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loveshotzz · 2 years

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There’s a place for me

Eddie Munson x Fem!reader

Chapter 1/?

Summary: On the run for wrongful murder charges, Eddie finds himself stopping in a sleepy ocean side town far enough from Hawkins where he can lay low for awhile. Running from the people that want him dead, his only hope is that his past doesn’t catch up to him. Especially when he meets the pretty eye’d waitress up the street.

Word count: 5.7k

Warnings: slow burn, angst (Eddie hates himself for running) eventual smut, strangers to lovers. My blog is 18 plus.

A/N: this concept was sent as a request by my irl friend @elthreetimes and as soon as I read it, there was no way it could just be a one shot. It needed to be a series. I feel so lucky that you trust me to bring this story to life, and I hope you enjoy this. Also I couldn’t have done this without my hellfire crew @myobmaya @boomhauer @subparwritersuperbreblogger @sweetsweetjellybean for bouncing ideas and characterizations with me. I seriously couldn’t have written this with out you guys. This is the most ambitious story I’ve ever tried, so here goes nothing. Also bonus points for anyone who guess’s who which character Ron is based off of.

*comments, likes, and reblogs would mean so much if you enjoy my work 💘

For days it felt like all Eddie did was drive, the passage of state signs was his only measurement of time. The hours blending together like the lines on the highway, tangerine skies bleeding vermillion the colors remind him of Chrissy eyes after they exploded inside her head. The beauty of it all being taken away as the image of her crumpled body replays over and over in his mind. With no destination he was driving on auto pilot, only deciding where he was going the third night in.

Hair dripping from the storm outside, his fingers feel bruised from switching out his plates for the third time. Sitting in the back of his van tucked away on the side of a dirt road somewhere in West Virginia, it was the first time in his life he was thankful his dad had taught him a thing or two about evading the law. Stripping off his wet jacket he knew he needed to find somewhere to go. He couldn’t keep driving aimlessly, he didn’t have the money for that. The only cash he had was whatever he’d gotten from his deals earlier in the week, thankful he didn’t spend it on the re up that was suppose to happen the night before everything changed.

He’d never seen the ocean, an elusive place he could only visit in his dreams. Stopped on the boarder between West Virginia and Pennsylvania he wasn’t that far from the east coast. Using his lighter to illuminate the road map he’d found stashed in a messy wad in his glove box he guessed it was maybe a 10 hour drive from the coast. Throwing the idea of sleep out the window with wet clothes making it impossible for him to get comfortable he decided to do what he’s done this whole time, drive.

Watching the early morning sun slowly seep into through the storm clouds the grey sky fades to a more comforting cerulean. Eddie drove with the kind of determination that he wish he’d used to pass high school. Maybe he wouldn’t even be in this mess if he’d just graduated when he was suppose to. Convincing himself he would have been long gone playing guitar in any city that wasn’t Hawkins, he lets himself wallow in self pity till his tires bring him to the ocean.

——

Finding his way into a nameless town that wasn’t even listed on his map, it made Hawkins look like New York City. A small strip set on top a broken battered road - he swerves to miss the never ending onslaught of pot holes. The few shops they had were attached to a single grocery store, the sides of the buildings eroding away from the misted wind. Snorting to himself - of course this is where he ends up, a beach side ghost town. Eddie catches the Help Wanted sign hanging in the window of the diner that lay nestled at the end. Sticking out from the rest, the way it’s lit almost makes it look like it glowing against it’s drab surroundings. It was also the only place he’d seen with any sign of human life.

The lights of The Sleepy Hill motel greet him like the four seasons, when his tired van pulls into the mostly empty lot. The flashing vacancy sign is a promise of a bed, his bones worn down and sore the weight of everything finally kicking in. When his dirty white Reebok’s hit the ground his arms reach for the sky in a kitten stretch of his whole body, eyes closing he relishes in the pops he feels in his spine.

Inhaling a deep breath the salt in the air stings his nose, the mist off the shore making his bangs stick to his forehead. Pulling a runway strand of hair from his cheek he finally takes everything in. On one side of him there was nothing but an endless expanse of tumultuous waves raging against the shore line. The storm clouds he had out run were making their way back through, the lingering bitterness of winter still hanging thick in the March air. It wasn’t like the kind of warmness he’d seen on the postcards, or the in the stories that Rick told, this wasn’t Venice Beach. The sight of a light house in the distance brings a slight feeling of comfort when he watches the strobes of light break through the purple hues of the darkness starting to set in over the horizon. Eyes lingering he lets himself sit in it for awhile watching the waves crash into the broken brick holding it up from falling into whatever laid in the water beneath it. When he turns his attention back to the town that took him less then a minute to drive through, the red “EAT HERE” sign that spun on top of the diner mocks his stomach when he realizes it had been almost a whole day with out any real food.

Slamming his car door shut, he takes quick strides to the back making a mental note to drive to the next town over at some point tomorrow to switch out his plates again, it was too risky to try to do it with any car in a town like this. Eyes darting nervously he opens his back doors with shudder that rings out over the sound of the waves. Furrowing his brows in concentration he starts digging though the blankets in the back searching for the outfit he’d found balled up a few nights ago. Forgotten about after a sleep over at Gareth’s, the memory of a time where his life wasn’t like this hurts in a way that he can’t explain. Maybe he wasn’t as miserable as he thought he was — all the little things he took for granted now at the forefront of his mind.

He hadn’t let himself think about Wayne. Maybe it was the adrenaline that kept his mind from going there, or that thing he’d heard about when your own mind blacks things out to protect you, but he hadn’t thought about what that must’ve been like for him to come home to that.

A life less mangled girl he didn’t know and a nephew that no one was going to find. Eddie just ran without a single thought as to what that would mean for him. Scowling to himself he blames the Munson blood that runs through his veins. Images of his Uncle slumped over with tired shoulders, shuffling into the trailer in the early morning hours when the sun is just peaking through the trees. Boots heavy from another double at work, walking right into the nightmare that Eddie left him with.

Eye’s burning he holds back his tears grabbing the balled up shirt and jeans giving them a sniff. They didn’t smell clean but they smelt better then what he was wearing now and that was just going to have to do. Fingers crossed the motel clerk would let him rent a room with out an ID, he was desperate for a shower. Shoving the garments into his backpack he takes another deep breath ignoring the sting this time, closing his eyes he fights away all the emotions that are ready to spill out. Clearing his throat he cracks his neck before slamming the metal doors shut.

Half way across the pavement Eddie stops in his tracks when he see’s the guy behind the counter. Not much older then him there was something oddly familiar about him, when he glances up catching Eddie in his line of sight. Shaggy brown hair parted down the middle and big teeth protruding from below his upper lip, his beady eyes squint as he tries to figure out what Eddie was doing. The sound of a distant boat horn is what makes his feet finally move again, the boy behind the counter standing up as Eddie closes the distance.

There’s a small chime when the glass door swings open, the warmth of the lobby heats him in a way he hadn’t realized he missed until its hits his skin. There’s an awkwardness that hangs thick in the air when the door closes behind him. Eddie hadn’t talked to another living soul in days besides mumbling the amount of cash and on what pump at gas stations. The man behind the desk who’s name tag said ‘Ron’ was staring at him like he was trying to pin point something familiar about the metal head, and it was making Eddie’s palms sweat. The anxiety of being caught tightening in his chest. Scratching the back of his neck he clears his throat.

“Hi — hey, man I’m uhh- I’m looking to get a room?” He tries to hide how startled he is at his own voice having not heard it in hours.

Ron’s silence doesn’t break much to his dismay as he takes in Eddie’s appearance. Dark eyes trail over his disheveled form before flicking back towards his van in the parking lot. It wasn’t just his palms that were sweating now.

“What’s your deal? You some kinda rockstar or something?” Ron finally breaks his silence, stunned it takes Eddie a minute to comprehend what exactly he’s being asked. When he finally wraps his head around the question he has to actively stop the snort that threatens to come out.

Looking down at his wrinkled hellfire shirt, the cotton is stained with a mixture of dirt and grime from the nights in his van. The whites of his Reebok’s barely visible under the dried up mud from last nights storm. Having caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of the door on his way in, he knew his wild mane looked like a bird had laid nest in it.

“Excuse me, what?”

Ron sucks his teeth shrugging.

“You just look like that Van Halen guy, but there’s no way you’d be here if you were actually him I’d reckon.” He says matter of factly before sitting back down in his desk. “And he wouldn’t look like he just rolled around in a pigs play pin. Or maybe he would? I don’t know the life style of a celebrity.” He adds with a wave of his hand.

Stunned and completely unsure of how to respond to the man in front of him, the conversation was not going a direction Eddie had even seen coming. Opening and closing his mouth a few times, he finally finds his voice again.

“Yeah, not Eddie Van Halen. My name is Eddie though, Eddie umm Henderson.” He winces internally when Dustin’s last name leaves his mouth.

“Eddie Henderson? That’s not very rock and roll.” Ron tuts before looking up at Eddie from his computer.

Feeling his frustration start to reach it’s tipping point, his fists clench at his sides before they release. Running a hand over his face he exhales sharply through his nose mustering up enough self control to answer politely.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Eddie pointedly looks at his name tag before adding with a curt smile. “Ron.”

Arching a brow, the man at the front desk brings his attention back to the computer screen with a hum. The awkwardness from before becomes almost suffocating in the small room. The growing silence between them lasting long enough that Eddie starts to panic.

“Look man, I’m just trying to get a room for a few nights then I’ll be out of your hair okay? I’m not some rockstar who’s gonna trash the place. I’m a nobody.”

Eyes never leaving the screen the sound of the mouse clicking is the only noise filling the space.

“Got an I.D. Eddie Henderson?” Ron’s tone is flat when finally looks up at eddie through the hood of his lashes, his own irritation clear on his blemished face.

The question he knew was coming still stiffens his body when it leaves his mouth, but the thought of another night sprawled out on the damp blankets on the metal floor of his van is enough for the burning sensation of tears to sting his tired eyes again. Shuffling on his feet, he readjusts his backpack.

“I’ve got cash, I can pay for at least two days up front.” Stepping closer to the desk his fingers drum against the counter top nervously, doe eyes pleading to show him a shred of mercy.

“No, I.D. No ro—“

Digging the 200 of the 250 he had left from his pocket, he slaps it on the desk in a crumpled lump. His survival instincts kicking in with a new level of stubbornness he didn’t know he had. He wasn’t leaving until he had keys to a bed and a shower.

“Please, man. I’m begging you.” The tears that had been threatening fall finally breach his strong hold, a single droplet landing onto his bottom lashes. He wipes it away quickly with the back of his hand, sniffing he closes his eyes collecting himself again. “I’ll keep to myself, you won’t even know I’m here.”

Ron’s eyes soften at the desperation is Eddie’s voice, despite policy there was something sincere about the mysterious stranger standing in front of him.

“200 will get you three nights.” Reaching over the counter he grabs the crumbled up bills before standing up, turning to the wall of keys behind him.

Relief floods his body as he watches Ron’s fingers skim over the glistening metal dangling from the dark blue wall. Blinking back tears the tense muscles in his shoulders release some of the stress they’d been carrying for the last 700 miles.

“Room 10, it’s at the very end. No parties rockstar.” Handing over the single key, it hung from a round burgundy keychain, a faded gold 10 stamped onto the plastic. Eddie can’t help but actually laugh this time, his mood lifted for a fleeting moment.

“Seriously, thank you. You won’t regret this I promise.” Snatching the key before he had a chance to change his mind, he clasps both hands together in front of his face bowing slightly in appreciation.

“There’s free coffee in here every morning. If you bring your key to the diner up the road you get a ten percent discount. We don’t have laundry but there’s a laundromat next to the grocery store, it’s open weird hours you’ll have to check the sign.” Ron prattles on, his voice becoming more professional now that Eddie was a paying guest.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Walking backwards Eddie kicks the door open, the chill in the air sending a shiver down his spine.

“Nice to meet you Eddie Henderson.”

—

The walls of the motel room match the ones in the front office, the sapphire paint chipping at the edges of the ivory trim. The single bed in the middle was covered in a crimson duvet, two fluffed pillows propped against the black head board tempting him enough that he almost throws the idea of a shower and food out the window. Toeing off his shoes, the socks that should be a crisp white are the color of ash and it reminds him just how dirty he really is. Dropping his bag on the floor he starts peeling off his clothes making his way to wash off the last 72 hours.

A satisfied groan falls from between his chapped lips when the heat of the water hits his skin. Tilting his head back he lets it run through his thick tangled waves, pooling at his feet the water is tinged brown. Turning he faces the stream with closed eyes letting it wash over his face as he tries to find peace in his thoughts. The fear seeing Chrissy suspended in the air every time he closed his eyes was what prevented him from the sleep his strained body needed.

After spending longer then he should wrapped up in the warmth of the shower, he can’t ignore the growling in his stomach, remembering the discount at the diner he forces himself out.

The cheap blow dryer makes his hair frizz with more volume then he was used to, holding it down with both hands on either side of his head he sighs exasperated when he lets it go and it bounces back with more force.

Whatever, he didn’t know anyone here and he wasn’t going to be around long.

Changing into his cleaner clothes, he pats down his jeans feeling something in his back pocket. Reaching behind him his fingers come in contact with the thin plastic foiling of a crumpled half full pack of cigarettes he’d left in a drunk mess one night.

“Fuck. Yes.” He mutters to himself feeling a little more like a person rather then just a passenger in his own body for the first time in the last three days.

Grabbing his jacket off the bed nimble fingers search for his lighter once the leather is wrapped around his shoulders. Smirking when he finds it, he heads for the door grabbing his key off the off the dresser. Turning around before he leaves he takes one good look at his new home for the next few days. It wasn’t much but it was better then hiding off on the side roads begging to get caught.

——

The rocks crunch under his feet as he walks up the wounded asphalt towards the diner, the mist in the air taming the poof in his hair as he struggles to get the cigarette lit. The hint of tobacco on his tongue teasing him as the gust off the shore snuffs out the flame every single time.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” dangling in his lips he stops for a second to switch positions so his back was facing the direction of the wind. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” Grumbling he snatches it out of his mouth in a huff before shoving it back in his pocket. Keeping his hands dug in into his jacket his face is set in a hard glare as he hits the parking lot of the diner. The inside gleams brightly and it’s the stark contrast to the dark moody-ness of his thoughts and the outside.

There’s families gathered in the windows laughing in the warmth of the light and he does his best to ignore the pang in his chest. Shoving down the realization of just how alone he really is now, he wasn’t ready to mentally unpack that yet.

Opening the single glass door of the entrance, the sound of the oldies station plays under the low hum of everyone’s chatter. Red vinyl covering the seats, a row of booths line the outside, the white walls barely visible decorated, covering almost every inch in various collectibles. The long bar attached to the kitchen extends down the length of the restaurant lined with stools.

Unlike the booths, the bar was filled with truckers and waderers. Hunched over their food alone in their thoughts. Taking a seat where he belonged the chain of his wallet clinks loudly against the metal of the stool.

The menu was already laid out on the formica counter top, just a page long the corners of the lamination are creased after obvious years of use. His eyes strain to read the red words that pop out against the white of the paper, the sleepless nights slowly catching up to his body. He tries pulling it further from his face to get a better look completely unaware of the pair of eyes watching him.

“Need some help with the menu?” A melodious voice breaks his concentration. Looking for the owner he comes face to face with you.

Almost as if someone knocked the wind out of him the softness of your features stuns him enough that he can’t find his voice. The dress you wear as a uniform wraps tightly around your curves and he fights his eyes from wandering. Hand on the counter in front of him you lean into his space, the smell of maple syrup hits his nose — sickly sweet he wants nothing more then to close his eyes and bask in it. Your warm gaze lands on his face and it feels like he’s looking up at the bright sun on a summer day. You didn’t look like you belonged here.

Realizing he hadn’t answered you, he clears his throat trying to shake his nerves. He was never good at talking to girls, especially not girls that looked like you and definitely not under these circumstances.

“You’re new around here.” You grin eyeing the slightly disheveled boy in front of you.

“Do you have burgers?” Blurting out his question he closes his eyes embarrassed when he realizes he’s ignored your observation too caught up to think straight. “Sorry.”

Laughing sweetly you take the menu from his hands finger tips brushing against his, the connection making his cheeks blossom pink.

“Sure do, how do you want it?” Pulling out your pocket sized note book from your apron, his eyes catch the red of your nail polish and for some reason it makes his cheeks deepen to match.

“Medium is —uh, is fine.” Scratching the back of his neck he watches the way your pen swoops gracefully against the paper.

“Fries okay?” Looking up at him from under your lashes his breath hitches loud enough for you to hear, the reaction making you bite your lip in a smile.

“Yeah, fries are, fries are great.” Exhaling loudly he gives you a tight lipped smile wishing he could bury his head in the sand.

“Anything to drink?” Ripping the page you turn around slipping it through the small window of the kitchen behind you. The line cook grabs it with a curt nod before you bring the full force of your stare back to him.

“Water is fine.” The sentence is short but he gets it out with out a hitch at least. Rubbing his hands nervously on his thighs he catches the mischievous glint dance around your eyes.

A small knowing smirk plays on your lips before walking away to the drink station at the other end of the long bar.

“Real fucking smooth.” Eddie grumbles to himself catching the attention of the trucker seated next to him.

