#like if its rent lowering gunshots. just do two and call it a night

[beaversatemygrandma]

I keep hearing the gunshots but the rent sure ain't getting lower

#gun tw #taks speaks #i was going to close my window for the night and someone is popping off in the truck depot again #it's 2:30am dude #why. #just a normal night here i guess #keeps happening #someone literally goes out there where there's nothing but metal containers #pops off a whole magazine. reloads. and does it again #exactly 6 shots rapid fire #and then again #WHY are you wasting so much ammo like this #like if its rent lowering gunshots. just do two and call it a night #then again there was a shooting not too far from here less than a few weeks ago. again. #goddamn it america. we got guns. i get it.

[eclecticstarlightconnoisseur]

VISIONS IN THE SNOW

Good Evening All! I have a new one-shot that was inspired by the horrific weather that recently swept across the U.S. It caused so much grief, suffering to so many people. I hope this would bring a smile to some faces. This was written with one particular person in mind (and you know who you are) and I’m glad you like it.

Thanks as always to @scubalass for the read through. Your suggestions were, as always, spot on. It made the final story so much better.

Status of Edinburgh to Boston: There is progress but it is painfully slow. There are two characters that are essential to this chapter whose voice I do not hear as well as I do Jamie and Claire. I write something, then I delete it and I do the same thing over and over. We will come to an understanding at some point so dinna fash. There will be A/N at the end to explain words or terms.

Without further delay I give you Visions in the Snow.

Here goes nothing:

VISIONS IN THE SNOW

February 1968  - Boston

The responsibility for hosting this week’s poker game fell to Joe Abernathy.  He took his duties in this regard very seriously. It was the way the surgeons decompressed after a week of stressful surgical procedures and this week was no exception. 

“It must have been a full moon,” he thought. Motor vehicle accidents, stabbings, gunshot wounds, volvulus, a ruptured esophagus, the works. It was during these times that he dearly missed his friend. Claire. He cast his glance over to the card table set with one extra place, Claire’s place. On the seat was her green visor that she wore when she played poker with the boys. It sat in repose like a memorial to a fallen comrade.

Silly thing! She believed wearing it masked her glass face.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but none of her colleagues had the heart to tell her. They all knew what Claire Randall was thinking. So much so, they often let her win which caused her to think she was good at playing poker.

He glanced around the room and saw that everything was in readiness for the evening. The sideboard groaned beneath the bounty of food, snacks, and brews.  

Outside, the wind blew fiercely rattling the windows drawing his attention. Joe looked out the window watching the two front trees bowing to the brute force of nature. Their skeletal fingers scraped at the roof almost as if trying to gain entry. It had been snowing for the last six hours with no sign of it letting up. He had considered canceling the game but a majority of his colleagues soundly vetoed that idea. Only Callahan and Peterson dissented. Callahan’s wife would kill him if he left her alone to deal with their six small ones while he went to play poker. Peterson lived thirty miles away. The remaining players all lived a short walking distance from his home, on Doctors Row. It was so-called because many of the physicians who worked at the hospital lived on the same street.  These surgeons were gambling men betting they had enough time for some comradery, hands, and beers before the brunt of the storm arrived.   

For a Boston snowstorm, it hadn’t accumulated very much. Yet. Regardless, it would not hamper these hardened surgeons accustomed to driving through Boston’s worst to get to the hospital. Without warning, the storm picked up intensity driving the snow hard enough to erase the landscape before him. Amid the squall, a hazy light glowed like the high beams of headlights in the snow. A wraithlike figure emerged from its center. Joe wasn’t able to make out any of its features. Man? Woman? He wasn’t sure. But one thing was for sure, it was headed directly toward his house. 

Joe leaned closer trying to see if the person was in distress as they were caught out in the snow. Maybe they had abandoned their car and were seeking help.  His warm breath met the cold pane fogging it, wholly obscuring his view.  Using his shirt sleeve, he wiped away the condensation hoping to improve his ability to see. As the person drew closer, it became apparent that it was a young woman and her attire was totally inappropriate for the weather. She wore a long dress whose hem floated across the snow. It looked like a green and black plaid and a white scarf crossed her neck to cover her bosom. Her hair was dark, curly, piled high on her head, and tendrils framing her face. She looked a lot like… It couldn’t be, could it? She came closer. So close that he could see her eyes. Eyes the color of a fine whisky. Claire? Claire! How? She had left for Scotland, disappearing into the past, to find her true love.

Anxiety flowed through him. He needed to speak with the woman. He needed to know if it truly was Claire. Joe tried to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge. The frame had swollen from the moisture, he thought. He rapped on the window calling her name, but she paid no heed.

Claire was running and laughing bright and merry. Stopping suddenly, she turned and extended a hand into the haze. A man appeared laughing and chased after her. He was a big son of a bitch standing at least six feet four inches and as big as a brick…Well, he was big. He had a mop of red hair, but to simply say red would deny the richness of the color. It was a curly thick mosaic of cinnamon, auburn, gold, and cinnabar.  And his eyes were the deepest blue Joe had ever seen. The man was kitted out in traditional highland garb right down to the sword strapped to his side. Reaching her, the young man made a courtly bow. He straightened, then took her hand to bestow a kiss. A moment later, he lifted and spun her around. She tossed her head back and peals of joyous laughter rang through the air. He set her down gently settling his hands on the swell of her hips. His eyes danced with love as he lowered his head to kiss her most thoroughly. Joe felt his cheeks burn as he watched such intimacy. 

Time advanced in front of him. He became witness to a lifetime, to a marriage, to the bonds of love that could not be broken. The vision changed from the blush of first love through to a life fully lived.  He wept at their trials, tribulations, and heartbreak. And he reveled in their accomplishments, triumphs, and joys. But through all their hardships, and there were many, their love for each other never wavered, never changed. 

The final event showed the couple had aged. The woman, Claire, had streaks of grey in her hair while the man’s hair had lightened. They stood atop a ridge overlooking some land. The man had his arm securely around her waist pulling her protectively close to him. Claire stood on her tiptoes wrapping her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a fiery kiss. She nodded her head and started to pull him toward a cabin. He scooped her up and carried her across the threshold kicking the door shut. 

As the vision faded back into the vapor as a voice called out, “I am happy Joe. I found my Jamie.”

Resting his head against the cold pane of glass provided a sense of comfort to his unsettled mind and spirit. Uncertainty gripped him as he grappled to understand what happened. Had this been a dream? Or a hallucination? Or had the fabric of time somehow been rent apart? He shook himself, much like a dog dispelling the rain from its coat, hoping to lift his state of bewilderment. 

Psssst, pssst, ssssssss! The homely sound of the radiator hissing brought him back to himself and away from his ruminations.

Mercilessly, the wind blew about the house ferociously shaking the windowpanes in their frames then suddenly died away. Out of curiosity, Joe tried to open the window. This time it slid open with ease. The blinding snow stopped returning to light flurries. As he turned to walk away from the window, he noticed the clock on the mantel. It was one minute later than when he last looked at it. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” he muttered.

Joe walked over to Claire’s chair and picked up the visor cradling it to his chest,  “Wherever you are Claire, I’m glad you’re happy and you found your Jamie. Jamie, if you can hear me, take good care of our girl.”

With that, the doorbell rang and Joe went to greet his guests.

                                                        *************

Claire woke with a start bringing Jamie to instant alertness. He grabbed the pistol he kept by his bedside in preparation for any threat. Seeing none, he turned to look at Claire. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

“Sassenach, what’s amiss? Are ye alright?”

“I dreamt...I dreamt I was back in Boston going to play poker with the other surgeons. It was our regular night to play. The game was at Joe’s house and there was this blizzard.”

“Poker? What kind of game do ye play with a poker?” he was afraid to ask. Claire had told him so many peculiar stories about her time that he thought this would be another one. The only poker he knew about was the kind used in a fireplace.

“It’s a card game. I was rather good at it too. Someday I’ll have to teach you.” Claire snuggled up against Jamie seeking his heat, his comfort. She yawned greatly, “Except I will miss my green visor.”

 “A vi-zor?” All he could envision was a knight’s helmet with a visor covering the eyes and face.

“It’s a sort of hat with a green brim. It shades your eyes and some of your face. People use it to hide their facial expressions when they bluff at cards.”

Jamie looked at her as if she were a bit daft. He knew nothing could hide her thoughts on that glass face. He tucked her head under his chin, “Come, Sassenach, rest yer head, aye? I think ye had a bit of the nightmare. I’ll keep ye warm and safe.” He lowered his head placing a kiss on the top of her head.

Jamie closed his eyes and thought about the black man he had seen in his dreams too. “Aye, dinna fash, Joe. I’ll care for her with my life,” he whispered just before lapsing into sleep.

A/N:

VOLVULUS: A volvulus occurs when part of the colon or intestine twists. The twisting causes bowel obstructions that may cut off the blood supply to areas of the bowels. This can cause the bowel to die or left untreated the person can die.

RENT: This involves a story. When I was in catechism class the teacher was telling the story of Christ’s trial before the Pharisees. When Jesus was condemned one of the Pharisees was said to have rent his garment. You say that to a bunch of kids and they start to giggle. They wanted to know who he rented his clothes to and for how much. So the teacher explained that to rent something meant to tear it apart violently. I fell in love with the word’s usage and I never thought I would get to use it in this way. But I did!

And poor Jamie, Claire’s stories always leave his surprised, confused, shocked among other feelings.

The truth behind this story was that it was supposed to be smutty. Instead, it evolved into this. It was supposed to happen that the Ridge was also snowed-in. Claire was bored with playing chess with Jamie and wanted to play something else. She wanted to teach him strip poker. So I left myself an opening if I chose to do a second chapter. But I have to finish E2B first.

I hope you liked this and it brought a smile to your face.

You can find me on AO3. There I am LadyJane518.

Thanks for reading!

#visions in the snow #ol fanfic #winter #snowstorm #poker #jamie and claire #joe abernathy #visor #tearing the fabric of time #My writing #my story #scubalass #gotham-ruaidh

[blossom-hwa]

Light the Pyres |Strike| - SUNGYOON

Based off the Burn It mv? Yeah I know it was like five months ago but whatever. Writing this honestly hurt me so I’m sorry if you’re reading it <3

(But no, really. This is a heavier and bloodier story. If this isn’t for you, please don’t read!)

Pairing: Sungyoon x gender neutral!reader

Genre: angst, bits of fluff, apocalypse!au

Triggers: cursing, death, side character commits suicide (no mention of suicidal thoughts though), semi-graphic depictions of blood

Word Count: 3.8k

As the world burns its last goodbyes, you find a jewel amidst the ashes.

Strike >> Next: Light

Golden Child Masterlist

“It’s insane, isn’t it?” You pace around your dorm. “I can’t believe it went so wrong. Not to say that I ever agreed with the testing in the first place, but –”

“I know.” Your mother sighs into the phone. “Anyone would’ve thought such a project would be handled carefully, no? It’s a miracle anyone survived at all.”

You sit on the edge of your bed. “I’m just glad you’re safe,” you say. “When I heard the shaking could be felt even from home…”

She laughs, soft and gentle in a way that sends a pleasant warmth tickling down your spine. God, you love hearing your mother’s laugh. “I’m fine, Y/N.” You can almost hear the smile in her voice. “I appreciate you checking in on me, but I’m perfectly fine. We had a few tremors, that’s all. No one is hurt.”

“Yeah, I know, I know.” You smile. “I have to go to class now, but stay safe, okay? I’ll see you this winter break, I promise.”

“I’m counting the days, darling. I love you and miss you.”

“Same here, Mom.”

You press your head against the car window as Daeyeol speeds down the empty highway. It’s been months since that call, months since the test bomb failed, mutating the few who survived into flesh-eating shades of their human selves.

Of course, no one knew it then. The survivors were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment and when they first woke up, there were no signs of abnormality besides some slightly shrunken pupils.

Then veins blackened, skin paled, and they attacked.

One infected hospital turned into an entire city. The few who managed to escape tried to spread the news, but no one believed them. Only a couple of the smallest news outlets, looking for a good scoop, related the stories of the shaking survivors of what they called a zombie apocalypse. Unbelievable, right?

Not so much when one zombie made its way into an otherwise healthy city and began biting people in full daylight.

Only a few states away, your mother was living her life when the government imposed a strict lockdown. No one was to leave their home. Certain stores would be open on certain days, and blocks would be allowed to shop at certain times. Otherwise, stay at home and do not go outside.

She called you that day and every day after until communications shut off. On the other side of the country, you panicked when your calls stopped going through, when your texts only rebounded with an “unable to send – try again” message that made you want to smash your phone against the ground.

Until several days later, in the middle of a class no one was paying attention to, she picked up.

Your professor doesn’t even blink an eye as you run out of the room, already halfway to tears. “Oh my God, Mom –”

“Darling, we don’t have time.” You can hear the cracks in her voice. “So many cities nearby have been overrun already, and we can’t use internet or even power anymore because we need to conserve. I don’t know how your call managed to go through.”

“I thought you were dead.” You slide to the floor, back pressed against the wall as you try hard not to cry. “Mom, I –”

“No, I’m alive.” She laughs, but there’s a frightened edge to it that you’ve never heard before. It feels like being doused with cold water, horrible – your mother, the woman who raised you so fearlessly in the wake of her husband’s death, is scared.

You can barely comprehend it.

