curiosity bring you out from California?”

“No.” Andrew shakes his head and reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone. “I came because of the disturbing conversation and texts I received from Amanda.” He admits, opening the phone and handing it to you. “Deciding to meet you without you knowing who I was is wrong, but I wanted to see an unguarded version of the woman my son loves.”

“I hope it was worth it.” None too pleased with being deceived, you look down at the army of text messages he had received from Amanda for the last few days and have to appreciate his curt replies. As little love as Marcus has for his father - understandably - it’s clear that Andrew Packard isn’t mucking around in Amanda’s bullshit. “Shit…” The pictures are what get to you, and you hand the phone to Marcus. “When she left the house on Monday night, I guess she was busy learning how to give herself make-up bruises.”

Marcus looks at the photos that had been send to his father and blanches, instantly knowing that this issue just got even worse. “I swear I never—”

“If I know one thing,” Andrew interrupts Marcus. “It’s that my son did not put bruises on that woman.” He hesitates for a moment but reaches out and clasps Marcus’s shoulder. “You aren’t that kind of man.”

“I’m going to take a half a vacation day so we can go home and figure out what to do about all of this.” Looking between the two men, it’s a little startling that you didn’t recognize the resemblance before. Marcus has his father’s profile and hair almost exactly. “If I leave you two alone for a few minutes to speak to my manager, do you promise to behave?” The question is really more for his father, you know Marcus would never cause a fuss in your store.

Andrew is slightly insulted by the question, but he nods. “I’m here to help get this witch out of your hair.” He promises you and Marcus. He’s done his research and spoken with his lawyers.

“I’ll be right back.” Reaching to squeeze Marcus’s hand tightly, you offer him the most reassuring smile that you can and hustle for the Employees Only door that leads to your office. Though your manager isn’t pleased about losing coverage, he agrees to let you go for the rest of the day using a little vacation time and you grab your things from your desk before bolting back out to the sales floor. Marcus and his father are right where you left them, barely speaking but occasionally nodding to one another. “Okay.” You slip your arm around Marcus’s waist when you reappear. “Let’s go home.”

Marcus turns to his father. “Did you rent a car or have someone bring you from the airport?” He asks, honestly unsure of why he is here. He didn’t ask for him to come and he doesn’t know how he could possibly help unless he offers to pay Amanda off and he’s not going to let him do that.

“I rented a car,” Andrew smooths one hand down his shirt before stuffing it in his pocket. Without his suit as armor and here with his son, he would never admit it out loud, but he feels a little insecure. “And already checked into a hotel. I didn’t think you would want me staying with you.”

“At this point I would welcome it if it meant Amanda wasn’t in my spare room.” Marcus huffs, his hand on your back as he starts guiding you towards the door.

“Let’s see if we can’t achieve that for you.” He offers, knowing full well that his son will be skeptical of any help he intends to provide. At this point, though, it’s very clear that Marcus needs someone with a bit more bite in his corner.

“You might as well know, since you are here, that Amanda contacted the FBI too.” Marcus tells Andrew as the three of you leave the store and start walking out to the parking lot. “What she doesn’t know is that I’ve got cameras in the house. So, the entire thing was on video.”

“You’ve been recording your home?” Andrew looks suitably impressed, not having thought that Marcus would go that far to gather evidence. But it’s a good thing that he has. “This might be less difficult than I thought, if you have footage of whatever happened at home during the time she claims you hit her.”

“I do.” Marcus nods and he sighs, tugging you just a bit closer to him, his hand tightening his hold on you. “Plus, evidence where she threatened to kill my pregnant girlfriend on the stairs.” He hadn’t said anything to you, but he had been enraged when he watched the video. It had taken every ounce of undercover training not to reveal that he knew that.

“I—” You sigh, looking down at your feet as you cross the pavement as you walk. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to worry. She was just extra pissy because we were about to leave for the trip and I…” Taking a deep breath, you shake your head in resignation. “I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Marcus leans in and kisses your cheek. “I just hate the thought of her trying something.” He had turned the video over to his lawyers but hadn’t heard anything about it yet.

“We’re okay.” That’s something you can promise him absolutely. You and the baby are just fine, aside from the stress of Amanda’s brand-new accusations. “Looks like we’ll have a little caravan,” you observe, seeing Marcus’s car parked beside yours in the lot and Andrew pulling out a key that clearly matches the luxury SUV parked two spaces over.

“Amanda is at the house.” Marcus groans, rolling his eyes. “Are we— what is our plan?” He’s talking to you, but he’s also curious as to why his father is here. At this point, he’s just exhausted and unwilling to fight.

“We can go to my old place.” Naomi insisted that you keep your key for emergencies, and Marcus had made her one for his place for the same reason. “Just so we can have a chance to make a plan before dealing with her?”

Marcus nods and looks over at his father. “I’m sure you have the address.” He tells the older man before he opens the door for you to get into your car.

“I’ll text Naomi that we’re taking over her living room.” Leaning over the car door, you give Marcus a quick kiss before getting behind the wheel. Your best friend and her now live-in boyfriend are both at work, so you won’t be interrupting anyone. It’s just good that you have somewhere else to talk.

Marcus closes the door and turns to look at his dad for a moment. Wanting to say something and even opening his mouth before he shakes his head and turns to go get into his own car.

“I really am here to help, Marcus.” Andrew places his hand on his son’s car door, hoping the younger man won’t just slam his fingers unrepentantly. “I know asking for your trust is a lot, but you’re still my son.” Even as much as Marcus despises that fact, it is true. “Will you give me the benefit of the doubt just for a little while?”

Marcus wants to, just for a moment. But instead he snorts. “Andrew, the last benefit of a doubt I gave you was the day that you told me that it would be easier to pay someone to live with me after my mother died.” His jaw clenches and he shakes his head. “So please forgive me if I don’t exactly trust your version of ‘help’.”

“I have a lot to make up for, Marcus.” He knows that. He feels it in his bones every day, and the older he gets the more he aches with it. “I know that. That’s why I’m here. If—” He sighs, a gruff sound despite himself. “If not for you, then just hear me out for your child’s sake.”

“I’ll be honest,” Marcus knows that you are watching the tense exchange, but he wants to let the man who sired him know exactly where he stands. “The only reason I’m willing to even entertain you being here is because I don’t want the woman I love giving birth to my child before I can marry her.”

“I know that.” Andrew doesn’t doubt that the hatred Marcus has for the way he was raised has informed a great many of his choices when it comes to you, and he nods solemnly. “I know that’s what you want, and I really am trying to help you achieve it. Otherwise I would have just told Amanda to stop contacting me and kept my nose out of it.”

“I’m honestly surprised you cared enough to come.” He admits. “Business trip?” There is a bite of animosity in the question, the excuse he used when he was with them and away from his ‘real family’.

Andrew sighs, knowing he deserves the question, but squares his shoulders as he shakes his head. “No.” He tells his son flatly. “I told your stepmother exactly where I was going and why.” The shock on Marcus’s face is immediate, and warranted, and Andrew just nods again. “I have a lot to make up for, Marcus. I know that. But I do want to try.”

He couldn’t say anything if he wanted to. Instead, he just nods at his father and gets into his car. Honestly not sure if the damage that had been done years ago could ever be repaired, but there was a more pressing matter to deal with right now.

Once you’re back at the house, you could nearly cry out of sheer relief to see Amanda’s car absent from the driveway. Whatever she’s doing on her day off, she’s not at home and that is going to make things much easier. You and Marcus pull your cars into the garage leaving Andrew to park in the driveway, and you envelope your fiancé in the biggest, tightest hug when you both climb out of your cars behind the closed garage door.

“I can’t believe he is here.” Marcus would never admit it to Andrew, but he’s nervous. Nervous that the life he’s built with you will be looked down on by the man who he had been at odds with for so long.

“He seems to actually want to help.” You could hear what they were saying to each other even with your car door closed and to an outside observer – not knowing their dynamic more intimately – it seemed encouraging. “Maybe we can hear him out? Just listen to what he has to say?”

Marcus blows a raspberry and sighs. “I can’t make any promises.” He murmurs, hugging you tightly before letting you go. “He’s spent years perfecting the art of lying.”

“I know.” Nodding against his chest, you leave a kiss over Marcus’s heart. “But I think we might need all the help we can get.”

“I just – domestic violence?” He sounds shocked, bewildered. Because he is. “Why does she hate me so much?”

“You have something she wants.” Unfortunately, it really is that simple. As disgusting as it is. “Apparently there really is no low she won’t stoop to.”

“I hate her.” Marcus admits quietly, voicing that for the first time ever. “I think I hate her worse than – than anyone. Ever.”

“I do, too.” Giving him another tight hug, you lean back and look him in the eyes. “But we are going to get through this. You’re going to be able to go back to work with your head held high, I’m going to get her the hell out of my store, and she’s going to go back to Portland with her tail between her legs and nothing to show for her efforts but a whole lot of wasted time and money. We are going to be okay.” You’re not sure how, but you know that what you aren’t willing to do is give up.

He wants to believe that. “We better get inside and open the door for Andrew.” He tells you. “Find out what he thinks he can do.”

Marcus’s home is small by the standards Andrew is used to, but the condominium is well decorated and neatly furnished with a feminine touch that he can only assume is yours. The art on the walls, though, he knows Marcus must have chosen. It stung when his son had elected not to pursue the family business, but at the time he had been convinced that the boy’s madness was temporary and that he would come around. Now, however? Now he looked for Special Agent Marcus Pike’s name in police reports and federal cases with pride. Not that his son would ever believe it if he said so. “You’ve made a house a home.” He observes, looking around the living room after you let him inside. “It’s very nice.”

“All her doing.” Marcus will readily admit. “She helped me pick out everything. Best furniture shopping day of my life.” There is that stupid, small surge of pride when it receives the Andrew Packard seal of approval. Marcus hates that he likes it so much.

“Best day of my life, period.” You beam at Marcus from across the room, already headed to the kitchen to grab drinks for everyone. “Except for maybe the day you proposed. That one might take first place now.”

“Then it will the day we get married.” Marcus predicts. “And the birth of the Pike-ette.”

“Pike-ette?” Andrew’s head cocks in amusement from where he had been inspecting a framed photo of the two of you on the wall.

“It’s our nickname for the baby.” Since Marcus is the one who mentioned it first, you don’t see any real harm in explaining its meaning. “Lemonade okay for everyone?”

“That’s perfect.” Andrew doesn’t say that you shouldn’t bother, it would be ignored as it seems you like to entertain. “Thank you.”

Reappearing a moment later with a pitcher of the raspberry lemonade from the Chestnut House Inn and three glasses on a tray, you set them down on the coffee table in the middle of the living room and nervously smooth your sweaty palms down your sides in an attempt to be discreet.

“Do you know the sex yet?” Andrew asks, nodding slightly toward your middle. The shirt you’re wearing hides any little bit that you might be showing, but he can’t for the life of him remember how far along you have to be before you can find out. He might not have ever known, come to think of it.

“Not yet.” You pour out a glass for each of you before you sit back with your drink in hand. “We have a few more weeks to go before we can find out for sure.” The name list definitely doesn’t reflect that, though. You and Marcus walked away from your weekend in DC with some new favourites.

“Do you know why Amanda contacted you?” Marcus asks, jumping right into the meat of one of his larger questions. “Did she ask for money to go away? Because I don’t want you to give her a dime.”

"The only thing I plan on giving her is a ride to the airport to get her out of your hair." Obviously the time for small talk is over, but Andrew appreciates the fact that you are willing to give him any kind of morsel of information about your lives. The fact that he has not been there for so much of Marcus's life is a source of not inconsiderable shame as he gets older. "She contacted me for sympathy. She intends to make an ally of me, thinking I might take her side when the divorce goes to court." He shrugs his shoulders a little and clasps his hands in his lap as he sits in the armchair across from the couch. "Which will never happen."

“I can’t fucking believe this.” Marcus snorts, shaking his head and leaning back in his seat. “I want to know why the lawyers are dragging their feet.” He huffs. “I’ve given them days of video from the house.”

"I have every intention of having her packed and on her way back to Portland by the time I leave." There isn't likely to be much more of a welcome for him in this house than there has been for the first Mrs. Marcus Pike, and Andrew knows that. Sitting back in the comfortable chair, he surveys the two of you for a moment before directing his attention at Marcus. "What she wants is the trust. We know this. She hasn't exactly been coy about it. But what neither you nor she knew before now is that that trust is what is called a revocable living trust. It is not simply something that I set up when you were born and put money into to forget that it existed." He softens slightly when Marcus doesn't bite back at him. "It is a living and growing entity. I have added to it over the years. Possessions and heirlooms as well as money. Some of...some of your mother's things, as well as a few Packard family pieces that I wanted to make sure went to your family. But because of the nature of a living trust, it also means that I – as the grantor – can change the parameters of the trust. In other words, I can make sure the trust is iron-clad against Amanda."

“I— why didn’t I know that?” Marcus chokes out after a moment, shocked that Andrew had been adding to it. And that there were some of his mother’s things in trust. “I thought you got rid of her things.” He admits quietly. When he had come back to visit from his first semester of college, there had been a strange family living in the house he had grown up in. He had assumed his father had sold the house. He had gone back to his college apartment and never really spoken about it. Just denying any visit Andrew had wanted to make.

"If I told you honestly that losing your mother hurt too much to talk about for many years, would you actually believe me?" He knows what his son thinks of him, and decades of retrospect have forced him to admit that he deserves some degree of the treatment that he has been given. "I know that I handled things poorly, but the things she loved and treasured most were kept for you. They're in an atmosphere and temperature controlled storage pod in California that you'll be given access to soon. It can just be shipped here if that's what you want. You don't have to come out there or see me again to have it all."

“You were good to her.” Marcus begrudgingly admits. His mother had died believing that Andrew had loved her, despite Marcus’s belief to the contrary.

"She was the love of my life." He admits that freely now, and can only hope that Marcus believes it. Andrew Packard has never been a man who believes in tears or sentimentality when it comes to most of his life, but change is inescapable. He just wishes the change had been sooner, and for the better. "And I regret the way I handled everything. Especially when it comes to you."

There is a bitterness to Marcus’s smile, a small huff of amazement. “You mean that it’s not a good idea to basically abandon a teenager who just lost their only stable parent to live by themselves with someone you paid because it was more convenient for you?” Okay, it might have come out extremely sarcastic, but right now, he doesn’t care. Andrew might have loved his mother, but he hadn’t shown Marcus much compassion after she had died.

"Marcus, I don't expect you to forgive me." Though it's what he wants – what he wishes for – he doesn't consider it a realistic option. There are too many years' worth of bad blood, and Marcus inherited Andrew's stubbornness. "But I am the person who can fix this for you, if you let me."

“God, you can never just admit that you were wrong.” Marcus shakes his head. “It’s ‘I regret the way I handled things’ or ‘there is a reason I did that’. Never just saying ‘sorry, I fucked up’.” Marcus holds his hand up and stops Andrew when he goes to say something. “How does dear ol’ dad plan on fixing things for me? Do tell.”

"Goddamnit, Marcus, I was wrong." Andrew shakes his head, not having wanted to cause an argument in front of his son's pregnant fiancée. There seems to be no way to avoid it, though, and he wipes one hand down his face like it might do anything at all to calm him. "I'm a miserable old man with three children who despise me and a wife who prevented me from marrying the woman I loved because of money, and I don't want you to turn out like me!"

“You could have divorced her.” Marcus scoffs, leaning in and narrowing his eyes. “Like I’m desperately trying to do so I can marry the woman I love. But you didn’t. You treated us like the dirty little secrets we were. Only to be given attention when your real family could spare the time!” The news that his father’s daughters wanted nothing to do with Andrew surprised him. He had never viewed them as sisters, but they had always been the golden heirs to the Packard empire and treated as such.

"I signed a prenup." Back then it hadn't been something anyone talked about. It was business only, when he had agreed to marry the wealthy socialite who would provide him the opportunities, finances, and place in society that he needed to get his business really moving. Andrew exhales deeply, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before going on so he doesn't shout. "The new technology that our company was working on was built on Jeannie's father's designs. If I divorced her, I lost everything that I had ever worked toward. The entire future of the Packard brand." He pauses again, trying to pretend he doesn't see the way you're staring at him in shock. "There was...there was a clause in the agreement that allowed Jeannie and me each one affair. Whatever children came from the affair would be taken care of. Provided for. I could give your mother money and put a roof over your head and food on your table, but if I tried to divorce Jeannie it would all be gone. I—” It makes him ache, the decision that he made, but he can't undo it now. It's far too late for that. "I should have done it anyway. I should have left and rebuilt my life with you and your mother. But I was afraid, and I made the wrong decision." When he looks at Marcus again, it's all he can do not to choke on the words. "I was wrong, Marcus. And I don't expect you to forgive me. Or even believe how sorry I am. But if I could take back the decisions I made, I would."