“If that makes you feel any better son, I think she thought it was cute.” The gruffness of his voice reminds him of his Uncle, the few moments with you had made him almost forget about why he was here in the first place. Guilt slowly starting to eat away at him as he tries to re focus his thoughts, the familiar sting coming back to his eyes.

Before Eddie has a chance to respond your sliding the glass in front of him, eyes never leaving his as you pull out a straw from your front pocket. This time he’s strong enough to hold your gaze even if the red on his cheeks spreads to his neck.

“It’ll be like 15 minutes, Freddy’s pretty quick.” Nodding back towards the kitchen, Eddie tries to listen to you but he’s too focused on the sheen of your lip gloss. A sharp elbow to his side snaps him out of his trance, his new friend trying to help him out.

“Oh— okay, thanks.” Dropping his eyes down he brings all of his attention to unwrapping his straw, silently scolding himself for being even less smooth then the first interaction. The only reason he knows you’ve walked away is the loss of sweetness that settles in the air in your presence.

Shoving the straw in his drink, the ice clinks loudly against the glass before taking a big gulp. When the water washes over his tongue in a wave of rejuvenation, he closes his eyes humming in satisfaction sucking more then half the glass down before pushing it away with a wipe of his mouth. He can feel what the needed hydration does for him in his finger tips, his brain function starting to sharpen.

Chocolate eyes finding you again, he watches the way you move around the restaurant with ease. Everything you were doing seemed second nature, bending down to meet the kids at eye level he watched the families stare up at you with the same adoration on their faces. It wasn’t just him you effected like that, it was every one.

Cleaning off one of the booths, he watches you bend over the table — selfishly letting his eyes wander your body in the way he’d fought off before. Expertly stacking the dirty plates in your arms, you shove the cash tip they’d left in your apron. Turning on your heel you catch his stare, stopping for a brief moment before your lips tug up in a way that makes him avert his gaze — but even he knew it was too late. He’d been caught.

Closing his eyes when you walk by he inhales deeply, chasing the comfort your scent brings. You smelt like Sunday mornings with his mom, the only childhood memories he was fond of. He watched as you disappeared through the double doors of the kitchen, loud voices greeting you once you were hidden in the back. It was obvious you’d been here for awhile. The urge to try and piece together your story is a welcoming distraction from his own.

You aren’t back there long before you push back through with a toothy grin, shaking your head in amusement. An irrational hint of jealousy settles deep in his gut at whoever was making you laugh like that. The high pitch ding of the kitchen bell brings his attention back to the small window, a burger and fries so warm he could see the steam coming off the bun sit waiting for you to collect. Brain going empty he can feel himself start to salivate, his hunger taking front and center in his mind now.

Too focused on his food he has better self control of his eyes when you go to grab it. Sliding the plate in front of him Eddie mumbles a thank you before snatching the burger, ignoring the way it heats under his finger tips.

Taking a giant bite he immediately opens his mouth at the shock of the burn, his initial reaction to spit it out is stopped when he looks up to see you watching him with crossed arms as you lean against the back counter.

“I would have told you to give it a minute, but I thought that was obvious.” Teasing him, Eddie fans his open mouth searching for reprieve only swallowing it when the pain subsides. Taste buds inflamed and seared he takes another gulp of water basking in the way it soothes his mouth.

“Sorry, I haven’t really eaten all day.” Grabbing a fry he dunks it into the small ceramic cup filled with ketchup before tossing it into his mouth. Curious eyes land on yours making him wonder what’s keeping your attention as he eats with out manners.

“So, what are you running from?” Choking on his food at your question his eyes go wide, maybe the news had made it’s way over here.

“W-what do you mean?” Swallowing loudly his appetite suddenly disappears.

“I mean, I’ve never seen you before. People either move here to run from something or they’re just passing through.” You shrug as if your question was nonchalant. “So are you a runner or a wanderer?”

“What are you?” Eddie counters back arching a brow before taking another sip of water.

The smirk you give him is almost devilish when you push yourself off the counter invading his space again. The smell he can’t get enough of swirling around him in a dizzying effect.

“I’m a runner.” There’s something hidden behind your eyes that he can’t decipher when you give him your answer unashamed. “I told you mine, it’s your turn now.”

Of course you weren’t from here, how could you be?

“Runner.” He says simply already nervous he shared too much. Averting his eyes he plops another fry in his mouth before he remembers that this 15 dollar meal was gonna put a significant hole in his remaining funds.

Looking back up from his food he sees you’re already half way down the bar walking he hasn’t even asked you about the Now Hiring sign dangling from the window.

“Hey! — I mean wait.” Eddie’s outburst catches you and half the diners attention and despite his embarrassment he doesn’t miss the way your lips curve up when you make your way back to him.

“Yes?” Raising your eyebrows in question you plant both hands on the counter top in front of him leaning forward a stance that keeps his Eddie swimming.

“I saw your help wanted sign in the window.” Clearing his throat for more confidence “How would a runner apply for said job?”

“You haven’t even told me your name, and you don’t even know what we’re hiring for.” All valid points leave your mouth and he nods with a scratch of his head.

“It’s Eddie, Eddie Henderson.” He said it once and now he just has to roll with it, he’ll apologize to Dustin if he ever sees him again. “I’m not picky, I’ll do anything. Just in desperate need for some cash.”

“Well Eddie Henderson, I guess that means you’re planning on staying here long enough to get work huh?” Tongue poking the side of your cheek he can tell there’s ideas bouncing around in your head.

“Yeah, for a little bit.” Eddie didn’t want to tell you that his time here was numbered in the single digits or that he needed the work so he wouldn’t become completely homeless in the next few days while he ran from the law.

Blowing out a loud breath, you drum your hands on the counter before turning around towards the white board behind you with various names and schedules scribbled on it. He wondered which was you. Grabbing an application from the stack that was pinned on the board you turn back around around pulling a pen from your pocket. Clicking it open you set it down for him to fill out.

Eddie wastes no time in scribbling out his fake information, chest swelling with excitement. He didn’t think it would be this easy and despite your stare making him nervous he could feel his own smile pull at his lips just for a moment.

“I’m just gonna need an ID to show my boss.”

The sentence leaves your mouth and Eddie wants to fucking scream, his grip on the pen becoming so hard he was close to snapping it in half. It was an issue at the motel why wouldn’t be an issue here? It’s not like he didn’t have one, it just had all of his real information on it. Information that had the potential to get him caught.

“I- I don’t have one.” It’s quiet when it leaves his mouth voice shaking and defeated. Meeting your eyes again he notices how they soften as if you could read his mind.

“You moved to a new town without any ID?” You question is gentle when it comes out watching the way his shoulders slump. The first smile you’d seen grace his handsome features slowly fading away.

“I’m afraid I can’t give this to him with out some kind of proof as to who you are.” It’s lame when it comes out of your mouth and you wish it could be different when you watch his big doe eyes glass over.

“It’s fine, I’ll figure something out. I appreciate the help none the less.” Eddie gives slight nod pushing the application away, his brain already starting to reel with no back up plan lined up. He feels fucking stupid.

Unsure how to comfort the cute mysterious stranger you shove your pen back in your pocket giving him your most apologetic look. The air shifting into something that felt like you should give him privacy— you walk away as he digs for his wallet.

Throwing a twenty on the table, he’s too embarrassed to even ask for the discount. He takes one last big bite of his burger before goes to stand up, the sudden urge to sleep becoming over powering with the hope a better idea would come to him tomorrow.

“Hey, actually.” Your honeyed voice drips through his very obvious despair.

Stopping him before he had a chance to leave, Eddie’s chestnut eyes meet yours in question.

Biting at your bottom lip, he can tell your nervous to ask him whatever was bouncing around in your head.

“Do you know anything about cars?” The thought of your late grandmothers car sitting motionless in your drive way comes to mind and how desperate you were for a pair of working wheels.

“I mean I’m no mechanic, but I can do the basics.” He offers back with a shrug.

“Good enough for me, I live by the beach not far from the motel down the road, it’s a shitty yellow house you can’t miss it. I’ve got a car you can come look at tomorrow, if you think you can fix it I’ll hire you myself.” Eddie doesn’t know why you’re being so nice to him but he’s not going to turn you down the offer. Even if he can’t fix it, he sure as shit was going to figure out how.

“Alright, sure yeah, I’ll come by.” Trying to contain his excitement the smile you’d already missed comes creeping back to his face.

“Perfect, I’ll see you around 10? I’ve gotta work at 4 so that should be plenty of time for you to come take a look yeah?” Not wanting to tease that six hours is plenty of time to do a normal check up on a car he just nods instead.

“I’ll be there at 10.” With a nod of his head and the first genuine smile on his face in days, he pushes back out into the developing storm.

——

Head swirling with the events of the day the cheap motel bed moans under his weight as he stares up at the water marks on the ceiling tile. The feathers of the pillows underneath him bring back the heaviness of his eyelids as all the muscles in his body finally relax. The fear of sleep slowly slipping to the back of his mind when the softness of your smile replays on a loop behind closed eyes.

——-

Taglist: @newlips @bimbobaggins69 @munsonology @triplethreat77 @edsforehead @manda-panda-monium @emotionaldreamer @eddiesprincess86 @micheledawn1975 @lil-graveling @b-irock @munsonmunster

If I missed anyone please let me know!

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nolpat0 · 3 years

Text

something like this | s. crosby

summary: sidney has always wanted someone like her and confess as much to her

wc: 1,573

warnings: mentions of hospital/injury, one sexual innuendo

The low, metronomic beeping of the monitor keeps a steady, consistent beat to the familiar, dulcet hum of a female voice. In his drugged, cloud nine-like haze, Sidney does his best imitation of a grin, the gloriously soothing tone of her words easing him out of his concern.

"Sid?" her whisper is followed by the warm press of her fingers against the skin of his upper arm, a sweet reminder of her unwavering support. "Are you awake?"

He is; but the boy fights the grin that is sure to give him away in order to keep the easy flow of her rambles going, enjoying her vivid stories and the giggle at the end of her words as she confesses the minuscule details of her day to him. She believes him to be fast asleep, for her words to be nothing but a useless hum, and he enjoys the unexpected imtimacy of the affectionate gesture.

"I see what you're doing," she speaks again, the edge of her words exploding into the melodic tumble of her soft laughter. However, she doesn't cease her talking. "I'll just keep talking and making a fool out of myself so you can pretend you're asleep."

Sidney can't help the glimmer of love that warms his hospital blanket-clad body, a small, tender smile tugging at the edges of his full lips, revealing himself. Her fingertips trail over the carved outline of his cheekbones and brush against his hair as he finally opens his coffee-colored eyes. He gives her a earnest smile, the edges of his eyes crinkling as his dark eyes travel over her face, his full, pink lips splitting open into a wide grin to reveal shining teeth. She mumbles a soft, calming greeting and caressed his cheek a second time with the tips of her fingertips.

“So you gonna fall asleep again so I can tell you what Mat did next?” She asks, the edges of her lips curled into a playful smirk as she teases him, fingers still running agaisnt the midnight strands of his short hair in a loving manner.

Sidney can’t help the gentle, genuine laugh that rumbles from his chest, his grip on the pale blue hospital blanket loosening as he lets his palm fall flat on the curve of her knee. He nods quickly, eager to keep hearing her soft speech and tease her back, “Yes of course. My bad.”

He doesn’t catch the small smile that lights up her face because his dark lashes are already falling flat agaisnt his faintly flushed cheeks. She doesn’t waste another second launching into a detailed discription of her colleague, Mat’s experience with a particularly awkward run in with their boss. As she gently lulled him farther into the comforting clutches of sleep, Sidney tried his very best to keep his facial expressions netural but failed quite badly, which propelled her further into making him laugh. As the tall hockey player felt sleep finally take him, he felt overwhelmed with the buzzing, delicious feeling of love. He was consumed by the complete love he held in his heart for the girl still talking and running her fingers through his hair. He was too deeply in love to even think properly. And Sidney loved every minute of it.

———

Sidney couldn’t feel the light press of her palm agaisnt his as the white lab coat clad doctor filled the couple in on his prognosis and what the steps leading them forward would look like, a detailed, and frankly terrifying process that would have Sidney recovering and ready to return on the ice in a month or so. His breath was strained through his lungs, his jaw dancing with a clenched muscle as he tried to reign in his fears and desire to lace up his skates without a practical thought about the nasty consequences. Sidney just wanted to return to the locker room and resume being captain, and knew the only way to that was through the plan the doctor was currently laying out. Which scared Sidney to his bones if he was allowed to be completely honest.

“Sid,” she called, eyes watching her boyfriend closely as the hospital room door clicked closed in the wake of the doctors exit. Nerves clung to her limbs but she shook them off in order to ease Sid and his tense posture. She tried again, more forcefully. “Sidney.”

His chin dips and he finally slides his cinnamon coloured eyes to lock onto hers, trying to mask his evident fears. But she knows him far too well to skip the flicker of fear shining in his irises or the slight quiver of nerves that shook his large hands. Instinctively, her palms slide over his, fingers knitting tightly with his in a subconscious attempt to ease his shaking.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she nods, refusing to break eye contact in order to get her confidence across. She could tell he was scared, as was she, but she understood that in the end, all would work out. And they would be ok.

“I know.” Sidney tries again, blatantly deflecting.

Her lips quirk into a soft, knowing smile, her eyes flickering up distractedly as she brushes his hair back from his forehead. She smiles deeper absentmindedly, a smile that Sidney adores with all his heart. He felt a tiny fraction of his terror fading away like ice thawing in his veins.

“You don’t have to act like you’re not worried, Sid.” her eyes dropped to hold his loving gaze, her lips set in a firm line. “You don’t have to always be the strong one. That’s what I’m here for.”

A tight breath eases from his lips as his eyes close lightly, his heart settling back into its former steady pace of calm at her carefully chosen words. He was grateful, for her presence and the pressure of her fingers in his and the weight of her words. He’d never experienced a love like hers, where she loved him wholly and unconditionally, allowing him to remove all his amored layers and bravado. He revealed his true self to her and she had only kissed him passionately and grinned like he’d given her the best gift she could receive, repeating her daily mantra of how much she loved him. Sidney had never felt more loved than he did at that moment. His heart swelled fondly at the memory, the edges of his lips turning up in a doting smile.

“Thank you,” he breathed, a little unsure of what exactly he was thanking her for, but the statement was truthful.

She responded with a light, fleeting kiss pressed to his temple, her palms reaching up to softly cup the sharp curve of his jaw. He waits with baited breath, but soon relaxes fully under her loving gaze content with just staring at her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, the syllables falling softly from his chapped lips in a unintentional audible confession.

She blinks at the unguarded, genuine compliment she knows he must mean, when she’s been curled up in the uncomfortable hospital chair beside his bed for the past two days, sleepless nights smudged under her eyes and dressed in his old clothes. She feels the burn of her cheeks under his gaze and the compliment. Sidney catches the slight embarrassment and reaches out to brush his thumbs under her eyes. “You’re cute when you get flustered.”

She rolls her eyes in response, mouth curving into a mirthful grin.

“Yeah, yeah, why don’t you fall back asleep?”

Sidney reaches out and hooks his fingers the the belt loops of her jeans, pulling her closer and onto the narrow mattress, shifting his own body to accommodate hers. “Only if you sleep with me.” he replied, coffee coloured eyes gleaming with flirtatious mischief. His fingers don’t loosen their hold, instead going to grip her hips and pull her flush to his side, savouring the warmth radiating from her smaller figure now dwarfed by his size. She curls tightly to his side, fingers digging into the material of his shirt and leg falling over his as his palm cups the underside of her thigh before it gave away to her knee. She hums with a soft laughter, commenting that she’ll think about his desirous proposal, ignoring the fact they both knew she’d already complied. Sidney settled in with a long, adoration filled kiss to her hair that didn’t hold a drop of lust. He grins at the tired lilt to her voice as she mumbles softly into his thin shirt, the reverberations flowing through his chest. His fingertips smoothed over her hair as he breathed deeply, catching her familiar scent. “I love you so much.” Sidney whispered into the layers of her hair as she promptly fell asleep to the barley audible confession, meaning every syllable with his whole heart.

When her breathing has evened out, a soft almost imperceptible whistle of her breath as she falls into a deep, dream-less sleep upon his chest, fingers tightly curled in the material of his thin shirt, as if she can’t fathom letting him go, even in sleep, Sidney reveals his truest confession.

“I’ve always wanted to be loved by someone like you.” his words are hot and hit the top of her forehead before he kisses her skin. Sidney is quick to brush a stray eyelash from her cheek. “And now I have you. And I’m not letting you go.”

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its-warm-in-here · 3 years

Text

Playing Pretend

I’m sorry I didn't get this up sooner. I gutted the end but here’s the first part of the first chapter of a Heisenberg x reader fic that will probably go on too long. This is more of a prolog. No smut yet! Written with a female reader in mind, but I may have versions for both m and f when the final product goes up. Gonna start out kinda fluffy before we get darker. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated!

Summary: This summer trip to Romania was supposed to be momentous, life changing, and the bases for your master’s thesis. Too bad the villagers want you gone and this ‘Mother Miranda’ won't even see you. Luckily, you run into a greasy engineer who says he can help.

Karl tries to take a day off from being ‘Lord Heisenberg’ with the cute stranger who wandered into the village. Things only spiral from there.