“I’m alive, Y/N.” A tiny sniffle on the other end. “I just want you to know that I love you very much. I always will.”

“I love you too, Mom.” A tear trickles down your face. “I love you. I’m going to come for you, okay? I’ll come. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come for you.”

No reply. You look down at your phone, only to realize the call’s disconnected with no way for you to know how much your mother heard of your last words.

You haven’t been able to call her since, not with her power completely cut off and your university going on lockdown just a couple of weeks later. But it doesn’t matter. When rumors that a wave of flesh-eating non-humans was going to hit your city soon, you rented a car with Daeyeol and set off for home, driving in a direction from where no zombies had come.

You’re pretty sure the rental owner knew you had no intention of returning the car, judging from the thin press of his lips as you handed over your card. He softened, though, when you slid into the driver’s seat. “Good luck,” he’d said.

That bit of luck seems to have paid off. After weeks of alternately walking and driving, weeks of crippling paranoia and sudden attacks, neither you nor Daeyeol has been bitten. You might be dehydrated, half-starved, and ready to collapse at any given moment, but at least you have no shrunken pupils, no blackened veins, and no hunger for flesh.

Daeyeol’s voice cuts through the car tires jostling on the road. “All right?”

“Mm.” You nod slightly, head still pressed against the window. A tiny smirk widens your cracked lips. “Still alive.”

It’s morbid. So many people you know or knew have died, probably more than you realize, so it maybe isn’t the best move to joke about being alive. But it makes Daeyeol smile, even if it’s more of a smirk than a real smile, and after everything that’s happened, you both need a reason to laugh every so often.

“Same here,” he says, words cracking slightly with disuse. His voice used to be smooth, sweet with his singer’s tones, but it’s all faded over days and weeks of silence.

Don’t exactly want to attract a horde of zombies for the sake of a bit of song.

His voice breaks you out of depressing thoughts again. “Get some sleep,” he says, glancing over. “We’ll stop at sundown.”

“Cool.” You stretch slightly, yawning. “I guess I’ll drive through the night?”

“If we don’t break down by then.” As if on cue, the motor sputters, nearly launching you forward, but thankfully, the car doesn’t stop just yet. Daeyeol sighs. “Halfway there,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you.

“Halfway there,” you echo as another faded highway sign flashes past. After nearly two months of travel, you’re over halfway home.

You let that thought comfort you into an uneasy sleep.

. . . . .

“Shit.”

You wake up to Daeyeol’s curse and the sputtering sound of the engine. He’s gone off the highway since you fell asleep, now trying to start the choking car on a street in what looks like it used to be a city. As you blink the sleep out of your eyes, he presses down on the accelerator, hard. The car jerks forward for a second, then stops.

Daeyeol groans. “We didn’t even make it to sundown.”

Sure enough, the sun still hasn’t fallen. From the beat up watch on your wrist, you estimate an hour or so before dark. Probably enough time to try and take a crack at fixing the engine or whatever’s gone wrong with the car.

“I’ll take a look.” You rub your eyes. “See if it’s something I can fix. Stay close, I might need your help.”

After years of growing up beside your mechanic mother, mechanical engineering was a no-brainer when you entered university. Since then, your technical skills have grown a little rusty when it comes to repairing cars (hey, not a lot of people drove around your college town), but in the months after the explosion, you’ve had to relearn those skills fast.

You don’t dare roll up your sleeves, not even in the heat of the afternoon sun and the warmth radiating off the engine. If a zombie comes out of nowhere, your layers are the only chance of surviving a bite. 

Wincing at the memory of your first close call, you start poking around the engine. It isn’t smoking, which is good, but something rattles when you tap at it with a wrench.

Great.

Sweat pours down your face as you fiddle around with the engine. A few bolts are loose – how you didn’t notice when you first took the car, you don’t know – but you tighten them carefully as the sun sinks lower in the sky. “Hopefully that’s it,” you mutter before pulling the hood down. Even in such an empty place, the small thunk makes you flinch, looking around for zombies to come pouring out of nowhere.

Nothing happens. You sigh in relief, plucking the keys from Daeyeol’s hand. “Let’s see if it works.”

It does. After an initial sputtering, the car moves forward. Reflexes keep your mouth shut before you can whoop, but you settle for a satisfied sigh as you beckon Daeyeol into the car, his eyes smiling in a way that’s become rare in the past month.

Then –

A shout.

A bang.

You freeze, one hand on the wheel.

Gunshots.

Daeyeol’s already opening his door, eyes wide with worry as someone screams and the familiar sound of dead groaning fills the air. “Come on,” he says, his tone booking no room for argument. “Let’s go.”

He’s too kind. Too selfless. As you run behind him, pulling out the gun holstered at your own waist, you try to push down the urge to drag him back to the car and just drive away from the growing screams and groans.

But Daeyeol is your best friend, one of your two last anchors to his barren earth. You may not have the same selfless streak that he does, but you’ll follow him into danger and watch his back if it’s the last thing you do.

Someone like Daeyeol deserves that much and more.

Following the noise, you sprint between two buildings, tall and dirty and abandoned. Broken glass crunches under your feet as you turn a corner –

And come face to face with black veins and white faces, pupils shrunken in death.

Whirling away from bloody, grasping hands, you club the first zombie over the head with the butt of your gun. It falls. Bang. Dead. You twist around the mass of stilted limbs and race after Daeyeol, yelling for him to slow down as you run into the fray.

Bang. Bang bang bang. Gunshots lead you into a space between four buildings where the ground opens up to reveal what probably was a subway. A horde of zombies claws at a tall bus stranded in the square, a lone man standing on top.

Him. Your eyes zero in on the tall figure, gun in hand that he aims at the zombies. There are too many, though, even if there don’t seem to be more coming.

Daeyeol scrambles on top of an abandoned car. You quickly follow. The man hasn’t caught sight of you just yet, still focused on avoiding zombies that get too close. There’s only a matter of time before they sense your presence and start chasing you instead.

Think. Think!

“You pick them off,” you gasp. “Pick them off from here.”

He nods. “Watch the back. Help me if I run out.”

You turn around. Back to back, you raise your guns, aim, and begin to fire.

Your gunshots and the allure of more meat turn deadened eyes and bloody mouths your way. Trampling over their shot companions, they lurch over to your car, stumbler closer even as you pick them away.

One. Two. Three. Each of your last thirteen bullets has to make a difference. Gritting your teeth against the smell of rotting flesh that still makes you gag even after so many weeks on the road, you shoot down another zombie that’s gotten too close and lock eyes with the man still standing on the bus roof.

The horde has thinned. The groaning has decreased. Zombies still claw at the roof, but if he jumps far enough and runs fast enough, he’ll make it.

“JUMP!” you scream, another bullet embedding itself into a head caked in dried blood. Three bullets left. “NOW!”

An uncertain glance. Daeyeol shoots away another clawing hand and glares at his still figure. “JUMP!”

He jumps.

Lands.

Pitches onto the ground.

Not far enough.

Zombies lurch forward, rotting arms reaching for the man who’s still scrambling to stand. You want to scream. He isn’t going to make it, all of this was for nothing, you’ve wasted ten bullets – eleven, now, as another tears into a zombie head – on a rescue mission that’s going to fail –

Daeyeol jumps down from the car and fires a last shot that goes haywire before grabbing the man and literally dragging him forward, narrowly missing a lurching zombie.

“DAEYEOL!” You jump from the car, kicking away a clawing hand. “YOU FUCKING IDIOT –”

He begins to turn, helping the man stumble forward. Something’s happened to his leg. Your eyebrows furrow – God, you’re going to have words with Daeyeol about putting himself in unnecessary danger when you all are out of this – as you grab at one of the stranger’s arms, dragging him across the bloody square.

All facing the same direction, none of you notice several leftover zombies creeping up from behind.

Daeyeol yells. His hand releases the stranger’s wrist and you watch in disbelief as skeletal, bloody hands drag him backward.

You scream. Fingers fumble for your gun that still has two rounds left, two rounds, more than enough –

But Daeyeol is already staring in disbelief at the blood seeping through a prominent bite mark on the top of his arm that’s beginning to turn black.

No.

No.

No!

Letting go of the stranger with a shriek, you raise both hands and shoot away the zombie still hanging onto Daeyeol’s shoulder. But you have only one bullet left in your gun and there are several zombies lurching towards you and it doesn’t even matter because Daeyeol’s been bitten, you’ve made it halfway home already and he’s been bitten –

Disbelieving eyes meet yours. Something crumbles in his expression and in his gaze you see everything – pain, horror, care, love, determination, resolve.

“Go,” he chokes, stepping backward directly into the path of the remaining undead. “Go!”

Tears blur your vision. “Daeyeol –”

“TAKE HIM AND GO!”

Dimly, you register a hand closing around your trembling wrist, dragging you back, away from your best friend of over twenty years, away from one of your last anchors to life. Gunshots tear through the air and you blink in time to see two of the zombies fall, Daeyeol gritting his teeth as he pulls the trigger on his gun again. And again.

He locks eyes with you once more. His gaze shines with twenty years of friendship and memories as he steps backward over and over, luring the last zombies away.

His instructions pound through your head. Go. Go. Take him and go.

Take him and go!

Your mind screams to stay but your body turns traitor, latching onto the stranger’s arm and stumbling between buildings, back in the direction of the car. He doesn’t move fast but you drag him along, shoes crunching glass and bricks and dried blood.

Something turns your head back in time for the last shot. It doesn’t split a zombie’s skull.

Instead, you watch the muzzle of Daeyeol’s gun fall away from his temple as he collapses to the ground.

Dead.

Dead. Dead. Your best friend is dead. Dead. Dead. Daeyeol is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead dead dead dead your best friend is dead dead dead Daeyeol’s dead dead dead he’s dead dead dead dead dead he’s DEAD HE’S DEAD –

With a burst of strength you didn’t know you had, you haul the stranger forward to the car still parked on the street. Tossing open the passenger door, you shove him in, then throw yourself into the driver’s seat.

You jam the key into the ignition, turn it and hear the engine sputter to life. Instinct alone moves your limbs, foot pressing down on the gas, hands clenching the wheel so hard your knuckles burn.

Tears stream down your face as you drive into the setting sun.

. . . . .

The car dies ten miles down the road. Far enough to escape straggling zombies.

Not far enough to escape bloody memories.

You curse loudly, slamming a hand on the steering wheel as if it’ll do anything (it won’t. You don’t need two degrees in mechanical engineering to have that measure of common fucking sense). Next to you, the boy remains quiet, barely looking over as you hit the wheel again. And again.

It doesn’t bring Daeyeol back.

Still, you give the steering wheel one more whack before throwing open the car door to kick the vehicle in the side once. Twice.

“Don’t injure yourself.”

Ah. So he speaks. Mystery boy’s voice is a little higher than you expected. If you’d met him before the apocalypse, you might even say it was smooth. Nice. Like a singer’s.

Like Daeyeol’s.

You kick the car a third time, insides writhing.

And you hate it.

It’s irrational, of course, fully irrational. He hasn’t done anything to earn your anger. It’s probably not his fault he got cornered by a horde of zombies. It definitely isn’t his fault Daeyeol has – had – Jesus Christ, you can’t think of him in the past tense, your knees are already going wobbly and the tears are coming again – a stupid selfless streak that ultimately got him killed –

But how dare he speak. How dare he use his voice to warn you not to injure yourself when Daeyeol is the one who should be sitting there saying that. Daeyeol should be the one telling you to take care of yourself when the anger, the stress, the sheer enormity of the world and your own insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe start getting to your head.

If this boy hadn’t been in trouble, Daeyeol would still be here. He’d be here, alive, and though you’d still be stuck ten miles down the fucking road, at least he wouldn’t be dead. Dead because he sacrificed himself for a guy caught in the middle of a zombie horde on top of a fucking bus whom neither of you even knows.

With the last of your strength, you slam the car door shut before you say something you’ll regret. Sinking down on the dirty, empty highway, you close your eyes and take a shuddering breath.

You don’t cry. You just sit there, eyes staring into the darkness of your closed lids. There’s no telling how much time passes until a car door opens and shuts.

There’s a soft grunt. A gasp of pain. Then a presence settles itself on your side of the car, hovering over your still body.

Your fists clench. Unclench. It’s not his fault. Not his fault. Not his fault, not his fault, not his fault –

You open your eyes to stare flatly at the boy standing over you. “Yes?”

He flinches. It must have come out more accusatory than you wanted. You don’t do anything, though, only stare as he keeps standing, leg shifting awkwardly.

Not shifting. You lower your gaze, narrowing your eyes at his trembling limbs. Your mind flashes back to him jumping off the bus, the noise with which he landed, the way he was limping slightly as first Daeyeol, then you dragged him away.

He’s injured. No bones broken since he can still support his weight, but maybe a fracture. Something you don’t have the capacity to heal with anything but time.

Time that you don’t have.

“I…” He swallows. “I wanted to thank you. For helping – saving me.”

For some reason, that rubs you the wrong way.

“Don’t thank me.” Your voice slices the air, bitterly caustic. “Thank my friend. He’s the one who wanted to help.” You look away. “You know, the one who’s dead.”

He flinches again, hard enough to stumble backward. Only the car keeps him from falling over. A pang of guilt hits at your sharp words, but anger and grief for Daeyeol keep it at bay. “You can stay the night,” you say, still averting your gaze. “Take the backseat. Not like I’ll be driving any fucking further.” You stand and kick the car again, this time leaving a dent in the rusty metal. “Gonna have to go back to walking…”

Walking.