Marcus is struck dumb for a moment. Learning things that he had never known, information he had never been privy to. Information that might have helped him see his father in a different light. Or at least eased some of the anger he had towards him. “And when mom died?” He whispers. “Living with you wasn’t an option? Because of the agreement?” Being abandoned after her death had really been the nail in the coffin. He hadn’t really cared for his father beforehand, but that act had cemented the idea that Marcus was just a byproduct of an affair and not really important to Andrew for him.

"It would have been a violation of the prenup." Andrew nods slowly, glad to see Marcus is actually absorbing the information instead of letting it wash over him as another thing out of his father's mouth to be ignored. "Jeannie has a third daughter living in New York. She's...a lawyer, I think. The father was one of my business associates for many years, and I held my tongue because the same rules that let them sneak off on their business trips also let me take time away to see you and your mother."

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Marcus climbs to his feet and paces around a small area in front of the coffee table. “And mom – she – she knew about all of this, didn’t she?” He asks his father, looking over at him as he paces with his hand on his hip and his other rubbing his temple.

"We agreed that it was too complicated to explain to you when you were younger." He huffs a little at that, rubbing the side of his head in exactly the same way as his son without realizing it. "She wanted to protect you, and I wanted to protect myself. She—would joke that she was too good for me, and that was why I couldn't leave Jeannie." Even the smallest memory is enough to have him choked up now, but he shakes it away.

“You should have told me.” Marcus declares. “Especially after—” he shakes his head, remembering all the hateful things he had said, thought about this man. “After I didn’t want to see you anymore.”

"Yes. I should have." He can agree to that, at the very least. "And I'm sorry that I didn't."

“Jesus.” Marcus closes his eyes, biting his lip as he feels his own guilt welling up. “I owe you an apology.” He’s enough of an adult, and nuanced enough to understand that the situation had been far more complicated than a rich man keeping a mistress and a bastard child on the side of his perfect family. He was a man who admitted his mistakes. Opening his eyes, they lock onto his father. “I’m sorry.”

Locked in silence on the sofa, you can only watch as Andrew Packard puts his hand out to his only son, only for Marcus to actually take a step forward to hug his father. You don't actually know if they've ever shared a moment before – surely it hasn't been since Marcus was a child if they ever have.

"You had every right to be angry." Andrew murmurs, one hand gently patting Marcus's shoulder as the two men separate. "But I'm here now to help. Hopefully you can believe that now."

Marcus takes a moment, emotions thick but he nods. “I- what are you going to do?” He asks gently. “What can you do?”

"I can change the wording of the beneficiary of the trust." When the two men sit back down, Andrew picks up his glass of lemonade, glad for the chance to do anything other than cry in front of his grown child. "Instead of simply saying that it is payable to you upon such and such conditions, I can tie it up so that it is payable to both you and your fiancée specifically – using her legal name, of course – upon the birth of your first child. And that any attempt to distribute the contents of the trust to anyone besides the two of you and your child will result in the immediate dissolvement of the trust. Of course, it means you literally cannot use the money for anything except yourselves and your family, but that's a problem for another time."

Marcus immediately frowns, his immediate refusal on the tip of his tongue. The insistence that he would never use the money ingrained in him. Instead, he bites off the urge and turns to you, wanting your input. “Babe?” He asks before he turns back to his father. “What is the trust worth?” He asks, never having paid too much attention to it at all and the idea that his father had kept adding to it make him wonder.

"Currently?" Andrew flips open an app on his phone and hums for a moment while something loads before looking back up at his son. "A little less than thirty-five million, plus your mother's things and a few family heirlooms that probably add up to another two or so million between them."

"Jesus." You shake your head a little. Absorbing everything has been a little bit of a hustle, but you're keeping up as best you can. "If you tie the trust up like this, can we still use it for things like buying a house or putting the kids through school? I mean that's what it was originally intended for, right?"

"Correct." Andrew nods, glad to see that you're sharp enough to keep up. "You'll be able to use it to make payments by cashing assets or moving funds into your personal account, and then using it as you see fit. But you will not be able to do things like sign a portion of the assets over to say...your child's spouse when they marry. You would have to set up an entirely separate trust for that."

Marcus swallows and searches his father’s face. “Why— why do you want me to have Packard heirlooms?” He asks. “I’m not a Packard. Shouldn’t they belong to your daughters?” He’s not trying to be cruel; he’s wanting to know why it’s important he receive those things.

"There are plenty of things that went to your sisters." He knows that Marcus has never thought of Elaine and Ariella as family, but they are. They are his blood, if only by half. "But despite the fact that I could not give you my name, you are a Packard by blood. And there are some things that I wanted you to have for that reason." There is a list, of course, all things like this have very detailed lists. "In your case, there are a few paintings, a few pieces of jewelry, and a furnished house."

“A house?” Marcus looks over at you and sees how wide your eyes have gotten. He doesn’t know why that surprises him, but it does.

"If you choose to sell it, that's up to you." He can't quite admit that it would break his heart a little, but given the strain in his relationship with Marcus, he would understand if the sentimentality meant little to him. "But when you decided to go into the FBI, I added it to your assets. A home already waiting for you in Washington seemed helpful." He sips his drink again, actually finding that he likes it and isn't just drinking it to be polite. "It's the house I grew up in. Your grandfather bought it from the original owners in the 1930s and I've been renting it to a family for the last ten years or so. Their youngest is in college now and I doubt they'll want to stay much longer."

Marcus can’t help but laugh. “She wants to go to Washington.” He tells his father, pointing at you. “I proposed there.” It’s oddly touching that he had been given consideration and well, a house in Washington. It would help if he did transfer there.

"Oh?" Andrew raises an eyebrow at you.

"I—" You fluster slightly, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden. "It's my favourite place," you admit with a shrug. "I went to college there and there's this inn I love, and...and that's there Marcus took me last weekend. They made us a picnic and he proposed on the Mall."

"Well," Andrew can't help but smile. "I hope you choose not to sell, then. It's in Georgetown. I can— I can have the trustees send over photos of the house, if you want."

Marcus nods. “For now, we are here in Austin, but I have a feeling D.C. will be our home before too long.” He admits with an indulgent smile towards you.

"Does this mean that you're willing to let me help, then?" In his view, it would be foolish and stubborn not to accept his offer to change the terms of the trust – and technically Marcus couldn't stop Andrew if this is what he decided to do. But Andrew Packard had promised himself that he was done bullying and steamrolling his son.

Marcus sighs, reaching for your hand. The little squeeze of encouragement is all he needs before he’s looking back at his father. “Yes.” Marcus nods. “I would appreciate your help.” He bites his lip. “Dad.”

Leaning over, you press a kiss to Marcus's cheek and rest your head temporarily on his shoulder before you blow out a sigh. "I can't believe there's an end in sight."

"Oh, I think it will be a very quick ending." Andrew nods to Marcus, well aware of the haze in his eyes at actually having his grown son call him Dad without sarcasm. "I'll be happy to sign a statement for the Bureau swearing absolute knowledge that the domestic violence allegations are false, if Amanda retracting her accusation isn't good enough on its own."

“That won’t be necessary.” Marcus shakes his head, knowing that there is no way that Andrew would honestly know that. “I have all of the video. It’s not pretty, but the only thing I did was yell and throw a cup at a wall. Nowhere near her. And it has audio.”

“Good, then.” Andrew blows out a breath with the air of a man who has had the weight of the world lifted from one shoulder but the woes of a lifetime still pressing on the other. “I’ll call the trustees and have the wording updated immediately.”

“We’ll give you some privacy.” It’s not as though the condo has an office or study you can let him use, so you nod to Marcus in the direction of the kitchen, thinking he might need a chance to breathe as well. The last hour has given him a hell of a lot to think about.

“Let me know if you need anything.” Marcus stands and quickly follows you to the kitchen and the moment he’s out of sight from his father, his knees nearly buckle as he sags against the counter. “Fuck.” He manages.

“How are you holding up, baby?” Your arms are around him instantly, encouraging him to use you for support and comfort as much as he possibly can. The man just had his entire perception of his father knocked on its axis and it can’t be easy to handle.

“I— I don’t know.” He admits, burying his face in your neck and closing his eyes. His breathing is labored and almost panicked. “I— he – it was –” He chokes out a sob and the tears that he had held back since he was a boy, the hurt and the pain at feeling unimportant by the man who had fathered him comes pouring out.

“Oh, honey…” It’s all you can really do not to cry with him, with the volatility of the moment so pervasive in the air. But you gently rub one hand in circles on his back, softly encouraging him to let all of it out. “That was…a lot of information…”

Marcus isn’t ashamed to cry. He’s never been one to believe that to ‘be a man’ meant that he couldn’t express real emotions. He knows that it’s healthy. Right now he’s crying for himself - all the anger and hate he had carried for Andrew, for his mom - who had loved a man who was caught in a situation with no good ending. For his dad - who had loved them and been unable to fully show it. “I— I d-d-didn’t know.”

“I know, love.” With one hand traveling in his back, your other holds him tight against you while he lets out every ounce of frustration and confusion he has. “You couldn’t have.”

Several more long minutes go by until the tears slow down and stop. Your shirt is soaked, but he knows you don’t care. Quieting down and finally just clinging to you, Marcus reevaluates his life, his entire perspective and knows that you are what is keeping him from going insane right now.

“Everything’s going to be okay.” Now, more than ever, you can honestly say that with confidence. There is a reason to say it. And even though the source is highly unlikely, you aren’t worried that it will fall through or backfire. This is Marcus’s father atoning for his own sins, and if that is what it takes to end this nightmare, you welcome it.

“I was starting to worry.” Marcus admits with a harsh chuckle. “Was afraid that it wouldn’t happen before you were giving birth.”

“I, um…” Wiping his damp cheeks, you press a kiss to Marcus’s forehead and shrug, like you’re not sure what else to say. “I think he’s at least earned himself an invitation to the wedding, don’t you?” Even if things are never more than polite between him and his father, you would hate for there to never be an olive branch.

Marcus huffs out a laugh and leans in to press his forehead against yours. “Yeah.” He breathes out. “I think he can come to the wedding.”

“I’m so glad that some of your mother’s things were saved.” A kiss to his cheek this time, as the last of his tears dry and he starts to breathe normally again. You fully understand how precious his mother was to him, and to not have lost all of those memories of her is an unlooked for blessing.

“I am too.” He admits softly. “I always regretted not taking the photo albums with me when I went to college.”

“We should ask if they’re in storage.” Andrew had been vague on which things belonging to Marcus’s mother were included in the trust, and you don’t want Marcus to be disappointed if something isn’t there.

“We can do that.” Marcus nods, imagining being able to see pictures of his mom again. He had only had a few that he had brought with him when he had left. They were precious to him, but only wallet sized.

“I love you.” Whispered as it is, just for him, it still lights you up in a way that nothing else really does. “I’m so sorry that today has been hard – that the last few months have been hard – but I love you and everything’s going to be okay.”

“I love you too.” Marcus whispered, cupping your cheek and leaning in to kiss you softly. “It’s going to be okay.” He breathes out like he’s actually believing it for the first time. Because the end is finally in sight. “We are going to get through this. I’m so fucking lucky to have found you.”

“I didn’t do a thing.” Your hands on his arms squeeze softly and you give him a lopsided grin. “Except accidentally tell your father about our s’mores dip and get a really good idea for chocolate and marshmallow covered strawberries in return.”

Marcus’s eyes widen and he bites his lip, smiling slightly. “I had forgotten about those.” He murmurs softly.

“I think we’re going to have to make some.” The smile on his face is everything, and you could just melt at how nostalgic he looks. “For the baby. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Marcus squeezes your hip and straightens. Letting go of you so he can walk over to the sink and wash his face from crying.

“What do you say to me making dinner for everyone?” It seems like the kindest gesture you can put forward, even if you’re not quite the gourmet cook that Andrew used to. A family meal meant everything to you growing up and it still does now. “Maybe we can talk a little bit more with your dad before the Wicked Witch comes home?”

“That –” Marcus is about to agree when Andrew walks into the kitchen, his phone sliding into his pocket. Turning to him, he wonders if it might just be that easy to get rid of Amanda.

“Everything’s being processed now.” Andrew tells you both, actually smiling a little. Amanda has made life hell for his son and he’s happy to make it hell for her in return. “The paperwork will be finished and filed before the end of business today.”

“God, just like that?” Marcus shakes his head in disbelief. “I’ve been trying for months to get her to just sign the damn papers. That I’m not giving her that trust.”

“She’ll have no reason not to sign now.” He notes the redness to Marcus’s eyes and the damp patch on your shirt but says nothing. It isn’t as though there is a door to your kitchen that could have kept him from hearing his son cry. “I’m—” he huffs a little, not used to the words or sure if they’ll be welcome. “I’m proud of you for not giving in to her, Marcus. A lesser man would have.”

“It wasn’t mine to give.” Marcus gives a small shrug. “Technically the money isn’t mine at all. I haven’t had a child, and I’m not the right age yet. I honestly never planned on touching it.” He admits, looking his father in the eyes.

“Well.” The older man rocks on his heels for a moment, steadying himself when he hears the front door open. “Hopefully it won’t be a sore subject for you any longer.”

“Shit.” Marcus wishes there were a few more minutes before she crawled in from the bowels of hell, but of course that couldn’t be the case. He turns to watch as Amanda walks through the door.

“Amanda.” Stepping out of the archway that leads into the kitchen, Andrew’s eyes narrow on her like a hawk spotting prey. “What remarkable timing you have. We were just talking about you.”

“Andrew!” Her eyes widen slightly, immediately adopting an innocent expression as she looks at him, barely noticing Marcus behind him as all three of you come into the living room. “I didn’t expect— you came all this way to make sure I was safe?” She simpers slightly, clutching her chest and finally looking at Marcus, smug when she notices his red rimmed eyes. “I am grateful to have the best father-in-law.”

There is a split second where you could swear that Andrew nods at you and Marcus, before he steps forward with a sympathetic coo in his voice. “Poor thing,” he intones, reaching like he’s going to cup Amanda’s cheek where the false make-up black eye hampers her usual flawless complexion. Instead of showing tenderness, though, the second she is in reach he swipes his thumb through the layers of foundation and color under her eye, smudging the make-up irreparably and holding up the digit to her gaze. “I came to make sure that you recant your story, sign the divorce papers, and leave. It’s a shame that you chose to prey on my son. Maybe you’ll choose a wiser target next time.”

Amanda gasps, jerking back with her eyes shooting daggers at Andrew. “How dare you touch me!” She screeches.

“Upset that I smudged your makeover?” He shakes his head. “I’m sure you’ll live.”

She looks around at the three angry faces. “Good luck proving this.” She sneers, tossing her head defiantly and pointing at her eye, “I’ve already made reports. The ball is rolling and there’s nothing saying that the bruises don’t ‘heal’ by the time everything is investigated.”

"I would say that the camera footage of the actual incident, as well as you admitting to me in this moment that the bruise is false – also on camera – should do a great deal to convince the Austin police department as well as the internal review board at the FBI that the report was falsified." Andrew sneers right back at her, wondering how a little viper like her ever managed to fool his son. "But you've forgotten one very important fact while you have been running around conducting your circus, Amanda. Marcus isn't in charge of the trust until the baby is born. I am."

Amanda narrows her eyes for a split second, having forgotten that part. “So what?” She asks. “The trust has been done for years. You can’t take money out of it.”

"Incorrect." He's so pleased with the fact that she's wrong that he practically chuckles, making the sound that follows the word a little foreboding. "The trust has existed for years. But it is a living, growing entity. Or it was, until about four minutes ago. Now it is set in stone. Accessible only by Marcus and his fiancée. Any attempt to sign over as much as a penny to any person besides their children will result in the immediate dissolvement of the entire trust."

Realization and fury fill Amanda’s eyes and she lets out a scream that is shrill enough that Marcus flinches in pain. “See if I fucking divorce you now!” She screams. “I’ll make sure your child is a bastard – just like you!”

"That's fine." Marcus and Andrew's heads both whip around to look at you in disbelief when you open your mouth, hearing those words come out. "This isn't Victorian England. Legitimacy doesn't mean anything, because our child is loved and wanted. Just like Marcus."

Marcus swallows and nods. “Our baby is wanted.” He tells Amanda.

Andrew nods, disgusted with the way she would try to emotionally manipulate his son. “Marcus was planned.” He informs her, much to Marcus’s shock. “I know that my son labored under the misconception that he was the byproduct of an affair, but he was not. His mother and I knew the exact date he was conceived.”

“Staying married won’t entitle you to a thing.” You tell Amanda point blank, sounding much braver than you feel. “You’ll just be lonely and miserable without any chance of being able to restart your life because you’ll have dug your heels too hard into ours.”

“I’ve wasted too much money on this to walk away empty-handed.” Amanda looks over pointedly at Andrew.

“What a shame.” Andrew laments dramatically. “Nothing is all you’re getting.”

Growling in frustration, Amanda throws her hands up and whirls around. “You’ve not won!”