~2080 words

Miranda loved the yearly festivals. She always made a big show of the village, flowers and banners everywhere. The townsfolk would bring out their best clothing, even if their best was still black and brown. The dreary village would come alive with drinking, dancing and merry making. Even some of the neighboring villages would join in the festivities. The town would be near bustling, the local tavern would be full, laughter and song would echo from the church to the castle.

He hated it. All of it. Heisenberg avoided the celebrations, instead opting to stay holed up in his factory as much as possible. And it wasn't just because of the excess of people, while that didn't help. No, it was an insidious purpose for these gatherings. He exhaled a ring of cigar smoke.

First, boost morale through the village and reaffirm the people's faith in Mother Miranda. Second, and far more insidious, was to widen the flock, to expand her influence and bring in new blood for her experiments. The surrounding towns were just as small and removed from the rest of the world as Miranda's village. Made it easy to bring new blood under her wing. Youth would meet and marry, a drunk or four would go missing, and some of the visitors would become new members of Miranda's community. More meat for her Cadou grinder.

Heisenberg flicked the ash from his cigar and watched it float down before the wind caught it. The early morning view from the top of his factory wasn't bad. It was his own part of the world: no view of the village, the stench of the reservoir was nonexistent, and the most he could see of Castle Dimitrescu was a massive wall keeping their territory separated. Just him and his machines. He took another puff. As much as he planned to avoid today, Heisenberg knew that he would have to make at least some appearance. All the Lords did, even if it was just for a moment. Just another way to show her power; having all of her ‘children’ before the townsfolk. He grimaced at the thought. Târgul de Fete was set to start soon. At least that gave him the morning to get shit done. Heisenberg kicked a bit of metal scrap off the roof and it bounced off the scrap heap below with a ping! before landing in the dirt. He rolled his shoulder. Time to get to work.

---

"Well fuck you too!" You slammed the door behind you. Why even bother going through the proper channels? No matter what, they turn you down, tell you to leave and treat you like an outcast. You spoke to towns folk, to village leaders, hell, you even wanted an audience with their 'Mother Miranda,' but she refused to even see you! You stormed along the path and the few people that had not made their way to the Târgul de Fete celebration steered clear of you, opting to give you a side eye and shuffle to their destination. All you wanted was to observe their festival, and maybe take a few pictures, but even that was negotiable. You had even offered to leave your camera behind with them for the day. Why hadn't you gone to Sweden with the rest of your class? No, instead you went to some culty, backwater town in Romania!

You kicked a rock, hard, sending it flying into the tall grass. "God Damnit!" This was supposed to have been your thesis! Supposed to be life changing! No, now you were just stuck, miles from any true civilization and being kicked out of some stupid, ramshackle heap, whose plants can't even grow right in a Romanian summer. Some of the plants were barely green, most appeared dry or yellowing. The flowers were either wilted and falling apart or hadn't even bloomed. You were no botanist, but you were certain that wasn't healthy.

You kicked another rock, it soared through the grass, but it struck something metal this time before landing with a thud. They didn't want you here, didn't want you at Târgul de Fete? Fine, but they didn't take your camera. Without thinking, you dug the old DSLR out of your bag and snapped a picture of the church.

And immediately deleted it.

You signed. Even if the villagers were a bunch of jackasses, this was their culture and they made it very clear that you were not welcome. Even if they had agreed to all this three months ago. And even if they had called you a bad omen, a poison and a danger to the whole village. You weren't about to infringe. Crestfallen, you huffed your bag over your shoulder and began the trek back out of town. It was at least a four hour walk to your rental car and a good chunk of that walk was more of a hike. Not like there was much you could do other than leave after cussing out the town speakers and nearly slamming the door off its hinges.

The village had felt abandoned when you walked in, and now that everyone had headed off to a celebration, the village was positively desolate. No traditional brightly-colored dresses or intricate belts to be seen. And no wary or hostile glares from the inhabitants either. It was... quiet. Aside from the occasional crow, you might as well have been in a ghost town. It took you a bit to find the correct path out of the grave yard, but after spinning in circles for a good moment, you pushed past a red door and were back on your way. The village wasn't large, most of the paths were poorly maintained and the whole place was enveloped in a strange fish smell.

You bit the inside of your cheek. This was a good thing, really. Who would've wanted to stay in the ramshackle place for more than a few hours, let alone a few days? You groaned and kicked at the ground again. While not lacking in repellent attributes, the pagan worship of the place fascinated you. They had their own religion but had incorporated traditional Romania holidays into their culture. Where else in Europe could you see that happen in real time? Of course, you could think of a couple of places, but you had picked here in the Carpathian mountains in particular! While you did have a second choice, you couldn't stop the self pity from setting in.

Ugh.

The village was relatively small and was quickly fading to forest, the castle that overlooked the town vanished behind you as you shuffled down a particularly steep part of the path. The trees here looked more normal, less sickly. While it was only marginally, you felt a bit better, a bit less mad. Stepping away from that place was a breath of fresh air.

Your boots skid a bit as you reach a flat spot. With a huff, you grip both backpack straps to center yourself. If this couldn't be your thesis, that didn't mean you had to hate the walk. This was Romania afterall, when was the next time you were going to be here? The sky may be overcast, but it sort of added to the eerie charm of this place. You sidestepped your way down another steep incline, using one hand to grip overgrown branches for balance. The last step is a bit further, but you find your footing easily.

And the rock gave way under you, tilting forward with an abrupt grinding sound. A burst of panicked adrenaline rushed through as you struggled to stop. You pitch forward, stumbling over branches and underbrush, your eyes forcibly losing focus.

"The fuck?"

That wasn't your voice. You slammed full force into something, another body? And it gives under you. The other person takes the brunt of the fall, landing on their back with a distinct, "oof."

For a moment, you don't speak, too focused on catching the breath. Finally, your vision swims back and you find your voice, "Damnit... are you ok?"

The man under you goans, sitting half way up to look you over. His hair is grey, and a bit too long, but he couldn't be any older than forty, possibly younger. "Get off." Your eyes go wide and that panicked beat fills your chest. "Ya deaf? Off."

"Er, right," you scramble to your feet and, without thinking, extend a hand to the stranger, "Sorry about... that." You gestured vaguely to the path. "Lost my balance."

He lets out an exasperated huff, and knocks your hand away. For a moment, he doesn't acknowledge you, instead retrieving something from the grass behind him. He's wearing a loose linen shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up with black leather gloves. You force yourself to look somewhere, anywhere else, nervously bouncing from foot to foot. When he turns back to you, he has a tattered, wide brim hat in place and is looking over a pair of broken sunglasses. One of the lenses was clearly shattered, but he hooked them over his shirt collar, his attention finally turning to you. "You're not from around here, huh?”

You couldn't help but snort, "What gave it away, the wind breaker? Don't worry, I'm leaving."

"Leaving?" He repeats.

You start moving back to the path. "Yup, your village speaker has made that very clear."

"They were clear? Not all back and forth on it?" He chuckles, "That's impressive, they must really not like you."

You stare at him, was this a friendly face? It was certainly a handsome face, even with scarring and stubble. But a trustworthy one? "You sure you're ok? Didn't scramble that brain when I ran into you? The rest of the town was pretty dead set on driving me out."

" 'Cause they're a bunch of morons, sweetheart," he insisted, "All part of Mother Miranda's big, idiot mob."

"Huh," you are walking ahead on the path, and he's not but a footfall behind you.

"But they don't matter."

"No?"

"What matters is, why didn't they want you here?"

You stop, turning to face this stranger. He was gruff, and more than a little rude, but in comparison to the townsfolk, he was downright friendly. Hell, you were surprised he was so forward with you. "Masters thesis," you put plainly, hoping he'll leave it at that.

"On what?"

"Anthropology."

He leaned in close. He wasn't that much taller than you, but you couldn't help but move away from his imposing figure. From this distance, you could smell motor oil and some kind of smoke on his clothes. "That's it?" You scoff, the sooner you are back in your car the better. "I just mean, it's surprising they'd want you gone. You sure there's nothing else? Didn't kick over any goat statues?"

"Not that I noticed," you started back down the path. You'd wasted too much time talking to this weirdo anyway. Just based on his demeanor and dislike of the rest of the village, you wonder if you'd maybe tripped over the town pariah. He certainly wasn't dressed like anyone else from the village.

"I could get you back in."

You stopped, not fifteen feet from him. "You're assuming I want to go back in." And didn’t you? You just risk getting yelled at again. But if there was a chance to write your thesis...

“Well, if you're not interested,” he turned to leave. You grit your teeth, your nails digging deep into your backpack straps.

“Hold up!" It doesn't take much to catch up to him. "How exactly are we going to do this?"

"My word carries a certain amount of weight," he carried on, "Though, the village doesn't meet on these matters till next week."

"But what good does that-"

He isn't listening, "For today, I know a place you can watch the town. Besides, you're an Archeologist, you probably want an interview, right?" Of course he gestures to himself with a sort of half bow.

You roll your eyes, but still follow, "Anthropologist." He gives you a blank look. "I'm studying Anthropology, not Archeology."

He doesn't seem to care, instead pulling a cigar and lighter from his pants pocket. "Got a name?"

"Oh, (y/n). You?"

The stranger is part way up on the path you had tripped down. "Karl," he had extended you a gloved hand. You look from him to his hand, before brushing past him, pulling yourself up next to him without the offered aid.

#Karl Heisenberg #Re8 #re8 heisenberg #karl heisenberg x reader #karl heisenberg x you #Ill keep this going as long as i can #wow creativity is hard #karl can be nice if he tries

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fandom-space-princess · 3 years

Text

The Game of Us

Rating: T (gen, no warnings)

Chapter 3: Raphael

Read below the cut, or on AO3

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

With Gabriel gone, the shades begin to dissipate, and soon Michael finds himself alone once again.

It doesn’t last long.

“Well done,” comes a voice from behind him. The tone is the same as before, but now the words are spoken aloud. The entity’s form has shifted. It wears a body that, while still indistinct and hazy, appears far closer to human than it had previously done.

Michael scrambles to his feet. He can feel his own form shifting as well, physical appearance undergoing continental drift atop his roiling grace.

“You took her. Gabriel. What have you done with her?”

“Please try to keep up, my boy. I took nothing and no one. The messenger is safe and well, merely—well, let’s call it offstage, for the moment. And she came quite willingly, as you saw for yourself.” The entity folds its hands neatly in front of it. “I see that she has given you much to consider. I trust your time together was informative?”

“That’s—one way of phrasing it.” The entity moves away, beckoning, and Michael doesn’t fight the impulse to follow. At the termination of the crevice, just outside the circle of crumbling stones, he is unsurprised to see that the path continues deeper into the forest.

As they walk, low-hanging branches catch and drag at his hair, his clothing. Michael feels as though he might be leaving snippets of himself behind, like fur snagged in brambles along the trail. He thinks of Gabriel’s wispy audience with sorrow. “So much of the Host, dead and gone. So many shades. I knew, of course I knew. But seeing them there... it’s not the same.” Regret swirls within him, settling as a tightness around his eyes; he can feel it there, performing the subtle work of reshaping the image he wears.

Into what, though—he doesn’t yet know.

The being at his side nods, curt. “You must understand where your actions lead. Not solely for yourself, but for others. You cannot abdicate your duty to your nature by refusing to choose, any more than you can by making choices.” He gets the impression that it raises its eyebrows meaningfully in his direction. “In your brief period of freedom, you knew the state of Heaven, and yet you turned your back on your responsibilities. On Earth, with that human—that wasn’t choosing. You were hiding.”

The words dig at him, slivers of ice working their way into the center of his grace. Adam. “He needed me. And I needed to keep him safe.”

“That’s a partial truth at best, and I’ve no interest in coddling self-delusion. Try again.”

Being dead, he is discovering, has a way of making it harder to lie to himself. Shame flares low in his stomach. “I... I should have done better by them all. They were my family, and I failed them. I couldn’t face them. Couldn’t face—”

He stops. The path has led them to the edge of another river. Crystalline and clear, smooth as glass, it burbles quietly past their feet. It winds away in lazy curves, disappearing into the deeper shade of the trees.

Michael looks down at his reflection, and his Father’s face looks back at him.

A hand on his shoulder. “I am not without sympathy for your pain,” the being at his back says, gently. “But running from it is no solution. The realm of Heaven is in disarray. Without you and your kin, it will fall, new God or no. And then—whatever it is you love, whatever it is you fear—then there will truly be nothing left to salvage.”

Michael crouches down, touches fingertips to the image of Chuck’s face. Tiny ripples distort the surface, rebounding off each other, spreading and fading away. “This isn’t the Styx. None of this should be here at all. What have you done to the local reality? And to what purpose?”

“Ask your next brother. They always were the wisest of you.”

This time, Michael doesn’t need to turn to know he is alone.

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

He follows the river further into the wilds, meandering gradually down the mountainside. The underbrush thins with the change in altitude, and the straggling trees grow steadily sparser. Before long he finds himself among yet more ruins, though these appear considerably more modern than the last. The river glides through the bones of a forgotten city. He picks his way along streets of stone dwellings adorned by grand archways, airy courtyards, monolithic houses of worship. Mist twines in and among the silent remains of civilization, and everywhere he looks he sees the incursion of the forest: trees growing in cracking walls, moss overhanging low rooftops.

Near the center of the city, both buildings and trees grow abruptly denser once again. A thicket of olive trees and creeping ivy, solid and unassailable, tangle up through ruined foundations and collapsed walls. The river seeps between the roots and disappears under a wall, alongside a single narrow entryway into what must once have been a church. It is barely wide enough to permit him entrance.

He pushes forward, through the vines.

An uneasy aura pervades the air within, musty and stifling, heavy across his shoulders and thick in his lungs. The further in he travels, the stronger it becomes. As it intensifies, he realizes that the feeling is not solely physical; a heady and potent psychic residue that he recognizes as grief only when he finds himself choking back a sob, without understanding quite why.

Down an overgrown corridor, and as suddenly as the vegetation had closed in upon him, it clears. He finds himself in an interior courtyard, roof all but gone, open under the sky.

“So, I get to see you again, after all. Hello, Michael.”

He looks around, confused, for a moment unable to identify the source of the words. Then, all at once, he sees.

In the quiet grove that has sprung up to consume this once-thriving city stands a sparkling pool, the termination point of the river’s above-ground course. Here the water stagnates, swirling deeper into a reservoir carved through foundation and bedrock to disappear into the earth. A stand of trees grows about the edge, roots worming deep down to seek the water through cracks in the floor. What he had originally taken for a statue carved into that living wood shifts minutely. Raphael meditates among the trunks, limbs now gnarled branches, head crowned by thick twisting ivy.

They are, he realizes, the source of the pain imbuing this place. He circles the pool and seats himself beside them, back bending under the onerous weight of their distress.

“You’ve taken His face,” they observe. Their voice holds neither scorn nor approval. Only sorrow. “Don’t take this personally, but I don’t think it suits you.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” he replies morosely. He brushes his hand lightly over the back of one of their own, firm and warm as olive wood. “And you’ve given up on a human form at all. I didn’t realize you held any fondness for dryads.”

“I needed—a change of perspective.” There is, momentarily, a hint of wry smile in their voice. Even on their worst days, he reflects, Raphael always held a spark of gentleness. It makes him ache for them; warrior and healer both, the only one among them as truly skilled in restoring life as taking it. They had never needed his protection, but he should have done more to uplift and support them, still. “Hamadryads have no skin to stitch. No bones to set. They neither bleed, nor do they break. They put down roots, and they grow, and they watch the world pass. It’s a peaceable enough existence.”

“Brother, you—you do realize where we are.”

Raphael rolls their eyes. “I’m dead, Michael, not blind.” They shake their head, ivy tumbling back and out of their face. Michael realizes, abruptly, that the ivy is a deep emerald green; like the blindfold Gabriel had worn, it is the only point of color against the otherwise monochrome environment.

“Then maybe you can enlighten me. I was sent to find you. By... well, I still don’t really know by who.”

“Don’t you, though?”

“I don’t,” he replies, adamant. “I can’t see the purpose to this, any of this. We are asked to return to the world, but to what end? What makes him think—” Michael breaks off, defeated.

“What makes him think we’d do any good for it this time around?” Raphael finishes knowingly.

Michael studies his reflection in the water, and says nothing.

They shake their head again, turning to contemplate the pool. “Did you know this pool has no bottom? If you fell in, you’d sink for eternity. There’d be no point in swimming; you couldn’t save yourself.”

“Why do you sound like you’re considering it?”

Raphael sighs. “I tried so hard, Michael. I fought and bled and died for our family, and still, it fell apart. You’re wearing His face, and for what? You blame yourself?” They look down at their palms, loose in their lap. The wood there is stained; in a place with light, with color, Michael wonders with a shiver if the stains might not appear the ruddy brown of old blood. “But I was our healer, Brother. And I tried and I tried, but I couldn’t heal anyone.” The sadness in the atmosphere redoubles, clawing over Michael’s skin.

Their voice cracks. “I couldn’t even heal myself. He wouldn’t even allow me that much.”

Michael’s head drops to his hands. This agony, like a breaking bone or a breaking heart, has been eating at their foundations for so long. Gabriel struck speechless, Raphael in tatters, and himself—what had he done for them? Other than carry out the edicts of a creator who treated his creation as no better than toys, to be discarded when He was bored of them?

He feels tears bead at the corners of his eyes, and overflow. To his astonishment, they do not fall onto his hands. He draws back in surprise.