Your mouth goes dry.

This is the first time you’ll be walking alone. No Daeyeol to watch your back, no knowledge that someone who’s known you for over twenty years will be at your side. That’s gone, all of it. Gone with his death.

The thought ices your veins. You just want to curl into a ball and cry. But that’s not an option, not with this mystery boy enclosed in the same space as you, so you just throw open the door and slide back inside. He follows a little more cautiously, gingerly entering the car and closing his door softly before sitting in the back.

You sigh. “Close it fully.”

He blinks up at you in the grimy rearview mirror.

“Close the door fully,” you snap. “If a zombie manages to get in because you didn’t close it properly, we’re both fucked.”

It stings a little to be so rude, especially when he only opens the door again like you said and shuts it with more force. But nothing changes the fact that Daeyeol died for him, a person he didn’t even know, and that this boy is the reason why Daeyeol isn’t sitting next to you in the passenger seat, his silent, familiar presence comforting you into sleep.

A tear blinks out of your closed eyes. Why? you want to scream. Why did he do it? Why did he always want to help everybody, even if he knew it might come at the cost of his own life?

You know the answer. Humanity. Daeyeol told you every time you asked, every time you had another brush with death to save anyone you could. He had to keep faith, had to believe that there was something, anything he could do to alleviate some of the pain brought on by this tragedy.

It’s why you always admired him, were so loyal to him from the day you two first became friends in elementary school. Daeyeol always believed in strength that comes from kindness, believed in helping those who couldn’t always help themselves. It’s why you always followed him into the fight, regardless of how much you wanted to shove him back in the car and just drive away.

Bitterness lodges in a lump in your throat.

So much for humanity when all that kindness just got him killed.

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

(1 reblog = 1 prayer for Daeyeol’s soul :/)

#kpopscape #golden child #golcha #gncd #sungyoon #choi sungyoon #golden child y #golden child sungyoon #golcha sungyoon #golden child scenarios #golden child imagines #golden child oneshots #golcha scenarios #golden child sungyoon scenarios #golden child y scenarios #golden child x reader #golcha x reader #choi sungyoon x reader #golcha sungyoon x reader #golden child sungyoon x reader #angst #fluff #apocalypse!au #tw cursing #tw death #tw blood #tw suicide #light the pyres #light the pyres |strike| #scriptura-delirus

[iamnotoriginalphil]

Family Matters (Zelda Spellman x Reader) - Part 3

Synopsis: Zelda finds out something you’d rather had been kept secret.

Words: 1335

Warnings: homelessness

**GIF not mine**

You’d passed your test with flying colours. It helped that the day you were on trial was a quiet day. You were able to set up a working diary for the Spellman sisters, opting for times during each day they could sit down for meetings amongst their other commitments.

You passed the weeks answering the phone, making pots of tea, and comforting grieving people as they thought of what to do with their deceased loved ones. You’d passed out tissues and cake, doing your best to remain in the background while the sisters ran their business. It was fascinating to watch them work.

You tried to get out before they sat down to dinner, your heart hurting when you saw the four of them together. The difference between their lives and yours were so stark.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, love?”

You looked up from the diary, working through a scheduling conflict. Hilda was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. You smiled at her. Hilda was without a doubt your favourite of the two sisters. She was kind to you, encouraging. Unlike Zelda who spent most of her time watching you, making comments about your work, and generally causing anxiety within you.

“No, thank you, Hilda. I wouldn’t want to intrude,’ you replied with a smile.

“Oh no, you wouldn’t be intruding, dear. We would love for you to stay. Wouldn’t we, Zelds?”

Your gut clenched as you watched Hilda look over her shoulder. Zelda appeared from the shadows, her cigarette holder resting on one of her fingers, her arms crossed over her chest. You bit down on your lower lip, already able to feel the anxiety clawing its way up your throat.

“Of course we would,” Zelda said, her eyes staring intently at you.

“I really can’t,” you said, “but thank you.”

You hoped your voice didn’t sound as strained as you thought it might. You closed up the diary, figuring you could work out the problem tomorrow when your head wasn’t being made hazy from Zelda’s cigarette smoke. You pushed your hair behind your ear.

“Goodnight,” you said to the sisters.

You pulled your coat and scarf on, grabbing your bag from under your table. You waved to the two sisters and pulled open the door onto the dark night. The air was cold when it touched your skin. You shivered, looking up at the sky. Thankfully it was clear, meaning no rain while you slept.

You closed the door on the warm house and shoved your hands deep in your pockets. You hunched down in your coat, hopping down the stairs. You paused in front of the graveyard, looking over the graves. It was one of your favourite parts of working at the mortuary, being able to wander through the graves alone, thinking about the generations of families buried beneath your feet. It was beautiful.

You continued past it, through the mud of the drive. The air felt like ice, burning you where you were exposed. You hurried on, knowing you wouldn’t be warmer at home, but at least you could hunker down and hope for sleep before the sun rose.

You broke away from the main path, heading through the trees. A twig snapped somewhere in the distance. You paused, perking up, looking for the noise. You knew things stalked these woods you did not want to meet in the dark of night.

The shadows kept looking like something moving in the dark. The moon was waning, so far from full. Light was minimal and you had to rely on your other senses. After a few minutes with nothing but your own paranoia for company you continued on, glancing over your shoulder every so often.

You came upon your small camp, passing from behind a tree to enter the clearing. You sighed, sitting down on the tree trunk in front of the fire pit. You knew you should start a fire to warm yourself up but you were beyond tired, just wanting to curl up and sleep.

You unzipped the tent and crawled inside. You pushed your bag to the side, quickly changing into your pyjamas in the darkness. You slid into your sleeping bag, curling up in the foetal position as you tried to imagine yourself in your childhood bed, back home that was no longer home. You squeezed your eyes shut, imagining you could hear your little brother snoring in the room next to yours. You could almost mistake the whistling of the wind for the sound of the kettle your parents brewed every night.

Another twig snapped, like a gunshot going off so close to you. Your eyes snapped open, your body freezing as you tried to hear what was outside your tent. You held your breath, pretending that would help despite the blood pounding in your ears.

A step sounded closer to your tent, only audible due to the silence that had fallen over the woods. It felt as if it was holding its breath for you.

The zipper to the front of your tent began to rise, exposing you to whoever, or whatever, was coming to investigate your home. You should have readied yourself in case of a fight, but you were frozen, only able to watch as your demise drew closer.

“What in Hecarte’s name is this?”

You blinked, surprised at the face peering at you through the tent flaps. Zelda was crouched down, staring in at you. All you could do was blink at her, unable to do anything else. She waited but when it became clear you weren’t going to give her an answer she stood up.

“Get out of there,” she commanded.

You crawled out, doing your best to not look as pathetic as you felt. She was never meant to find out about this. None of them were. This was your shame to live with, the lack of proper house. This was the best you were able to do in your circumstances. You didn’t want to have to admit to any of them this was all you had. You let them continue thinking you went home to a warm house at the end of the day, not a dingy tent in the middle of the woods.

“What are you doing in there?” she demanded.

“Trying to sleep,” you replied with a shrug. You had thought it was pretty self evident.

“Why are you not at home?” she asked.

“I am.”

She looked at you. Her head cocked to the side, as if trying to work out a difficult math problem. You watched her, waiting for any kind of reaction. You couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through her mind.

“Why?” she asked.

“I told you I needed the job. This is why. I can’t afford rent, I can’t afford a house, I can’t afford anything. Before my first pay check I couldn’t afford to buy even a cup of coffee. I have nothing. Miss Spellman, I can’t thank you enough for hiring me because now I have a chance.”

She considered you for a moment.

“I think you can call me Zelda, don’t you?”

You didn’t have an answer for her. She was not reacting the way you expected and you weren’t quite sure how to respond if it wasn’t on the defensive.

“Pack your things,” she said.

“Why?”

“This is no way for a young woman to live. We have more than enough room for you to sleep until you are back on your feet,” she said, looking you over. You flushed under her gaze.

You quickly packed up your camp site, glad to have so few possessions. Zelda Spellman was not a woman to be kept waiting.

You followed her through the forest, back to the mortuary. You looked up at the glowing windows and couldn’t help but wonder what your life had come to. You weren’t sure what to make of your new situation.

You knew it would please at least one person.

Tags: @theenglishwizard​ @eyesofanangeltongueofadevil​ @hallospaceboyy​

(If you wanna be tagged, let me know)

#Zelda Spellman #zelda spellman imagine #zelda spellman x reader #family matters #tw homelessness

[quietoneshots]

Target Practice

Title: Target Practice

Fandom/Characters: John Wick / reader 

Synopsis: Caught in the crossfire of a war you don’t understand, you get a moment with some dude in the midst of chaos. 

A small note: No gun stuff, but some violence and blood because ya know, John Wick-ery. 

The night watch job has never been the most convenient way to pay the rent, but convenience wasn’t really anything you were worried about. It was quiet, serene, and secure. 

You like hanging out with all of the old antiques, crates upon crates of weird junk and rusted treasures. They were good silent friends. You especially liked a flat-top case of knives. They couldn’t hurt you, and you never really had reason to want to use them, but it was nice to know they were there, tucked away in case of an emergency. That seemed unlikely.

Late into the evening, when you’d already made a full round of the warehouse, and were usually tucked into a book, you heard the sharp sound of shattering glass. 

That wasn’t good.

It was followed quickly by the thud of feet on concrete, circling ever closer.

You didn’t have to think. Your feet took you right to that case of knives. Without thinking of the ramifications of busting the glass you were meant to be protecting, you slammed your book down on the case and managed to fish out a suitably dangerous looking blade without too much damage to your hand. The footsteps echoed across the rows of anitquery, and you couldn’t be sure how close it was. You didn’t hear any gunshots, which was a relief and a conundrum.

You clutched the hilt in your fist, utterly confused and completely terrified. Had you ever even picked up a knife like this before? 

They were rounding closer. 

You readied yourself, remembering all of the classes you had taken, where to hit somebody to make it matter, clean up procedures, and maybe a two weeks notice to your boss.

You didn’t have time to finish the thought before a bloody shoulder rammed into your back, knocking the wind out of your lungs. You lunged around, stars flooding the corners of your eyes. A round face with an eyepatch stared back at you, eyes absolutely feral. It looked like this man had seen a ghost. Before you could process all of this, he had nailed your wrist with his own, knocking the knife from your hand, but miraculously turning away from you, ready to attack whomstever he was running from.

Without thinking, you felt for something, anything else with which to arm yourself from the case. Silent and slippery, you felt cool metal on your palm, and carefully found the handle of something more sinuous and sinewy than your previous pick. The man had not turned around. You carefully rose, trying not to wheeze and cough from the impact to your chest. 

A dark shape rounded the corner, and the man with the eyepatch pounced. Both men fell the floor, squirming, dodging, you could barely get a grasp on who was who. You didn’t have such a luxury. With all of the adrenaline in your body, you ran forward and slammed the knife into the shoulder of the man on top, whose body went rigid at the impact. It wasn’t enough to kill him. You hadn’t wanted it to be. The feeling of steel into flesh was disgusting. Even as it was happening, you never wanted to experience that again.

You had miraculously stabbed the man with the eyepatch  He tried to turn, to get a look at his assailant, but before he could register that you, lowly security guard and knife neophyte, had caused some serious damage, he slumped down with a gurgle, blood seeping onto the cold gray floor. The other man pushed himself off of the floor, clutching your first weapon of choice in his own hands. 

You quickly dropped your knife, hands outstretched, staring in shock at both the man who had risen, almost entirely unscathed, from an honest to God knife fight, and the body slumped on the floor. “Oh my God please don’t kill me.”

The man, impeccably dressed and incredibly poised, did the same, knife clattering to the floor. His stare was surprised, brows raised, brown eyes wide in shock. You realized that you had kind of just saved this dude’s ass. 

You both stayed that way, arms outstretched, gaze unwavering, surveying the damage around you.

He lowered his hands slowly. “Thank you.” His voice, deep and rough, was both grateful and skeptical of what the hell had just happened. 

You couldn’t feel you limbs for all of the adrenaline. For some reason the only thing that sprang to your mouth was “Shit, my boss is going to kill me.” 

The man’s mouth quirked upwards in a grim smile. “I can fix this.” He immediately reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, and you were relieved when he merely pulled out a phone. you had been ready to make a dash for the nearest rack of vintage suitcases, hoping they might provide some cover should this man decide you were a loose end he couldn’t afford. He spoke brusquely, quickly, to whoever was on the phone, asking for a small cleanup crew to immediately dispatch to the warehouse.

“Who are you?” You whispered.

“In your debt.” The man answered, reaching once again into a pocket in the suit. There must have been dozens of them. You could vaguely make out a thicker lining in the jacket, bulletproof maybe? It was nearly imperceptible. Dark hair covered his eyes, leaving you unable to get a read on any reaction from the man as he rummaged around in those pockets, until he pulled out a small gold compact, which opened like a locket. You watched, spellbound, as a small spike emerged from its side, with which he pricked his thumb with barely a grimace, and pressed a bloody thumbprint into the inside of the compact.  He offered it to you, pressing it into your hands. The contact felt shocking after everything. You tentatively took it, investigating its strange markings, there was something inscribed in Latin on the elaborate surface, but you weren’t sharp enough on your dead languages to take a crack at what it said. 