“I will make you one deal.” Andrew offers, after a chilling pause. “Pack up your things, call your job and quit, and I’ll drive you myself to the Four Seasons Austin to spend your last week bothering my son staying in a luxury hotel. I’ll drive you to the lawyer’s office and to the police department myself tomorrow so that everything can be handled properly. As soon as you have dotted your last ‘i’, I will put you on a one-way flight back to Portland and you will never contact any of us again.” The business side of Andrew Packard is chilling, knowing no compassion or compromise as he stares her down in the living room. “This offer will be made only once. If you take it, we will not file a restraining order.”

Amanda clenches her jaw, looking from Marcus to you and the back to Andrew. “Fine.” She spits. “The decor is ugly and uncomfortable anyway.” She sniffs, glaring at you and Marcus. “You both deserve one another.”

Watching her storm upstairs is like watching a thunder cloud move independently through the skies, and Andrew’s eyes follow her with concern. “One of you should come with me to watch her pack. To make sure she doesn’t take any of your things.”

“I’ll do it.” Marcus volunteers, turning to you and pulling you against him. “I don’t want her to actually try to push you down the stairs in retaliation.”

“Agreed.” Andrew sets one hand gently on your shoulder. “Why don’t you decide where you and the Pike-ette would like to have dinner tonight. A celebration. My treat.”

Marcus looks at you when you turn your eyes on him, nodding slightly. “That sounds good.” He says. “Anywhere you want to go.”

“I’ll do a last purge of the kitchen while she packs.” Being able to toss out one last batch of all off those foods that have been making your life that much more miserable will be incredibly cathartic.

“Okay baby.” Marcus nods and kisses your forehead. “We are getting rid of her.”

“We can pick a wedding date.” Did you mean what you said earlier about still being with Marcus and loving your baby if you were never able to be married? Of course. But without Amanda standing in your way, the path to happiness lies open and waiting for you.

“Yes, we can.” Marcus beams at you, his grin wide and happy. “You decide if you want the wedding before the baby is born and talk to the inn and see when we can do it.”

“I’ll email Alana and see what dates they have available.” You rope your arms around his neck to press an earnest kiss to his lips. “Go on. I’ll be right here when she’s done.”

Marcus smiles and keeps smiling as he and Andrew make their way upstairs. Hearing her slam around in the room she has been squatting in. “I refused to put furniture in the spare room.” Marcus admits as they walk up the stairs. “So she had to sleep on an air mattress.”

“Will it be the nursery now?” Andrew distinctly remembers painting the nursery walls in the little house where Marcus grew up, loving the shade of blue they chose and how it seemed to radiate happiness when the sun hit it just right.

“Yes.” Marcus nods quickly, unable to keep from grinning at the prospect of finally being able to prepare for the baby. “Everything we’ve bought so far has been stuffed in our room. Afraid she would destroy it.” Marcus steps up on the landing and turns around to look back down at his father. “We’re planning on having four.”

“Four?” Andrew chuckles at his son’s enthusiasm, but slaps him on the shoulder in that sort of ingrained act of encouragement that all fathers show. “Do you have names yet?”

Marcus laughs and, if possible, his grin gets even wider. While he wouldn’t say everything with his father was fixed, he wasn’t going to continue to shut the man out. “We’ve got a notebook of names.” He bites his lip and asks, “who chose Marcus?”

“Your mother did.” They stand at the top of the staircase, sentinels making sure that Amanda keeps packing every second that she’s in that room. “I liked Mark, but she thought Marcus sounded better.”

“What you said – downstairs…” Marcus shuffles slightly and glances back at his father. “About being planned…was that for her sake or was that true?”

“That was true.” Andrew’s head bobs on a resigned sigh. “We talked about it so much – what it could be like to have a real family – until ultimately we decided that having you was more important than whether or not we were married.”

Marcus sighs, echoing his father almost exactly. "I wish I had been told all of this." He murmurs quietly, frowning when he remembers something else that Andrew had said. "You said all your children hate you." He reminds him. "What's the deal with that?"

“We were going to tell you…” he knows it isn’t enough, but it’s the truth. “When you turned eighteen. When your mother died before that I couldn’t—” He couldn’t bring himself to sully the perfect memory that Marcus had of the woman who cherished him more than the world. “I wasn’t strong enough to do it myself. But the girls? They…” He shrugs, not quite knowing what to say on that account. If he was ever looking for proof that he was a lousy father, it lay in the fact that none of his children wanted anything to do with him. “I focused my entire life on provided for my kids. When that’s your focus, you forget to be there for things like dance recitals and homecoming games. They become less important in your mind, but they’re not, Marcus. Don’t ever miss out on what is important to those four kids of yours once they’ve arrived. Because while you’re busy looking at the broader strokes, the little things are already cemented in their minds.”

"I'm not." Marcus promises, knowing for a fact that his relationship with his children will be far different from the one he had with his father. Although he can acknowledge that it's also because of his own attitude towards Andrew that caused the rift and the stoic man's refusal to bend the rules that apparently his parents had put in place when he was young concerning the knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes. "I plan on being a very hands-on dad." He sighs when he hears another slam inside the bedroom and glances towards the closed door. "Although I'm pretty sure that the kids will be spoiled by their grandfather when he comes to visit."

“What’s her father like?” Andrew can’t deny the sting that comes from knowing that your father will be allowed to have a relationship with his grandchildren when he will not – but he burned this bridge a long time ago. He knows that now. And Marcus may have apologized for his harsh attitude over the years, but it was far from displaced.

"I— I've never met him actually." Marcus admits sheepishly, shoving his hands in his pockets. "He's a farmer in upper New York." He chuckles after a moment, realizing that his father didn't understand what he had been trying to subtly say. "So I'm anticipating vacations to the farm more than he would come to them." He shrugs and looks at the man who really does embody what Marcus can expect to look like in another thirty-five years. "Their other grandfather would be the one that travels a lot."

“Oh.” Andrew nearly stumbles, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he moves to lean on the railing at the top of the stairs. “Any time, Marcus.” He promises, without hesitation. “Say the word and I’ll be there.”

"Well, first we have to get through the wedding." Marcus tells him casually. "It'll be in Washington D.C. That little inn where we stayed. She's in love with it and honestly? I am too." He opens up, offering his father details that he never would have before. He doesn't know if his father cares about information like that, but it's his way to extend an olive branch. "And then there's the birth of the baby. Have to be there for it."

“What’s the inn?” Marcus hasn’t willingly opened up to him like this in nearly twenty years and Andrew will be damned if he doesn’t grab the opportunity to learn all he can when his son is willing to share. “She strikes me as the homey and historical type.” He had gotten a few glances at your ring in the last few hours, too, and was impressed to see that you had chosen style over carat number - the opposite of what Amanda wore.

“She is.” Marcus grins, proud of you and everything to do with you. “The Chestnut House Inn.” He tells his dad, hearing another muffled curse from the closed door of the spare room. “Coincidentally in Georgetown too.”

Andrew hums for a moment, thinking intently, before he nods. “Big old converted mansion, right? They used to have dances there and your grandparents liked their restaurant a lot.” He chuckles, shaking his head at the coincidence. “It’s maybe two blocks from the house. You’ll be able to go and visit any time you like. I think they stopped doing afternoon teas in the summer, but my mother loved those.”

“If it was ever on the market, she would want to buy it in a heartbeat.” Marcus can’t believe that Andrew knows about the inn. “She majored in hospitality.”

“Really?” That surprises him. That you’re not working in the field you had wanted to. But times are tough even for the well connected, in terms of the job market. “For the right price, I think the current owner could be persuaded to part with it, don’t you?” It would take almost no work at all to find out who owns the place and if they’re inclined to sell. He could have the information from his business manager in under an hour.

Marcus shrugs, having left the majority of his own business dealings and investments alone. Maybe just a bit of a thumbing towards his father since business had been his entire life. “I honestly don’t have a clue what something like that would cost.”

“It depends on how well it’s doing and how satisfied the owner is with their staff, usually.” Andrew’s phone is out and in his hand, quick keystrokes getting him the information he needs, until a moment later he’s nearly laughing in disbelief. “You know,” he looks up at Marcus. “If you think she would really be interested, and be good at it? I know the current owner. He’s a son of a bitch, and a greedy one. He would sell if there was a profit to be had.”

Marcus knows you will be fantastic at it. “She isn’t the problem.” Marcus tells Andrew. “She would be amazing at it. But I don’t have that kind of money and I don’t know if, or when, we will be in D.C.”

“I have that kind of money.” Andrew reminds him, not shy about the fact that he would want to be the one to do this. “If and when you get word about DC? You just let me know. It would be a hell of a surprise for her, if you wanted it to be.”

“I’ll let you know.” He doesn’t want his father to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars on his behalf, even if it wouldn’t personally hurt his wallet.

“Do.” Andrew nods. He’ll buy the property anyway, keeping the staff in place, and gift it to you and Marcus on the correct occasion. It’s no less than what the current owner is doing, he’s sure, and he’s a better businessman than his so-called friend. But he doesn’t want to lose the thread he has with Marcus, so he quickly picks up the conversation again. “Have you talked about the honeymoon yet?”

“Vague ideas.” Marcus admits. “It’s been hard to plan when we couldn’t set a date. Somewhere private. Maybe a tropical island.”

“You’re welcome to use our place in the Caymans.” Glancing over at his son, Andrew is perhaps extra aware of the privileges that he can offer if Marcus is willing to let him into his life. Not that he ever forced his son to struggle – he actively worked to provide for him – but the advantages are definitely exaggerated right now. He wants to give Marcus, and you and the baby, the world.

Marcus frowns and furrows his brow. “The Caymans…” he tilts his head. “That vacation to the beach when I was seven? Eight? Was that?”

“That was the Caymans.” Andrew nods, pleased that Marcus at least has some good memories of him left.

“That was a good vacation.” Marcus muses. “You helped me make sandcastles and you and mom would stay up late and dance.” He remembers watching when he was supposed to be asleep.

“I loved her.” Andrew murmurs, turning his eyes on his son again. “As well as I knew how. And we—we both love you so much. She would be so proud of you.”

“I’m sure we have a lot to catch up on.” Marcus murmurs, feeling warmer. “Do you—” he hesitates for a moment. “The photo albums she had, do you have them in storage?” He asks quietly.

“I have them, but not in storage.” The albums that Rachel had kept so meticulously to document Marcus’s early years occupy a shelf in the safe of Andrew’s home office, where they have sat for years, waiting to become part of what is effectively Marcus’s inheritance. “They’re yours when you want them.”

“Where are they?” His answer is suddenly very important to Marcus. He’s had a lot of judgements against his father, but he needs to know this.

“My safe.” Andrew barely glances at the door to the spare room when a storm of frustration is heard from inside. “In my office at home. They’re yours, of course, but I—I’ve appreciated being able to see your mother from time to time over the years.”

Marcus chokes up slightly and blinks rapidly, realizing how much that Andrew must have missed her and being denied the child that he created with her must have twisted the knife deeper. “Maybe we can make copies?” He offers. “So we can both have the memories of her?”

It takes a moment, but Andrew manages to hold back an overly emotional reaction, nodding instead. But a crack in his voice gives him away anyway. “I—I’ll keep the digital copies. You should have the albums.”

“Whatever you think is best.” Marcus tells him right as the door to the bedroom opens and Amanda curls her lips at the two men. “This is touching and all, but someone needs to help me with my bags.”

While it would be delightful to force the woman to make several trips on her own, Andrew wants her out of Marcus’s hair pronto. “Come on,” he huffs, all but rolling his eyes when he sees three more bags sitting on the mattress in the spare room. “The sooner you’re out of here, the happier everyone involved will be.”

She snorts and huffs as she shoulders her purse and levels a withering look at Marcus. “It’s a good thing, I guess.” She tells him. “You were horrible in bed and boring.”

“Oh now see, Amanda, that’s just not true.” At the bottom of the stairs, you’re standing with a trash bag full of her awful foods all tied up and ready to send away with her. “Because I’ve fucked both of you, and you were worse by far.” Thrusting the bag into her hand as she practically stumbles down the last step to you, you just smile brightly. The eager, victorious, unwavering smile of a woman who is finally going to be free of torment to live the life that makes her happy. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

“Fuck all of you.” She hisses, looking like she might attack you for a moment before she stalks to the front door and flings it open. “Let’s go!”

“Bye bye now!” The sound of the door shutting behind her might be the best thing you’ve heard since Marcus asked you to marry him, and you practically slump in on yourself watching her go. Andrew calls out a promise to come back soon and then it’s nothing but blissful, magical silence inside your house.

“Holy shit.” Marcus slumps down and closes his eyes. “I can’t believe that it might actually be over.”

“There’s still paperwork to sign and making sure she retracts her statement to the police, but at least she’s not in the house.” Wrapping both arms around Marcus, you bring him tight to your chest and press a kiss to his hairline. “And we gotta make sure she quits her job, so I can have my work back.”

“She’s quit.” Marcus chuckles and presses a kiss to your hairline. “My father will make sure of it.” For the first time since he had woken up to the banging on the door, he feels like he can breathe.

“How are you feeling about having him around a little?” For such an enormous arrival outside of thin air today, Andrew Packard has certainly made an impression. And not the one you thought he would.

“I don’t…hate it.” Marcus admits quietly. “Surprisingly.” He rubs your back and decides to tell you. “I may have told him that he needed to be around for his four soon-to-be grandkids.”

That surprises you probably as much as it surprised him to say it, but you melt a little in his arms and let one hand cradle the underside of your belly. “I’m proud of you, love. It’s not easy to except help from someone you’re at odds with, and you did far more than just accept today.”

“I— learning the specifics of their entire…thing – it changed a lot of things for me.” He tells you quietly. “Especially since we’ve been in our own situation.”

“Maybe we can learn a little more while your father is still here?” Tangled around each other, the tension of the last few months loosens from your joints and starts to drip from your shoulders. “He did something enormous for us today. It would be nice if we could keep building good memories.”

“I can’t believe that he did this.” He sighs out. “I can’t be upset at him for coming. He did something amazing for us. And he has the photo albums.”

“Your mom’s albums?” He’s mentioned them more than a few times - how he wishes he had those photographs from his childhood to share with you and with your kids. “Seriously?”

“They aren’t in storage.” Marcus whispers. “He’s got them in his personal safe.”

“Would he let us make copies?” You know how much it would mean to Marcus to have memories of his mother back again, and you would do anything to help him make that happen. “I can make a digital replica for us to keep.”

“The photo albums are mine.” Marcus whispers, still amazed that his father had said that. “He wants to make a digital copy for himself. And let me keep the originals.”

“Oh, honey.” You’ll blame the tears in your eyes on pregnancy hormones, but either way you squeeze Marcus tight to your side. “That’s amazing. You’ll be able to see her whenever you want now.”

“I know.” He closes his eyes and leans in to kiss you again. “I think this is going to be good for both of us. I’m going to try. To at least be polite, but I’m going to try.”

“I think it could be really good.” You won’t push, of course. You have never pushed Marcus. But it seems clear to you that Andrew wants a relationship with his son and is willing to put in a hell of a lot of work to make that happen. Humming softly when he kisses you again, you grin against his lips. “Alana is sending me a list of available dates for the rest of the year. We could have a wedding date picked out before we even go to bed tonight.”

“I invited him.” He announces. “Or maybe he doesn’t realize I did, but I mean to.” Inviting him to a wedding he had helped move up was the least he could do.

“We’ll make sure he gets a real invitation sent through the mail and everything.” It’s too much to ask if he might want to try to talk to his sisters, and today has already been a bit overwhelming, so you leave that out of the conversation for now. “Out of everything…I can’t believe he’s just…giving us a house…”

He can’t help but chuckle, shaking his head. “That’s what you are impressed with?” He can’t help but swing you around slightly and kiss you again, so fucking happy that the end is in sight.

“I’m taking it in one thing at a time!” You defend, laughing in his arms as he reels you in again to crush tightly against his chest. “I don’t even know how to process a number like thirty-five million, and it’s not going to really hit me that she’s gone until we wake up in the morning to no loud noises and no awful smells. So yes, I zeroed in on the house.”

“So you love me for my money?” Marcus teases, winking at you even though he’s shooting you a playful pout. “Although my father is impressed with you, adding you to the trust.”

“Marcus Pike, I would love you with nothing but dirt under your fingernails.” After all, you are a farm girl. “I would marry you with no ring and no roof and barely the clothes on our backs. I will work every day of my life to help provide for our family and make our lives happy.” Squeezing his hand in yours, your smile turns teasing. “But it’s a lot easier to plan for four babies when we know we won’t be struggling to feed them.”

“No. We won’t be struggling to feed them.” Marcus smiles and rubs your stomach with his free hand. “Especially since he just also maneuvered us into using the trust.” He chuckles. “Crafty bastard.”

“It’s a change we’ll reckon with.” Especially if he and his father are going to repair their relationship, which seems likely in light of today. “If using the trust means gaining your memories of your mother, then I’m all for it.”