The tears hang suspended in the air before him, crystalline. Gently revolving, they slowly coalesce, and descend toward the pool. When at last they meet the surface of the water, they merge without a single ripple marring the glassy shine.

Raphael watches, impassive. “Our pain is not weakness, Michael. This grief... it took some time, but I did eventually come to understand. Why I awoke here, that is. You met Gabriel at the Styx? Fitting. Judgement always was her burden to bear. But this... this is mine. The Kokytos is fed by the tears of mourners.” Their voice rings hollow, but there is an underpinning of tenderness there, Michael thinks. Something patient. Something compassionate. “My own contribution was long overdue.”

“How do you know where I came from? And why the rivers at all?”

“My stubborn, immovable brother.” Raphael’s smile is weary, but fond, even in their grief. “This place is his to command, he who sent you here, beyond mortality as it is. Knowledge flows through it. You need only listen for it.”

Michael scrubs hands across his eyes, and takes slow, steadying breaths. “Raphael. You don't belong here, not like this. Please. Move on from this place with me. We can do it together.”

Their eyes crinkle at the corners. Gently, they extend a hand down to break the surface of the pool. “No, Michael. In that, you are mistaken. It has been too long since I allowed myself to sit with my pain, and learn what it has to teach me. Give me time. I’ll catch up with you.” They draw the hand to their face. Trace their fingers over their lips. The tip of their tongue flicks out, catching at the water that beads there. “If I am to heal, first I must let myself mourn. Don’t worry too much about me. I know how far the river of lamentation runs; I will not drink so deeply of this well that I drown.”

The thought of leaving Raphael behind fills him with dread, but he nods. Stands. They reach up to him, trace a hand over his wrist as he pulls away.

“I wish I could have done more for you, too,” they murmur. “But you aren’t Him, Michael. Please remember that. You’re nothing like Him. I wish I could have helped you to see that more clearly.”

Michael resists the urge to look back into the pool, to see his reflection there. “I don’t know what I am. But I’ll keep searching until I do know.”

“That’s all I could hope for. See you soon.”

He feels the edges of his countenance shift and blur again. When he exits the room, his companion is waiting.

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

(Chapter notes:

- The city in which Michael finds Raphael is inspired by the ghost city of Kayaköy, currently part of Turkey; by its former inhabitants, it was referred to in modern Greek as Levissi. Between World War I and the Greco-Turkish war, its entire population was either forcibly exiled or killed. Despite the horror of that recent history, until that point it had been a relatively peaceful place, its mixed Muslim and Orthodox Christian populations living together harmoniously. It is now officially under the protection of historical conservation, and there have been some attempts at restoration. I think Raphael would consider such a place deeply meaningful, and be able to find healing in the possibility of moving on even in the wake of such tragedy.)

#hugs for raphael <3 #spnarchangelweek #day 2 raphael #michael spn #gabriel spn #raphael spn #lucifer spn #my fanfic #spn #supernatural

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gettin-a-lil-hanse · 3 years

Text

You Found Me - Chapter 3

Read it on AO3

Pairing: No pairing (but SeongJoong is involved)

Genre: Slight Fluff, Angst

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 2k+

Summary: Wooyoung opens up about his past.

Tags: Kitty Hybrid! Wooyoung, Found Hybrid, Abandonment, Caring For a Kitten

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of abuse, mentions of death, mentions of scars (not related to self-harm), unhealthy coping mechanisms, alcoholism, mentions of homophobia, mentions of prostitution, mentions of sex trafficking (?)

A/N: This chapter will be much heavier than the last two, and I want you all to please read the trigger warnings, and please read with caution. Take care, take time if you need to.

The trip to the vet went as smoothly as any normal vet appointment is expected to go. (Vet? Doctor? Hongjoong really wasn’t sure what to call it.) Wooyoung was not very fond of the intimidating-looking doctors and acted accordingly. Honestly, Hongjoong was a bit surprised, seeing as the hybrid had taken a liking to the couple fairly quickly, but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind.

Hongjoong stayed by Wooyoung’s side throughout the duration of the visit, providing him with the necessary level of comfort needed to get through the appointment. In the end, the vet deemed him healthy aside from slight malnourishment and some bruising. The vet also told the couple that hybrids coming in with scars like his were a pretty common occurrence as of late and that it was a clear sign of abuse, but Wooyoung tuned out of the conversation at that point.

From there, the three of them took a drive to the mall. Hongjoong insisted that they build the hybrid a brand new wardrobe consisted of the highest fashion, though Wooyoung tried to convince him that comfortable clothes are all that he needed. Seonghwa could only laugh, knowing deep down that he too was excited to finally get to dress someone that would (probably) cooperate and let him. Hongjoong’s and Seonghwa’s styles clashed quite a bit, so it was rare that they got to dress each other up.

Wooyoung quickly found out that he hated the mall. There were too many stores, too many displays, too many people. Everything was too much. The stores had bright, colorful signs, many of them flashing which was extremely distracting. Honestly, how was someone supposed to get through their shopping with everything like this? But that wasn’t even the worst thing. No, the worst thing was the staring. It seemed like, from the moment the three of them walked through the automatic glass doors, all eyes were on them. Wooyoung couldn’t tell if the eyes were on him or the couple, since they were so unabashedly affectionate with each other. Even Wooyoung knew that this side of town was known for being full of stuck-up, high-class rich people. As a matter of fact, all of the stores in the mall, as far as he could tell, were high-end and expensive-looking.

“Hey, Hongjoong? I thought that we were just getting clothes for me to wear around the apartment?”

“Sweetheart, we’re buying you clothes. It doesn’t really matter where you wear them.”

Hongjoong chuckled and pulled the hybrid into his side, making for a very awkward walking position which only drew more attention to them. Wooyoung leaned in close to whisper into his ear, eyebrows furrowing and creating crease lines on his forehead,

“People are staring…”

“People always stare.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“More like I’ve learned not to care. Those people don’t deserve my energy, let alone my emotions. It’s not easy, of course, but it’s better this way.”

Hongjoong turned to face the hybrid still tucked under his arm and for a moment—though it felt as if they moved in slow motion—Wooyoung forgot how to breathe. Wooyoung swore that Hongjoong poured glitter in his eyes. How else would they sparkle so much?

“Don’t let unworthy people take up your time and energy.”

“You know,” Seonghwa started, snapping Wooyoung out of the trance he didn’t realize that he was in, “Hongjoong taught me a lot. It’s cheesy, but he really did make me a better person, and he still does to this day.”

Hongjoong let out a soft laugh, loosening his grip on the hybrid’s shoulder to move his hand to his back.

“I have that effect on people, apparently.”

------

The shopping trip came and went without too much fuss—seeing as the hybrid wanted no more attention on him than there was already—and the boys filed into the apartment with armfuls of bags. Hongjoong, ever the chatterbox, kept the mood up and kept the conversation going. Hongjoong loved his days off and was in a very good mood. Now that they had an addition to the household—temporary as it may be—he cherished his time at home even more. So when he got a call from work saying that he needed to come in for an emergency meeting, he was visibly upset. The only bright side, he figured, was that Seonghwa and Wooyoung would be forced to spend some alone time together. He hoped that they would be a little less awkward by the time he got back home.

Seonghwa and Wooyoung sat in the guest room that they spent the afternoon cleaning and removing tags from, folding, or hanging up Wooyoung’s new clothes. There was a thick silence between them until Seonghwa decided that now was as good a time as any to try to get to know him.

“So, tell me about yourself.”

Wooyoung’s ears flicked as he looked up, a bit caught off-guard by the blunt statement.

“Well… what do you wanna know?”

Seonghwa shrugged with a slight smile playing on his lips, eyes cast down on the shirt he was so neatly folding.

“I mean, the more we know about you, the better.”

Wooyoung finished wrapping a jacket around the hanger and stood with a soft sigh, hanging the item up in the closet.

“Where do I even begin… As you probably already know, hybrids are created in labs by scientists and then sold to various facilities. From those facilities, we’re sold to buyers and I was sold to a nice young woman. She was my owner, but she hated addressing the relationship as such. She really cared for me and when she fell sick, I did the same for her. It got to the point where I spent every waking minute caring for her, but I didn’t think anything of it because she started to get better. So when she passed I was absolutely devastated.”

Seonghwa saw the shift in his face, grabbing his hand gently and pulling him to sit before he got too lost in his memory and broke down on the floor. To his surprise, the tears gathered but never fell, so he stayed quiet, allowing Wooyoung to continue.

“After she passed, I, along with her other possessions, was auctioned off to the highest bidder. The bidder that I was auctioned off to was an assistant for a man who ran a “hybrid home” which, news flash, was nothing like a home. It would be more accurate to call it a hybrid whore house.”

Seonghwa’s jaw clenched, taking in a breath through his nose. He shouldn’t be so angry since Wooyoung was alive and well now, he thought, but something akin to rage began to bubble up in the pit of his stomach.

“To say that my life there was miserable is an understatement. We barely got an opportunity to look after our hygiene, they kept our schedules packed with clients, and when we weren’t busy with either of those things, we were probably being scolded for something. Nothing was ever good enough for The Master. Someone was always doing something wrong in his eyes and he made sure that we paid for it. That’s how I got to be so… beat up. I don’t know if you saw them, but I know for a fact that Hongjoong saw them when he bathed me…”

Wooyoung toyed with the hem of his shirt before lifting it up, revealing the fading bruises and various-sized scars lining his back and torso. Seonghwa’s eyes racked his body, tears of anger welling up in his eyes at the sight. But, again, he kept his feelings down.

“I… We have something to put on those scars that will help them heal. That is if you would like…”

His voice was unsteady and Wooyoung chanced a glance over at him. He could see him holding back, could see it in his eyes.

"You don't have to feel bad for me. I'm okay, see?"

"It's... It's not that, I just... I just wanna protect you at all costs even more now." Seonghwa let out a wet laugh, taking a deep breath to keep tears back. "You know, Hongjoong really is a healer of sorts. He saved me too. Although my conditions were nowhere near as bad as yours..."

Wooyoung's tail flickered in interest.

"Saved you how?"

"He saved me from myself. Before we started dating — no, before we met — I was in a bad place. My family, god I haven't spoken to him in years... They never accepted me for being bisexual, so they kicked me out of the house. I stayed with my girlfriend at the time while I tried to find my way."

Seonghwa stood, walking to his bedside drawer to grab ointment to coat his bruises.

"Why do you just have that by your bed—"

"Don't worry about that. Anyway, I was staying with my girlfriend and she wasn't... the best, you know? She made me feel lesser than I am, she treated me like shit, to say the least. I loved her nonetheless and took it all. I couldn't get myself to leave her, but it became unbearable to be at home. So I started hanging out elsewhere."

Seonghwa helped Wooyoung remove his shirt while he talked and began carefully tending to each individual bruise.

"Bars became my favorite place to hang out. I would stay out late drinking to the point where I almost lost control. It just overall wasn't a good time in my life. I wasn't happy; every day, simply existing felt more and more like a chore. That is probably the lowest I have ever felt in my life and I didn't think that there would be any coming up from there. I was drowning in bad thoughts."

Wooyoung could feel the emotion bubbling up in Seonghwa, could feel the pain.

"Hongjoong literally came like a light in my life and helped me get out of that dark place. I started to see him at the bar more often." Seonghwa smiled fondly to himself, hands moving gently over his skin. "He would come just to check up on me and talk to me. He kept me company, made sure I drank some water, made sure I got home okay. Then we started to hang out outside of my dark hours in the bar, and it got to the point where I didn't even need the bar anymore. Or alcohol anymore—not as much, anyway.

“Hongjoong was the one who helped me gain the courage to break up with my girlfriend. He helped pick up the broken pieces and he's kept me together ever since. So yes, he saved me. I appreciate him much more than I could ever say but don't tell him that. His ego is big enough as it is."

"Do you think you were meant to meet him?"

"Of course I do. If someone is up there watching over me, they definitely sent him to me."

Wooyoung nodded, thinking to himself for a moment.

"Hongjoong adores hybrids, you know? For the longest time, he's said that he wanted to adopt one, but I think that he is absolutely enamored by you. If you stay with us, you'll be taken care of, treated well. If not, he's gonna do everything in his power to get you somewhere where he knows that you'll be safe. He has a good heart, and I think he was meant to find you too."

"It's just... After all I've been through, it's a lot to think about, you know? I don't know if I can put myself in a position to trust someone like that again."

Seonghwa hummed and nodded in understanding, pulling away once he was finished to look up at him.

“I know it’s hard to trust anyone after so many people treated you wrong and let you down. I’m sorry that you had those experiences, but I believe that you will be able to open your heart again. Some day. You’re strong, you’ve already come so far.”

Seonghwa ended with a kind smile and moved to pass back the shirt he was wearing before pausing.

“Ah, would you like to put on your new pajamas? They’re much softer than these old things.”

Wooyoung thought for a moment before shaking his head and taking the shirt back from Seonghwa gently.

“I’ll… put those on later. After my shower? Before bed? I’m comfy in these now…”

Seonghwa didn’t push it and just smiled.

#8makes1teamnet #atzinc #kdiarynet #kwritersworldnet #chye’s writing #ateez #ateez fluff #ateez angst #ateez fics #seongjoong fics #seongjoong angst #wooyoung fluff #wooyoung angst

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Note

Would you be willing to give us a little peek/drabble about when they brought Chris to the safehouse?

CW: Referenced noncon, collar, referenced restraints/leftover restraint marks, traumatized whumpee, drugged whumpee, referenced whump of a minor

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxckfxck, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout, @doveotions

The boy stands in the driveway perfectly silent and still, a heavy woven blanket draped over his head and shoulders his only protection from the winter rain pouring down in sheets that nearly eclipse from view the houses just across the street. The blanket long since soaked through, and rain beads up on the boy’s face and runs down in tiny rivers to drip off his jaw and soak into his thin pajama shirt and pants.

Wide green eyes barely even blink when rainwater drips into them, nearly-invisible coppery eyelashes barely flutter to chase the rainwater back out. He’s a perfect statue in the driveway, with a thin face that comes to a narrowly pointed chin, prominent cheekbones, and sopping wet strawberry blond hair sticking in the color of an old penny to his forehead. Thin wrists are marked with red welts, his knuckles are white where he grips the blanket.

He’s wearing a thin t-shirt and pajama pants - the pants are more like yoga pants, nearly skintight, and the shirt is Vince’s, just something he had in his trunk when Meghan all but shoved the shirtless boy at him and then fled in her car.

Vince could barely tell what color his eyes even were at first, his pupils were so dilated and wide from whatever was in his system, but that seems to be fading, now. His disturbing perfect stillness hasn’t though. He was silent through the car ride here. He is silent now, staring up nearly sightlessly at the only house in the neighborhood with its lights on.

Nat stands on the porch in her housecoat and nightdress, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, looking both older and younger than she really is in equal measure. “Who’ve you brought me, Vince?” Her voice is pitched low - probably even the old woman next door wouldn’t be woken up by this.

The boy in the driveway looks up towards her without focus, and he’s trembling, full-body shivers that stop as soon as Vince puts a hand to his back. If he didn’t know them as well as he does, he might have thought it was because his touch was comforting.

But Vince knows what he feels is a prey animal going perfectly still to try and appease what he sees as a circle of predators. A baby fawn hoping its spots will hide it in a hollow along a forest floor dappled with sunlight. There’s no camouflage here, and the boy stands out in ways that can’t be hidden.

“He’s still got it on,” The tall, muscular man - Jake, Nat’s assistant who still doesn’t like him ever since that whole mistake he’d made with trying to meet Kauri - says tightly.

Vince swallows and nods. “There’s a padlock on the back. I can’t get it off myself.”

The boy shrinks slightly into himself, as though he could hide the wide stripe of soft, supple black leather wrapped around his neck. It’s as soaked as the rest of him and has to be irritating the thin skin on his neck by now, but he doesn’t make a sound.

“Well, bring him in then,” Nat snaps, pulling her housecoat closer. Her Midwestern accent is thicker with something that sounds like irritation, but Vince knows her well enough to know by now is just another sign of her worry. “Won’t be the first collar I’ve cut off of someone. Let’s get him into a warm bath and settled in Antoni’s room, there’s an extra bed in there. What was his designation?”

“I don’t know, but considering all Meghan would tell me was she found him in a basement and he, and I quote, 'was wearing less clothing than I put on my dog’, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Romantic,” Vince says, voice flat.

There’s a silence, as the three adults take in the teenager who never looks directly at any of them.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” That’s Jake. “What an absolute piece of goddamn shit, you-... that can’t be right.”

“Look at him.”

“I’m going to be fucking sick. You have to be fucking kidding me-”

“Bath first,” Nat says firmly, cutting him off. “Bath first, new clothes, cut the collar off. We’ll figure everything else out after that.” Vince has to push him a little to get him moving, but the boy stumbles forward and grips the blanket a little more tightly around himself. He’s never seen someone move so little - you could hardly tell he’s even breathing.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Nat says softly, with genuine warmth, once the boy is out of the rain. He doesn’t look at her, but at something just beyond her left shoulder. “Can you tell me your name?”

His eyes drift in her direction, alight very briefly on her face and then drift again. “My... name is Baldur,” He says, slowly. It’s the first time Vince has heard his voice. It’s soft and sweet, pitched low the way they’re trained to. If he couldn’t feel how tense the boy was, he might have seemed soothed by her. He’s trained to seem soothed.