“I’ll stay until the crew finishes. Just to be sure.” He moved to slump on the floor across from you, leaning back on a dusty bookshelf with a sigh. You stayed standing, unsure that you would be able to get back up should you take a seat. 

“Seriously, who are you?” It was almost laughable, all that had happened in the last four minutes. 

“You don’t wanna know.’ He grimaced.

“I really do.” You insisted. “I mean, this is great,” you gestured to the pocket where you had stowed the golden compact, “but you also just saved my ass.”

He considered you for a moment, long legs crossed on the floor. There was a cut above his eyebrow, mostly healed, still angry and red. He made you feel frumpy in your pale blue button up. “John.” He raised a hand in a hello, 

“Thank you, John.” 

You heard the sound of a truck beeping, rolling backwards into the warehouse, garage door already open before you could even blink. “Already?” You questioned John.

“They’re efficient.” He answered tersely, making his way to his feet with a grunt. All of his words were short, but there was never any malice towards you. 

An old man in a bowler hat stepped out of the passenger side of the van, surveying the landscape, a studious eye assessing any damages. “Well, you certainly like to give us a challenge, don’t you, John?” 

“Somebody has to.” He smirked once again, a tinge of humor clouding those gaunt features. 

“Ten minutes top.” He gestured with a black-gloved hand to the crew of outrageously burly folks behind him. You couldn’t fathom getting this place fixed up that fast, but you also hadn’t been able to fathom how this evening had already gone so far south, so you didn’t raise any complaints. 

“She okay?” The old man gestured to you, and it was then that you realized you were shaking, ever so slightly. John nodded, and you knew he wasn’t talking about your physical condition, more your allegiance. 

The old man whistled once again, and a large man with a spiraling arm tattoo approached with a bright orange blanket. “Try this.” He offered, and John tucked it around your shoulders, a comforting weight settling over you.

“We really oughta invest in black shock blankets. Keep this thing color coded.” The old man nodded in approval.  It really did make you feel better. 

True to his word, the clean up crew was done in record time, all evidence of blood and bodies off the floor, glass replaced, warehouse impeccable, maybe even better than they had found it. Hey, it wasn’t your job to dust. 

“Be seeing you.” The old man whistled as hopped into the passenger seat of the van, surprisingly spry for someone who appeared to be well into their sixties. 

As they drove off, John returned his attention to you. “When you need a favor called in, press this.” He rubbed a thumb over a tiny red button on the golden compact resting in your palm. “I’ll be there.” 

“What kind of favor?” You already knew, but you had to ask.

“Anything. The skillset might suggest something serious.” He teased lightly.

“I will. I promise.” 

“I’ll go then. Keep an eye out.” 

“John?” You couldn’t resist. 

“Be Seeing you.” 

#john wick #imagine #keanu reeves

[midrashic]

[headcanon] a map of hidden places i: new york city

{ a map of hidden places }

the first time james visits new york is more accident than anything; there’s a weapons expo and it’s january, and surely new york in january can’t be any more unpalatable than scotland in january. there are restaurants and boutiques whose names were, even then, synonymous with luxury, but james spends most of his time in the hotel room with the nanny playing with the puzzle ball he’d received that christmas. enid takes him to the natural history museum to see the mammoth bones, to central park to stare at the bare, shivering tree skeletons while he mounds old snow into various blobby shapes.

he doesn’t remember any of this; by the time he’s ten, new york is just a vague smear of concrete and solitude in his imagination, a glimpse of a faded marble facade that blends into all the other glimpses of all the other cities of everywhere else his father has ever had a conference.

for years, there’s the odd holiday abroad with his aunt, a trip with a school friend whose father owns a major hotel in the city or something. then there’s the navy. he learns new york in thirty-six hour stretches of shore leave, and he learns new york through the eyes of dozens of royal navy sailors, which mainly means that he learns very fast which bars near the harbor serve something roughly as strong as paint thinner for a measly two dollars per drink, or a dozen for a twenty.

but he learns other things, too. he saves up the days of walking on solid earth for the weeks when his feet won’t touch dry land and wanders into the neighborhoods that his well-to-do parents and guardians never let him anywhere near: bushwick, the lower east side, basically all of the bronx. new york city’s just hit its peak for violent crime, though someone only attempts to mug him once and gets a broken jaw for his trouble besides. the strangest thing for a brit is the gunshots that will ring out randomly, multiple times a night, but that’s true for every american city he’s ever visited.

he experiments with the subway. the tube in the 80s and 90s was no picnic, but hell, he learns, is a suspiciously empty new york subway car.

one strange thing: over the course of one particular weekend, he runs into a girl he slept with on shore leave in kingstown in a pizzeria named something uncreative like “48th street pizza,” an old university professor in a rare book store, a boy who was in the class above him at eton in bryant park, and then the girl again at a bar that night. (there is indeed a repeat performance.) this is a statistically accurate sampling of how often he recognizes a face from his past. back then, it was the third-largest city in the world, after tokyo and osaka, but it could sometimes feel very fatalistically small.

& then he’s in new york fairly often as a junior agent, but he doesn’t really tap the veins of the city until he’s a double-oh.

the thing about new york is that, for all that you tend to run into people you haven’t seen in years fairly frequently, it’s a great place to disappear. there’s no way to cover every possible exit when planning an ambush and a thousand laundromats, bars, and, hell, magic shops to duck into when you’re being tailed. vaguely seedy fleatraps that bill themselves as “youth hostels” where you can rent a room for four months and leave without anyone having asked you your name. the city seems to boast a disproportionate number of people sitting alone in the corners of coffeeshops, bars, hotel lobbies. it’s the first thing he thinks of when the name shows up in a mission briefing or news article: the pure relief of being quietly ignored, of being anyone, of being no one. he kills a drug kingpin and sips espresso at a café patio ten feet away as the police begin to boredly take statements. he garrotes a man in a bodega bathroom and no one notices for three days because it’s always out of order anyway. new york makes it so easy, so very easy to let a face become a file become a statistic. it has a carelessness with its people that he’s used to seeing in the third world, in places where the corruption is overt, in places that don’t even pretend to have a functioning police system. new york doesn’t care about you.

it also makes it so very easy to pick people up.

in a lot of ways, new york is a lot like london. it’s not every city in the world where you can get a sandwich at four am because the son of a bitch you were surveilling spent five hours haggling over uranium shipments with his contact, which was four hours and fifty minutes longer than he needed to spend. there’s a certain level of mercenary profit-seeking required to keep a sandwich shop open all night, damn circadian rhythms.

but new york takes it to excess. in london, you can probably find 24/7 takeaway within a reasonable walking distance, but in new york, you’re guaranteed to have at least five in the immediate neighborhood and eight more if you’re willing to go a little further for a substantial uptick in quality. during a particularly frustrating bit of downtime not longer after the quantum incident, bond strolls into a midnight karate class for no other reason than he’s bored and wants to see what kind of people can only do karate in the middle of the night. it’s a surprisingly friendly bunch, two night shift workers, a sleep-deprived college student, a jumpy little tweaker, and a single mother who decides to do this with her scant two hours of free time weekly. it’s taught by a petite woman who hits with the precision of an architect and used to practice jiu-jitsu competitively until a back strain caused her to switch to a sport with more standing and less rolling around on the ground.

he does try to sleep with her, but they actually end up sharing a platter of nachos in between (fittingly) manhattans at a bar and chatting about differences in karate conditioning techniques and shitty b-movies. the bartender joins in for the latter. he walks away that morning to another endless round of negotiation with the cia feeling strangely refreshed for a man who got no sleep and no sex.

bond ends up censoring his new york reports more than any other locale, not because missions go wrong in new york more often than anywhere else, but because they tend to go wrong in utterly baffling and sometimes embarrassing ways when he’s in new york. in the reports, he changes the timely plague mask-wearing flash mob that allowed him to escape his pursuer to a traffic jam, the girl wearing a dress made of lettuce that beat a terrorist into submission with her tomato purse into a well-placed police officer, the message he got painted on his nails in gold glitter to a simple note (it worked, the fsb searched him and found nothing and apparently manicured men in brioni are common enough in the city that no one even gave him a second look). new york is many things, but it spits on the dignity of the profession.

felix hates new york, hilariously. he calls it “the big asshole.” he hates the garbage sitting out on the streets, the way you can never tell whether a puddle is rain or urine, the flimsy little metrocards, the food deserts, the traffic, my god, the traffic. (bond has to agree: it’s bad. he once walked to laguardia instead of waiting for a taxi.) the only places he hates more than new york are minnesota and south sudan, which are the foreseeable consequences of a boy from texas spending his first winter away from home in the midwest and being a sane person with a functioning sense of smell. but for some reason, international criminals turn up in new york a lot more often than they do in ann arbor or south sudan, so felix has no choice but to spend sometimes weeks or months at a time in his third-least-favorite place in the world.

(bond knows why he really hates new york: in 2003 he was chasing a jewel smuggler and ran straight into a fruit cart. he was washing fruit juice out from behind his ears for a week and he lost the target. after that, anyone would hate this place.)

when bond is in midtown west, he makes a point of stopping by the trenta tre pizzeria, which boasts pizza that isn’t oily, isn’t too chewy or crisp, and boasts a sauce with a salty-to-sweet balance of flavors that make his eyes roll back in his head. he’s had the real deal, pizza lovingly crafted by hand, topped with buffalo mozzarella, and wood-fired in a tiny neapolitan back room. he knows better than to tell an italian--or anyone who he needs to think of him as a well-traveled sophisticate--but he prefers this.

coincidentally, the pizzeria is located next to a bodega that displays its fruit on wooden stands on the sidewalk. behind the peaches lives a cat, well-fed and sleek and a shameless thief of chicken parm pizza toppings. he doesn’t know her name--the owner is from rural ethiopia and doesn’t speak english, mandarin, arabic, french, german, spanish, russian, or any of the four other languages bond speaks--but in his head he’s named her selina after that greatest of feline burglars, catwoman. selina is good company after a violent mission, and almost never sheds on him, which is more than he can say about the other cats in his life. if he lingers after the pizza to pet her a little longer, no one needs to know.

the events, the new trends, the previews, the releases, blah blah blah. the access is touted more than it actually matters. he’s sure that- if he actually lived in new york he would appreciate the convenience of dwelling in the obligatory stop of every tour and the go-to place to drum up media attention. but he doesn’t and he has enough frequent flier miles that his grandchildren will probably be getting complimentary upgrades and if he really wants to be at the premiere of a much-hyped performance of la traviata he’ll make it there somehow. he does notice that the access has given new yorkers a strange sense entitlement--when a fashionable event happens someplace other than new york, the resentment is deeper, the sense of loss sharper--as if everything important should happen in new york. still. he brings home a tea flavored with the newly discovered ruby chocolate months before it becomes widely available as a souvenir for q. there are compensations. 

when q finally punches down his fear of air travel for long enough to make it to new york, bond keeps him out of manhattan. they drift around brooklyn and queens, wandering streets balanced on the knife edge of an existence that is almost suburban--dogs everywhere and strollers between the specialty shops and markets. they sit in a soda fountain famous for its egg creams and share a sundae named after elvis. q orders three different sodas--he’s a connoisseur of exotic beverages--and pronounces the house blend the best cherry soda he’s ever tasted. bond smiles at him around his ice cream float. the place is packed, every seat filled, but here, at a little round table tucked into the corner, he and q might as well be invisible, being aggressively ignored by everyone except the soda jerks. just two people, forcefully alone together. the last two people in the world.

#007 fest #teambondvillains #fandom: this is the end #relship: your loving arms (keeping me from harm) #ch: secret agent man #ch: shiny new steamship #event: gee brain what do you want to do tonight 2019 #ella headcanons #series: a map of hidden places

[blogs-of-our-lives]

I, Frankenstein is a Trash Movie

           I’ve been putting off writing this for some time now. I watched Episode 98 immediately after watching 97, and you can tell it was getting a little hazy by the end. I can vaguely remember the beginning of the episode, and that’s when my memory was at its clearest. So I may take some creative liberties and make my own plot as I go.

           Welcome to Carter’s nightmare carnival funhouse version of Days of our Lives.

           This show makes me sad. I write way way way slower than they produce episodes. As I write this review for Episode 98, they’ve already released episode 205. Granted, I have no intentions of following it every day (episode 200 has a thumbnail of Ciara passed out on the floor as an obviously fake fire consumes her house, so I’m abso-fucking-lutely reviewing that one next), but the blistering pace that this show takes is disheartening. It just goes to show that life moves fast. You blink, and kids your age are getting married. In the previous NFL draft, the Buffalo Bills selected linebacker Tremaine Edmunds in the first round, at the age of 19. He’s younger than I am. That’s ridiculous. I’m getting old, fast.

           The episode opens with John at the hospital. He looks flustered, glancing around desperately. For those who haven’t read about the previous episode, the last we saw John, he had just entered the Dimera mausoleum with Will. As the door shuts, we hear a gunshot. Shortly behind him is Paul (wearing a black leather jacket, everybody in this show is wearing a black leather jacket, it’s like the soap opera version of Sons of Anarchy).

“What have you done?” Paul asks, staring in horror at the floor.