“I can’t believe this.” Marcus shakes his head. “This is not what I expected to happen when I walked into your work today.”

“And thank god for that.” You lean your head on his shoulder. “Because the day we almost had was going to be hell.”

He basks in the silence for a moment before he flashes you a sly smile. “Want to go deflate the air mattress?” He chuckles sinisterly. “Although I hate wasting things, I feel like it’s contaminated and should be thrown out.”

“We’ll find somewhere to donate it.” Waste isn’t in either of your vocabularies when you can help it, but you’re not keen to keep the bed Amanda had been sleeping on, either.

“We can clean it up and start setting it up for the baby.” Marcus rubs your stomach again and sighs, relieved by being able to actually do something rather than dream. “I’ll go get the cleaning stuff, you can just watch or start stripping the air mattress. You know she didn’t.”

“We’ll get everything cleaned up and we’ll paint first thing. Get the room feeling completely different then when she was in it.” Popping up, you lean over to kiss Marcus before heading for the stairs. “It’s gonna be great.”

Marcus watches you, just admiring the way that you are buoyed by the change in circumstances. The pep in your step a delightful thing to see and he hopes that there is nothing but smooth sailing from now on. You are right, it's gonna be great.

______

Master Tags: @pixiedurango @chattychell @winter-fox-queen @lady-himbo @artsymaddie @princess76179 @paintballkid711 @missminkylove @pedrosbrat @ew-erin @sarahjkl82-blog @sharkbait77 @justanotherblonde23 @lv7867 @recklesswit @mylittlesenaar @f0rever15elf @gallowsjoker @steeevienicks @athalien @sherala007 @skvatnavle @thatpinkshirt @jaime1110 @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @goodgriefitsawildworld @greeneyedblondie44 @katheriner1999 @littlemousedroid @harriedandharassed @churchill356 @ajathegreats-blog @hardc0rehaylz @beardsanddetectives @kirsteng42 @ladykatakuri

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#Pedro Pascal #Pedro Pascal character fanfiction #Pedro Pascal fanfic #Marcus Pike #Marcus Pike x reader #Marcus Pike x you #Marcus Pike x female reader #The Mentalist #Mentalist fanfic #tw divorce #tw unplanned pregnancy #pregnant reader #tw deceased parent #tw adultery

[bedlamsbard]

Some MCU concept writing!  This is for the "HYDRA had already taken over SHIELD when Steve came out of the ice” AU; I could potentially turn this into a full story, but I’ve already got a couple of novel-length WIPs right now so at present it exists entirely as concept writing.

About 6.7K below the break -- Steve/Natasha.

******

When Nick Fury showed up in the garden at the home one warm spring day, Peggy Carter knew that the news had to be bad.  He walked past the two undercover agents as if he really was the young church volunteer that his photostatic veil proclaimed him to be rather than the most wanted man in the world and spent a pleasant if tense two minutes chatting with her about the new additions to the U.S. Botanic Garden and whether she would like to see them before judging that they had enough privacy for whatever it was he wanted.

“They’ve found Steve Rogers,” he said.

Peggy shut her eyes and managed, just barely, to keep herself from either screaming or crying. After a moment to get her breathing under control, she opened her eyes again and said, “So the same bastards who killed him sixty-seven years ago will get the political credit for burying an empty coffin as well as whatever bits and pieces of Dr. Erskine’s formula they can tease out of his body.”

“No,” Nick said, an odd kind of gentleness in his voice.  He was capable of it, though he didn’t show it often.

“No?” Peggy said. “Are you planning a daring midnight raid to retrieve his remains?”

It would be worth the risk to keep the world’s only successful super soldier from remaining in HYDRA’s hands, though.  Seventy years of attempts to replicate the original serum had resulted in a great deal of pain, a great number of corpses, and only marginal success that did nothing to make up for the lives it had ruined.  Peggy had known Abraham Erskine and Steve Rogers both well enough to know that both would have hated what had come out of Project Rebirth; even Howard Stark had drawn a line there, though the discovery that others in SI weren’t so discerning had killed him in the end.

“No,” Nick said again. He took a deep breath, and something about that uncharacteristic uncertainty made Peggy tense further.

“Out with it,” she said. “Whatever else you came here to say, I doubt it will get better by waiting a few minutes.”

Nick dipped his chin slightly in acknowledgment and said bluntly, “They found Captain Rogers alive. It looks like the initial crash back in ’45 sent him into a kind of suspended animation – he was found in the permafrost off Greenland; we couldn’t find out the exact coordinates.”

Peggy took a shaky breath, her mind going entirely blank for a few moments before she forced herself to say, “When are you retrieving him?”

That there had to be some kind of attempt wasn’t in question; whatever the state of Steve’s mind and body, HYDRA couldn’t be allowed to have a living test subject any more than they could a dead one.

“We aren’t,” Nick said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Captain Rogers was found six months ago,” Nick said.  “He woke up five months ago, but my sources say that he could have woken up naturally at least two weeks earlier, maybe more; they were keeping him sedated. He’s cogent, in full possession of his faculties – to all appearances, in exactly the physical condition he was in when the plane crashed in 1945.”

Peggy pressed a hand to her mouth.  It should have been good news, but – “Oh, no,” she whispered. “Oh, god, no –”

Nick reached across the table and took her other hand in both of his, the photostatic veil a light buzz against her palm.  He waited until she had stopped shaking before he said, “The good news is that the agent they have handling him is one of ours.  They’ve had him out on a few softball missions so far; he’s been toeing the line, but they worked him over good before it got that far.  My agent says he seems to be pretty stable, all things considered, but it’s not like she knew him beforehand.”

He hesitated for an instant, then changed his mind about whatever it was he had been about to say. Peggy could guess, though; by now she knew how HYDRA operated and what their best bets would be with the man who had been America’s sweetheart three-quarters of a century earlier.

“The agent assigned to him,” she said, and Nick flicked an ironic glance at her, “I suppose she’s a young lady?  Attractive?”

“Yeah, she’s sleeping with him,” Nick said, his voice careful; he knew what her real question had been.

After nearly seventy years it wasn’t the shock it might have been, though Peggy was surprised at the flush of surprised hurt that followed the words.  Whatever else he was, Steve Rogers was a twenty-six-year-old young man who was at least reasonably attracted to women; Peggy could separate herself enough from the situation to know what she might have done had she been in Alexander Pierce’s shoes just now.  Pierce needed Captain America functional; he already had a Winter Soldier and didn’t need a second one – not yet, anyway, not unless this situation couldn’t be salvaged.  Sex was a rather blunt instrument, but under the right circumstances it was a fairly effective one, and for someone utterly alone in the world and reeling from the shock of reentry…that would be effective, assuming he had picked the right person for it.  Women in SHIELD – which meant women in HYDRA – tended to follow a certain model, and unfortunately Peggy and everyone else knew that that model was one Steve Rogers would be susceptible to.  Getting Steve fixated on his handler wasn’t the surest method, but if done right it could be a quick one, and Pierce must need quick.

“When are they planning to go public?” she asked.

“Not just yet,” Nick said. “Seeing if Rogers will do wetwork is one thing; putting him on the press circuit – and it will be the press circuit if and when Pierce goes public with him – is another.”

Peggy shut her eyes briefly, then opened them again.  “You’re planning to extract him and your agent before then, I assume?”

“We’re hoping to,” Nick said, his voice carefully neutral. “But right now, as far as my agent can tell, Captain Rogers doesn’t know that he’s standing in a nest of vipers. Pierce might have him out killing people for the cause, but so far he’s managed to keep what exactly that cause is to himself.  They’re ops I might have run back in the day,” he admitted.

Which meant they were ops that Peggy herself would have ordered when she had still been the director of SHIELD – back when SHIELD had still been SHIELD and not HYDRA flying a false flag.

“You need to make certain he’s salvageable,” Peggy said, even though the words hurt to say.  It was Steve.

“I need to make certain he’s sane,” Nick said bluntly. “They worked him over both before and after he woke up and we’re still not sure how.  It’s not great for us if HYDRA has another super soldier on their side, especially one whose serum is more stable than the one Barnes got, but it doesn’t put us in that much worse of a position, either.”

“You only say that because you don’t know what he’s capable of,” Peggy said, and when he raised his eyebrows, the expression still familiar despite the mask of the photostatic veil, she said, “But Pierce doesn’t know that either.”

“Then we got that going for us.”  He passed her a brochure for the Botanical Garden.

Peggy flipped it open and caught her breath.  The photograph inside could have been from the war, except she knew all of the surviving pictures of Steve Rogers and this wasn’t one of them.  The black tactical uniform he was wearing – vaguely reminiscent of his old uniform in the lines though otherwise modern, with the curve of the shield just visible over his shoulders – seemed to wash out all of the color in the photograph, until she looked closer and saw the bloom of it in his cheeks, his eyes, his lips, and a flash of red hair next to his shoulder that the photographer hadn’t quite managed to crop out.  He didn’t look as if he had aged a day since the last time Peggy had seen him in 1945.  The only sign of it was in his eyes, wary and weary in a way she didn’t remember them being. His body was angled ever so slightly towards the unseen woman beside him.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Nick said, though Steve Rogers’ face was well-known enough that there had never been any real question. “Not some other WWII super soldier we lost in the Arctic?”

“That’s him.”  She touched her fingers gently to his face, then drew her hand back quickly.  He wasn’t wearing his helmet, though she could see it dangling from one hand, and his blond hair stood up in sweat-darkened spikes.  Something about it made him look very young – except he was very young by almost any standard but the calendar, even without the benefit of her nearly seventy additional years. “When was this taken?”

“Yesterday.”

That hurt in a way that Peggy hadn’t anticipated after all this time.  While it was possible Pierce was keeping him at another SHIELD facility, the most likely place for him to be was at the Triskelion, not much more than an hour’s drive away – less without traffic.  Pierce would have told him Peggy was dead, of course.

“Is she good to him?” she blurted out, then winced; it wasn’t the question she wanted to ask and it certainly wasn’t a question she should have asked.

Despite that Nick’s expression was sympathetic. “A hell of a lot better than anyone from the other side would be,” he said. “For what it’s worth, she’s the agent I would have assigned to him anyway if this had happened back in the old days, for most of the same reasons.  Not the sex, obviously.”

“‘Obviously,’” Peggy said back to him, mimicking his dry tone; SHIELD had tried not to operate that way but there had been exceptions.  There were always exceptions.

She knew better than to ask which of Nick’s agents it was.  Even if it hadn’t been a security risk, very likely Peggy wouldn’t know the woman anyway. The fact that he was telling her about Steve at all was a huge risk, especially given that Peggy’s bad days had been coming more frequently of late.

“How long have you known?” she asked instead.

He grimaced. “Not long enough.  Pierce was keeping it close to his chest, HYDRA loyalists only, until he handed Rogers over to my agent.  We got lucky that he decided she was the right kind of pretty face or we probably still wouldn’t know.”

“Not just a pretty face, I assume.”

“Not just a pretty face.” Nick sighed.  “When we extract him, I’m guessing he’s going to be pretty confused – that’s assuming he’s in his right mind, which isn’t a given.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Steve Rogers has been in his right mind since about July 4, 1918,” Peggy said, and was rewarded by seeing the corner of his mouth curl up. “Around 6 am Eastern time, I believe.”

“I’d like you to be there once we’re sure he’s not dangerous – to us, that is,” Nick said. “Or at least not actively trying to kill us.”

“Of course,” Peggy said. “Assuming you can get me away from my nursemaids.”  Neither of them looked at the HYDRA agents assigned to watch her.

“Yeah, we can do that.”

Peggy looked at the picture of Steve again, wary-eyed and trapped even if he didn’t know it, then closed the brochure on it and handed it back to Nick; she couldn’t afford to keep it in her room, which she knew was searched regularly just in case she was in touch with Nick and his SHIELD loyalists.  She was, of course, which meant that all their paranoia was justified.

“Does he know about Barnes?” she asked with the usual familiar flush of shame.

Nick shook his head. “Looks like they moved Barnes to an overseas facility after they brought Rogers here.  I doubt they’d risk having the two of them in the same place yet, not until they’re sure Rogers is stable – stable for what they want, anyway.”

“Even HYDRA is familiar with that particular bit of their history,” Peggy said. “They can learn, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” Nick said sourly. “Too bad; I’d have liked to see that one backfire on them.”

“Well, you may yet have the chance.”  Peggy took a deep breath.  “Get him out, Nick.  Get him out now, before Pierce can have any more time with him.”

*****

(set some indeterminate time later)

The first thing Nick Fury said to her was, “You all right?”

Natasha felt her shoulders slump with relief she wouldn’t have shown to anyone else except maybe Clint, who was lingering behind her with Maria Hill.  They were the only ones in the room, though there were six other SHIELD loyalists outside, keeping watch.

She nodded in response to Fury’s question.  “Yeah.”

She took the chair he indicated as Clint sat down beside her, propping a foot up alongside her hip in a gesture more for familiarity than comfort; she had seen him moving gingerly when she had arrived and there was a fading bruise on the underside of his jaw.  Hill stayed by the door.

“They feeding you up there?” Clint asked, pushing a pizza box in her direction.  It was labeled with the name of the pizza shop upstairs from their meeting place and had obviously come out of the oven only a few minutes before even before Clint flipped the lid open for her.

“Well, they’re feeding us,” Natasha said. “I wouldn’t say they’re feeding us well.”

“So they really are evil,” Clint said with a shudder.

“Yeah, I’d say the chip in the back of my neck that will fry my nervous system if they realize I’m here is a good clue,” Natasha said dryly.  SHIELD could deactivate the governor implants, but Natasha had told them just to dial it down enough so that it wouldn’t kill her even at the highest setting; she couldn’t risk HYDRA finding out she wasn’t a loyalist because they tried to yank her leash and realized it had been cut.  “Also the part where they’re, you know, HYDRA.”

“Point taken.”

Fury let her wolf down two slices of pizza and start in, more slowly now, on a third, before he said, “Sitrep?”

Natasha swallowed before she spoke and balanced her half-eaten slice on the edge of the box. “Not great, but I don’t think we’re going to get a better shot and we have to move now before the situation gets worse, which it’s going to one way or another – probably several ways.  Pierce has definitely been testing to see if Rogers will toe the line if they go public soon.  Might be he’s waiting for an October surprise, though, depending what happens with the race in the next couple months.”

“Pierce must have been as happy as a pig in shit when they pulled out Captain America during an election year,” Hill said sourly.

“Emphasis on the pig or the shit?” Clint said.

Fury made a grimace that suggested the answer was both and said, “And will he?  Toe the line?”

The door opened. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Steve Rogers said.

He reached sideways without looking and grabbed the gun Hill had drawn, squeezing until the barrel deformed and then snapped.  Clint and Natasha were already on their feet; Clint with his sidearm raised and Natasha with her widow’s bites charged.  Fury just stayed where he was, watching Steve.  Through the open door beyond him Natasha could see the bodies of the SHIELD who had been waiting outside.  A few of them were twitching or groaning, clearly alive and not seriously injured.

Steve was in civilian clothes, though he was wearing his shield harness and had the covered shield on his right arm.  There was blood on the shoulder of his blue shirt and a couple of fresh cuts and bruises on his face – what would on anyone else have been a day or two old, but which he must have gotten sometime in the past few hours, between when Natasha had left the Triskelion and now.  He looked at Natasha with silent pleading in his eyes and after a moment she lowered her fists, letting the charge on her bites dissipate.

She glanced over her shoulder to catch Fury’s eye, nodding a little, and he said, “Barton.”

Clint lowered his sidearm, obviously reluctant.  Natasha mouthed it’s okay to him, then returned her gaze to Steve.

He dropped what was left of Hill’s sidearm with a clatter, gave her an ironic look as she reached inside her jacket for her holdout pistol, and stepped away.  Hill kept her hand inside her jacket as Steve went on silent, wary cat feet around the room, not saying anything as he circled the table and the three SHIELD loyalists there, looking them all over carefully.  When he had come back to the front of the room he said to Fury, “I saw you on a list.”

“Yeah,” Fury said. “I bet you did.  It’s the kind of list I’m happy to be on.”

“It was a ‘kill on sight’ list,” Steve said.

Fury shrugged.  “Well, they’re pretty kill-happy over there.”

Steve tilted his head a little in acknowledgment, then looked at Natasha again.  She nodded; after the better part of five months she knew his signals well enough to understand what he was asking.  He slid his shield onto the harness on his back and then held up his hands to show Fury they were empty, though it was already patently obvious he didn’t need a weapon to do serious damage.

“Anyone know you’re here?” Fury asked. “Or that you’re not in the Triskelion right now?”

Steve shook his head, then turned to pull the collar of his shirt down so they could see where he had cut his tracking implant out of his shoulder.

“Who hit you?” Clint said.

Steve looked at him and arched an eyebrow. “The ground.”  He considered Clint briefly before adding, “Saw you on a list too.”