“Can you tell me your designation?”

“WRU, Facility 001, Romantic 223499,” The boy answers without hesitation, and it’s clear that his number means more to him than even the name he’s been given since. His words are faster but still emotionless, rote memorization rolling off his tongue with perfect ease. “I am a Romantic companion and I am an active participant in fullfilling-”

“That’s enough,” Jake says roughly, face pale in the yellow light from the porch. The boy flinches and his mouth snaps shut. “I don’t want to hear this. This is fucking sick. Fucking sick, Nat. He’s a fucking kid. There’s no way he’s eighteen.”

Tentatively, the boy tries again. His eyes don’t drift past Jake, but lock on his face and read some kind of authority there that he immediately focuses on, tilting his head, giving a practiced, empty little smile that never reaches his eyes. “I am eighteen. WRU ensures that all Box Boys are of legal and consenting age at time of voluntary acquisition.”

“Jesus fuck,” Jake mutters. “They fed you perfect bullshit, you know that, right?”

The boy swallows, and his eyes carefully lose focus again. For the first time, Vince realizes he’s doing it on purpose. Refusing to look directly at any of them is self-protective.

“Stop it, Jake,” Nat says, gently. “You won’t get through to him like that.”

“Nat-”

“You’re not going to help him by getting him confused already. Just let him settle, first. He has to trust us before he can start to crack it.”

Jake goes silent, his blue eyes are storm clouds, but gradually he nods and glares off to the side.

“I can’t stay,” Vince says, a little regretfully. “I’ve got a nine a.m. meeting with a couple people on a thing I want to produce and it’s going to take most of that time to get back and get myself presentable. Shit, I’m going to be a mess tomorrow.”

“You’re fine, Vince. Thank you for thinking of me.” Nat smiles at him, gives a squeeze to Vince’s shoulder, unbothered by how sopping wet he is, too.

“You’re the safest place for Romantics there is, Nat.”

“I try. I’ll call you tomorrow night, or when we know more. Thanks again.”

“Anytime, Nat. Absolute least I can do.”

Vince turns, then, moving back through the rain to get into his car. The last he sees of the new little rescue, for weeks, is that moment of the boy slipping the blanket slowly off his head as he is led inside the house, shrinking away from Nat and Jake in fear but following their suggestions as though they are orders just the same.

The padlock on the back of his neck catches the light from the porch, just briefly, and Vince closes his eyes against a wash of nausea and an old, old fear he’s spent years trying to shake off.

Then he backs out of the driveway, lights carefully off to avoid drawing attention until he reaches the end of the block.

He doesn’t notice the curtains twitch slightly in another home as the old woman next door lets them fall back into place.

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consumedkings-archive · 3 years

Text

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic.

chapter five: dark vibrations

word count: 11.4k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: body horror, hallucinations (?), mentions of self-harm, mentions of suicide. spooky scary activities ensue. elliot has an increasingly difficult time keeping a grasp on reality. we knew this was gonna happen, though!

notes: howdy! i hope y’all enjoy this. sometimes i go weeks without updating and sometimes i wait like, 4 days before manically writing an entire chapter. you know how it be like that sometimes. i was feeling a bit more inspired and felt like i finally hit a groove on where this story was going, which i think definitely helped, and i hope you all enjoy it!

thank you, as always, to everyone who reads, likes/comments, even if you just come into my dms with two nice words or write something nice in your tags; it really does make my whole night to see even one person enjoying anything i’ve made. <3

Cold morning light filtered in through the window, drenched in wedding-silk grays thanks to the wintery cloud-cover. Everything in the room looked to be placed with absolute intent and care; polished, porcelain-white decor in elaborate geometrics, gold accents, a king-sized bed with impeccably pressed sheets. Truthfully, John had thought for certain he’d come back into the house to be informed by Elliot’s statuesque mother that, in fact, she had rescinded her offer to let him stay and actually, he would need to depart immediately, lest the authorities be called.

He was glad that it hadn’t come to that, of course, because it would’ve been such a shame to have to dampen Scarlet’s opinion of her own daughter so quickly into their meeting.

Dropping his small bag of belongings—the manila folder packed full of information, including his own scribbled notes; the burner phone; a few quickly-packed clothes that had been meticulously cycled to avoid the most long-term wear—John paused as the heat in the house kicked on with a delicate whirr.

Everything in Scarlet Honeysett’s home seemed to be precisely the shape and color that she liked, with not a single thing out of place; and yet, as the heat kicked on, he was certain that he could hear the sound of sharp, hushed voices downstairs, a little ripple in the woman’s perfect, arcadian home scene.

It was good. It felt good, to be here. To have gotten the upper hand. So much of the past weeks he’d spent with Elliot had felt like he was slowly, violently spiraling out of control, but this? She was here, and she had to play by his rules for once, and—

And he’d wanted just one more second alone, with her. To watch the way her eyes flickered over his face, to drink in the way her chin tilted up in defiance but not unlike the way she used to do it when she was waiting for him to kiss her, the same lovely high-color in her spreading along her cheekbones and the same little spark in her gaze. Whether it was anger or allure was neither here nor there, anymore; with Elliot, they were interchangeable, a stepping stone one way or another, just the way it had always been with them.

Because John liked her anger. He liked her wrath. He wanted to put his hands on it, his mouth on it, break it into pieces and wring it out of her and put it back and do it all over again, while she said his name, his name, and not anyone else’s. God, she’d been so fucking close—so close, and he couldn have just had her if he really wanted to, grabbed a fistful of her hair and kissed her when the sting of her slap was still fresh on his face. She liked when he did that; kissed her, like he was starved for her. Because he was starved for her, and then she could knot her fingers into his shirt or dig her nails into his skin or whatever it was she wanted to make him desperate.

The sound of excited barking downstairs broke him out of his thoughts. John blinked, taking one last swift look-over of the immaculate room his mother-in-law had decided to put him up in before he nudged his bag beneath the bed and stepped out into the hallway.

To say old money would be almost an understatement. Surely, this house had to have some kind of historical significance; it was several stories, with one of those grand staircases that was wide going up, hit a landing, and then split to either side of the house. As he made his way down, he caught sight of the flicker of Scarlet’s silk robe in the kitchen; music drifted out of it, the same kind of hazy, older music that Elliot had turned on in her mother’s house back in Hope County.

“Stop moving,” Elliot was saying to Boomer, strapping him into a little reflective vest that sat on him like a saddle blanket. For a second, she didn’t notice his presence—or willfully ignored it; he couldn’t say for sure one way or another—and instead focused on the Heeler, rubbing his ears and kissing the bridge of his nose. A tiny little smile ticked the corners of her mouth, and he thought he heard her say, so handsome, best boy, yes you are.

Boomer’s attention snapped to John, now at the foot of the stairs. He let out one sharp, accusatory bark (could dogs sound accusatory, John wondered, or was that just Elliot getting to him?), and what little of his hackles were visible from out under the vest spiked up instantly.

“Good to see you too, beastie,” John greeted him, trying to ignore the way the hound’s low-pitched, reverberating growls made his skin crawl. Flashes of Boomer’s numerous and vicious takedowns of not only Eden’s Gate members but at least one member of the Family that had the misfortune of having chained the dog up darted across his memory, like a flipping through a photo album.

“Don’t talk to him,” Elliot snipped, cupping Boomer’s ears protectively. “I don’t need him getting the idea we’re friendly.”

John rolled his eyes. “More than friendly, I’d say.” His eyes darted over her, drinking in once against the shock of her appearance—red hair, so fucking red that every time he looked at her it was almost like staring at a stranger until he took in the rest, the freckles smattering her nose and the flush in her cheeks, cupid’s-bow lips that were glossed. Had he ever seen Elliot with more than river-soaked mascara on before?

The woman shot him a look, dry and unamused, coming to a stand. He asked, “Going for a walk?”

“Trying to,” she replied tartly, “but someone is evil enough that Boomer doesn’t trust them.”

“We’re pals,” John offered pleasantly. “Me and the beast. You know, were, anyway. He probably just needs to spend a little time with me.”

“Speaking from personal experience, more time makes you less palatable.”

“Let me come on the walk with you,” he tried again, letting her little barbs and jabs roll right off of him, water skating off of his feathers. At this point, he really quite enjoyed her venom; it was familiar. “I’m sure we’ve got plenty to catch up on.”

Elliot eyed him warily, eyes giving him a scathing once-over—eerily reminiscent of her mother’s own disdainful look, and now he thought, ah, yeah, that is where she gets it from, then—as her mouth twisted around whatever it was she wanted to say but wouldn’t let herself. Something too vicious for Scarlet to overhear, perhaps. The threats she’d made in the past had been wildly colorful, but each second that Ell spent considering her words more carefully rather than saying whatever it was she felt with her eyes darting to the kitchen was another second that John became more aware of how little Scarlet actually knew.

“Fine,” Elliot said at last, her eyes narrowing. “I suppose that we do. Mama, we’re leavin’.”

The little quirk of an accent at the end of her sentence made him swallow back a laugh. He’d barely heard that Georgia accent back in Hope County, but maybe spending time with her mother had reinspired it.

“Alright,” Scarlet said, drying her hands on a towel as she stood in the doorway. Her eyes glanced between them, inquisitive for a moment, before she said, “Be quick. Doctor’s appointment in an hour and a half.”

John tilted his head. “Oh? Baby check-in?”

“Can’t imagine what else it would be, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet idled. “Are you familiar with the process of pregnancy?”

“Not beyond the knowledge of a man, I’m afraid.”

“Well, allow me to educate you,” the blonde said, her voice light. “When a woman is carrying a baby, she has to make frequent visits to the doctor, to ensure that all is well. Can’t have anything going wrong with the baby, you know.”

John steadied the intake of breath so that it did not sound so abrupt. He would have done a double-take and thought perhaps she was just overbearing, and not attempting to insult him, were Elliot not smiling. Certainly, only her mother’s attempted insult of him could elicit such an expression out of her.

“Then my arrival was fortunately timed,” he announced. “I look forward to it.”

“And you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Elliot cut in, her humor fading. “You won’t be coming.”

Ah, yes. That’s why I don’t love her attitude. “That’s absurd,” he replied, incredulous. “It’s nearly six weeks, and I haven’t seen a single ultrasound of our baby.”

He was careful, this time, to keep it to our baby. He’d seen the way Elliot’s expression tightened when he’d said my baby, even though that’s what came so naturally to him now, being that they were hardly on the same team—but he’d seen it, that look in her eye, the way she’d squared her shoulders like she’d suddenly been ready to go at him.

Only one thing to do with a rabid dog, Jacob had said, not two days before they found Elliot drenched in another man’s blood in the woods.

John half-expected Scarlet to jump in, to say that it was the father’s right to be there; she was more traditional than Elliot, if her comment about wedlock or her insistence of him staying were anything to go by, but when he turned his gaze to her, the older woman’s expression was devoid of any sympathy. Typical of Honeysett women, he was coming to find.

“If she doesn’t want you there, then you won’t be there. I won’t have my daughter stressed out,” Scarlet told him. “Stress is bad for the baby. Surely that falls within the realm of what a man knows about babies, Mr. Seed?”

He pressed his mouth into a thin line. “Surely.”

“Good. Hour and a half, my beloved, do not be late.”

That a woman had become so capable of tacking the softness of my beloved onto something that verged on a threat was nearly beyond John—would have been, certainly, were he not accustomed to Isolde’s particular brand of venom that was not so unlike Scarlet Honeysett’s.

“I won’t,” Elliot promised. “Can you call the handyman? My TV’s been acting up lately. Turning on static and whatnot.”

“Fine,” Scarlet replied, waving her hand. “I’ll have them come out this afternoon.”

Elliot turned on her heel and opened the front door out into the frigid morning, letting Boomer dart out ahead of her and not waiting for him in the least. He fell into step beside her easily, shrugging into his coat halfway out the door as it clicked shut behind him; she trudged through the snow, passing the garbage can and opening the gate that led out into what had once been pastureland and towards the woods.

It was the same fence that she’d been standing at, early that morning, face lax and serene. If the return to the fence bothered her at all, it didn’t show on her face any more than her irritation at having him there.

“Your mother’s quite...” John’s voice trailed off. “Tall.”

“Mm.”

“Statuesque, even.”

“Mmhm.”

“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me that much.”

“Yes,” Elliot acquiesced, her tone dripping with something close to venomous amusement, “I’ve never seen her take so poorly to someone so quickly before.”

“I suppose I should be flattered.”

“You would be.”

A fourth of the way into the snowy pasture and Boomer was far ahead of them, leaping like a little speckled gazelle in drifts of snow. It was easy to forget that the dog had been ready to rip him to shreds just a little under an hour ago (and once more, more recently). Still, as they trudged through a path that it seemed Elliot had worn through a few times before, John let out a little puff of breath and glanced over at her.

For just one second, she wasn’t spitting any venom at him, but rather seemed to favor the act of pretending like he wasn’t there, which was a bit worse than having her fix her fury on him. Her gaze was focused forward, following Boomer’s little lines in the snow. Attention at all was one thing, but acting as though he didn’t exist?

John said, “So, Burke just got his autopsy reports back and dropped you off right here at home, huh?”

Elliot’s face had already gone pink from the cold, right on her nose and spreading through her cheeks. At his words, a new flush of color rose, a shade more vicious than the last, and her gaze slid to him. If looks could kill, he thought, that dreamy little spike of delight at her eyes on him going straight to his head. Look at you, my little Wrath. You’ve got the good girl mask on, but I know what your true face is.

He’d seen it. Kissed her when the blood was still in her mouth. Let her feed the monster inside of her when she told him to beg, when she dug her nails into his skin, when her breath hitched in her chest from the pressure of his knife blade against her sternum—not in pain, necessarily, but delight at that pain.

The scar had to still be there, of course. The reminder of its existence, swathed in the heavy winter fabrics she wore now, made his fingers itch. If he could just get his hands on her—get his mouth on her, if she would just stop being so obtuse—but he didn’t think he’d be so fond of her if she wasn’t.

“The same way the government probably drove you and your siblings back to the compound and dropped you off,” she replied at last, her voice tight, “isn’t that right?”

John flashed his teeth at her in a grin. “Very astute, hellcat.”

Her expression tightened at the moniker. She sucked her teeth, fixing her eyes forward again, shifting back into the strategy of being withholding of her attention rather than entertain him.

“Oh, come on,” he said, swinging around in front of her and stopping her single-minded journey across the pastureland. “You can’t say you didn’t miss me even a little bit, Ell.”

“I told you,” she replied tartly, “not to call me that.”

“Because it reminds you of what it was like when we’re together,” he agreed.

An exasperated noise came out of her. “Did you forget that I lied to you?”

“At the end, sure,” John said, eyes flickering over her face. “But I don’t think you’re so good a liar you could lie about all of the times you said please, or the way that you said my name, or—and I think you’ll recall I’ve insisted on this bit from the beginning—the undeniable connection that we’ve had since we met.”

“You are a fucking lunatic,” Elliot snapped, her face flushing red. “And don’t fucking talk about me like I’m—like I wasn’t there, I know what I—” She sucked in a sharp breath; lower, and more threatening, “I’m aware of what I said. Of what I did.”

“And you’re going to tell me that it was all fake?” he prompted, unwilling to let go of this little thread. Gripping, sliding through his fingers, but he wouldn’t be so quick to let it escape him now that he didn’t have to think about her mother pitching in an unwanted opinion. “That you lied the whole time and you don’t feel anything for me, that—”

“Of course it wasn’t fake,” she bit out. Her voice had gone venomous, sharp, unbridled in its timbre. “I’m not a fucking psychopath, John, I can’t fake loving someone like you can.”

John opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. He hadn’t been expecting that. Sure, there was a part of him that was sure Elliot had her doubts about his intentions, otherwise she wouldn’t have fucked off to the middle of nowhere (nor turned them in), but—still?

“You think I—” He paused again, blinking. “You’re not that stupid.”

Her eyes narrowed. Everything about her stiffened, quite suddenly, like maybe she was bracing to take another swing at him. “You are fucking begging for a punch to the face.”

“I mean,” John began quickly, waving his hands a little, “that you surely don’t think that whole time I was just—”

Elliot made a disgusted sound and brushed past him, letting out a high whistle; the sound immediately drew a flurry of activity as a flock of birds when bursting from the treeline, followed closely behind by Boomer’s gray-and-black speckled form. John fell back into step with her, huffing out a breath of air. He was going to table that discussion for later—she was clearly still upset, still a little sore and tender from their departure, and that was fine. There were a lot of things at play concerning his wife’s mood, including but not limited to being pregnant.

So she did, he thought, glancing at her through the corner of his eyes. Love me. Back then, and maybe now, still.

“How have you been sleeping?” is what he said instead, when the moment had spread between them long enough for him to think that he was safe to speak again with incurring her wrath once more. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Fine,” she replied, her voice tight.

“Yeah?” he asked, keeping his tone conversational. Elliot blinked once, slow, clearly trying to temper herself. “I just remember what a restless sleeper you were, back home.”

He wanted to say, I saw you at three AM, twice, staring out your window and then walking out into the snow barefoot. I saw you sleepwalking, I know you aren’t sleeping well.

He wanted to say that, and he couldn’t, because if Elliot knew he’d been tailing her for a while she’d go berserk—pull the plug, self-destruct, take whatever loss she had to in order to fucking end him.