John steps in behind him, holding a comically small gun. “The same thing I’m going to do to you,” he says. It cuts to the outside of the mausoleum, where we hear another gunshot.

I didn’t mention this last episode, but imagine if that was the last thing you heard. It was clearly not a sincere question. Paul knew what happened. Ugh. I hate that line so much. Imagine your first memories. Imagine kindergarten, first grade, all the way up to middle school and high school. Every moment of your life, every love and every regret, every moment of anger or sadness, has been leading up to an old guy in a black leather jacket with a tiny gun saying “The same thing I’m going to do to you” and then shooting you.

Anyway, we’re caught up. John is distressed, and at this point it’s kind of unclear what he’s trying to do. I can’t remember if John is trying to finish off Steve (John is a spy tasked with killing Steve, the eyepatch guy), trying to tell his wife (Will’s grandma, and just so you guys all know, there’s no coming back from murdering someone’s grandson. No amount of foot rubs and boxes of chocolate shaped like hearts can help you come back from murdering your wife’s grandson) that he’s a spy, or maybe he just had a moment of clarity and realized that Days of our Lives can only rent like three sets at one time and he truly had nowhere else to go.

I’ll just tell you all the truth. Will and Paul are alive. They both make an appearance on the thumbnail of episode 191, and unless it’s from a flashback (more on that later), they survived. Just as a good rule of thumb, if this show wants you to think somebody is dead, they’re probably alive.

Fun fact, when someone on the show says “They’re in a better place” when talking about a dead character, they’re telling the truth.

Oh god, I just realized that it doesn’t even matter. They’ve blurred the lines between life and death so much (Will returning from the dead with amnesia, the Salem Stalker victims returning to life, John dying in a car accident and somehow appearing in this episode) that there truly is no reason to believe anyone is dead. It doesn’t matter if an actual licensed doctor comes on screen and pronounces the character dead. You could probably bring back your favorite character just by emailing the producer. The email is [REDACTED BY EDITOR – You absolutely may not use my personal email address], by the way. Email that at least twice a day every day, and soon you’ll get your character back.

The scene cuts to a man and a woman standing next to each other in front of the Dimera mausoleum. The mausoleum has “DIMERA” etched into the marble, just in case the viewer has forgotten that scene from less than 24 hours earlier. It could have easily been confused with any of the thousands of mausoleums that appear in our day to day television. These two people (the woman is a former lover of Andre Dimera, the most recent Dimera to pass away – which apparently is common enough that it merits the need for a mausoleum – and the man is of absolutely no consequence and isn’t worth the number of words I’ve invested in him already) take up most of the episode, pondering Andre’s life in front of his tomb, before they will presumably enter and discover Paul and Will’s “bodies” (I have no idea what they will find there), but are also painfully boring. I’ve said before that a single Days of Our Lives episode contains very little content. Usually it has about a conversation’s worth of information. For example, the description of episode 189 is “Kate makes a huge confession to Chad.” Presumably they also talk about the confession, right? Usually not. Usually the episode breaks down in the following way: Kate sees Chad and says hello, cut to other characters, cut to commercials, Kate says she has a confession, cut to other characters, cut to commercials, Kate says the confession, cut straight to commercials, Chad looks upset, the episode ends.

This is a very long-winded way of me telling you that it takes the full 60 minutes of Days of our Lives for the two people to enter the goddamn tomb.

It’s about time I talk about the flashbacks. I don’t remember what each individual flashback contained, but there were two or three in this episode. And holy crap, they were genius. Not the content of the flashbacks, but the idea of them. Because they literally reused old Days of our Lives footage. Imagine if I could copy and paste bits of previous Blogs of our Lives episodes, label them as a flashback, and call it a day. Oh man, I am jealous of the writers. Until I remember they’re stuck in the Fields of Asphodel that is being a writer for Days of Our Lives.

Naturally, the flashbacks have slightly lower quality than the episode itself. We live in an age of progress, and in a few years, even the most recent movies will look dated. But this is just absurd. It looks like someone went frame by frame and printed out the entirety of the flashback, photocopied them, photocopied them again, and put them back in. Also the audio sucks. I don’t have anything poetic to say about it. It just sounds like the voice actors did their recordings via walkie-talkies.

Remember Gabi, the chic murderer? Well now she’s talking with a police officer in the station. He’s trying to get help her out, clearly a friend of hers. “You’re going to be home to see your daughter soon,” he said.

“That’s not likely,” a woman says, strutting into the room. She’s got a satisfied, smug smirk. “I’m pressing charges.” Ah, she must be the DA. I think? Is that how law works? The DA can just press charges? Does that mean that she just as easily could have chosen not to? For murder? I’ll give DOOL a pass because I don’t understand it myself.

And now my notes start making even less sense. The handwriting is larger and sloppier and mostly illegible.

The former lover of Andre Dimera and the man accompanying her continue on their Hamlet-style soliloquy, talking and talking and talking and just standing outside the damn mausoleum. Finally, she opens the door and gasps, before the camera fades to black, ending the episode. Which is the biggest cop out I’ve ever seen, but nothing in this show surprises me anymore. I’m not mad, just disappointed. I’m telling you guys, an hour of Days of our Lives contains about five minutes of something actually happening.

Of course, this isn’t the end of my notes. I will transcribe them below exactly as it is written:

·       GUY IS MURDRER

·       WOMAN SEES THINGS

·       PUNTS SRYNGE IN SLEVE

·       FIGHTS OF ANGELS AND ALL THAT

All of these wonderful pieces of insight culminate in a full page entry, in all caps, on the next page. SHE FINDS HIM THERE.

I don’t know. I was going to put more to that sentence, but I realized it answered every question one could possibly have about that list. Why did I forget how to spell? I don’t know. Presumably I was in a rush to get all my ideas down. Where does the syringe (or rather srynge) come in? Who is the woman that sees things? Why are the angels fighting? I don’t know.

My best guess is that John Black stole a syringe to inject Steve with poison, seeing as both were in the hospital. Which opens up the possibility that I meant to write “punts srynge in STEVE.” Somehow I doubt that, however. I assume I meant “flights of angels,” a Shakespeare reference. Who even knows. You guys can probably decipher my notes better than I can.

The other day, I was at Walmart (while procrastinating writing this, and I suppose in a way I’m still procrastinating by writing this side segment), when the $3 movie bin caught my eye. I’m drawn to it every time. I love DVDs (there’s something to be said about physical media rather than digital), I’m a cheap bastard who loves cheap-ass shit, and I love love love love love bad movies. More on that later.

I found a three movie collection of Prom Nights 1-4, starring Jaime Lee Curtis. It seemed to be some kind of an off-brand Carrie. Also, for those of you with keen eyes, it was not a mistake that the 3 movie collection contained 1-4. For whatever reason, the set contained Prom Night, Prom Night 2, and Prom Night 4. Why not Prom Night 3? Won’t I be lost without knowing what happened between Prom Night 2 and Prom Night 4?

I truly, sincerely believe I have good taste in movies. I watch a lot of good movies and can understand what makes them good and why. However, on one fateful day about three years ago, I discovered that it was far easier to enjoy a bad movie with your friends than a good one. I get upset if people talk during a good movie, and don’t care if people talk during a bad movie. We can make fun of bad movies, but not good movies. Most of all, a good movie often invokes a specific mood. It’s hard to match that mood with a group of people. A bad movie also invokes a specific mood, always laughter, which is very easy to match with a group of people.

Which is why I’ve seen Fridays the 13th Parts 1-8, Jason Goes to Hell, Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, Nightmares on Elm Street 1-3, FACE/OFF, The Room, a lot of Scooby-Doo direct to DVD movies, Scared Shrekless (in my defense that was a gift), The Wickerman (the one with Nicholas Cage, obviously), The Gingerdead Man (starring Gary Busey), Starship Troopers (starring Gary Busey’s son), Antz, Darkman (treat yourself, it’s pretty great), Flushed Away (I enjoyed this one a little too genuinely), Birdemic: Shock and Terror, S. Darko, Jurassic Park III, Vampires Suck (not as much as that movie did), Hellraiser, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Meet the Robinsons, Hannibal Rising (swapping Jodie Foster for Julianne Moore was a poor decision), Alvin and the Chipmunks, Eragon (sweet Jesus Christ, I forgot about Eragon), Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, The Conjuring (people will try to tell you the Conjuring is a good movie… don’t let them), Ouija, The Boy, and The Visit. Honorable mention goes out to Rubber, which isn’t actually a bad movie, and one other.

I, Frankenstein.

A movie so bad its title needed to be separated so it couldn’t taint any other sentences. The worst movie I’ve ever seen. But I can save that for another post.

You’ll notice that a lot of these movies are horror. I looove horror movies, so I say this with all the love in my heart. It’s a trash genre. I’ve never seen anything like it. For every one good horror movie, there are at least fifty horrible ones. Not fifty bad ones. Fifty horrible ones. I’ll talk about horror as a genre next time, but I’ll leave you with an anecdote. My friends and I wanted to watch a horror movie, so we found a list of the Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time. We didn’t recognize a single movie until #50, and they had the movie Oculus as the 25th best horror movie of all time. That’s ridiculous. The nicest thing I have to say about Oculus was there were a lot of parts of the movie where I didn’t want to get up and leave. There were a lot of mediocre scenes, and I mean that as a compliment. I thought about this for a moment, that Oculus was ranked 25th of all time, and realized that’s about right. There are so so so few good horror movies, and just an absurd amount are terrible. I think it’s due to the fact that all horror movies are vaguely formulaic, relying on tropes for the genre. It makes them really easy to write and produce.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll have the next Blogs of our Lives out much sooner than I got this one out.

Fuck I, Frankenstein.

#Days of Our Lives #blog #soap opera #movies #funny #hopefully #I'm the internet equivalent of a guy talking to himself on the bus #bad

[theseagullspeaks]

Where the Waywords May Go Chapter 1

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. This wasn't supposed to be a trap, a setup. But, there Skut was, back pressed against the wall, with only a bullet or two to spare. And, someone was coming around that corner. 

Or, a fanfiction written in short parts back and forward between me and a friend, where we're both blind and neither of us knows where the other will take it next.

Panting and sweating, Skut tried to make himself smaller than he was. Lanky legs and bony elbows wedged into some alleyway corner, pressed against shadows, with an automatic drawn.

Stupid! Stupid! He cursed internally, taking a shaky breath, How could they have not seen this before?

It had started last Friday, really, at Tintin’s old flat, moving furniture and packing the last of years awaited boxes. It had been two years since he’d lived in Marlinspike and Mrs. Finch was more than happy to have her long awaited mover finallyget his crap and leave. Of course he’d paid the rent while he was away, chasing questions and criminals and black coats. He’d even pecked her on the cheek before he left. Mrs. Finch would be missed, dearly, of course. And they thought it’d be the last they’d ever hear of that old place.

That is, until, when sweeping the empty flat, Mrs. Finch found a letter addressed to the old renter and forwarded it to him.

Scrawled handwriting had detailed a nearby smuggling deal, a treacherous member had written the streets of the next shipment of arrival, upon a freighter in the port.

They would’ve called the police, they really would’ve, except that when looking at the clock, it read 10pm, less than 10 minutes before the shipments arrival. Much to his protest, Skut intended to travel along. No way was the boy and his companions going alone.

Except, how they have not have smelt it being a trap? A clever one at best, Skut mused, shifting through his pockets for extra bullets, playing on that dumb spark of the moment action. Real smart.

He looked around the stinkin bin he was hiding behind, muffled gunshots ringing out in the port. There was the barking of a dog, men yelling, tins being turned over, a huge commotion.

He heard something else, someone approaching. Skut’s eyes widened.

And seeing he was only two bullets full, prayed they, whoever they were, wouldn’t see him in that dark corner.

Haddock pushed open the front door to Marlinspike, returning from his nighttime stroll of the grounds, in awe of the endless stars overhead.

“Tintin!” he called. “You’ve got to see-” he stopped abruptly in the dark hallway. Where in the blue blazes was everybody?

“Tintin!” He called again, turning into the den. “Skut!”

The dying embers of the fire were enough to illuminate the shadowy shapes of the furniture, and reveal the absence of the reporter and pilot.

Turning to search upstairs, he felt a scrap of paper under his boot. Picking it up, he saw Tintin’s hurried scribble scrawled across it.

Captain,

Skut and I have just recieved word of a smuggling happening tonight at the port. Be back as soon as possible.

-Tintin

“Blue blistering barnacles!” Haddock grumbled, turning and running into the foyer.

“There you are, sir!” Nestor cried, coming down the stairs as Haddock barreled towards the door. “Where are you going?”

“To save Tintin and Skut from a gang of smuggling troglodytes!”

“Smugglers?”

“According to Tintin! You know he can’t ignore the opportunity to bust an undercover operation!” Captain Haddock shouted as he ran outside again, jumping into his car and making for the port.

Skut held his breath.

The person was coming closer, shoes squeaking against damp cobblestones and gently uprooting a can. It rolled in his direction and Skut pressed himself against the wall again, seeing if he could sinking into the brick.

Don’t look. He prayed, hand coming up to cover his open mouth, Don’t look.

The footsteps and rustling stopped.

A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, damping his button up, his pilot uniform sticking to his skin.

Biting his tongue, he reached into his pockets.

He couldn’t see who it was, only felt their presence, a warmth of another human being, breath between lungs.

His fingers fell on a bullet and, as meticulously as possible, he loaded it.