“Yeah, well, like the boss said, it’s a good list to be on.”

“My guys alive?” Fury asked. When Steve nodded, he jerked his chin at Hill, who slipped out the door to check on them.  “Sit down, Rogers.  Have some pizza.  From what Romanoff tells me the food at the Triskelion’s gone downhill since I was in charge.”

Steve flicked another glance at Natasha, then came warily over to sit down on her other side, taking the shield off his back to lean against the chair as he did so.  Natasha and Clint sat too, though Clint clearly wasn’t happy about it – any hero worship he might have had for Captain America in the old days had gone out the window when Pierce had gotten his hands on Steve Rogers.

Natasha put her hand on Steve’s knee and found him as tense as a drawn bowstring, though he didn’t pull away from her. “It’s okay,” she promised him, and felt the ironic look Clint shot her without even having to see his face.

Right now SHIELD needed every loyalist in the Triskelion they could manage to sneak past HYDRA, but there was a difference between that and being the person holding Captain America’s leash while Alexander Pierce had his fingers in his brain, trying to make another, better Winter Soldier.  

Natasha didn’t know exactly what Pierce’s scientists were doing to him during all those long hours of “tests,” but she knew that Steve hadn’t slept through the night since they had started sleeping together, and two nights out of every five when he woke up, he woke up screaming.  Sometimes it was about the war.  More and more often it wasn’t.

He was supposed to be at one of those test right now.

“You know who I am?” Fury asked him.

“You’re Nick Fury,” Steve said. “You used to be director of SHIELD, but the CIA found out you were selling classified intelligence to the highest bidder.  You found out ahead of the agents coming to arrest you and got a quarter of SHIELD to come with you as your own private army.  They told me that the Triskelion and half a dozen other SHIELD stations were basically warzones for most of a week, your guys and SHIELD’s shooting it out before they finally got it locked down.  There’s a fifteen million dollar reward out for your capture or proof of death.  Preferably the latter.”

“You planning to collect?”

“What am I going to do with fifteen million dollars?” Steve said, his voice very dry.

“Could pay the rent on an apartment in Brooklyn for about six months, as long as you don’t go too crazy with groceries.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth twitched, but all he said was, “Pierce is never going to let me out.”

“So you took it into your own hands?” Clint said.  “And, what, jumped out of a window?  You don’t think they’re going to notice?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t really care,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m staying here, but I’m not going back there.”  His voice broke on the next-to-last syllable, but he didn’t look aside.

Fury looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Fair enough.  You believe what Alexander Pierce told you about me?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”  He turned his head as the door opened again and Maria Hill came back in.

“Everyone’s in one piece, but they’re not very happy,” she reported. “One broken bone, two concussions.”

Steve looked back at Fury and made a gesture best described as see? They’re fine.  HYDRA ops went for maximum casualties, which everyone in the room knew very well even if Natasha was still fairly certain Steve didn’t know it was HYDRA he had been working for.  Steve was a hard fighter, brutally fast and brutally dangerous in a way that shocked even Natasha a little because it was so far beyond human it was hard to register as a real person doing it.  She had had her run-ins with the Winter Soldier – twice, and felt lucky to get away breathing each time – but that was different.  The Winter Soldier had never felt like a person, like a human being, but Steve she had kissed and held and watched bad movies with, trying to catch him up on the parts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that Pierce deemed acceptable for him to know about.

She had also seen him on the handful of times Pierce’s scientists had gotten a little too overenthusiastic with him, when Steve had come back to their rooms limping or pale from blood loss or on one recent memorable occasion with his left hand a bloody mess of bandages.  That had gotten a visit and an apology from Pierce, sincere because the severity of the injury not only meant that the op they had been meant to go on the next day had to be handled by STRIKE instead, but was potentially crippling.

The injury, bad as it was, had fully healed four days later, something that had clearly alarmed Steve as much as it had delighted Pierce.  They had both known then that he was going to repeat the experiment with something more significant than a couple of fingers.

Natasha had told Fury the next day that SHIELD had to extract Steve and do it sooner rather than later no matter what the cost.  She hadn’t told him why.

“You want the truth?” Fury said.

Steve nodded, his expression wary.  Natasha had no real idea what he had been like before he had gone into the ice, but no one else did later; by the time Pierce had handed him over to her he had already been awake for the better part of a month, long enough for HYDRA’s headshrinks to have done serious damage to him if that was what they wanted. Natasha didn’t think it was – Pierce needed a Captain America who could pass muster in the public eye, not another Winter Soldier who had to be kept on ice – but she knew they had tried something before Pierce had decided on the slower, arguably sloppier method of throwing a beautiful woman at him.

They were, she knew, very, very lucky it had been her and not a real HYDRA agent.  Steve had been skittish but obviously desperate for some kind of human connection; Natasha had sometimes felt more like she was trying to soothe a nervous cat than another human being.  Even though Jasper Sitwell had made it clear to her that he expected her to sleep with Steve if he was even remotely interested – despite the fact that the legend of Peggy Carter was still a potent force in HYDRA-cum-SHIELD, it wasn’t a hundred percent guarantee that Steve Rogers liked women – Natasha hadn’t intended to seduce him if it was going to hurt him more than it helped. But it was always going to be someone; better her than any of the other options, and she had been glad in the end because it turned out that she genuinely liked Steve Rogers.

Fury’s gaze flickered quickly between them, as if reading her thoughts on her face, but all he said was, “You know who Obadiah Stane is?”

“He’s the head of Stark Industries.  He took over after Howard’s son died.”

The brittle note in Steve’s voice was familiar; he hardly ever talked about anyone he knew from the old days, nearly all of whom were dead now.  The survivors Pierce didn’t want him to know about and Natasha hadn’t been in a position to tell him the truth.  She didn’t think he would have gone straight to Pierce demanding an explanation for the lie, but it wasn’t a reaction they were willing to risk.

“Stane killed Tony Stark,” Fury said, his gaze fixed on Steve’s face, and only waited a beat for Steve to start to react before he went on, “or thought he did, anyway.  We pulled Stark out of the rubble two days later, after Stane had already made a public announcement and rushed a funeral. Something about it felt hinky, so I let it play out while we waited to see if Stark would wake up – he did, by the way,” he added, anticipating Steve’s question.  “Took a while; he’s fine now, aside from the shrapnel in his chest, but he had that little problem before Stane dropped a building on him. He can tell you all about it later if you decide to stick around.  You seen Stane’s powered armor?”

“Yeah, the Chessmen suits,” Steve said. “Not really my style.”

Fury eyed Steve thoughtfully, but apparently decided not to mention that he was aware that in the fights between STRIKE fighters in the Chessmen suits and Steve, Steve had come out on top every time.  Stane hadn’t been very happy about that, though he had put it off as something to improve on in future iterations of the suits.

“Stane sold the armor directly to Alexander Pierce,” Fury said instead. “Not as a representative of the United States government, but for his true allegiance.”

“Which is?”

“HYDRA.”

Steve blinked once, then again. “Hydra died with the Red Skull.”

“Yeah, we all believed that for about sixty-three years,” Fury said, a muscle in his jaw working briefly. “Turns out we didn’t get that lucky.  What’s that thing they say – cut off one head, two more –”

“I’ve heard it.”

“As best we can reconstruct – understand we’ve been on our back foot for the past four years – Schmidt already had people infiltrating the Soviet Union, a couple other countries in Europe, all planning for his big takeover.  When his Plan A didn’t work out – thanks to you, Cap, and I do mean that, because things would have been a whole lot worse if he’d actually blown up the half the world – his Plan B kicked in.  Infiltration, conversion – the Cold War was perfect for them.”

“What does that have to do with SHIELD?” Steve said, his expression unreadable.

“The name ‘Operation Paperclip’ mean anything to you?”  When Steve shook his head, Fury said, “Yeah, I didn’t think Pierce would want you to know about that one.  After WWII, the United States recruited German scientists of strategic value. Your old friend Arnim Zola was one of them, a few other Hydra scientists in there too.  After the SSR was dissolved and SHIELD was founded, they went to work for us.”

“And started recruiting,” Hill put in.  Steve turned his head a little in response to her voice, but there was no emotion on his face.  “We think that by 1975, as much as a quarter of SHIELD was either a HYDRA operative or sympathetic to their cause.  They’ve got other cells all over the world – the Soviet Union was a big favorite of theirs. Like Nick said, the Cold War was perfect for them.  They’re all through various alphabet agencies, governments, industry, probably various terrorist groups like the Ten Rings too.”

Steve didn’t say anything, his expression very neutral.  His poker face wasn’t quite as good as Natasha’s, but she had seen it get better and better over the past five months, like he was terrified of giving Pierce or Sitwell or Rumlow anything of himself.

“Stark’s PA and a team of SHIELD agents were at SI when shit hit the fan, so we already had suspicions about Stane,” Fury went on.  “I started doing some digging at SHIELD – too much, too fast.  It tipped Pierce off and he tried to have me killed.  When that didn’t work out, he trumped up the story about selling classified intel, but even that didn’t end up going the way he wanted.  Not entirely – he did a pretty decent job of purging SHIELD of loyalists, but he didn’t get everyone.”

“Got a lot of us, though,” Clint said grimly.

Steve shut his eyes briefly, then opened them again and said, “So what are you now?”

“SHIELD,” Fury said. “The real SHIELD.  Sooner or later Pierce and HYDRA are going down if it’s the last thing I do on this earth. We could use your help, if you’re interested.  If you’re not, we’ll give you money, IDs, anything you need, and send you on your way. It’s not 1945 anymore and we can’t send you home, but the world’s not all bad, either.  Plenty of things to do, places to go, people to be.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a good thirty seconds, then he said, “Why should I believe anything you say?”

“There’s a reason you walked out of the Triskelion today, isn’t there?” Fury said.

Steve looked away.

Fury reached inside his coat, making Steve look at him sharply, and drew out an envelope. “And there’s this,” he added, tapping it on the table between them. “We were planning on extracting you and Romanoff within the next few weeks, first chance we got. There’s someone we were going to bring in to make breaking the bad news to you easier, but since you anticipated that – and since we didn’t know when we’d be able to grab the two of you – she and I took contingencies.”  He turned the envelope towards Steve so that he could see his name written on it in elegant if slightly shaky handwriting.

Steve just looked at it for a long moment, then shook his head.  “She’s dead,” he said, short and sharp, like every word hurt to say. “Pierce told me.  Two years ago.  Heart attack.”

“He lied,” Fury said. “I talked to her last week, when I told her about you.  She’s not too happy with him, but then she hasn’t been for a while. He has her under surveillance and the moment we pull her out he’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Peggy’s dead,” Steve said bleakly. “They’re all dead.  Peggy, Howard, the Commandos, Phillips, everyone – they’re all dead.”

“Not everyone,” Fury said. When Steve didn’t move to take the proffered envelope, Fury laid it down on the table and pushed it towards him. Steve just let it sit there, staring down at it.

“You want to ask me anything else?” Fury said eventually. “I’ll answer as best I can, as long as it doesn’t put any of my other agents in danger.  Romanoff wasn’t the only one we still had inside and with her out, we need every single one of them.”

Steve raised his gaze warily to Fury, then looked sideways at Natasha.  She tried to meet his gaze, worried, but he had already turned back to Fury. “Did you put Nat with me?”

“No,” Fury said. “That was Pierce’s call; we just got lucky he chose one of ours.  I’m a little surprised he went for a redhead and not a brunette, to be honest, but you can’t say he didn’t have good taste.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth curled up for barely an instant. “Yeah.”

“Listen,” Fury said when Steve didn’t say anything else, “I know they hurt you.  I don’t know how, but I know it happened. Not because Agent Romanoff told me, but because that’s what they do.  And I am sorry, Captain Rogers, that you were hurt.  I’m sorry that we didn’t find you five years ago before they took over.  I’m sorry Howard Stark didn’t find you in 1945 or 1946 or any other time in the fifty-six years he spent looking.  I am sorry that you didn’t get the homecoming you deserved and I am sorry that we couldn’t pull you out from HYDRA’s claws six months ago – five, four, three – hell, yesterday.”

Steve looked down.

Natasha’s phone rang.

They all looked at her as she pulled it out of her pocket, then swore quietly. “It’s Sitwell.”

Steve went pale. Natasha caught his hand briefly and squeezed before she released him and swiped her thumb across the screen, aware of Fury’s gaze on her. “Romanoff.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m getting halfway decent coffee for once, why?  I’m not making a run for the whole office; you’ve got interns for that.”

“Is Rogers with you?”

Natasha winced and took her phone away from her ear to hit the speaker button so that everyone in the room could hear. “No, of course not.  Even if he was allowed out, he’s supposed to be in the lab with Nagel today. Why?”

“Because he’s gone,” Sitwell said.  “Nagel’s dead and so are the STRIKE agents assigned to the lab when Rogers is there.  We found his tracker in the lab sink, cut out.  The computers were wiped; the data’s gone and so are all the biological samples Nagel had in the lab, because it blew up.  The shield’s gone too.”

“Oh, shit,” Natasha said, heartfelt and genuine as they all stared at Steve.  There was a little color in his cheeks, but this time he didn’t look away, acknowledging the fact that he had apparently left a trail of bodies on his way out of the Triskelion that no one had noticed until now. “When?”

“The bomb was on a timer; it went off ten minutes ago.  No idea when any of this happened, since it could have been any time in the last four hours.  The bodies are too damaged to determine cause of death until someone can do an autopsy.  You sure he’s not with you?”

“I think I’d have noticed if he showed up at Starbucks,” Natasha said. “I’m not sure he even knows what a Starbucks is.  Do you think he ran or do you think someone took him?  Fury, maybe?”

Sitwell snorted. “If it wasn’t for the missing data, I’d think the good doctor got a little too happy with his knives again and Rogers finally snapped, but I don’t think he can hack a computer.  We’re exploring all the possibilities.  If he did all this on his own, he might have gone looking for you.”

Natasha looked pointedly at Steve, who bit his lip, then dug something out of his jeans pocket and put it on the table – a USB stick.  Clint mouthed, oh my god, and Steve just shrugged.

“Security cameras?” Natasha said.

“No good.  The ones in the lab were turned off; hall cams didn’t catch anything unusual, but we’re still going through them.  Don’t come in until I tell you too; I want you to stay out there in case he did run. Once his governor’s activated, we can track him that way.”

Steve froze, his expression appalled.  Fury mouthed a curse and gestured sharply at Hill, who slipped out the door, her hand already going to her earpiece.  Clint followed her at another gesture.

“If you activate his governor, he’s going to drop like a rock,” Natasha said, thinking, shit, shit, shit.

“I’m not telling Pierce that we didn’t do everything we could to find Captain America,” Sitwell said shortly.  “Rogers can survive his governor going off; he’s just not going to be very happy about it. I’ll be in touch once we have a location.”  He hung up.

Natasha put her phone down and looked at Steve. “You could have led with the fact you killed seven people and blew up the lab on your way out.”

“I didn’t blow it up on my way out,” Steve said. “That’s what the timer was for.  And I didn’t go in there today planning to kill anyone. Dr. Nagel –”  His fists were clenching and unclenching frantically. “Nat –”

“We can deactivate it but not until Sitwell triggers it,” Natasha assured him, reaching for him and cupping his face between his palms.  He was breathing in harsh, shallow gasps, on the verge of a panic attack; he had had his governor implant activated before, just to make certain it would actually work on Captain America.  “We can take it out after, I promise, Steve.  We don’t do that.  I promise –”

“I’m not going back –” Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over, chair and shield both clattering to the floor as he fell.

Fury swore and came around the side of his table as Natasha kicked her own chair over on her way to Steve’s side.  He was shuddering, his teeth clenched tightly together as energy coursed through his body from the governor implant in his spinal column.

“How much time do we have?” Fury asked Natasha shortly.

“Nine minutes, maybe ten. Hold him.”  She charged her widow’s bites as Fury caught Steve by his shoulders.  Natasha didn’t think Steve could hear her, but she said, “I’m sorry,” anyway as she put her fists to his neck, over the place where the governor had been installed. “This is going to hurt.”

She activated her bites at the highest setting with a buzz of electricity.  Steve’s whole body went rigid as he convulsed, his back arching up off the floor, then he went limp.  Natasha deactivated her bites and checked his pulse, which was fast and fluttery, but present.

“We need to get his implant out,” she said to Fury over Steve’s unconscious body. “Sitwell’s going to trigger it again as soon as he realizes we’ve moved him.  And mine, as soon as he realizes I’m involved.”

“We need to get out of here before STRIKE shows up,” Fury said.  He raised his voice and yelled, “Barton, Hill, get back in here!  We need to move.”  As the door swung open and Clint and Hill came back in, blinking for an instant at the unexpected sight of Captain America laid out unconscious on the floor, he added, “Call Base and tell them to prep for surgery.  Tell them to go ahead on extracting Director Carter, too; I want Rogers to have a familiar face there when he wakes up.  Barton, get him up.”