“I’m sleeping fine,” the redhead reiterated. For a second, she looked like she wanted to say something; her eyes flickered uneasily, like something was bothering her and she hadn’t been able to say it to anyone but maybe she wanted to, and maybe she could say it to him, but something in the treeline drew her attention away. They were about ten yards away, now, the low breeze skimming pine needles against each other as Boomer barked conversationally at the birds that had so rudely taken flight.

Elliot’s molars clicked, grinding together. Her lashes fluttered, and she sucked in a sharp little breath through her nose.

“Elliot?” John glanced at the trees, but that was all he saw—tall, dark pines, bunching together erratically through years of growth spurts and inevitable fellings. He turned his gaze back to his wife, gaze inquisitive. “What?”

“Don’t you—?” She stopped herself, and sucked in another sharp breath, and now John felt the concern spike sharp and hot in him, because when he reached up she didn’t even seem to register his movement; Elliot, the same woman who had snatched his wrist and threatened to snap it in half for having the audacity to ‘sneak up on her’ when he’d been in the middle of talking to her, completely transfixed on something that he couldn’t see.

“Elliot.” He tried something firmer this time, his hand coming up to sweep the strands of her hair away from her shoulder and neck. The gesture finally startled her out of wherever it was she had gone, yanked her back to reality.

Her shoulder bunched up to her jaw in an effort to deter his hand, swatting at him absently with her hand. “Don’t touch me.”

“Are you going to tell me where you were just now?” John asked, tilting his head inquisitively.

“I was here. Just thought I saw something in the trees,” she replied tightly, turning away from the treeline and clearing her throat. “Just birds.”

Just birds, she said, even though the birds had already taken off and the forest was otherwise still and serene. Behind her, Boomer whined before beginning to follow her back towards the house. Elliot moved with a newfound purpose, one that she had been distinctly lacking before.

His mouth pressed into a thin line. John turned his attention back to the trees, searching for anything—any tangle of branches of play of shadows that might read sinister or threatening.

Only the trees and their shadowy pines. He thought about that night he’d fished Elliot out of the Family’s grip, when she’d been so fucking drugged up to her gills that she’d balked at the sight of the treeline on their way out. I don’t think I can, she’d said then, her voice pitching high with the anxious vibrations of panic. John, I don’t think I can—

“John,” Elliot snapped from ahead of him, “are you coming, or are you just gonna stand there all fucking afternoon?”

He thought about the way Ase had grabbed her hand, blood and viscera coating Elliot like she’d become a tried-and-true Scream Queen. If he searched long enough, if he sat in the memory long enough—did Ase’s mouth open? Had she said something to Elliot? What had she said?

“John,” came the grinding demand, again, less patient than before. “As much as I would love to leave you to freeze to death for insinuating I’m stupid, mama would hate to have to deal with a corpse on her property and I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I missed our banter,” he replied, though the jest did not quite land the same way that it would have were he not so deep in his own thoughts. By the time he’d started walking in her direction, his back to the forest, something uneasy had settled just under his skin; the feeling of being watched, eyes on the back of his neck, anticipation prickling along like his spine.

The house loomed, polished and pristine, on the horizon; as they picked their way across the snowy field, Elliot puffing out breaths occasionally from the labor of it all, John tried to shake that pervasive feeling of dread that had settled over him.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Weyfield was just Weyfield, a small town not unlike Hope County, and maybe he was just jumpy from the way the Family had conducted their business, and maybe it was the same for Elliot, who had certainly been put through a different experience than he—but regardless:

The sooner they got out, the better.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Shouldn’t have agreed to let him drive me here.

“Have you been getting enough sleep?”

It was stupid. Stupid, I should have put my foot down, told him to fucking stay at the house and wait for me to come back.

“Elliot?”

She blinked, vision fuzzing and refocusing around the sterile white of the doctor’s office. Her abdomen was sticky, and the ultrasound machine had been turned off along with her shirt tugged back down. Like usual, Dr. Harding did not say anything about the gossamer-webbing of scars, but did pause upon first seeing them, as though she hadn’t seen them times before.

“Sorry?” Elliot said, the apology quirking up at the end in question. She sat up from the bed, the paper crinkling beneath her as she moved.

“I asked,” Harding reiterated, “have you been getting enough sleep?”

Elliot knew the answer. She felt the exhaustion souring in her mouth already, the way something spoiled when it went too long without attention. A sickness. She should say that she hadn’t been sleeping well at all, that she’d begun sleepwalking, that

(seeing things, I’m seeing things when I close my eyes and when I look in the dark treeline, I see faces, heads, people I don’t know but they feel familiar and their faces drop down in between the branches of trees on invisible silk threads and their terrible dark mouths open but they can’t scream)

she’d been feeling out of sorts, as of late. That seemed like a nice way to put it.

The dark images that had fluttered between the trees on her walk earlier that morning with John felt as real as any memory—and that wasn’t to say that her memories always felt real, because they didn’t. But the validity of this morning’s waking nightmare of floating heads drifting between tree-trunks, swinging loosely while John asked her how she’d been sleeping.

“Fine,” Elliot said after a moment, feeling a fresh wave of nausea come over her. “I think, um, maybe the stress about the baby is keeping me up at night.”

Harding regarded her for a moment. The severe sharpness of her dark hair pinned back did nothing to soften her expression—though the woman was hard-pressed to be cheerful, she, at the very least, never sugar-coated anything. “Have you been trying those breathing exercises before bed? And spending time at the stables, as I suggested?”

“I have,” she replied, which wasn’t entirely untrue—she was doing at least one of those things. “It’s just been a lot of—stress, is all. I’m sure it’ll get better once the holidays are over.”

“That can definitely help,” the woman agreed, nodding her head and typing a few loose notes into the computer. “If you find that you aren’t getting enough sleep—enough,” she continued, pointedly, “restful sleep, you let me know and we can figure out some next steps.”

Elliot nodded, coming to a stand; the sudden movement had her head rushing, and she for a second she thought again of the floating heads, swaying with the breeze through the pine boughs.

“I’ve been sleep-walking,” she blurted out impulsively, her doctor’s gaze turning quizzically towards her. “I mean—um, just twice.”

“Do you have a history of it?”

“No,” Elliot began, “but I’ve always been a restless sleeper.”

“It’s not uncommon for sleepwalking to increase with pregnancy, Miss Honeysett,” the doctor replied, her voice even-keel. “It sounds like you’re under quite a bit of pressure, as well. I would suggest trying something mild—an over-the-counter sleep aid would be fine. Unisom is a typical one. Try half of one first, and see how it makes you feel.”

“Okay,” she murmured, sliding her coat back on. Something that was less heavy-duty than the pills her mother had left for her might be good. “Are there any—symptoms? To sleeping pills?”

The doctor adjusted the glasses on her nose, regarding her for a long moment. “Some adverse side-effects, on occasion. Usually with stronger, prescription sleep aids, you could have worsening anxiety and depression, day-time drowsiness. That kind of thing.”

So, no hallucinations, then. No sleepwalking, no lost time, no...

“Are you having other symptoms?” Harding asked.

You’ll think I’m crazy, Elliot thought, you’ll think I’m fucking nuts if I tell you about my dream with the television, and Joey’s body, and walking out nearly to the treeline in my sleep clothes. You’ll think I’m fucking nuts and I’ll have to be committed.

So Elliot said, “No, just curious,” and Dr. Harding hummed as she scribbled the name of the sleep aid onto a sticky note for Elliot to take out with her.

“You have a healthy baby, Miss Honeysett. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” The brunette gestured for Elliot to head out the door, walking with her back up the hallway that led to the front lobby once again. “Next appointment we can find out the gender, if you’d like.”

“Oh,” Elliot said, surprised. Was it that soon already? Had it already been that long of being—like this? With child? She swallowed, pleasant little flutters in her chest. It was the first time that she’d felt something other than dread concerning the baby. Well, first time, sans John’s annoying little assertion about his claim. Why had that bothered her so much?

“You can decide to keep it a surprise,” Dr. Harding added, sound a little amused. “Think about it, and in the meantime, get some rest. Half a pill to start, remember.”

“Will do, thank you.”

She waded through the small collection of people in the lobby and out onto the street. Something strange was humming inside of her—it was sad, she realized, with a little spike of panic. She felt mournful. So fast, and so soon, she would figure out the baby’s gender, and suddenly the baby would be all the more real and she’d have to start thinking about names, she couldn’t have a baby without a name, and how was she supposed to pick a name? How was she supposed to decide something a real human being was going to be saddled with, forever?

Was the baby a Seed? Or a Honeysett?

Which one was she?

“What’re you doing, just standing out here? You’ll freeze.” John’s voice broke her out of her thoughts, shaking her back to reality again. He must have seen her standing there, glassy-eyed in the middle of the sidewalk, from where he’d been waiting—perhaps, if she was lucky, even suffering over the fact that he hadn’t been allowed into the doctor’s appointment—and come out. He’d kicked up a big enough fuss about not getting to come in that she’d said, fine, you can fucking drive me there, but that’s it, and true to his word John hadn’t pressed the matter any further than that.

Even though he wanted to. She could tell he wanted to, the second they had parked on the main street. She could tell he wanted to say, so, maybe I do come in, hm? What do you say to that? But he hadn’t. And that was...something.

Fuck, she needed to stay focused; she couldn’t keep letting her mind wander like that. Twice in less than an hour?

“I was just—thinking,” Elliot replied, feeling exhausted already. John’s brows furrowed at the center of his forehead, and she sighed. “Stop looking at me like that.”

He arched a dark brow loftily. “Like what?”

“Like you fucking care,” she snapped.

“Contrary to what you might believe concerning my feelings for you,” John quipped, his voice tart, “I do have every reason to be invested in the well-being of our baby.”

She thought to reiterate again that the baby was, in fact, hers, and not any part his, as she was doing all the work and John had done nothing to endear himself as an acceptable father-figure, but she was too tired. Something about the doctor’s office and the way she’d had to dodge the truth of how she’d been feeling left her empty, scooped out her insides like she was a Jack-O’-Lantern and left her floating, aimless.

“Ell,” he began. His voice had pitched lower, now, and his hand reached up; she saw it move in the corner of her vision and something inside her said, yes yes yes, this is what we want, we remember you, we know you. He twisted a loose curl around his finger, letting it smooth out against her shoulder, the corner of his mouth ticking upward when she absently batted his hand away. “Tell me about the appointment. Did everything go well?”

“The baby is fine,” she told him, and then sighed. “I mean—healthy. The baby is healthy. The doctor wants me to pick up an over-the-counter sleep aid, so we’ll need to stop at the store on the way home.”

“I thought you were sleeping fine?” John prompted. He sounded sly. His was a gotcha tone, the way he got when he thought he’d walked a particularly fine circle through the holes in what she chose to tell him or not. Elliot’s expression flattened. She ignored the way that he was looking at her—hungryhungryhungry, always greedy and never, never content with what he had—and fixed her eyes on the passing traffic behind him.

She said, “Just when you’re being somewhat tolerable, you have to go and ruin it.”

“If it’s intolerable for me to point out when you’re withholding information from me about your health,” he demurred, “then I’d prefer intolerable.”

“I cannot believe that I have to say this to you,” Elliot bit out, the sudden spike of irritation flaring hot and violence in her chest, “but I don’t fucking owe you anything. I don’t owe you the truth, or an explanation, and quite frankly, the fact that I allowed you to even chauffeur me to this fucking appointment is a sign that I’m being incredibly generous with you—far more generous than what you deserve.”

John’s teeth flashed in a grin. Before, back in Hope County, the venom had bothered him—he’d hated it, frowned and fought back with a little poison of his own, despised that he had to work so hard to get to the nitty-gritty underneath. But he had once, and perhaps now that he had known her, it only thrilled him.

How frustrating.

“Everything I did,” he said, lowering his voice as he closed some of the small distance between them now, “whether you believe me or not, was for us—”

“Ugh.”

“—and I might have gotten a little heated,” John continued, and this time when he reached up again Elliot’s mouth twisted into a grimace and she tilted her face away, don’t say it don’t say it don’t you fucking say it fuck you fuck you fuck you, “back at the ranch, but I meant it when I said that I l—”

“Honeysett!”

It was Via. Her greeting immediately cut off John’s words, effectively driving a wedge between their metaphorical—and physical—closeness. Snapped her out of the magic of his cologne and his voice and his hand coming up to her shoulder with its grounding weight.

“Missed you at the barn today,” the blonde chirped, cheery as she approached, hands tucked into her fluffy parka pockets. Her eyes flickered over to John, inquisitive. “Friend?”

And then Via turned her eyes back to Elliot, waiting expectantly. It struck her quite suddenly that Sylvia was checking—that despite the kindness and warmth in her voice, she was giving Elliot the opportunity to escape, to wave a red flag and ask for help. She said friend?, and what she meant was, is this man bothering you?, and it made a fuzzy warmth spread right through Elliot’s chest, uncomfortable in the softness is inspired in her.

“Hey, Via, this is...” How best to proceed? How to explain, this man is the father of my baby—which, by the way, I’m pregnant—and also technically we are legally married, oh and also he’s supposed to be in Federal custody right now but he isn’t, somehow, but it’s fine, we’re all good? “...my...John.”

Sylvia eyed her for a moment, sticking out a gloved hand. “Howdy, Elliot’s John. I’m Sylvia.”

John was clearly trying not to have the biggest shit-eating grin on his face as he shook Via’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Sylvia,” he replied pleasantly, once again reminding Elliot that the man was a tried-and-true practiced liar and could slip a perfect face on at any time. The knowledge was almost enticing, to know that she’d seen him without the masquerade, more than once.

It made, in hindsight, reflecting back on that moment he’d come unraveled at the ranch—No way, baby, I’m fucking it for you—have a different light. She had done that to him.

Good.

“Y’all busy?” Sylvia asked, blissfully not prying any further for an elaboration on what the nature of their relationship was. “I was just about to meet Wyatt at the Wild Rose. It ain’t trivia night, but they do have a live band playing tonight that’s supposed to be good.”

“Oh,” Elliot said faintly, “I don’t think—”

“That sounds excellent!” John interrupted. “I’ve barely seen anything of Weyfield. What do you say, Elliot?”

I say you can eat shit, she thought, but Sylvia was watching her closely—trying to make sure everything was okay, she supposed, considering Elliot had said nothing of John since they’d become friends. She took in a little breath and looked at the blonde, giving a small smile.

“No harm in a little time out of the house,” she agreed after a moment. “I’m starving, anyway.”

She wasn’t hungry in the least. The sticky note with the doctor’s suggested sleep aid was crumple in her pocket, and a little sweaty from the way she’d been clutching it, but somehow the idea of returning back to the house only seemed to fill her with more dread.

The tv, buzzing static, dull and thrumming in the back of her head, in the roots of her molars. HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS? And the heads, twisting and turning in the breeze, their silk-spun puppet threads invisible, their mouths swinging open as they try to scream.

HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS?

“Well, can’t have you starvin’,” Sylvia said amusedly, looping her arm through Elliot’s own and beginning to walk. “You’re not keeping my girl well-fed, Mister John?”

“Trying my hardest,” John replied, his gaze sly, “but she can be a bit ornery.”

“Hm, that does sound like her. Where are you visitin’ from, anyway?”

As they chattered, over her, John on one side and Sylvia on the other, Elliot got the distinct impression that her friend was quietly, politely fishing for information without putting Elliot under the stress of it.

HAVE YOU

Snow underfoot. The forest breathing, expanding, swelling because it holds some great, dark beast just waiting for her to get close enough.

BEEN HAVING

(Itwaitsforyouitwaitsforusallanditwillhaveyou)

STRANGE

“Careful,” John cautioned, reaching for the door with all of the gentlemanly nature of a man not possessed by the devil to hunt her down across states, “it’s slick.”

He opened the door into the Wild Rose, the sweep of warm air rushing over her a pleasant shock to her system that managed to draw her back to reality. Sylvia nudged her inside, effectively planting herself between Elliot and John as they moved single-file into the crowded bar.

She was tired, and having nightmares, and once she finally got some sleep she would feel a lot better about everything. All she needed was some sleep. And in the meantime, try to enjoy her time with her friends as best she could.

Get some sleep. Feel better in the morning. Burke’s old mantra popped up in her head, running through the worn grooves that were a sad, bittersweet sort of comfort to her now; the second you think you can’t anymore, you keep going anyway. Dig, dig, dig, until her fingers were dirt-packed and bloody, as deep as she fucking needed to go to keep moving, because it wasn’t just about her anymore.

Get some sleep.

Feel better in the morning.

Sylvia had drifted out from their little formation to make her way to the booth they had recently staked out as their own, where Wyatt already sat waiting and waving for them. John planted his hands on her shoulders, squeezing and lowering his mouth to her ear. “What do you want to drink?”

“You’re acting awfully domestic for someone who should be in Federal custody,” Elliot replied lowly, looking at him over her shoulder just in time to see him flash a smile that was all teeth.

“C’mon, hellcat,” and he all but purred the words at her, making her skin prickle in a type of anticipation that wasn’t purely dread. Traitorous, treacherous body. “You can at least play at liking me while your friends are around.”

“Iced tea.” She shrugged, disembarking his hands from her shoulders. “No lemon. A lot of ice. Think you can swing it without, I don’t know, lying halfway to Hell on your way there, Slick?”