The gun clicked and the figure shot around, uprooting newspapers and trash in his wake.

Skut shot up from his hiding spot.

“Freeze!” He screamed.

Then there was the sound of a gunshot.

Haddock swerved into the parking lot close to the port, barely waiting until the car was off before leaping out and bounding towards the shipyard.

Gunshots and yells echoed off of the brick buildings as Haddock dodged between the walls, hoping against hope that Tintin and Skut were safe.

The sounds of fighting grew closer, until they sounded like they were coming from just around the corner of Haddock’s hiding spot. Haddock silently picked up a trash can lid to use as a makeshift shield, finding a pole to use as a weapon, if needed. The sounds grew louder, and Haddock steeled himself before running into the alleyway.

However, he had underestimated the distance to the fighting, and found himself facing empty shadows. He began to creep forward, inching towards the sound of a barking dog.

Suddenly, a figure ran backwards into the alley in front of him, holding a gun pointed the way he had come. Haddock caught a flash of red hair and a small white blur before the figure was swallowed in darkness again.

“Tintin?”

Tintin whirled around, gun pointed at Haddock, and froze.

“Captain! What are you doing here?”

Captain Haddock rolled his eyes. “My nighttime stroll took me further than I expected. What do you think I’m doing here?” He looked behind Tintin. “Where’s Skut?”

“He’s over here!” A harsh yell sounded from around the corner, and Tintin fired a shot before running to Haddock, the pair ducking behind a sturdy brick wall, Snowy at their feet. There was silence for a moment, a moment tense with anticipation, but no figures ran past their refuge.

Without turning to look away from the entry, Tintin whispered, “It was a trap, set by none other than Allan Thompson. Right when we got here, Allan came at me, and Skut tried to take out some of the other men between us, but had to retreat. I haven’t seen him since.” He took a shaky breath. “I hope he’s okay.”

“What happened with Allan?”

Tintin shook his head. “I thought I heard Skut yell, so I ran in this direction. Allan was following, but I think I lost him in the crowd.”

“Then who was following you just now?”

“One of the other sailors. I didn’t recognize him.” Tintin raised himself slightly from the crouching position he had assumed and crept towards the entryway, Snowy right behind him. “We need to get going if we want to find Skut. The crew will be over here soon looking for us.” His brow furrowed. “It’s odd…”

“What? What’s odd?”

“Since we’ve been hiding back here, it’s been silent.”

“And?”

“Well, the crew isn’t going to shoot at each other, now are they? So that means that they don’t know where I am, and are probably on their way over here now. And they either have Skut, or he’s hiding somewhere, waiting to be found.” Tintin met Captain Haddock’s gaze. “And we have to find him before they do.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Haddock stood, gripping his lid and rod. “Let’s go get him.”

At that moment, a gunshot broke the silence, echoing throughout the shipyard.

Tintin gripped Haddock’s arm. “Skut!”

This wasn’t happening. Skut thought, hands trembling with the weight of his gun, This isn’t happening. Wake up.

Lowered to a knee, Skut could only stare as the crimson pooled off his shoulder, arm hanging limp at his side.

Fingers found its way around the wound, pressing to stop the sudden bleeding. Grimacing, he looked up to face his attacker, raise his arm in an attempt to defend himself. Only, an attack never came. Instead, Skut was surprised to find a circled figure on the ground, a pained gasp emitting from the hunched figure under the sweater.

Standing unsteadily, Skut rushed over to the figure, kicking the gun they held in their lose hand. Hands trembling, he held his own weapon tighter, metal pressing against the wound of his now useless shoulder.

Looks like he wasn’t the only one to get hit.

He stared at the moaning figure, and cautiously, took a foot to turn him over in order to properly see his face.

Skut felt his eyes widen.

“Tom.” He breathed, mouth falling open in a breathless gasp. His eyes hardened, “Where’s Allan?”

A breathy, almost gurgling laugh escaped the sailors lips, the man grimacing and curling up shortly after, “Gone.” He hissed, “Coward ran the moment he got the chance.”

Tom gave a lopsided frown, pressing both his hands into his side as a purple stain spread across his sweater, “Lucky ass. May he rot.”

Skut blinked, “He not bring you with him? I thought you friends.”

“The word you’re missing is were.” Tom hissed, “We were friends.”

A heavy silence hung over them both, humid, hot summer air and still pumping adrenaline making them sweat in the buzzing night.

Skut shook his head, raising his automatic, “Doesn’t matter. Those gunshot would cause anyone to call police. They be here any minute. Hope you smuggle in prison.”

Tom, through his discomfort and pain, raised his head, “Wh-What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“The note,” Skut explained, breath shuttering, “there was note. Said there was undercover operation here. Said your crew was part of it.”

Tom’s eyes widened. His breath wheezed, a bit of crimson dribbling out his mouth and down his chin.

“We’re not smuggling anythin’. Haven’t been, for months now.”

“Bull.”

“Itsa truth! I swear.” Tom gasped, “Look. I know i gotta history. I - I get it, but, you gotta believe me1” He paused, a hand finding its way around the pilots ankle “Whoever sent you that letta’ was a damn dirty liar. A cheat.” He paused again, breath caught in his chest, “We was set up. We was…”

There were the sounds of rapid footsteps approaching the alleyway and Skut, in a flash of blonde hair and stained blue shirt, raised his automatic to whoever was barging in.

Friend? Foe? Skut didn’t know.

But, he wouldn’t be a sitting duck again.

He was prepared for anything.

“Tintin, wait!” Haddock grabbed the back of Tintin’s sweater as the reporter made to fling himself into the waiting alleyway.

“Skut!” Tintin protested, panic making its way into the usually calm reporter’s voice. “Captain, he’s hurt!”

Haddock could hear hurried footsteps in the alleyway, and pulled Tintin down beside him, slinging an arm over him. “Wait!”

The reporter obeyed, arms twitching with fear and rage as the crewmembers ran past their sanctuary, their shadows dancing across the pair’s faces. Snowy shrunk against Tintin’s legs.

“That Tintin kid’s gotta be around here somewhere!” A husky voice spoke from just outside of their alleyway. “Split up and find him!”

Haddock and Tintin locked eyes, and, with a nod to Tintin’s unspoken plea, Haddock released the young reporter and grabbed his weapons again. Silently, Tintin stood again and crept towards the voices. Haddock stood behind him, waiting. After a moment, Tintin whispered. “We won’t be able to get out of this alleyway without them seeing us. And there’s way too many for us to fight off andescape to find Skut.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Haddock asked, but Tintin was already scanning their alleyway, his usual in-control demeanor returning as he did so.

“Where can we go?” he muttered, pacing towards the back of the alleyway.

Haddock risked a glance towards their enemies. “They’re getting closer, Tintin.”

Tintin tugged on something in the shadows; Haddock heard the faint creak of metal. Tintin sighed. “It’ll have to do.”

“What’ll have to do?”

Tintin whistled softly, and Snowy ran to him, allowing Tintin to tie the dog securely to his back with his coat. “We’ll have to go to the rooftops, Captain.”

Without any further instructions, he grabbed a hold of the rain pipe he had been testing and began to climb, ignoring the quiet, yet ominous creaking.

“Tintin!” the Captain protested. “There’s no way it’ll support both of us!”

“It’ll have to,” Tintin said matter-of-factly from above him. “Are you coming?”

Grumbling, Haddock hoisted himself onto the metal pipe, climbing up carefully behind the reporter.

A shout sounded behind him, followed by a gunshot that lodged a bullet into the pipe below Haddock’s feet. Haddock yelped, but Tintin calmly turned and, balancing precariously with only one hand on the pipe, returned fire.

Another muffled yell, and Tintin turned and scurried up the pipe, turning to kneel on the rooftop, firing at their attackers. Haddock scrambled up as fast as he could, bullets raining around him but never quite hitting their target. Tintin continued to shoot from above him, only stopping to help the Captain hoist himself onto the rooftop.

“Go!” he yelled, firing the pipe until it broke away from the wall, preventing pursuit. Haddock backed away from the edge, crouching behind a tall vent until Tintin joined him.

“The first gunshot was that way,” Tintin said, pointing towards the bay. “We’ll have to go across the rooftops. It’ll be faster.”

“What about the alleys, Tintin? We can’t jump those.”

“We’ll figure it out as we go,” Tintin said, eyes landing on an abandoned ladder laying beside them. “We can use this as a bridge.”

And without waiting for Haddock to protest, he pushed the ladder across the alleyway and crawled across to the other side, Snowy still tied to his back.

“You can do it, Captain! Just don’t look down!”

Haddock had no choice but to follow, gripping each rung with white knuckles, fearing the long drop from the tall buildings. Tintin hauled the ladder onto the rooftop behind him, then ran to the other side.

“I can see them, Captain!”

“Who?” Haddock said. “The crew or Skut?”

“Skut! He’s just over there!” Tintin’s face clouded. “He IS hurt! His shoulder, by the looks of it!” He squinted at the dark figures that Haddock had only just begun to make out.

“Who is that with him?”

“One of the crew,” Tintin muttered, looking down at the ground below. “We’ve got to get down there!”

“The gutters on the other side,” Haddock offered.

“No, the crew will be over there.”

“They’ll be over here before too much longer,” Haddock replied.

“No, they won’t. This alleyway is walled off on their side. They can’t get to us from here.” Tintin’s eyes landed on a rusty fire escape. “Of course!”

He jumped down, landing on the top landing of the fire escape and quickly climbing down. Haddock followed, sliding more than climbing down. Gunshots still rang out behind them, but Tintin only cared about the figures not far from their alleyway.

By the time Haddock had climbed to the ground, Tintin had untied Snowy from his back and set the terrier on the ground again. Snowy shook himself out and began to trot towards the entry of their alleyway.

“Come on, Captain!” Tintin whispered, raising his automatic once more. “Skut isn’t far!”

And without further hesitation, the pair charged around the corner.

Footsteps. Coming. Rushing closer.

There were the shouts of men, their pursuit, metal against concrete.

Something was happening.

They were getting closer.

“Shit!” Skut muttered, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Tom, grimacing stared at the man as he looked wildly about, automatic trembling in his hand.

“What is that?” Tom muttered, eyes drifting towards the sound. “What’s going’ on over there?”

Skut didn’t even pay any mind to his question, choosing to turn his back to the disarmed man for a place to hide.

There were trash cans, rain beaten cardboard boxes, flat and useless.

He had only one bullet and arm. He had to take them by surprise. Hide behind something large, then come up from behind.  

Only, there was a problem, unrelated to bullets and handiness.

He glanced down at Tom.

“Can you get up?”

Tom, baring his teeth, gave a sputtering laugh, “Do ya’ think I would’ve waited if I could?”

Skut, face growing hard as flint, placed his automatic in his hip holster, sighing in defeat.

There was only one way this could go.

“Here.” Skut snapped, croutching down, “Don’t make sound. I mean it.”

Tom, eyes narrowing, spat. “Fat chance!” He shouted, filling his lungs and opening his mouth to scream.

Skut narrowly had time to muffle his shout with his free hand, fingernails digging into his skin.

“Shut up!” He hissed, wenching the man up to a sitting position, “Shut up or I swear!”

Tom, in his panic, began to fight, against Skuts grip, gaping open wound in his side forgotten as his hand found their way around his wrist.

“Let me go!” He choked, “Let me go! Halfwit!”

Paying no time to insults, Skut grabbed the man's lapel and, with limbs hanging, managed to drag the limp, wounded man behind a leaning wooden palate. Stumbling, Skut fell back behind it, and forcing his wounded appedance to move, pulled Tom in with him, the body falling atop of him. Tom squirmed in an attempt to push himself off and up, but, with a quick hand, managed to wrap an arm around his neck and chest, pulling him further behind.

Tom, through the dizziness in his pain, gave a weak muffled scream, limbs failing uselessly in an attempt at escape. Skut pressed the automatic to his back, hissing close.

“Don’t move. I still have one.”

Instantly, the struggling and movement stopped, Tom falling back against Skuts chest weakily. It was a relief, he could see. The man’s face was turning ashen, and his hands weakly clutched his side again, blood still flowing but a bit slower now.

Just in time, too. Skut mused, as the footsteps finally began their heavy approach into the alleyway.

He was prepping on turning his gun to shoot, when the soft barking of a dog could be heard in the near distance, and he saw a familiar set of wingtip shoes step into the alleyway.

Skut, hand lowering, felt his eye widen in shock.

“Tintin?”

“Skut?”

Tintin’s call seemed to greet an empty alleyway. Haddock crept up behind him, looking around the shadows.

“Tintin?”

“Sh!” Tintin hushed him. “I heard my name, I’m sure of it!”

Automatic drawn and pointed, Tintin crept further into the alleyway, Snowy and Haddock just behind him.

“Tintin! Over here!”

“Skut!” Tintin dropped the automatic and ran to his friend as the pilot rose from behind leaning boards. “You’re hurt!”

A groan sounded from behind the boards, and Haddock roughly pushed them aside to reveal-

“You.”

Tom lay on the ground, weakly clutching at his side, where dark blood was pooling on the ground around him.

“Captain, no!” Skut protested as Haddock glared daggers at his fallen former crewmate.

Haddock looked over to the pilot, who was now seated on the ground, Tintin anxiously holding a wad of cloth to his bleeding shoulder.

“He set up. Just like us.”