#cut scenes and concept writing #ws steve au concept tag #as always comments are appreciated

[arunneronthird]

hello hello! I have a few random questions (because I like random questions, if you hate them ignore me)

favorite ship/coup?

do you have a favorite character that most people kinda over look?

what you reading?

are there any comic characters you're like "oooh I want to know more!"

also my personal oddity, I adore little 1980s Jason with the two little curls, you know? and so I always feel... like 6 foot 2 sheet of BEEF! Red Hood Jason is a weird cognitive dissonance also he's only like 18 or 19 but is always drawn 10 years older, I'd love a skinny short twink Jason as Red Hood, or if Jason came back but like a year younger than Tim that would have been funny

luckily for u and unluckily for most people i love talking so lets go!

favorite ship... its a hard question, i dont really ship things in dc, im really into the damijon dynamic but i dont necessarily shiiiip them like dami is so aro coded its painful and jon has to get his 7 lost years before he makes sense to me, ask me again after this superman comic, outside of dc though i like going back to read fics with promptis (ffxv) and reddie (it) nad some haikyuu pairs no one cares about

favorite overlooked character... i really like maya (from son of the bat), im a sucker for secondary characters! i like sho from mp100 and yamaguchi from haikyuu and jack in spn (whos jack u ask, exactly)

currently im in the middle of injustice year five! ive been making my way through injustice this past week to prepare for superman and im liking it way more than i thought i would

characters i wanna know more about! there sure are! if they dont give me more monkey prince i may stab someone! i mostly wanna know more things about characters i just havent gotten around to reading about so those dont count i think

ur so right about it like why do they draw him like hes 35, i dont mind his height though (but if u want twink jason titans is ur show i think) i like that he grew up to be big and tall but hes so young... hes just a guy, he would be in college, tiny jason makes my heart grow though so here, for u

#thanks for the asks! this was v fun to answer honestly i feel like i could expand on everything 68 times but uh in due time

[coffeeandjournaling]

Field Guide to Memory

A keepsake game by Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor

Materials

game manual

journal

pen, art supplies

printer (if you want to use the ephemera provided)

some common items for one prompt or another (coin, leaf...)

Premise

Accomplished cryptozoologist Dr. Elizabeth Lee has gone missing and is now declared dead five years after her disappearance. Her ongoing research on the Pronghorned Desert Rat remains unfinished and is currently held hostage by the Institute for Theoretical Evolutions. As her former student, you set out to finish what your mentor started to save these endangered critters and reconnect with Elizabeth and her legacy in all new ways - some surprising, some humbling, some devastating. This is a game about community and finding peace in the knowledge that no one ever truly leaves this world as long as they are remembered.

Mechanics

At the beginning, you use the character sheet to create your persona. Each in-game day then provides you with the next piece of the narrative as well as one or several prompts to journal about. Most of the prompts are presented as some sort of in-game correspondence or other ephemera/facsimiles for you to react to. You journal in three different categories, as given in each prompt: your diary, your field notes and your correspondence (each is basically exactly what you would expect from their name). If you take notes on cryptids, answer some official letters or reflect on your time with Dr. Lee, each journal entry brings you closer to the whereabouts of the Pronghorned Desert Rat. Some prompts bleed into your reality as the player - you might be asked to destroy parts of your journal or go outside to answer a prompt and gather materials. Bit by bit, you’re creating your own artifact, a chronicle of your efforts, as foreshadowed by the keepsake aspect of the game description.

Thoughts and Examples from my Playthrough

Field Guide was my first foray into solo games and a truly magical experience. The game has a very strong narrative, aided by a pleasant and engaging writing style that manages to feel consistent and still leave room for distinct character voices. You’re drawn further into the story by the lovingly designed ephemera and facsimiles, effortlessly fitting into the gorgeous layout of the game manual (which feels like a horrible name for something that is much more than just a guide for you to follow). Sitting down every day to answer prompts was always thrilling: What piece of Dr. Lee’s colourful past will be unveiled today? Which challenges lie ahead? Who is going to join my ranks of allies? Each journaling session was satisfying in a different way, each prompt unique and engaging.

The simple yet elegant layout, the ephemera and the writing spark your creativity to create beautiful, clumsy, neat, human ephemera yourself. I haven’t drawn for a good while before I started to play and suddenly found myself doodling again without pressure or anxiety. You don’t need to be an artist - the game doesn’t judge your skills, only challenges you to try. If that’s not your cup of tea, there’s enough material to be printed and used as a base for your journaling. It might help to have some stickers, washi tape and similar stationary supplies at hand, but maybe your character prefers a simple black pen in a blank notebook.

If you decide to play, you will be busy for a few weeks, at least. I do recommend you take your time, as intended by the game - it’s a much more lasting, reverberant experience and will stay with you for a good while after. Some of the “reality-breaking“ aspects had me wait on the next journaling session for a couple of days until I could do what the prompt asked me to - while you can always use your imagination, of course, I found the waiting time to be beneficiary to my game experience. It felt wonderful to finally get back into it, like I waited for a letter in the mail that finally came. Honestly, don’t rush it. And don’t worry if you leave the game to rest for a bit - it’s gonna marinate in your head and get even better. Linking the game to real-world places and experiences connects you that much more with your character and the story you’re building. I don’t think I’ll forget that day at the park although I was alone and the weather was terribly bleak - yet I enjoyed myself immensely.

A lot of the gameplay relies on you getting introspective. You might reach into places that feel uncomfortable for you. While the mood in general is a lighter one, with bright memories of your mentor just as frequent as the more sombre ones, it can get pretty dark here and there. Personally, I liked these parts best, but if you’re looking for an overall fluffy and happy adventure, this might not be for you. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried a little at the end.

Finally, the cryptids! There’s of course the Pronghorned Desert Rat, a small horned critter on the verge of extinction (according to Dr. Lee). If you are not able to attach yourself to your late mentor, these wee guys will motivate you to keep going. Learning about them, their behaviours and characteristics, was some of the most intriguing things about the game. With them come a few more cryptids that are part of their ecosystem and a few others you will have to explore or make up yourself, as well as - light spoiler! - some sexy cryptid costumes for a burlesque show. The concept of the ecosystem is also adapted to describe the community you build to achieve Dr. Lee’s goal. The theme of connection is weaved strongly into every aspect of the narrative and gameplay, so much so that you begin to think of it even at times you’re not playing. What makes a community? I think that is one of the question the game wants you to find an answer to.

Even though you have plenty of creative freedom to answer your prompts during the game, the narrative is mostly linear. There’s a predetermined ending that you can embellish to your liking and will be different for each player, but I reckon a second playthrough for the same player, even with a new character, wouldn’t differ significantly and isn’t necessarily worth it. That being said, the time you spend with it is plenty and I find the game worth the cost for what it is.

This might be your cup of coffee if...

you prefer to be guided in your solo adventures.

you enjoy a well-designed manual full of fake memorabilia and ephemera to use in your journal.

you’ve always wanted to be a cryptozoologist.

you take pleasure in exploring a character in-depth, especially in relation to other characters and how they impacted yours.

you are open to experimental mechanics.

You can find the game on itch.io. Both creators also have their own patreon - your support garners you access to some of their smaller projects, which are also worth a look!

#solo rpg #review #journal #long #beginner friendly #reality encroaching #keepsake #drawing #drama #field guide to memory

[resetting37]

World Building Wednesday: The Glass Watch Tower.

told u I'd continue this segment. I mean it's the second week in, i can't stop now (last week is here).

This time, I want to talk about a specific location within the city of Evelow: the Glass Watch Tower. A building I've occasionally drawn in the background of skylines of Evelow, but plays a pretty important role in the story.

Located on the outskirts of Evelow, facing both the entirety of the city and the desert wasteland, it's not tall enough to get the *best* glimpse of its broad surroundings, but it's sufficient enough to look out for any danger both in and out of the city. It's also one of the oldest buildings in Evelow, so it was considered really tall hundreds of years ago.

(psst, you can see it in my RESETTING map. It's size is exaggerated for the purpose of being visible, as it's not *that* big in comparison to neighboring buildings.)

The glass tower's view, along with it being kind of close to where my main cast lives, makes it a fun spot for them to hang out in. It's still in commission, but it's also open to the public. Some people like to go there as it's the closest many get to seeing the wastelands. Most people who live in Evelow never leave the city.

So why does it play a role in my story ? Well, it simply starts off as a good location for my characters to hang out in. It just has nice views I guess ! Sometimes leaders and councilmen go there to privately discuss manners.

(picture circa 2019. Characters include Sean, Aurora, Crystal, Samson, and Advik. Context behind this picture isn't super relevant for this post, I just wanted to share it because it provides another view of the interior of the tower.)

It becomes a plot staple when Aurora, who learns how to manipulate and generate glass, lures some of my main characters* there at once one way or another in Arc Five (out of six within the story) and um. shatters the place with many of them inside ! Spoilers for that, I guess. Yes she wants to be ruler of Evelow, so what if she has to destroy some piece of artifact in order to do it ?

Aaaaand thanks for reading this week's segment ! I know it's overly specific and maybe even boring, but this was actually something I wanted to talk about, so now's my chance ! I even got to draw a little sketch of the building (although that picture took me longer than a "real sketch"). Let me know if there's any topics, general of specific, that you want to know about ! I've struggled with keeping up a world for my ocs in the past, but I've been pretty settled with this one for a few years now and I've been having fun developing it.

*By 'my main characters' I mean Audrey, Advik, Zack, Sean, and... Trinity ? Trinity's not really main character and not related to Aurora's plot. She's doing her own thing. But she gets caught in this nasty scheme too.

Katsumi, despite being Aurora's ex, was not a victim to this scheme and upon finding out, wasn't able to make it to the tower to warn the others on time, and Morgan is trying to save Avery, who is too caught in Aurora's evil plan but elsewhere. (more on that later.)

#world building

[beardedmrbean]

MIAMI — When Bárbara Viltres regained consciousness, she was told that she was in Miami, that she had achieved her goal of escaping from Cuba and that she could consider herself lucky.

Unlike some of her fellow travelers, the sea had not swallowed her in the shipwreck off the coast of Florida.

After two weeks in a coma —and against the prognosis of some doctors— the 25-year-old Cuban opened her eyes in a room at HCA Florida Kendall Hospital. But it took her a few seconds to realize that she had paid a high price to reach her destination.

“The wounds I have are very deep. I had holes in my hips. I have had six operations to remove skin from my back and put it on other places,” said Viltres, who survived a three-day journey in the sun, without eating or drinking water, before being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard off Key West a few weeks ago.

Viltres, who cannot swim, left Havana in early August on a rustic boat bound for Florida, at a time when the economic crisis and reports of political repression in Cuba have reached their highest levels in decades.

Another 14 passengers were part of the illegal trip, including her partner, 21, and her cousin, 38, who arrived safely. Five migrants remain missing and Viltres says she saw several of them drown, including the boat maker and his pregnant wife.

Alicia Perez, who is also Cuban and lives in Miami, volunteered to help Viltres during her recovery. Viltres has no family or friends in the United States.

“She woke up from the coma lost. The first thing she asked the doctor was, 'Where are my nipples?' because so much of her skin had been lost," Perez said about Viltres.

It’s unclear what will happen to the migrants who were rescued, but most of the Cuban rafters intercepted at sea are deported back to Cuba, from where the makeshift boats are setting sail for the U.S. in increasing numbers, according to Coast Guard data.

Cuba is experiencing its largest exodus in recent history, the largest since the 1980s. More than 4,600 Cubans have been intercepted at sea from October to August. On the U.S.-Mexico border from last January to July, border authorities stopped Cuban migrants entering from Mexico nearly 155,000 times, over six times as many as the year before.

In Cuba, medicine and basic foods are scarce and some towns suffer power cuts of up to 20 hours a day due to fuel shortages and an aging power infrastructure, recently damaged by a massive fire.

Viltres is hoping that U.S. authorities grant her mother a humanitarian visa so she can come and help her during her recovery in Miami.

“I don’t have anyone here,” she told Noticias Telemundo. “One always needs the mother next to them.”

Speaking from her hospital bed on Aug. 30, Viltres spoke to Noticias Telemundo about her journey. What follows is a first-person account of her journey, which has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

'We were adrift and nobody saw us'

“I paid my ticket of 40,000 pesos (just over $300) without having seen the boat. You couldn’t see it. They were making it in a house in Havana.

I don’t remember when we left, I know it was a Tuesday morning, the first week of August. We put the boat on a cativana (horse-drawn cart) and the men carried it to the sea.

We were 15 people, three women and 12 men. We spent weeks preparing the trip, and we brought crackers and sardines to eat.

I remember that we were all doing well, until half past 10 at night when [the boat] broke down. The waves were strong and water began to enter. We took water but it was a lot. The motor did keep running.

We had a tank of water to drink, but we had to throw it away and use the tank to remove the water that entered from above, below, from wherever — until we decided to turn the boat upside down to get on top and not drown.

We were drifting until dawn and no one saw us, and it got dark and no one saw us, it was dawn again and no one saw us. We had three nights without sleep. We couldn't. If you fall asleep, you sink and drown.”

'The worst'

“[Seeing people drown] was the worst, because we were all together, we all got along.

The mechanic [of the boat] and his three-month-pregnant wife drowned. She saw him drown. My boyfriend asked her where her husband was, and she said: ‘He drowned.' She had no more strength either.

Joseíto, my cousin’s husband, the one who assembled the boat, did not make it either. That's painful. They all had to arrive, but he had to arrive, he was the one who made it, who looked for everything.

My cousin couldn’t help him because she doesn’t know how to swim. I saw him sink and come out again. The night we left he was very tired, because they spent many days preparing the boat, without sleeping.

There weren’t that many left: Inaudy, my cousin, my husband, me, Julio, Osmany.

Since then I don’t know anything else. What they tell me: that a small plane appeared, that someone signaled to it and that one of those Coast Guard speedboats arrived.” 

'I didn’t want to be in Cuba anymore'

“When they rescued me, I was unconscious. I hadn’t eaten or drank water since the day we left. They tried to revive me, to get water out of my chest, but what I released was foam.

I arrived badly. My kidneys weren’t working, my lungs stopped. I was rotting from the wounds I had, until the doctors saved me.

When I woke up from the coma, I asked for my husband, because he was falling asleep when we were on the boat. When he fell asleep, I grabbed him by the sweater.

My whole body hurts, but it was worth it. Just as I am, it was worth it. This heals. I never regret what I do. Never.

In Cuba, there is a lot of need, I didn’t want to be there anymore, I didn't want to. People are desperate to leave. The situation in the country is very bad. It's difficult to get anything.

My mother is in Cuba and I would like her to come. I have spoken with her on the phone and she is crying. But I tell her I’m fine, not to worry. She knows I’m in a hospital and she sees my face, but she doesn’t know how I am or everything I have.

The first thing is to recover from all the wounds, which are deep. And then I’ll start working on whatever. The doctors tell me that the recovery is super slow.

I am crazy to go out and see things, I haven't seen anything. I went straight to a hospital. They told me that Miami was like Havana. I imagine it as Havana.”

#nunyas news #bernie shows up to scold her for leaving all that #glorious socialism

[msannabiz]

Trigger warning. Pet Loss/Grief

On Sunday, something happened with my best little friend. After evaluation, it was determined that she is really sick. Basically, I have to say goodbye next Friday after Thanksgiving.

My heart has never been this broken before. Every time I look at her I just smile or cry. I have one week until I have to say goodbye. I’m kind of just writing on here because nobody really looks here. I have a few followers who follow me because of my Astro photography but right now I need a journal where I can just write how sad I am.

All I’ve been able to is write about how much I’m going to miss her. I had a therapy session yesterday, and we got really deep into it. From that session, the biggest conclusion that I have come to is that I didn’t save her, she really saved me.

She came from an abusive beginning, being forced to live in a crate after she wasn’t cute anymore, barely being fed, being left out in 112° weather, to a loving, fun, exciting and exploratory life. I got to take care of her for almost 2 years. I have only had her living with me for five months. in those five months I have had some of the happiest, most satisfying moments that I’ve ever had in my entire life.

She is my first dog that I have ever had, due to my parents banning dogs from the house when I was growing up. She is a reactive dog, so it’s hard for her to meet new people or new dogs. She didn’t get to socialize when she was younger, but I have tried to socialize her and it hasn’t been a success.

As I write this out, she is laying on my bed, on my blue comforter, taking heavy little breaths, and snoring just a little bit. I am tearing up right now, just as I’m writing this. I think this is one way to get grief out. I can say I have been in denial for a while, and I have been angry with myself. I’m at the point where I’m bargaining with God, just asking for him to take her home. I can only hope and believe that everything we love here will be up there. I don’t mean the materialistic things I mean the things that have true value. Each day I’m going to do something more. I think I am fortunate in knowing that I have a week left.