“Anything,” he replied, pitching his voice even lower amidst the din of the bar, “for my lovely wife.”

Elliot’s head snapped around, ready to grab a fistful of his shirt and remind him to watch his fucking mouth, but he’d already started his journey to meander through the crowd and reach the bar on his little fetch quest.

Fucker, she thought, even when her stomach twisted with something other than vicious disdain. John had only been here for a day and was already too comfortable taking liberties; she’d have to make sure that got nipped in the bud before he got any funny ideas about his own personal redemption arc.

It would have been nice, to just be able to turn off any and all feelings whenever she wanted. But she couldn’t, and that meant she’d have to do the next best thing:

Get John the fuck away from her.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Eden’s Gate did not make a good first impression. Eden’s Gate did not even make a good second or third impression; in fact, Isolde had come to the conclusion that Joseph’s little compound was incapable of making any impression that didn’t fill the observer with a sense of despair. Every time she stepped out of the little building Jacob had set her up in, she was overwhelmed with disgust—eyes followed her, but none of them held anything beyond a dull spark of interest, nearly smothered by what seemed to have been a full-body beat down by the other cult.

The other cult, she constantly had to remind herself, because that’s what Eden’s Gate was. A cult.

A few miserable days at the hands of Montana’s coldest winter by record had her in a foul mood. The snowfall seemed inevitable, like it wouldn't ever stop, and the amount of times there had been paths shoveled between buildings—all leading to the chapel—were equally endless. Isolde couldn’t imagine coming to fucking Montana for fun, let alone for work, and yet she was somehow here for the latter and not the former. Distinctly, painfully lacking in fun.

It didn’t help that Joseph was insufferable. It didn’t help that every time he fixed his eyes on her, she felt an uncomfortable heat dripping down her spine like some kind of molten IV, like they hadn’t left on the worst of terms. Like she hadn’t told him to get the fuck out of her loft, like she hadn’t thrown an engagement ring on the floor like it was poison.

That was a time of her life that she had the distinct desire to not revisit, not even once, and yet in his presence—she found it nearly impossible to ignore. Joseph seemed to take a special, muted pleasure in making her hackles raise, and at least that hadn’t changed about him.

“Sol!”

Jacob called to her from halfway down the compound’s yard, a truck idling beside him. She stopped her trek back to her little hovel and looked at him, arms crossing over her chest.

“You wanna get out for a little?” He inclined his head toward the truck. “I’ve got some errands to run.”

“What kind of errands do the Collapse dictate?” she asked.

“The important variety.”

“Hm.”

She didn’t elaborate on that any further, and Jacob waited only one heartbeat before he reached for the driver’s side door and opened it, slowly.

“Going once—”

“I am not a child, Jacob.”

“—going twice—”

Fuck, did she want to get out.

“Fine,” Isolde snapped, “but bring that truck here. I’m not hiking through a snowdrift to get to you.”

Jacob, sounding quite pleased with himself, replied, “I thought you weren’t a child?”

He seemed moved enough by the dramatic eyeroll to oblige her, and if he found it annoying, it didn’t show; enough so, at least, that Isolde was able to clamber into the passenger side of the truck once he pulled it around, tapping the snow off of her shoes before pulling herself in.

“Thank you,” she huffed, shutting the door and rubbing her fingers to circulate the blood again. “This weather’s a bit abnormal, don’t you think?”

“Not anything out of the ordinary for this time of year, no,” Jacob replied. He nudged the windshield wipers on, plowing a thin layer of snow that had already begun to accumulate off of the window before starting to pull out of the compound. “I think you’re just not suited to the snow.”

“Could have told you that myself,” Isolde snipped. “I’m a hot-blooded creature.”

Jacob made a noise, something like an mm, a place between agreement without incriminating himself by agreeing too fervently or elaborately. She glanced over at him through the corners of her eyes as they turned onto the highway. In the comfortable silence that elapsed between them, Isolde settled back against the seat of the truck and tried to appreciate being out from the stifling dread of the compound.

It did seem to her that Joseph was markedly different than he had been, before. In the few instances in the last couple of days where he hadn’t been picking a fight with her, it almost felt normal—but of course, he was doing it in his own way, this pot-stirring, this instigating. With politeness. With kindness. By remaining completely unrattled by anything she said to him, every, any critique, so self-assured in his righteousness that not even reason could make him look twice at the state of his congregation.

Then, he had always been that way. Righteous. Assured. She had found it appealing, once—she liked a man with confidence—but now she found it—

Equal parts frustrating and attractive. Objectively, of course. Not anything that she felt herself.

“Trying to account for the bodies of the Family against the ones we know we saw before,” Jacob explained, when she had been quiet long enough to let him sort out his thoughts. “Seems like they started killing themselves, in pairs, once the two leaders were done with. I sent out a couple of scouts and they radio’d back some locations, but they’ve gone quiet for a while.”

“Dedication,” Isolde murmured, digging the nail of her thumb into her lower lip. “How dreadful.”

“The dedication, or the act?”

“Both. Imagine being so bound to something or someone.”

Jacob’s mouth twisted in a wry smile, and he brought the truck to a crawl. Two bodies, swallowed by snow nearly up to their waists, sat propped against the cliff face. He fished a pad of paper and a near-worn out pencil out of the center console of the truck and held them out to her.

“Mark it down, Sol.” When she blinked at him, he continued, “What, you thought you were gonna get out and not help me?”

“Well, I was hoping.”

She sighed, taking the pad and pencil—a glorified secretary is what I am, she thought bitterly—and marked two tally marks down. From where the car was stopped, she could see that the arms of the corpses came together, and though it was buried in snow, she had to think that beneath the white frost their hands were intertwined.

They went like that for a while; Jacob would drive to a spot, have her mark down the amount of bodies, and then go on. By the time they had reached Fall’s End, Isolde had counted nearly twenty dead bodies. As they rolled into the far end of town, Isolde realized very quickly that most of the buildings were blackened, and when she rolled down her window, the stale scent of charcoal still sat in the air.

“What happened here?” she asked, grimacing and scrunching up her nose.

“Dunno,” Jacob replied tightly. “Someone with an agenda.”

Isolde’s gaze snapped to him, to try and wring any information out of his expression, but true to his nature Jacob remained completely unreadable. It wasn’t until they had gotten to what appeared to have once been a bar and tallied up the bodies there that Jacob threw the truck into park.

“What in the fuck?” he muttered, eyes fixed forward. When Sol followed his gaze, she realized that it was fixed on someone—someone running towards them, frantically, nearly falling over themselves in the snow.

“Is that one of yours?” she asked. “Jacob?”

“Shh.”

He had busied himself fishing around in the back seat, and as he did Isolde squinted, trying to get a better look at what was going on. The man running definitely had to be Eden’s Gate—he had the big red emblem on his shirt, but he wasn’t wearing any coat, and—

And there were others.

“Jacob,” Isolde said, “there are more.”

“What?”

“Bodies,” she managed out, “there are more bodies.”

The snow wasn’t so deep on the roads that she couldn’t see the width of a body, and she did—see it, that is, tousled dark locks reflecting wet and sticky in the overcast, late-afternoon light. The man running was waving his arms and yelling for help, and then he fell over one of the bodies, fell to his hands and knees over the body of someone else, and made a sound kind of like anguish.

Jacob finally managed to pull out what he’d been looking for—a pair of binoculars—and immediately lifted them to his face.

“Shit,” he said. “Fuck, they’re ours.”

“All of them?” Isolde demanded. “They’re all—”

“Yes,” he bit out, opening the driver’s door and grabbing the rifle from the back seat. “They’re all ours. Isolde, stay in—”

Jacob’s words were cut off by the violent crack of a gunshot. For a split second, Isolde saw nothing; in the space between heartbeats, sluggish from panic, she saw the arterial spray coming from the back of the running man’s body before he hit the ground, screaming.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead, he was still crawling, dragging himself through the snow, leaving a smear of red behind him, and that’s when Isolde saw them.

Jacob had stopped moving as well. The person at the far end of the main road leading through Fall’s End had yet to shoulder their weapon. From here, Isolde could see that she was tall—short-cropped, blonde hair, swathed in dark clothes, but beyond that the features were near impossible to make out.

“Close the door,” Isolde hissed, not moving, her instincts screaming to duck but the fear that sudden movement would draw attention prevailing. “Jacob, close the fucking door.”

The eerily satisfying click-click of what could only be the bolt-action rifle in the hunter’s hands clattered around in her head. The rifle was returned to their shoulders, brought up level, and then fired again.

Out of pure instinct, Isolde flinched—but once again, the bullet was aimed not at them, but at the man already crawling in the snow. The sound of the gunshot, and the subsequent bullet-on-bone impact, was enough to make her stomach churn; now, at least, the man lay slumped in the snow, one of the many bodies that seemed to have been the unfortunate pull-and-fire clay birds for the stranger.

“Who,” Isolde whispered furiously, as Jacob carefully put the truck into drive without letting it move forward at all first, “Jacob, who the fuck is that?”

The redhead’s expression was unforgivingly tight, pulling taut with it the scars and mottling of his skin visible outside of his beard. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather kept his eyes fixed forward, as he closed the driver’s side door.

“Fifteen men,” he ground out between his teeth, “that’s fifteen fucking men I sent out here to figure out the body count.”

The stranger finally lowered their rifle, apparently satisfied with their work. This far away, it was hard to tell, but Isolde got the distinct impression that they were being watched, looked at now, where before the attention had been elsewhere.

And then it was confirmed, because the stranger lifted one gloved hand and pressed her index and middle fingers right against the hollows of her jaw. A snakebite. A cut right to the carotid. A message.

Jacob cranked the wheel, the tires shrieking in protest against the snow as he pulled between buildings in a sudden rush of acceleration. The stranger was quickly cut out, stifled by the side of the used-to-be-bar, leaving them out of direct range of a sniper rifle. Not that her companion seemed that pleased about it, anyway.

“Fuck,” he bit out, seething as he tried to navigate the narrow space in the clumsy Eden’s Gate truck. “Fuck, did you count how many bodies were on the ground?”

“Hm, no!” Isolde snapped viciously. “I was a bit too busy trying to make sure they were going to shoot us!”

Jacob gritted out another string of swears between his teeth, turning the truck until he could take what looked to be a back alley in the opposite direction of their little hunter. He checked the rearview mirror frequently; his expression was set in a deep frown, and he only looked at her once before continuing his regular scanning of the road behind them.

“Well, aren’t you going to turn around?” she demanded.

“For what?” Jacob replied flatly. “I’ve got a hunting rifle, not my HTI.”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care,” Isolde bit out.

“It means, the chances of me getting shot before I get a shot on them are significantly lower,” he told her, his knuckles whitening along the steering wheel, “and as confident as I am that I could kill them before they killed me, I’m not confident they wouldn’t take a shot at you first.”

Isolde’s stomach rolled. It wasn’t the violence that bothered her—it wasn’t the death, or the guns, or even the blood—but the message itself. The Stranger had been hunting the Eden’s Gate men and women for sport. For fun. To pass the time, while they waited. But what for? What could they be waiting for?

She stayed quiet, listening to Jacob radio back to the compound quick, short orders that flew right over her head. She couldn’t stop thinking about it—the gesture. The stranger. Who were they? The remainder of the other cult, perhaps? What were they waiting for?

You’re next, that two-fingered, snake-bite-right-to-the-carotid gesture had said.

You’re next, and I’m coming for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sylvia did not seem that impressed with John Seed, and Elliot could not blame her.

John was exceptionally charming. So charming, in fact, that he and Wyatt seemed to get along smashingly. It was almost frustrating, how quick the blonde took to John—but then, Wyatt did strike as the type of man who got along with everybody until they gave him a reason to think otherwise. After all, he’d been kind to her, and she was...

Needless to say, Sylvia was a harder sell, which was nice. Reassuring. It made Elliot feel more grounded, to see Sylvia politely smile at John’s chatter—she’d nearly forgotten how much he liked to talk—but then decidedly turn to Elliot to ask her about something or dive into a different conversation. It was pointed, and if the way John watched them interact was any indication, the message of it was not lost on him.

By the time the evening had drawn to a close, for her and John at least, the brunette had departed to go warm-up the Jeep and left her standing by the doorway, keeping warm, with Sylvia.

“You sure you’re doin’ okay?” the blonde asked after a moment, propped up against the wall in the tiny little doorway that led out to the main street. “You look tired. Stressed out. I was worried when we didn’t hear from you this morning, about comin’ to the barn.”

Elliot felt a little pang of guilt digging in, just there below her sternum. “I’m okay,” she promised. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, I—had a doctor’s appointment this morning that I completely forgot about until my mama reminded me, and John showed up this morning too, so it’s just been...”

“A crazy day,” Via agreed, her nose crinkling cutely in amusement. “He’s a funny fella, that John of yours.”

Oh, if only you knew. “I think so, too.”

“What is he?” she asked, conversationally. “Maybe a—car salesman?”

Her friend’s playful jab was enough to elicit a laugh, billowing out of her and catching even herself by surprise. But then, she shouldn’t have been shocked to find that Sylvia had gotten a quick read on John. Given the way she’d quickly diverted from the attention on Elliot’s scar and carried on, she thought maybe Via was more perceptive than she liked to let on.

“Lawyer,” Ell replied, and Via winced comically.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean—Elli,” Via intoned playfully, “he might as well be sellin’ you snake oil when he’s a lawyer.”

Elliot sighed ruefully, glancing out the window to see John clambering out of the front of the jeep. Snake oil seemed a light judgment for him, all things considered.

“Hey, Via,” she began, swallowing a little, “if I tell you something, you’ve gotta promise you won’t say anything?”

Via regarded her curiously, head tilted. “Okay, sure, Freckles. What’s up?”

She shifted on her feet. “John and I are actually, um—” Elliot paused, swallowing thickly. She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to, because saying it out loud—her, and not John—made it real. Gave it legs. Forced her to face what had happened and what she couldn’t change yet.

“You don’t have to,” Via told her gently. “I could tell there was somethin’—you know, out of sorts. You don’t get a slick-talkin’ lawyer grinnin’ like the cat what ate the canary if he hasn’t done somethin’ to piss a woman off.”

Elliot shook her head. “We’re actually, uh,” she tried again, pulling at a loose thread on her shirt, “m—married.”

Saying the word out loud didn’t feel as wretched as she thought it would, which was almost three times as concerning. She felt, instead, more dread waiting for Sylvia’s reaction—waiting to see what her one friend had to say or think about that.

The woman’s face screwed up comedically. “Oh, Freckles,” she said, her tone teasing. “Say it ain’t so.”

“I’m not kidding!” Elliot felt a nervous little laugh bubble out of her. “I mean—what, Via? You clearly have an opinion on him.”

“I don’t know the man from Jack walkin’ down the street,” Sylvia demurred. “I just think...well, I just think you’re a real peach, you know? And you didn’t seem too pleased to have this John walkin’ around, and I take that kind of thing seriously.”

Sighing, Elliot scuffed her shoe against the ground, watching John pick his way through the crowd back down the street.

“We left on—bad terms, sort of,” she explained. “He showed up to make amends.”

“Do you want to make amends?”

The question caught her off-guard. It was an obvious one—obvious in that, it should have been one of the first things anyone asked her regarding John, even John himself, and yet: no one had. Not a single person had asked her if she wanted to suffer through making amends with the man who had lied to her, violated her trust, and still somehow managed to be the one person she didn’t have to fear seeing the worst, ugliest parts of her.

“I don’t know,” Elliot said after a moment, clearing her throat. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Then I will reserve judgment,” Sylvia replied firmly, “so you can make a decision on your own.”

The door to the street opened, bringing with it not only a waft of chilly wind, but John himself and the scent of his viciously-expensive cologne. It took every ounce of Elliot’s self-control not to burst into laughter at the absurdity of it—John Seed, charisma-extraordinaire, somehow managing to make poor first impressions both on her mother and her friend.

“Car’s all warmed up,” John announced, rubbing his hands together. He glanced between the two women, the corner of his mouth ticking upward. “What’s so funny, hm?”

“Nothing,” Elliot replied. “Just talking about you.”

This piqued his interest. He said, “Good things, I hope,” and she could see it on his face—the painful reminder of the way John had craved Joseph’s approval, the way he’d lit up like a nuclear mushroom cloud the second Joseph deigned to say anything remotely kind to him.

“Jury’s still out,” Sylvia said lightly, and then flashed a pretty smile and clapped him on the shoulder. “But don’t worry bud! We’ll get you there eventually.”

John tried very hard to feign polite laughter, but the uneasiness bled through readily—and it was a little satisfying, to see John squirm, to see him out of his element, no longer surrounded by a constant chorus of Yes hitting his dopamine centers nonstop. No wonder the man had a conniption anytime someone dared to dislike him.

“Better get this lady home, she looks like she’s about to fall asleep standing,” Sylvia announced, reaching and giving Elliot a gentle hug. “Night, Freckles.”

“Goodnight.”

John and Sylvia bid each other a pleasant goodbye as Elliot stepped out onto the street, careful to avoid icier parts of the concrete as she made her way to the car. Her brain felt fuzzy—a lot of socializing, a lot of time spent trying not to let John get to her. It had been long enough since she’d had to hold her walls up for so long that she felt exhausted from doing it, even for this long.

Maybe that was his strategy. Wear her down, then swoop in, just like last time.