“Set up?” Haddock growled. “It was one of them that sent the note and got us into this mess!”

“The note…. Lied…” Tom moaned weakly, harsh breaths rattling in his chest.

Haddock glared at him again, then started as Tintin rushed past him to hold another cloth to Tom’s side. With a sigh, Haddock turned towards the entry to guard the group.

“Why would someone send a letter about a false operation if not to be a trap?” Tintin asked.

“I don’t know…” Haddock heard Tom murmur. “We ain’t smugglin’ nothin’, I swear….”

Shouts rang out from the alleyway, causing the group to jump. Snowy growled.

“Time to go!” Haddock said.

“Can you stand?” Tintin asked Tom, who shook his head.

The shouts were getting louder now, and Haddock grabbed Tintin’s arm. “We need to go. NOW.”

Skut, breath panting, pulled himself back to his feet.

Indeed, the footsteps were coming closer. Fast, drumming feet of men as they came closer, looked further.

Skut shared a glance with Tintin before staring at the curled figure of Tom, still bleeding on the filthy cobblestone.

He swallowed.

“We can’t leave him.”

Haddock whirled around, shocked.“What?”

Tintin looked calmly back at him. “He’s coming with us.”

“So, what? We’re taking a hostage?”

Skut and Tintin were already standing Tom up between them, a limp figure supported between the two. They shared a glance. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

“And we do it quietly as possible.”

Haddock stared at them in disbelief. “Why?”

“We need information,” Tintin said, as the three began to approach Haddock like odd 4 legged race contestants. “Are you coming or not?”

Through bated breath, they followed Haddock to his out of sight car, tucked away at the edge of the parking lot near the port. However, as it came in sight and they emerged from the dank and dark pathways, the whiz of a bullet came flying over their heads, and the three conscious men looked behind them. The burly forms of dark men came around the corner, brandishing their weapons high over their heads and screaming like sirens.

Despite his his injured shoulder, Skut pulled Tom’s hanging body closer, grunting as it pressed against his own, throbbing wounds.

“Get to car!” Skut half-shouted, “Quickly! Quickly!”

“Open the trunk!” Tintin called to Haddock. “Captain, open the trunk!”

Not pausing to question, Haddock flung open the trunk of the car, helping the two others to shove Tom’s limp form into the compartment, then slammed the door closed, not paying any mind to possible fingers or toes trapped in the door. Scurrying, he jumped into the car, pulling away as Tintin and Skut pulled their doors closed.

The sound of squealing tires rang out into the air, drowning any sounds of fire as they tore across the asphalt streets and into the darkening night. A dog barked, a woman shouted from a nearby apartment, and the sleepy sounds of sirens made their way towards the port, Haddock’s car and headlights slicing in the opposite direction.

Skut, white faced and just as white knuckled, kneeled over in his seat, face pinched.

Well, so much for leaving quietly.

#the adventures of tintin #tintin #captain haddock #snowy #tom #Piotr skut #fanfiction

[hailthefreakshow]

Antidote || Sam Drake X Reader

Summary: Imagine being the one to bail Sam out of prison after thirteen years. But when you see him, his nose is nearly broken due to a fight. It’s up to you to help fix it and care for him throughout the night.

————-

Sam’s alive. Those two words rang in your mind like sirens sounding. After thirteen years, your Samuel Drake was still alive in that dammed Panamanian prison. Once you had received the surprise call from Rafe stating that Sam survived the gunfire, he knew that you would want to be the first to see him. “So what I want you to do, (Y/N), is go to Panama, bail him out, and bring him back to the States. Got it?” Rafe spoke through the phone.

His words seeming so lifeless and stern, you shook your head and a shaky “Yes.” escaped your lips. Rafe scoffed on the other line and continued. “I went ahead and transferred the cash to the prison for Sam’s bail. I’ll give you enough money for two flights and possibly a room while you’re there…And one other thing. You cannot tell Nathan about this!”

Before you had time to question, the call ended. You thought it was strange how after seven years of no communication Rafe decided to contact you. After everything went down with both you and Nate choosing to move on from Henry Avery’s treasure, after Sam’s death, leaving Rafe on his own to claim it as his. It was so shocking with that in the past he still phoned you, which you’re happy he did to inform you that your other half was alive.

~~~

Panama hasn’t changed. It was still the old place you remembered over a decade ago. The plane landed on the runway, its tires leaving skid marks on the scorching hot cement below. You could see the enormous prison out of the circle window next to you. Causing a sickening pain in your stomach, the memories flood back of when you and the three boys went on that horrific mission to retrieve the cross. How you warned them of it being a stupid idea and how you weren’t allowed access into the fissility. They made you be the one to do research and wait on that boat for their return, only finding that two came back and Sam was shot and had died there.

You snap back to reality as people were boarding off the aircraft. You handle the paperwork and are officially let into the country. First agenda being renting a car, you make your way out of the airport and pay for a run-down rusty black ‘07 Ford Fiesta. As you buckle the seatbelt you look at your cellphone, reading a text from Rafe, giving you the directions from the airport to the prison.

Within minutes of driving and listening to the radio, you could see the Panamanian prison in the distance. Feeling slightly nervous but over all happy to see your love again and wrap arms around each other…One mile left and you spot the gate up ahead. The car came to a stop and you slam the door shut, walking towards the prison. You’re greeted by a tall, greasy-looking guard. “How can I help you ma'am?” He spat.

“I’m here to get Samuel Drake. My-friend…” You hesitate. “Sent the bail money this morning.”

“Ahh, yes. Drake,” The guard snickered. “wait here and I’ll send him.” He then pushed a button and started speaking a different language into the walkie talkie that he held in his right hand. You leaned against the rental car as you waited for Sam to exit the prison gates; mind feeling numb and rapid thoughts submerged your brain. Nerves getting the best of you as your heart raced and anticipation grew immensely.

Minutes pass and you see the elder Drake brother making his way towards you in the same clothes you both shared your last goodbyes in. He carried luggage over his left shoulder, smiling greatly when you both locked eyes until he broke a frown, gripping his nose which was covered in fresh blood. You ran to him, wrapping your arms around his torso as he dropped the bags and joined your embrace. “Sam! Your nose!” You called with concern as your lover was severely injured. You took a step back and got a better glimpse at his tired face.

“Yeah, as soon as I got the call that I was being bailed out, wards had to pull a guy off me.” Sam coughed.

“It looks broken…Sir can you do anything to help? Patch it up or give us a bandaid?” You frantically ask the guard who only laughed.

“He’s your problem now.” Said the prison guard as he shut and locked the gate behind the two of you. Only his nose seemed harmed, it bled like a busted dam with blood streaming down his face. You inform him to quickly get in the car and that you’d be taking care of him tonight. You rush down the narrow streets both sitting in silence as you drove around towns until you found a small motel to settle into.

~~~

Now halted in a parking lot you grabbed a first aid kit from the backseat, rummaging through it looking for something to stop the bleeding. Sam watched as you searched the mini box that contained medical supplies. He remained to cover his damaged nose. “Well this is a fantastic introduction to a reunion.” He teased, trying to shine some light on the subject. You glanced up at him in the passenger seat.

“I’ve never seen a nose bleed this bad before.” You mention as you take a closer look at it and lightly dab a cloth on its bridge. Sam flinched in pain as a response, you hated seeing him in this state. “Here, lets go inside and get a room. I’ll continue where it’s brighter.”

The sun was nearly down. Small rays beaming the horizon and water glistening a light blue from a marina not too far from where you two were. You helped Sam carry a bag into the building, his belongings in your left hand and your bag in your right. He held the cloth over the wound as you managed a room number in the lobby; standing behind you.

Entering through the motel door, you set the luggage down and quickly grab the medical kit once more. Sam took a seat on the bed which you soon joined him and examined the cut. Focusing on the wound you could feel his eyes on you, not looking away. Trying to ignore it you finally cracked and met his gaze. “What?” You question; blushing.

“I’m just happy to finally see you after so long.”

You hesitate for a moment as your heart beat increased. “I can’t believe you’re here.” You spoke while wiping the last bit of dry blood from his bridge and applying the bandage to it. “So I guess you’re wanting an explanation, huh?” You say as you inch back, getting comfortable on the bed with the elder Drake’s nose now recovering.

“Please by all means.” He smirked and kissed your temple.

“Rafe-” With just the mention of his name Sam’s eyes narrowed without saying a word as you continued to explain how you bailed him out of prison. “called me the other day and told me that you actually lived through the gunshots. Which I’m surprised he informed me because after the incident the three of us still looked for the treasure. Six years Nate and I stuck with Rafe, but all we did was reach dead ends. He became so obsessed with finding Avery’s treasure that Nathan and I grew tired of Rafe’s BS and left for him to find it himself. He wanted me to bail you out. Said something about meeting up with him to discuss things that he didn’t go into detail with. And lastly to not get Nate involved.”

“I think I know what he wants (Y/N).”

“What is it?” You question, not placing the puzzle pieces together.

“I’m guessing he wants me to rejoin him on the hunt for Avery’s treasure…”

“No! You can’t! Sam I lost you during our last mission. I don’t want to risk it again if you go with that bastard!”

“(Y/N)-” He got cut off.

“I’m scared Sam! This could be the last time I see you.”

Before speaking again he leaned over and kissed you on the mouth. It felt like the world had stopped, that nothing else mattered. Just the two of you in each other’s arms again after many years. Seconds after a passionate kiss the two of you departed. “I’m here with you now (Y/N) well alive and breathing. I am yours to hold and keep.” He said in a low voice.

You felt your heart grow warm in your chest. All the problems on earth slowly melting away. Your entire world sitting in front of you, he looked you in the eyes. They sparkled in the dim lighting. You lock your arms around him and whisper. “I never want to lose you again.”

His long arms wrap behind your back as you move closer to him “You never will.” He answered. Sometime of talking and sharing old memories with one another pass by and you both begin to feel tired. Fatigue lingered and Sam took off his shirt exposing the three bullet wounds on his lower abdomen; it pained you to look at them.

After changing into a pair of night clothes, he joined you in the motel bed and shut the nearby lamp off. You scoot closer to his body, hearing his breathing pattern, it sounding so soothing. You place a hand on his chest, tracing your index finger up and down his torso as the two of you doze off. You felt the texture of the three holes and stop. He looked down at you as if knowing what you were thinking. Sam grabbed your hand intertwining his fingers with yours and squeezing your palm firmly.

“Don’t worry princess, we’ll sort all of this shit out in the morning, I swear it…I love you.” He said as he turned to kiss you once more.

“I love you too.” You say while dozing off into a trance, curled up to Sam’s body, waiting for the next day to surface.

#sam drake #sam drake x reader #samuel drake x reader #samuel drake #uncharted #uncharted 4 a thief's end #uncharted 4 #fanfic #fan fiction #x reader

[caffeineivore]

Margarita

Fic, written for @nelwynp‘s nuptials. Part of... not quite a series, as the stories are not precisely related to each other, but... we can call it a series. Senshi/shitennou, AU Angst, Crime, Drinks. Depending on my motivation/level of laziness, I may or may not hunt up and post up the other fics in this... “series”. 

The Blood Pact

I am not perfect.

I am sometimes selfish. Occasionally self destructive.

And prone to very brief, yet severe, spells of sadness.

But I would fight until every bone in my body was broken to protect you.

That's a promise.

--- Beau Taplin

*-*

Nondescript jeans, straight-leg and medium wash, ancient Adidas, and a green University of Miami sweatshirt, autumn-leaf-auburn curls poking out underneath the hood. Marisa Cruz's dossier states that she's a recent grad, who'd attended on a basketball scholarship and turned twenty-two only a month ago, but right now, her hands are clenched in her lap, knuckles white, and if she bites her lower lip any harder, she'd draw blood. She has the height and statuesque build of an athlete, but that only emphasizes her fragility as she sits bolt-upright across from him as the small airplane makes its way from Florida towards Washington, DC. Nico can't blame her, though, for the silence or the nerves. This particular flight is never a happy one for any who make it.

“Want something to eat, or drink?”

“No. No, thank you.” Marisa's fists clench even tighter. The shadows underneath her green eyes are bruise-purple as she raises her gaze briefly to his face, a grimacing smile upon her own. “I hate flying.”

Nico doesn't see the point of mincing words, but returns her forced smile with an uncharacteristically-gentle one of his own. “I'll stock you up on Dramamine, then. Unfortunately, you're going to have to get used to this.”

She sighs and closes her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping. “I'm going to have to get used to a lot of things.”

A new home, a new phone number and email address, a new name on a new driver's license and a new social security number. Twenty-four-hour protection. Waking up sweating and screaming, gunshots echoing in her subconscious, the blood-spattered faces of her parents frozen in death, branded to the insides of her eyelids. A single tear tracks its way down one pale cheek, almost as though she has yet to completely cry herself dry.

Nico tucks the dossier away and reaches the short distance across to lay one hand on her tightly balled ones, and keeps it there until he feels her fingers relax-- roughly ten seconds before the plane begins its descent.

*-*

Marisa Cruz attends the orientation for joining the Witness Protection Program with a stoic face as the details of her new life are explained to her. She will relocate and enroll in grad-level classes in a completely different field than her undergraduate studies. At no point is she to contact any of her old friends and any remaining family members. In time, she will be expected to testify against the drug cartel boss who had murdered her parents, after which she will disappear.