I think I’m actually one of the lucky ones who knows that they get to do whatever they want for the next week with their dog. There are so many things that I wish I could’ve done with her but her quality of life would not be high if she continue to go on, she is a dog that could not be rehomed or taken in. It’s not that I would feel like I had abandoned her. If I did that, it’s that something might happen if I do that with her. She would be scared and nervous, and wouldn’t know what to do. Therefore, she would be reactive with anybody else.

I begged and pleaded with God that there was another way. But there isn’t, and I’ve come to that conclusion on my own. It’s not that he didn’t listen it’s just that it’s a different perspective than what I know. I know that probably sounds shitty but maybe I’m the only one that’s supposed to understand.

I have written so many poems and drawn so many doodles. I have uploaded every single photo on my phone to my computer so that way I have them saved if they ever get deleted from my phone or my iCloud. I have printed off photos in a poster of her so that way I can have it in my room. So that way when I open that door, I can still say “there she is, there’s my little girl” because that’s what I do every time I come home. She gets so excited and begs me to hug her and pet her and play with her and I do.

Ever since I brought her home, she has done nothing but sleep in my bed at night right next to me. That is something that I have been missing for the past three years. A warm body sleeping right next to me snoring just as much as the other person I wish was there.

I realized last night or more at 4 o’clock in the morning that I do live in a safe area but it’s also not super great. There have been incidences that have happened around the campus and the apartments that are actually quite scary but I could sleep through the night, knowing that if anything happened, she would bark and bark to let others know that this place is protected. She protects me, every single night every single minute of every single day. She protects me from things are out of my control, and she protects me from myself.

Because I have to put a muzzle on her when I take her outside I get a lot of looks and stares from people. My neighbors rushing into their apartments when they see me out with her. It’s not too bad, but it definitely feels some type of way. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it can make me unapproachable. don’t give me wrong. I’m fine with being alone literally alone by myself in a city that I’m not familiar with with no friends or family. But I think I was really OK with it because I had her.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I come home and she’s not here. I’ve never had to experience that and I think I’m really scared to do that.

She knows that something is wrong because she is asking for the pets and rubbing up against me, being more interactive with me, putting her little paw at me, and turning upside down on her back because she’s comfortable and she trust me.

It’s not that I can imagine life without her, it’s that it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I don’t really have a way to make this organized as I really don’t care just doing this is helping, but not really. I don’t know if I can write every single day about what’s going on but I want to so that at least I have some type of memory that can remind me.

This morning I literally took 25 minutes of video of us just walking around the park that we go to every morning. I plan on still walking around that park maybe not every morning but walking around the park with my headphones on just walking the same path that we always did. I have a little bucket list that I’m able to do with her.

Of course she gets all the food. Of course she gets anything she wants. I went out and bought a peanut butter bone that she’s already halfway through.

my doctor let her be my emotional support animal, and as a joke I always say that I am actually her emotional support human. But looking back at it all the past two years she’s really actually been my emotional support animal. And not just that she’s been my best friend. She taught me what unconditional love is. She’s taught me what’s good for me. She’s taught me to have a routine and take responsibility and really take care of myself. As I’m writing this, she’s looking at me with closed eyes a little Paul up in the air, almost on her side and back, with her little ears up and back. Just trying to hear what I’m saying. It looks like she’s slowly falling asleep.

One of my favorite parts of her is that she is a pitbull. She is a American Staffordshire pitbull. She is orange Brown and white. Both her eyes are covered in that brown and there’s a white streak that leads from her neck to her nose. Her nose is a little brown but what’s really great about it is there looks like there’s a spot that’s on her nose and a little bit on the white part that isn’t her nose, her paws are all white with some brown running down the side of her legs. We always said she looks like a little cow just because of where the brown is all located on her body.

She has these little sounds, she snores, she says, she pouts, and when she wakes up in the morning and yawns, you can tell that she’s talking to you with her little vocal cords warming up, letting you know what she wants to do. She loves to go on walks. She knows so many words, she is such a smart dog.

I’ve decided to get her cremated and put her in a urn that isn’t made out of glass. So that way maybe I can still sleep with her at night. I can’t help it cry I can’t help it. It just hurts so much. I’m gonna add a little picture just so you see what she looks like right now in this moment. So that way I can remember what she looks like in this moment.

I wish there was some other way, but there isn’t. And I have to believe that I will see her again otherwise, I don’t know what I would do. She’s my best friend and I feel like I’m betraying her, even though I’m doing this out of love for her.

Her mind the way her brain works is her own worst enemy. I hate that she hast to be on medicine like me just so she can be calm. I hate that the medicine makes her so sedated that sometimes she can’t be a dog. I hate everything about the situation. I can’t help but think it’s my fault. But it could’ve happened sooner or later.

The vet, my therapist, and a few other people have told me that I have done more for this dog than anyone else in the world would have done. And I think that’s true, but I would walk to the end of the earth and back and forward in through hell if I had to just to see her again Just to have her, live her life and be happy with chasing squirrels, eating all the food she can, and being healthy with no fear.

I’m going to continue to try and do this. I want to remember the little things I want to remember the big things I want to remember it all. This hurts so much.

I was in my car, the other day driving home by myself and I think that I screamed and yelled the loudest I’ve ever done. So much that even to me, it didn’t sound like myself. It actually sounded like pure grief and sadness and anger. So much anger But I don’t even know who. I’m not angry at the world, I’m not angry at God. I’m not angry with myself I’m just fucking angry.

But as the days go on the anger comes and goes, but the sadness keeps staying. I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I come home and her cage is here with her water in her bowl. And her two beds and toys all over the place. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to sleep in my bed or if I’m gonna stay in this apartment anymore But if I leave it’s like I’m leaving her. One day I’m gonna have to leave and it won’t mean I’m leaving her just means that the place I’m going to is where I’m moving on and where I would’ve gone with her. It just sucks because she didn’t get to Liv, more than five years she only got to live to be three years and four months. She’s looking at me and struggling to get up and rolling over on the pillows. I think I’m gonna go hang out with her or do something maybe do my homework. But I’m gonna stay with her until I can’t at least until I have to let her go.

This really sucks. I know I’m not gonna be OK for a while if not forever. My heart will always be broken by this. It’s not that it will repair or it will be OK one day. It’s just always gonna be hurt by this specifically.

I hope one day I actually get to see her again.

[theserpentsadvocate]

Unexpected Dividends

I really had no intention of getting into the nitty-gritty of Fred’s Auto Repair shop (except for the tagline, which I am very proud of), especially since I know nothing about cars at all, but, uh… apparently this needed to happen before I could get to all the things I actually planned. I also thought these would all be from Jade’s point of view, but I guess not. For the record, I do not have anything in particular against The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

Anyway, this is a direct sequel to Flipping The Script, but the other installments should be more stand-alone.

*

It was probably weird to run a to-do list for your boss in your head, but Eli had been doing it since his second month on the job, because Fred was competent, and reasonably organized, and obviously he was a hell of a mechanic, but his ability to prioritize was a little bit whacked out.

It usually went something like this:

Update the shop into the 90s. Not the present, just the 90s.

This was scratched off every month or so and re-entered, because Fred was afraid of computers.

Have the sign repainted; it’s not quaint, it’s tacky. If you won’t reconsider the slogan, at least make it legible.

Stop giving Luis so much to work on. He’s reliable, not fast.

Pay me more.

Hire more help.

There were other items that made it on, but most things only took a few nudges for Fred to see the benefit. Even he understood that customers liked it when the air conditioner worked.

Right now, the list was something like

Fire Mike.

No, seriously, fire Mike.

If you do not fire Mike, I will quit. (bluff)

Update the shop to the 90s. Not the present, just the 90s. A computer with customer information on it! It can duplicate the file cabinet and we’ll keep that too.

Have the sign repainted so it looks less than five hundred years old.

Stop giving Luis so much to work on, he can’t keep up.

Hire competent help.

Pay me more.

Reconsider the slogan. No one is being drawn in by ‘Fred’s Automotive Repair: We go FAR!’ Also, their car should be what’s going far.

If you do not fire Mike, I will quit. (for real)

and it was giving him a headache. Admittedly, the clenched jaw and the teeth grinding probably hadn’t helped with that, but he’d had the world’s most annoying cloud of passive aggression sniping at him for two days straight and leaving tools out, and now Mike was mysteriously missing his Saturday shift, like Fred couldn’t fire him if he wasn’t at work. Which was fine, obviously, because at least he wasn’t there, except that now the rest of them had to pick up the slack, and Fred might forget about the whole situation by Monday, because as far as interpersonal and disciplinary issues went, he was not the world’s most hands-on boss.

But he could get another couple thousand miles out of almost any vehicle, he wasn’t running a chop shop, and he didn’t care about past assault convictions. Eli also liked him, but that wasn’t nearly as pertinent most of the time.

And he reminded himself of those things repeatedly while he ran through the basic Saturday morning checklist. If he was already pissed off when Fred got in at nine thirty, it wouldn’t make things go over any easier. Tomorrow the garage was closed, and as long as he made it through the day without killing anybody (one thing Mike’s absence definitely made easier) he could spend the day… sleeping or something. Thinking about anything else. Doing three loads of laundry.

No prizes for guessing which one of those options would end up winning.

He should put another day off under pay me more. Working six days a week was good for his bank balance, but it was killing him a little. Just because Fred had pulled those hours most of his career didn’t mean it was exactly best practices.

The rumble of his boss’s pickup pulling in jerked Eli out of his thoughts, and he shelved that thought for later. Priority one – get that motherfucking bastard out from under his feet before he went back to prison for actual murder. Priority two – everything else.

Fred was set up in the tiny back office, as always, looking through the intake book and checking over the files for all the cars that had been finished in the last two days. There was probably a real name for all that kind of stuff, but Fred still used the weird-ass system he’d invented when he opened the place by himself in the 70s, and Angel hadn’t exactly kept thorough books.

“How was it?” he asked, as usual.

“Mostly fine,” Eli conceded. “Almost lost a customer, though. Mike was supposed to handle the handover for that Cinquecenta from Monday, the one the daughter was picking up? He wouldn’t let her have it because she wasn’t the owner, as far as I can tell he didn’t even look at the paperwork, and he left me hanging for almost an hour while he gave her the runaround. He’s not working out, man.”

“So you fired him?”

“Well, I’m not authorized to fire him, but I’m pretty sure someone needs to, so…”

Fred made a face. “You know, if you’re the one with the problem, I think that means you should fire him. Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?”

Eli shook his head. “We talked about this. The promotion, remember? I’m in charge when you’re gone and I can approve deliveries and place orders for parts, but no hiring or firing.”

“Huh.” Fred tapped a pen against the desk. “Well, that seems silly. You’re the one who wants more people anyway.”

“Look, I know you’d rather be alone with the cars, but that’s not really how businesses work.”

Fred laughed, which he always seemed to do right when Eli was worried that he’d gone too far. “Well, you’re the one with the fancy college experience.”

It was his favourite joke ever since he’d seen Eli’s resumé. Normally, it was eyeroll worthy; today, after Mike’s cracks about not finishing high school, it stung.

He pushed it aside with an effort. “Look, if you want me to take over that side of things, I can.” At least, he could probably handle it. He had recruitment experience, albeit in a very different arena, and he could fake things pretty good when he had to. “But I’m already…” there was no tactful way to say holding everything together here, “underwater with the extra responsibilities, and until we get some more help…”

“You wanted me to hire more help,” Fred pointed out. “I did. Now you want me to fire him.”

“He didn’t even bother showing up today,” Eli pointed out, and Fred frowned. Eli pressed his advantage. “He’s lazy and he doesn’t listen. I can’t get my work done because I have to follow him around telling him to put his tools away and finish the jobs I give him. He spent all day yesterday bitching about not having to do what I say, and that’s aside from harassing a customer to the point she nearly walked.” He doesn’t mention that they’d already finished the job and been paid almost in full. Fred was savvy enough to know how much repeat customers mattered, but it didn’t hurt to give the story a little extra impact.

“Wait, I thought this was a competence issue.” Fred flipped back to the Gutierrez intake, complete with his notes on the pick-up. “He was harassing her because she wasn’t the owner?” he asked dubiously.

Eli shrugged. “You know, she was pretty,” he said, like he didn’t spend an hour yesterday looking for a shirt that might pass for classy with his one pair of good jeans, to wear on a date he was never going to go on with a woman who definitely would never call him.

For one thing, she was the kind of person who wore blouses and dress shoes to work, and he was the loser who finished high school on a technicality.

“So you want me to fire him, and then you want more money because I fired him?” Fred fixed him with a gimlet stare. It had been intimidating the first few times, but after two years, Eli didn’t even flinch.

“Pretty much.”

Fred snorted. “Ah, the fine diplomacy of labour negotiations.”

“Hey, I can do diplomacy.” Eli cleared his throat, mentally calling up every evaluation and workplace comp discussion from Hearst. “Having carried out all responsibilities as outlined in the updated employment agreement for the previous three months, it has become apparent that the wage increase is insufficient to the additional volume of work now required. Should further responsibilities–”

“I get it, I get it.” Fred grinned to offset the mock heat in his voice. “You’re the glue that holds this place together, you’re single-handedly staving off the red, you know lots of big words. Let’s stick to the plain talk, huh?”

Eli leaned against the filing cabinet, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coveralls. “Listen, I know you’d be paying me what I was worth if you could afford it.” He paused for the requisite laughter, then went on. “Fire this dipshit, give me another two bucks an hour starting next month, and hire Luis’s cousin. I know his English is shit,” he added, “but that won’t matter to anyone except you, and Mike doesn’t know the names of half the important stuff anyway.”

“You speak Spanish?” Fred was momentarily diverted, like this was surprising. Then he recalibrated. “So is this an ultimatum?” He raised a playful eyebrow, but the question felt serious underneath.

Eli shrugged it off. “Just a suggestion. But Thursdays and Fridays are going be a hell of a slowdown if nobody thinks they have to listen to me, and it’s like you said; I told you we needed more help.” More seriously he added, “You know I work my ass off for you, man. I’m here late every time you ask. I’m not planning on leaving. You really want me to start hiring people, or firing people…” he inclined his head. “We see how Luis’s cousin works out, and then we talk again in September?”

“At which point you’ll want more money,” Fred observed.

“Right now what I want is credit for not taking every wrench I’ve picked up off the wrong bench in the last two days and forcing it–” He’d been going to say down Mike’s throat, but based on the way Fred was laughing, he thought they were going a different direction.

“I guess that’s worth one-fifty an hour in the grand scheme of things,” he allowed, which was the best Eli was going to get, and maybe better than he’d hoped for. It wasn’t like he’d planned on incorporating the money discussion today, and he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“And I think you should get a computer system,” he added, because why not go three for three? Fred swatted at him with the intake book and declined to answer.

*

He spent Sunday dragging his stuff to the shitty laundromat on Hastings, doing it one load at a time because half the driers were busted and if you left anything waiting there were absolutely people who’d throw your wet clothes on the floor just for the hell of it. The book he was trying to get through was impossible to focus on with the churning washing machines in the background, but honestly it was more to stave off the nasty looks from the other patrons than to read. It wasn’t terrible, or anything, but it was kind of weird and pretentious, and he wasn’t sure why exactly his sister liked it so much. And the cover ripped way too easy because of that stupid cutout of a dog, but whatever; it had already been tearing when Mona lent it to him, and it was better than trying to read that Columbine book in a public place. Never mind that both those kids had been middle-class white guys.

The end result was that he was in a bad mood when he got home, with half the day gone and the choice of making himself some depressing make-do meal out of what was left in the fridge, going grocery shopping hungry, or blowing money on take-out. Eli liked his job, but the perpetual looming knowledge that he had work tomorrow just made everything worse. This was better than Hearst, he reminded himself. The pay was better, there were no bitchy college students to deal with, and he wasn’t having every mistake and injustice in his life rubbed in his face on a daily basis. Just… he needed another day off. Monday, or something.

The phone rang, and he winced. He was not in the mood to babysit tonight, even if he never minded seeing Ophelia. Ricky was a holy terror these days, and their mom had been picking up a lot of last-minute shifts, which meant a lot of trying to keep his nephew from climbing the stove every five minutes.

But Mona was family, so he fished his cell out of his pocket and answered before he even realized that it was an unfamiliar number, with just enough time to turn his customary Yeah? into “Hello?”

“Hi.” The voice was female, soft and just a little breathy. “This is Jade Gutierrez, from the other day?”

Holy shit, she’d actually called him. “Yeah, I remember. I didn’t know if you were going to call me.”

She laughed. “Me either.” There might have been an edge of nervousness to it, but she carried it off well. “I was actually wondering if you wanted to get dinner some time? Or lunch.”

Uh, yes.

“Sure,” he said easily, frantically trying to figure out some common ground worth meeting on. He couldn’t take her somewhere fancy, not on short notice, but he didn’t want to seem unenthusiastic either. “How about pizza? Works for both.” If she was too fancy for pizza, he’d never measure up anyway, he told himself firmly.

“I like pizza.” She sounded actually pleased, which was encouraging. “There’s a place on Dalton, near the movie theatre?”