It's all old hat to Nico, but something about her-- fragile and solitary and intrepid as a wild rose blooming amidst a mess of thorns-- stirs an undefinable feeling of tenderness that he's certainly not accustomed to feeling. Later, they sit in the windowless room, drinking cokes from a vending machine, and he smiles at her.

“Pick a name that's going to be easy for you to remember. Some people like to use their same initials.”

She finishes her soft drink. The highly-identifying University of Miami sweatshirt is gone, and one pink tank top strap slips down her shoulder as she wings the empty can into the wastebasket across the room with impressive accuracy. Nico's eyes trace the graceful movement for a moment, but then meets her emerald gaze.

“My grandmother's name was Marcela, though my grandfather always called her Marcelita. I think I can go with that. Marcelita Cross. Maybe Lita for short. Will that do?”

“Perfect. Lita Cross, my name is Nico Hernandez, the US Marshal assigned to your protection.” His big hand swallows her smaller one, and finally, finally, she cracks a faint smile over their clasped hands. “It's nice to meet you.”

*-*

Despite the Dramamine, Marisa Cruz-- now Lita Cross, is still tense and white-knuckled in the seat across from him during the flight out of Washington, so Nico fills the silence with his own words.

“So, what did you go to school for? Aside from basketball, obviously.”

“Electrical Engineering, if you'll believe it. I was gonna go work in Silicon Valley like all the cool kids, retire by the age of thirty-five with a gazillion dollars, or something.” There's a hint of an ironic smile on her lips, and that's better than nothing, so Nico smiles back.

“Eh, it's overrated. I'm from California, originally, and the cost of living is outrageous out there. When I came out to Virginia at the start of my career and got my first apartment-- a decently sized one-bedroom, too, in Crystal City-- I almost wept with joy. My apartment in Cali was about the size of a shoebox, and the rent was triple.” His smile widens and he adds a cheeky wink. “Naturally, being a shallow asshole, I do miss the beaches. And burritos. And In-N-Out.”

“Where did you go to school, then?”

“Stanford. I was an athletic scholarship kid, too,” he reaches over and takes her hands, gently pries her fists open. “Track and field, though. Mainly, it was cool because I can say that I went to the same school as Dana Scully from the X-Files, who holds the distinction of being the first woman I loved. Aside from my mother and sisters, that is. I think I have a weakness for tomboyish redheads.”

She rolls her eyes, but her fingers relax fractionally in his as the sunlight streaming in through the airplane window glows golden against her ruddy hair.

*-*

Lita Cross attends a different school than Marisa Cruz had, and lives in a cozy two-bedroom apartment on campus with a roommate whom all of her new female classmates have agreed upon as man-candy of the best tall-dark-and-handsome variety. She has no social media of any kind. She's enrolled in the culinary arts program, and wears her bark-brown hair in a ladylike ponytail and knee-length dresses that show off beautifully toned, tanned legs. She's friendly enough with the other students and is known to like flowers and chick flicks.

The nightmares wake her up more often than not in the beginning, and in the first, agonizing weeks, several times a week, she'd shoot up in her bed, cold sweat matting her hair in dark streaks to her neck and a scream choking in her throat, shivering despite the southern warmth as a large male body bursts into her room and silently holds her as she sobs, dark eyes bleak and sympathetic and endlessly patient as they wait for her to finally drop from exhaustion. She sleeps with the lights on and feels ironically ashamed at the taxpayer dollars that went, every month, towards her astronomical electric bill.

It is about a month and a half into their acquaintance that Nico hits upon a solution.

A few nights a week, always during the wee small hours, the two of them go to the twenty-four-hour gym an hour's drive off-campus and play an exhilarating and sweaty hour of one-on-one basketball in a deserted indoor court, with nothing but the fluorescent lights overhead bearing witness. They always get home at roughly three in the morning, and then follow up the basketball with a kickboxing lesson in the living room, and then, more often than not, scrambled eggs hastily devoured over the kitchen counter before they'd had the chance to cool down from smoking. These nights would always be before days that she didn't have any morning classes, and it would be approaching dawn when both of them would finally crash, fully dressed, in her bed out of sheer exhaustion.

Eventually, in an organic, unplanned progression, he sort of abandons his own bedroom altogether. It's not sexual-- they're always dressed and nobody's hands wander. She just sleeps better with a warm, muscular, protective body lying in between her and the bedroom door.

In the locked drawer of the nightstand on her side of that bed is the one photograph of her parents that she was allowed to keep. He pretends not to know that it's there and always looks away when she takes it out.

In the locked drawer of the nightstand on his side of that bed is a loaded Glock 22. She pretends not to know that it's there and always looks away when he takes it out.

*-*

Lita finds herself enjoying culinary school more than she thought she would. The long hours on her feet don't faze her, and she finds it a rather fascinating duality of precision and creativity. She often brings home leftovers and experiments of all kinds, some more successful than others. Nico democratically and enthusiastically demolishes all of them, but has an especial fondness for desserts, particularly cookies.

“I don't know why you're not like, six hundred pounds,” she teases him one evening, as they watch a football game on TV and he plows his way through a generous serving of coq au vin and half a dozen chocolate macarons. There's a crumb by his mouth, and she reaches across the couch to swipe at it just as the game cuts to halftime and commercials. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him set down his plate, and then his hand-- large, tanned, surprisingly elegant despite the roughness of his fingers, snags her wrist, his touch warm and achingly gentle.

“Exercise and good clean living,” Nico says lightly. “PT for the job is no joke, at least to the guy who trained me. Guy by the name of Elias Priest. Had one of those faces and smiles like a Catholic saint, but appearances can be deceiving, you know?”

She traces her fingertip over the crumb by his mouth, and his skin is warm like the air in a Thanksgiving kitchen. Stubble is coming in, brushing his chin and jaw with sand-papery dark brown. He's a man's man and loves sports and documentaries and napping on the couch, but he listens to everything she says-- her fears, her memories both happy and horrible, her pet peeves and stupid things she's seen on the internet-- like his investment in her life extends far beyond keeping her breathing until the court date. He had taught her how to throw a punch and use a taser, and holds her in her sleep, even though she keeps the lights on and tosses and turns. She doesn't realize that she's leaned forward until suddenly she can count every one of his eyelashes, which have no right to be as long and dark as they are, but he's the one to bend his head. Firm lips brush against her hair, then press against her forehead, and she's sure that she's blushing wildly despite the innocuousness of the touch. It's not where she'd like it to be, the sudden thought occurs to her, though she'd never, ever admit that aloud. He smells like chocolate and her girly-smelling fabric softener, though it's incredibly different on him.

The game on TV is well into the third quarter before she manages to turn her attention back to it, but somehow, that hand around her wrist doesn't leave, and his fingers entwine with hers.

*-*

The driver's license bearing the name Marcelita Cross is issued by the State of Georgia as opposed to Florida, and states that the bearer's birthday is the 12th of May, so the fifth of December that year dawns uneventfully like any other day. Lita comes home to the distinctive grinding sound of the blender whirring away in the kitchen, and curiously goes to investigate.

Nico smiles as she walks in, even as he pours something pale green and frothy into two cocktail glasses rimmed with salt. “All in all, we can say this is just another day, yeah?” He has a dimple in his right cheek but not his left when he grins, and there's a small gift box somewhat clumsily wrapped in floral gift-wrap on the counter next to a grocery-store bouquet of flowers in a plain white vase. “I made margaritas. They're the only girly drink I know how to make, I'm afraid-- I'm more of a beer kind of guy.”

Shocked green eyes meet his dark ones, and her breath catches in her throat. Wordlessly, she reaches for the drink, but her cheeks flush even before she takes a sip, and her fingers tremble as they carefully unwrap the box. Nestled inside against snow-white satin is a pair of earrings shaped like pink rosebuds. She puts them on, and smiles tremulously at the gleam of approval in Nico's eyes. She drains her glass and half of a second one before she finds the courage to step closer to him-- Nico-the-protector is so much easier to understand than Nico-the-closest-friend-and-more-- but when she leans up to press her lips against that solitary dimple and he wraps his strong arms around her like it's the simplest thing in the world, it's the most perfect thing she's felt.

And yet, in some strange and subtle way, it seems to herald yet another change in her life. A quickening thrill. Elation and despair intertwined. The warmth of his body cradling hers and the dread of the trial, set to begin in a month.

A beginning. An end. The beginning of the end.

It's as though Nico feels it too, though, because all of the sudden, he sets down his barely-touched drink with a quiet clack and she feels him bury his face in her hair, and his breath is hot but not quite even against her neck.

“Do you know, I've been doing this for quite some time? Most people who go into witness protection are criminals who turn informant. Kind of sleazy types-- the villain who helps the good guys bring down the bigger villain, if you will.” He pulls back just enough to look into her eyes, and the shine in them, so different from the numb flatness of their first meeting, causes his breath to hitch. “Not like you. No one's ever been like you.”

There's no good that can come out of this conversation-- it ends with a one-way plane ticket to some small town in Wisconsin that she's never even heard of before, where the name Marisa Cruz means nothing to anybody, and life will go on, perhaps peacefully and uneventfully but in sepia-toned anonymity and solitude. All at once, for the first time in months, her eyes fill with tears, and she burrows back into his arms as they start falling. He rubs her back and rocks gently and there's probably something ridiculously incongruous about the tableau-- fruity tropical drinks on a cheap Formica counter, a jewelry box, a weeping young woman with copper roots showing under her tousled brunette hair, a dark-haired man holding her protectively, a gun holstered at his side. And maybe it's because she presses her wet cheek against his stubbly one, close enough that he can taste tequila and lime on her breath, or maybe it's because her hands are clenched white-knuckled again, this time around fistfuls of his shirt, and he knows that in the morning there will be dark-purple shadows underneath her eyes again, but a moment later they're kissing, devouring each other, and he sinks his grip into her hair and she sinks hers into his heart and both of their mouths taste like salt—margarita and tears.

Nico pulls back first, and his eyes blaze like dark fire as he stares down at her. “We can't, not like this.” His voice sounds as though he'd swallowed something a lot rougher than citrusy cocktail, and in his eyes, Lita reads an echo of her own despair. “I'm falling in love with you, but I can't compromise your safety. If something were to happen to you, it would kill me.” His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, his chest rises as he takes a ragged breath. “I'll come back for you, though. Someday, when you're safe, and this is all over. I swear that, on my life.”

The day's date means absolutely nothing, according to all of Marcelita Cross's documents, but a birthday is a year older and wiser, no matter what anyone says. And so she nods, slowly, gingerly, with the meticulous care of someone trying not to break. She leans up, and when her lips meet his this time they're soft and sweet and slow as a requiem. They don't break apart until they need to breathe, and then, deliberately, she finishes her second drink and his, letting the alcohol cushion the blow to come.

She's dimly aware of him carrying her to bed, then lying down next to her, holding her close under the covers. But she wakes up the next morning alone, and when she walks into the living room, there's a different marshal. A sharp-eyed blonde with a pixie crop who introduces herself as Harper Tennyson and whose sardonic smirk doesn't at all resemble Nico's smile. But at least Harper asks no questions, and lets her cry herself to sleep in peace that night.

She doesn't see or hear from Nico again, not when the trial is finally over, not when she completes her culinary program, not when she gets that one-way plane ticket. But at the oddest times in the subsequent years, she'd receive a dozen pink roses from the local florist. They match her favourite earrings perfectly.

*-*

The town of Menomonie, Wisconsin, dawns cold and snowy on the fifth of December, and Lita Cross quietly bids farewell to her coworkers at the restaurant where she'd been working for the past six months as the pastry chef and makes the short trek to the local neighbourhood bar. It's a quiet weekday night, and she seats herself at a small table in the back, content to watch a basketball game in silent progress on the TV screens.

Marisa Cruz would have turned twenty-seven today, had she still existed.

A cheery cocktail waitress walks over to her table, and sets down a pale green drink in a distinctive glass, and Lita's head snaps up in surprise.

“I didn't order anything.”

“Oh, it's from that gentleman over there. He said to tell you he really likes your earrings.” The waitress gestures a broad back at the other side of the bar, sculpted shoulders brushed with dark hair slightly too long, and as Lita watches, wide-eyed, everything else around them seems to stand still as he turns around, one dimple in his right cheek as he slowly walks over. He's wearing a black pea coat and jeans and looks nothing like a US marshal as he reaches her table, but it's the same warm hands, the same smile, and when he wraps his fingers around hers, it's like everything slowly falling into place with the same quiet loveliness as the snow outside.

“What are you doing here?” Lita manages to ask in a surprisingly steady voice. Her testimony at the trial of the cartel kingpin years ago had resulted in a conviction and she had been out of true danger for quite some time, but just now, she felt brave enough to take on the whole wide world.

“I moved out here a few months ago. You know why I'm here,” Nico tips her face up, staring at her as though unable to get his fill of her face. His stubbly cheek presses against her smooth one as he whispers into her ear. “Happy birthday, love.”

She picks up the glass that the waitress had left on the table and takes a sip, tasting icy, salty-sweetness on her tongue, and clenches her fingers around fistfuls of his coat, and grins. “Do I get a present?”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, clumsily-wrapped jewelry box in floral paper, and the hint of nerves in his eyes gives away precisely what might be in the box. “Why don't you open it and see?”

#fanfiction #sailor moon #senshi/shitennou #fanfic #M/N #nelwynp