Eli had never been there, but he knew it. It was a vaguely sports-bar kind of place, fancier than Cho’s but not too expensive. He could definitely wear his good jeans without getting kicked out.

“Sounds good to me. I’m usually working around lunch time, though.” He kept his voice warm but not too flirty, not sure where the line would be. She’d been so delicately pretty that he hadn’t been able to avoid thinking of her as fragile at first, even after she’d shown some spark playing along with him, but when she’d marched back around and asked for his number he’d reconsidered. But at the time he’d thought she was just getting revenge, taking their little game one step farther – he hadn’t seriously considered that she would ask him out. Maybe that changed things, but he wasn’t quite sure yet.

“Dinner’s fine.” She hesitated. “I’m free this Thursday?”

“I can do Thursday,” he said immediately, not bothering to play it cool. He didn’t have plans and he would have rescheduled anyway, but he must have been too quick off the mark because Jade laughed on the other end of the phone.

It was a nice laugh, not derisive or superior, and she didn’t try to backtrack or apologize, which he liked. “Okay. I’ll meet you there at six-thirty?”

That gave him an hour to get home and shower and change, assuming he got off work on time. “Sure. That sounds nice.” On an impulse he threw out, “Then you can laugh at me some more.”

If it was a risk, it paid off: she laughed again. “Maybe I will.”

Eli could feel himself grinning as he leaned against the counter. This he could do. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

That got him a giggle. “Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. I happen to be very serious about my pizza.”

“Is this the pineapple thing?” he asked. “Because–”

She cut him off immediately. “Oh, no. Not a chance, sir. I never talk about religion, politics, or pineapple until at least the third date.”

That made him laugh. “I guess that tells me.”

“I guess it does.” There’s a pause, just long enough to set his nerves on edge, and then she takes an audible breath. “So I’ll see you Thursday.”

“You will.” He put just a touch of heat into the words – not enough to make them innuendo but, if he was lucky, enough for her to wish they were.

She made a surprised noise on the other end, managed a half-flustered, “Okay,” and then the call ended. There was a chance he’d just ruined this, but Eli thought – maybe optimistically – that it was a small one.

Thursday. Six thirty. He’d find out.

#veronica mars #eli navarro #jade navarro #fanfic #weevil navarro #i've been sitting on this for like four days because i couldn't decide if it needed MORE #but anyway here it is #and when i finish the next one it'll probably carry on from jade's perspective #i swear these were not supposed to be so closely related #the jade/eli chronicles

[amoveablejake]

My Five Key Songs of May 2023

Rounding off spring. 

Most months when I write these introductions to the key songs pieces I say how I can’t believe how we’re already here at the round up. For the last couple of months, they have felt very long indeed and as I look back now it does feel like my trip to Paris was a stretch ago but May, I’m not entirely sure where its gone. When I was looking over my May playlist it felt almost like I hadn’t spent much time with the songs in it at all. Ofcourse, I have spent countless hours with them but I think May have just rolled on and all the music has blended with it. There was however, a clear choice to be my song of the month but before we get there, lets take a look at what other tracks make the list. 

First up, ‘Work’ by Gang Starr. 

They say that first impressions are key and I suppose that is true but sometimes, what matters is the second or third take. For instance, I tried to read ‘The High Republic: Light of the Jedi’ twice without it clicking before returning to it over the past month where now it clicked so much I couldn’t put it down and I am now on book three of the series. As for Gang Starr, when I first started to listening to their music, don’t get me wrong, I liked them, but they never really made my monthly playlists. For whatever reason though I was drawn to Gang Starr one Friday a couple of weeks ago and they ended up providing the soundtrack to the day and now their work is really clicking with me so much so, I find myself wondering what I was thinking about before. But really, I kind of like when something doesn’t click right away because it means that when you do really get in sync with it, it almost feels like you have earned the connection. Whilst Gang Starr may not be the key song of the month this time around, I have a feeling that will change at some point during the year. 

Second up to bat, ‘Across the Stars’ by John Williams. 

As I mentioned above, I have been reading quite a few Star Wars novels over the past month or so, ever since Celebration really, and often when I am reading my novels I am listening to Star Wars soundtracks to help build the atmosphere. One song from the soundtracks however, that always leads me away from the page and to truly listen to it is ‘Across the Stars’. The love theme for Padme and Anakin is a beautiful piece of music that Williams has also made ever so heartbreaking. Its gentle melodies often give way to grand, sweeping orchestral swells that could perhaps feel out of place in a love theme. Certainly, it is a different choice and it almost suggests that there is darkness coming. Ofcourse, I have absolutely no idea about that and I’m sure it will all work out fine. Right? Right? John Williams’ orchestral work for cinema is second to none and whilst we all know the classic, iconic pieces I do think that ‘Across the Stars’ should perhaps be counted among them as the thought and care that has gone into it with the story that it tells, it is nothing short of sublime. 

The third choice for May, ‘In the Meantime’ by Spacehog.

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure about including ‘In the Meantime’ and as I write this I am still not sure. There have been songs that I have listened to over the last few weeks a lot more than this but its not how much I’ve listened to a song that means it gets onto the playlist, it is the feelings that it has inspired and the impact it has had. ‘In the Meantime’ first came to my ears when a stripped back version of it was featured in the inaugural trailer for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Three’, at the time the song struck  a chord with me as I got more and more excited for the third and final installment of the Guardians of the series. In the run up to watching the film, I watched the trailer a couple more times and listened to ‘In the Meantime’ and as I did, I would think about the journey that I have been on with the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ films and characters. Who I have seen their cinematic entries with and how the music from them has then filtered into other memories. With ‘Star Wars’, I always know how much it means to me (the world) and that is ever present but with Guardians, before that third and final film I realised just how much their adventures have meant to me over the years and I started to get nervous about this third and final entry. I didn’t want any of the gang to go and for the story to have the ending that they all deserved. Really, I think that it did although that third final was rather emotional, perhaps none more so than when ‘In the Meantime’ started to play in the film and all of those feelings and thoughts that I had been having before came flooding in. 

The penultimate choice for this last month is, ‘Hateno Village’ by Super Piano 64. 

In the run up to ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ being released, I have been playing ‘Breath of the Wild’ and have fallen for its soundtrack very much. Nintendo being Nintendo means that the soundtrack is not readily available anywhere at least in an official capacity. As such, I have turned to artists’ interpretations of it and I have been all the better for it. Super Piano 64 has turned the score into a gentle, piano based album that is a beautiful take on the seminal work from Nintendo. Dare I say, at points it eclipses its source material. I have been listening to Super Piano 64′s work a great deal as I read and get ready for bed and everytime I hear ‘Hateno Village’ which is the first track on the ‘Breath of the Wild’ inspired album, I know it is time to relax, to breathe and to be calm. As I said last week, I think I know who will be my artist of the year however, I also think I know who will be second both in my heart and on Spotify. Although saying that, due to the amount that I’m listening to Super Piano 64 I wouldn’t be surprised if Spotify tells me otherwise and really, I would be a okay with that. 

And, here we are, the key song for the month of May is ‘Say Something’ by Twice. 

Look, I’ll be honest, every song for May could have been from Twice. That perhaps would have been the truest reflection of the last month. I didn’t do that as I wanted to share a few different pieces and to write about different subject matters but let the record show that May could have been completely about Twice. And who knows, maybe June will be, perhaps July and August and do we see where this is going something. I never cease to be amazed by the group as I work my way sporadically through their discography and ‘Say Something’ was the biggest revelation of all. It feels like it should be being played throughout ‘Cowboy Bebop’ and I mean, do I need to say anything else. How I could possibly pick my favourite Twice song, I don’t know, but certainly for the moment if I could only pick one it would be ‘Say Something’. It more than deserves to be the key song for May and I am curious to see where Spotify puts it in my wrap up of key songs. Its already on my top twelve songs for the year with its place here and really, its only going to keep climbing up the ranks as Twice do. Is it Twice year, I think it might be. Hell, it already is. 

So there we have it, the five key songs for May and ‘Say Something’ making its way on to that end of year playlist. The funny thing about these key songs of the month pieces is that often on the day that I write them I do happen to stumble across some other special songs which I then hope have the staying power to stick around to the end of the next month. This morning, I potentially have found three of the next five key songs so we’ll see if they do end up sticking around. But thats later down the line, for now, its time to enjoy these last few days of May before moving into the summer and seeing what music it brings with it. 

-Jake, a man hoping for a surprise winner at Monaco, 28/05/2023

[joy-n-crew]

Best time to travel Switzerland in Best Cities

“Det är svårt att hitta en plats att inte gilla i Schweiz.” This means “It's tough to find a place not to like in Switzerland." Unquestionably one of the most alluring nations in the world, Switzerland has enchanted visitors with its breathtaking grandeur of the Alps mountains, sweeping valleys, glacial lakes, delectable chocolates, and picturesque locations. It is an accomplishment that Switzerland has been a peaceful nation for more than five hundred years. Many artists and thinkers sought sanctuary in this nation of peace during the wars and instability.

The Alps in the south, the Jura Mountains in the north, the bustling center of Geneva, and the calm areas of Bern are just a few of the scenic wonders that make Switzerland's towns famous. Additionally, the nation is well known for its premium goods including cheese, chocolate, and timepieces. Switzerland is a picturesque winter holiday location that is highly recommended for a visit, in addition to its natural beauty and extensive history. Here is a carefully picked list of the top spots to meander around on your next trip, no matter where you are in the nation or learning about a new city every week.

5 Best Cities In Switzerland

We've compiled a list of Switzerland's top destinations, from Interlaken to Geneva, that have long drawn tourists from around the globe.

Interlaken

This tranquil metropolis is one of the most well-liked places to visit in Switzerland and is a picture-postcard location. The iconic mountains known as "Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau" make up the Interlaken tourism hub. The Interlaken region, one of the top cities in Switzerland, is known for adventure sports and offers a wide range of activities. Traveling through the tunnels is a voyage through both nature and history. Beautiful views of the surrounding Alps glacier world and the Eiger north face may be had from the two tunnels.

2. Zürich

The thriving city is frequently referred to as "the Portal to the Alps" because of its proximity to the mountains. Zurich is well known for being efficient and clean in addition to being a famous tourist destination. In the past ten years, Zurich has become well-known for its cosmopolitan culture, nightlife, gastronomy, and some of the top restaurants in the world. All of Switzerland's major corporations, media outlets, and the nation's financial center are located in Zurich, the nation's financial center. Additionally, it is well known for its Swiss chocolates, which you can discover when visiting the city.

3. Geneva

In the far southwest of Switzerland, in the Geneva Canton, is the city of Geneva. The Jura Mountains to the west and the French Alps to the east encircle the city, which is located on the shores of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), the largest body of water in the region. Mont Blanc can be seen beautifully from Geneva's downtown, which is roughly an hour away by automobile. The city, a commercial hub, is only two hours by plane from most locations in Europe.

4. Lausanne

The capital of Vaud and the fourth-biggest city in Switzerland, Lausanne is located on the northeastern side of scenic Lake Geneva, the largest lake in western Europe. The city has a long and remarkable history that dates back to when the Romans lived there and camped nearby in Vidy. Since then, it has developed into a bustling tourist destination and the location of numerous important organizations, including the International Olympic Committee and the Federal Tribunal. Lausanne has several important institutions, including the Olympic Museum with its fascinating museum, the Olympic Center with its fascinating museum, and the Ouchy area with its vibrant cafes and well-known gourmet restaurants, in addition to its picturesque old town with its narrow alleys, boutiques, and cafe life.

5. Bern

From its medieval Old Town to urban swimming in the Aare River, from its city's variety of attractions to its government buildings and Parliament, Switzerland's frequently ignored capital features a wealth of modern and historic treasures. The government and legislative chambers of Switzerland are also located in this city. Bern, the intellectual hub of Switzerland, is a tranquil location to unwind and enjoy a leisurely vacation. The place is a favorite of serious intellectuals, especially Albert Einstein. Its cafés and charming neighborhoods are perfect for relaxing and learning from the modern masters. It is also regarded as one of Switzerland's most stunning cities.

Best time to travel to Switzerland

The four distinct seasons of Switzerland are spring, summer, autumn/fall, and winter. Here are Switzerland's seasons for simplicity, even though official dates overlap and extend into other months.

Spring: March to mid-June

Summer: mid-June to September 

Autumn/Fall: September to November 

Winter: December to March

As you ascend to higher elevations from urban areas, the temperature changes. In the cities, snowfall is at a bare minimum, even in the winter, whereas certain ski resorts may receive snow most of the year.

The numerous cities that are dispersed throughout this region frequently reflect the breathtaking beauty of Switzerland. You can discover more about this famous nation's culture, geography, and history by traveling to one or more of these locations. Looking for suggestions to help you create your itinerary? Contact our Joy-N-Crew LLP to learn more.

#Best time to travel to Switzerland #5 Best Cities In Switzerland #Switzerland's top destinations #switzerland tour packages for family #Switzerland Tour Package

[blackmagicspecialist786-blog]

Winning Numbers Drawn in Mega Millions Jackpot Worth Nearly $1 Billion

It was Friday evening that the winners were selected to win Mega Millions. Mega Millions jackpot prize of approximately $940 million. The numbers were 3, 20 and 46. The numbers were 59 the numbers were 59, 63, 59 as well as the gold Mega Ball 13. It was not clear until shortly after the drawing to determine if there was a winner on the ticket. Since no one had won in the preceding 23 drawing, the prize for the drawing on Friday night grew to $940 million, with cash options of $483.5 million in the event that the winner or winners prefer to receive the prize in one lump amount. If the drawing is any winners, it would be the sixth-largest lottery prize to be won in U.S. history, and the fourth-largest Mega Millions prize. Since 2016 Two Powerball jackpots have exceeded $1.5 billion. Three Mega Millions jackpots have grown to over $1 billion. Two of these mega jackpots happened in the past year. Here's an overview of the 10 most lucrative jackpots to date. The biggest lottery prize up to now was the one with the highest payout. It was the winning lottery ticket drawn during the Nov. 7 Powerball jackpot, was drawn from California and was sold in Joe's Service Center in Altadena the gas station that lies from Pasadena. Officials at the lottery claimed that the winner is the first billionaire from the lottery within the State. It was not clear if the winner claimed the winnings. A spokeswoman for Powerball confirmed that the vetting process of winners who reside in California could take several months. The second largest jackpot was divided into three parts. The winners Powerball numbers came out on the 13th of January. 13in 2016 winning tickets were purchased from California, Florida and Tennessee. "I think we can all live on $528 million, don't you think?" Russ Lopez, a spokesman for the California Lottery, said at the time. The biggest Mega Millions prize was the third highest jackpot overall with the winning ticket being drawn on October. 23, 2018 from South Carolina. It took a long time until the prize was accepted. The following March year, an unidentified winner was identified through an attorney, choosing to pay a one-time lump amount of $877,784,124 instead making payments over the course of 30 years. One lucky man from Illinois purchased the prize winning Mega Millions ticket on July 29. After a few weeks, the winner was announced. The winner's identity was not known since Illinois law permits large winners to keep their names and addresses secret generally. A group dubbed The Wolverine FLL Club of Oakland County was the winner of a ticket worth more than 1 billion dollars in the Mega Millions drawing on Jan. 22nd 2021. One person picked the numbers at the Kroger supermarket in Novi the city of around 60,000 residents that lies 30 miles to the northwest of Detroit. Manuel Franco of Wisconsin won the $768.4 million jackpot in the Powerball drawing on the 27th of March in 2019. The prize was sufficient to allow the winner. Franco to quit his job within two days after winning. Wisconsin does not have a law that protects the identities of those who win lotteries. This means that Mr. Franco was required to be publicly identified. A health care worker of 53 years old in Massachusetts was a millionaire after she took home the Powerball on August. 23rd 2017. Winner, Mavis Wanczyk chose to receive a lump-sum payout in the amount of $480.5 million. However, after tax which included five percent for the Federal government, and 25 percent for her state , she earned $336 million. A huge amount of more than $700 million was awarded to the owner of the prize winning Powerball ticket on January. 20-21, 2021 in Maryland. Lottery winners in Maryland have the option to remain secret. If they do, they will be awarded as the winner, the prize was given the name "The Power Pack." Scott Godfrey of California became millionaire when he won the Powerball on October. 4 2021. The winner, Mr. Godfrey opted for the lump amount of $496 million, minus tax. He also told KSBY that he planned to give some of the funds to charity. The two winning winners, one from New York and another in Iowa have to share the October. 27th Powerball prize that was worth more than $687 million. The winner from Iowa is Lerynne West the mother of three who lives in Redfield. She stated to the Des Moines Register that she had asked a clerk in a shop to generate the numbers randomly for her. It was New York winner was Robert Bailey from Manhattan. In 2018, he said that he'd been playing identical numbers - -- 8-12-13-19-19-27-4 each week for over 25 years. Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.   Read the full article