“Did you have fun?” John asked, and she realized that she was at the car, having climbed into the passenger seat already. He closed the driver’s side door, settling in before carefully beginning to back out of the parking spot.

“I mean, having you loom over my shoulder the entire night was a little odd.”

He made an affronted sound. “I was not looming.”

“You were,” Elliot told him, “a little.” She paused, feeling the exhaustion pulling at the edges of her vision, begging for her to close her eyes—but she couldn’t. Not in the car, not with John driving. If she did, he might just keep driving and not turn back around. “It’s funny—”

“My quote-unquote looming?”

“How much different you are,” she finished, “when you’re not around Joseph.”

John was clearly trying very hard not to look like he was stiffening at her words. Gotcha, she thought, with a little pinprick of pride. Yeah, I didn’t forget. I didn’t forget how much you hated it when I brought him up.

“I don’t know what you mean,” John replied, keeping his voice light. “I’m exactly the way I’ve always been.”

“You haven’t tried to drown me a single time.”

“That time was a miscommunication,” he insisted. “I wasn’t trying to drown you. Just—coerce you. And besides, that’s behind us now. I know you, Elliot Honeysett, intimately, which means such forms of brute persuasion aren’t required.” He paused. “It’s much better when you indulge me willingly, anyway.”

Elliot’s nose crinkled. “You sound fucking nuts when you say that. ‘That one time I thought about drowning you was just a miscommunication’. No wonder Sylvia doesn’t like you.”

“So she told you? That she doesn’t like me?”

He paused for a moment, his gaze flickering over to her, and when he saw the very subtle upturn of her mouth he exhaled out of his nose.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Not necessarily. But if I was—it would be the least you deserve.”

He was different, out from the insane pressure of the cult, out from under Joseph’s thumb. It was like, given room to breathe, he was suddenly relearning what it was like to make his own decision—to exist outside of Joseph. Back in Hope County, John had been fervent in his belief that he owed Joseph everything. Maybe the distance had done him some good.

Don’t, something inside of her insisted viciously, as she turned her attention out to the side of the road where the headlights illuminated snowdrift after snowdrift. Don’t get soft on him. That’s how he got you last time, you know. Don’t let it happen again.

But if he wanted to press the issue about Sylvia—or about her comment concerning Joseph—John seemed to exercise a remarkable amount of self-control and instead focused on driving. In the quiet, without him chattering on about doing things for them or how much he missed our banter, it was almost...Comfortable.

“Finding out the gender,” Elliot said after a moment, the exhaustion now settling like a deep chill in her bones. “Of the baby, I mean. At the next appointment.”

The brunette shifted in his seat. In an attempt at nonchalance, he said, “Oh, yeah?”

What am I doing? she thought. He plays nice for one night. He’s good at that. Short-term goodness.

“I’m nervous,” she added after a moment. “About finding out.”

“Not excited?” John tilted his head.

“No,” she admitted. “Nervous.”

Ahead of them, she saw the dark blur of a figure. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. John was saying something—something about how he’d read a number of books and it was normal to feel nervous, or some other kind of psycho babble—but she shifted forward in her seat, eyes straining to see.

“Slow down,” she said, “I think there’s a dog...?”

“What?” John asked. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Just up ahead. Have you not been paying attention to the road?”

He made an indignant sound—“I am the best driver between the two of us, you know,”—but before Elliot could think up a response, the dark, furred creature slowed down ahead of them, stopped in the middle of the road, and turned its head.

The headlights caught it immediately. It was a dog, four-legged and large and shaggy black fur, but when it turned its head, it was a man’s face, the mouth slung open and the gently-rounded teeth of a human’s mouth blaring white in the headlights. Something dark and slick oozed between the teeth, in that split second, she watched the dog-human-creature push off from the ground and stand on its two hind legs.

She screamed, and John swerved, and immediately threw the car into park and slammed his hand on the hazard lights button.

It was dread, pure dread and fear, sending a pulse of adrenaline straight to her brain. Bent over at the waist, Elliot closed her eyes tight, trying to will the image out of her head, out from behind her irises. John had quickly unbuckled and reached over, his hands doing the same to hers.

“Elliot,” he said urgently, fingers pushing the hair back from her face. “Ell, take a breath, come on—sit up, you have to take a breath—”

“Is—is it gone?” she asked, but the words came out closer to a wail, the fear spiking viciously in the timbre of her voice. Please, God, what the fuck, please let it be gone. God, oh fuck, what the fuck what the fuck— “The—the—”

“There’s nothing—?” John stopped. Elliot frantically scrabbled at the high neck of her parka, fingers shaking and clumsy. “Ell—”

“Can’t breathe,” she managed out. “Too hot, can’t—”

The brunette reached over the console and stilled her hands. She was still bent at the waist, but he made do, pulling the zipper of the parka down until she could pull her arms from it; once it had been deposited in the back seat, his hand went to the back of her neck.

She sat up slowly, her eyes immediately making a frantic search of the road. There was nothing. Only quiet snowfall.

“Where—” She paused, swallowing thickly. “Where did it go?”

“Ell,” John murmured, “there wasn’t anything in the road.”

“What do you mean?” she moaned. “I saw it, the—I saw the—”

“You saw...?” he prompted. His thumb swept across the back of her neck, coaxing.

“The dog,” she insisted. “It was a dog, but it had—it’s face was—it was a man’s face, and it f-fucking—it fucking stood up, John!”

He was watching her carefully, his gaze searching her face for a long moment. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t see anything,” he told her. “Just that you—you just screamed, so I pulled over.”

“I’m not crazy,” Elliot bit out, her voice wobbling.

“I know,” John replied plainly. “Maybe it was just—you know. The snow. In front of the headlights.” And then: “Have you really been getting enough sleep, Ell?”

She felt her lip tremble, the desire to cry almost overwhelming. She couldn’t stand it—couldn’t stand John being tender to her, worrying about her, questioning the validity of her saying that she had been sleeping fine because he could see that she couldn’t. He was wretched and wicked and it needed to stay that way.

“Please take me home,” she said finally, re-buckling and rolling the window down to let the cold air on her face. “Please just take me home.”

John waited for a few heartbeats before he turned the hazard lights off and put the Jeep in drive.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he told her after a moment, glancing at her a few times. “I mean it, Ell.”

“Fuck you,” she replied, exhausted and feeling furiously wound up. “Just take me home.”

Get some sleep.

Feel better in the morning.

#my writing #otp: death keep off; i am your enemy #ch: elliot honeysett #ch: john seed #ch: helmi #ch: isolde khan #ch: jacob seed #fic: witching hour #she gets a lil face lift #as a treat : ' )#far cry 5 fic #fc5 fic #john seed x deputy #fc5 oc #john seed/deputy #normally i would be making more of a commentary in the tags but head empty !!!!#but: thank you thank you anyone and everyone who reads!!! ily!!!!!

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waiting4inspiration · 4 years

Text

Addicted XI: A Cure

Summary: Ivar’s self attempt at remedying his pain leads to him poisoning himself. You’re frantic trying to find a cure and too emotional to be of any help to him.

Warnings: angst, mentions of drug use, poisoning, mentions of abandonment, it’s really angsty, mentions of death, small fluff,

Word Count: 2,485

Addicted Masterlist II Vikings Masterlist

It’s been days since you last spoke to your father all because you don’t really have anything to say to him. There’s nothing you wish to tell him, nothing that you want to share with him that has happened since he left. You told him all he wanted to know, what happened to your mother and brother, and that’s it. What else could you possibly say?

Ivar lets you speak freely every chance you two are alone, letting you ramble and rant on, comforting you when you need it. He’s just thankful that you’re holding up your promise. He’s just grateful that you trust him to heal you just as he trusts you.

But, he hasn’t been holding the end of his promise. He feels that bothering you with his pain will only burden you more, so he keeps it to himself. A part of him is determined to do this himself, sort out his pain on his own, like he has always done.

But he can’t stop wishing that you hadn’t thrown away those leaves. He can’t stop thinking about the relief they gave him.

Perhaps he can find them again in the market?

You’re grateful to have Ivar by your side no matter what, that he’s there to listen to you without asking for anything in return. That he’s holding his promise to heal you and protect you. It’s a relief to not keep everything to yourself as you did back in England. It’s a relief to just let it go.

Though, you can’t help but feel like you’re neglecting his pain.

In the middle of the night, you wake up to the sounds of Ivar groaning in pain. It makes you snap around to face him, and the sight you see him in makes your blood turn cold.

He’s drenched in sweat, but shivering as if he’s stuck in a blizzard. His chest moves rapidly up and down, as if he had run a mile. And his body jerks every now and then in fits as pained groans and screams leave his lips that have a blue tint to them.

“Oh Gods, Ivar.” The words leave your lips before you can even think about them and you quickly push yourself up to kneel beside him.

Grabbing his shoulders, you don’t care about his sweat because the fact that he is burning up makes tears brim your eyes. Letting him rest against the headboard, you take his face in your hands to try and get him to look at you. “Ivar? Ivar, look at me,” you beg, a thousand thoughts running through your mind as to what might be wrong.

Patting his cheeks to get him out of his unconscious state, a small bit of relief washes over you to see his eyes flutter open. But that relief fades at the sight of blood in his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?” you frantically question, stroking his face cheeks as you shift closer. You ask him that because, honestly, you have no idea what’s happening.

He breathes out a weak sigh as his head falls against your hand. He’s very weak. “The leaf,” he mutters out, and you barely catch his words.

“The leaf? The leaf is gone, Ivar. I told you that,” you gently whisper, thinking that he’s wanting it for his pain.

But he shakes his head and turns his gaze down to his hand. You follow his gaze, watch as he slowly opens his hand to show you that he has been holding onto a herb. One that looks like that you used to give him for his pain. The leaf that caused only more problems.

Taking the leaf from his hand you carefully examine it. And one small difference, the darker color of the leaf, tell you exactly what you need to know. “Ivar, this is poisonous if you put it in your mouth and it will kill you if you swallow it,” you whisper, looking back up at his face.

And the realization hits you so hard, it makes your body numb.

His eyes close as his head falls back. Throwing the leaf away from you, you take his face in your hands and stroke his cheeks with your thumbs. “Ivar? Ivar!” He doesn’t respond. “Shit.”

Pushing yourself off the bed, you rush out the room, not caring if you bump into things and make them fall over with loud crashes that wake up the entire Hall. You have to find the cure.

The cure? What’s the cure?

Working with herbs, your mother made you learn all about them as if it was a religion, made you memorize their look, which ones look alike but are, in fact, so different, what the cure is if they somehow get mixed up. You could list them off in your sleep.

But now, the thought that if you don’t find the antidote, Ivar will die clouds your thoughts and makes it hard to think about what your mother taught you.

“Green leaves, grows on a post; darker leaves, sprouts from the ground,” you mutter to yourself, trying to recite the phrase your mother taught you about these two leaves because your brother used to be treated with one of them. The same one you treated Ivar with. “One heals, one kills. Both can be fixed with a meal.”

A meal. The kitchens.

Trying to recall the rest of the phrase as you run to the kitchens, you pass by a few people who take note of your emotional state and question what the matter is. But you don’t reply. You have to focus on finding the antidote.

Scrambling through the kitchen, trying to find what you’re looking for, you pick up herbs that you probably have in your pouch, but you can’t remember where you put that. “Mugwort, mayweed, nettle, thyme, fennel,” you mutter as you take them, something inside you telling you to do it, like it’s second nature. You feel that your combination is right, and you don’t see the thrall standing in the doorway staring at you like you’re a crazed woman.

As you turn to leave the kitchen, your eyes go to the firepit where the evening meals meat was roasted. It hasn’t been cleaned out yet, and a burnt piece of wood, charcoal, takes your interest. A voice in your mind tells you to take it. Your mother’s voice.

Grabbing a piece of cloth first to prevent you from burning yourself if the wood is still hot, you take the piece of wood in your free hand before storming out the kitchen.

Back in the room, you throw everything on the table as you move to grab a bowl. You have to put everything together. Ivar’s not looking good and seeing him even paler than before, his lips bluer now makes fresh tears spring from your eyes.

Looking at the herbs you have, you realize you need a knife. Ivar always has a knife beside the bed.

“Gods, what happened?” You don’t comprehend Ubbe’s words. All you can think about is the cure. Get it done. Get it done. You don’t even remember picking up the knife and walking back to the bowl to cut the herbs.

By now, tears are streaming down your cheeks at the thought that he’s doing to die if you don’t get this done. You need to be quick. You’re not being quick enough.

“(Y/n).” You don’t know if it’s your father’s voice that makes you lift your head or your name, but you look away from the bowl in front of you and see him pushing his way past Ubbe at the door and walking towards you.

Renier sees your distraught state and it makes him stop for a second before he picks up his pace towards you. But you look back at the bowl and grab the next herb to cut up. “(Y/n), let another healer take over,” your father whispers as he tries to reach out to place a hand on your shoulder.

“No!” you shout, throwing the cut up leaves in the bowl and grabbing the next one. “No, I can do this. I can help him. I can fix this. I don’t need help. I can - ow.” Not being able to see what you’re doing because of your clouded vision thanks to tears causes the knife to slip and cut your hand, making you drop it to the table and step back.

And then, your knees give in.

Falling to the ground, you break down in sobs and hold your hand to your chest. Lifting your head up when you hear Ivar’s strained breathing. “Ivar,” you whisper to yourself, glancing up at the table again and finding another healer picking up where you left off. “Leave it. I can do it,” you whisper, not sure if she heard you or not.

As you stand to your feet again, Renier stops you by placing his hands on your shoulders. “Let her do it.”

“No. I can do it. I can do it-”

“(Y/n).” Again, it’s either your father’s voice or your name that makes you look at him. And when you do, he cups your cheek in his hand and wipes away a tear. The comfort you’re receiving makes you weak and you fall forward into your father’s chest.

Renier looks over to Ubbe and Hvitserk who stand at the foot of their brother’s bed, give him a nod to say that it’s best to take you out of the room. You’re too emotional to help Ivar even if you really want to. You’ll just end up hurting yourself more.

You have to trust someone else to help him, take a step back.

Keeping your head in his chest, Renier walks you to the door, comforting you by stroking the back of your head as you sob. This reminds him of when you were a child and you had a nightmare. You would call out for him and would want only him.

Halfway to his room, you shake your head and try to pull away from him. “Ivar. I have to help him. I have to-”

“You have to take care of yourself, my darling,” he gently says, wrapping a strong arm around your shoulders to stop you from pulling away. “Ivar will be fine. You have my word.” You look back at him and raise an eyebrow as if to ask if he is sure.

In his room, he sits you down in a chair before moving to look for something. You watch him move around the room, open chest after chest on his search as you bite your lip. Looking over at the door, contemplate getting up and returning to where you feel you need to be.

How could you have left Ivar like that? How could you leave him dying with a healer you don’t know? What if she doesn’t know what she’s doing? Did you even know what you were doing? What if she makes things worse? What if-

“Ow!” you hiss, your head snapping down to your hand when you feel a sting only to find your father dapping the cup on your hand with a wet cloth that smells of alcohol.

But he doesn’t apologize. The focus on his face intrigues you. And when he reaches for a cloth to begin wrapping your cut, you tilt your head to the side. “You’ve done this before,” you whisper, noticing skill in his way of bandaging a wound.

He chuckles as a smile grows on his face. “Your mother taught me a few things. And I helped some healers during wars when they were overrun with work,” he explains, glancing up at you when he ends off the bandaging and pushes himself off the ground, to his feet.

Standing in front of you, your head lifts more to look at him as he reaches out to wipe a tear off your cheek. “You love him,” he whispers, keeping his hand on your cheek, waiting for you to withdraw from his touch. But you don’t.

You nod without having to think about it. You do love him, and you haven’t told him. He could die tonight without you even telling him that you love him. “I can tell. Your mother acted the same way when I came back one night close to death,” he says, turning to grab a chair and pull it closer so he can sit in front of you.

You frown at him. “I don’t remember that,” you whisper, leaning back in your seat and finding comfort in his presence. It’s not tense like you remember your last interaction being.

“It was just before you were born. Your mother was pregnant with you at that time and we still lived in the village,” he states, leaning back too and smiling to see you relaxing around him. “People found out who I really was and didn’t like what my father was planning, so they decided to kill me. After your mother fixed me up, we moved into that out away from the village, knowing that you’d be safe away from those that wished harm on me and you; my heir,” he explains, and somehow, you find yourself smiling.

“Soini would have ruled before me,” you say, a small laugh on your voice as you look down at your hands, your eyes meeting the golden ring he gave to you on the docks.

Renier hums, shakes his head and shifts in his seat. “No. In Nanard, the firstborn is always the successor. No matter if their female or male,” he states, making your head lift back up to look at him.

You stare at him for a second before turning your eyes back down to your hands. “What’s Nanard like?” you question, changing the topic about ruling because you’re not sure how to feel about that just yet.

“It’s beautiful. Both in summer and winter,” he states, perking your interest and making you look up at him again. “We have direct access to the sea. Some say it is a weakness, but I see it as a strength. Because of that, trading can happen all year round. The kingdom is rich, but not in gold like some kings strive to be rich in. Nanard is rich in other ways,” he adds, a smile growing on his face as he speaks about his home.

You swallow, run your tongue over your lips and shift in your seat. “I might like to see it sometime,” you whisper, your sincerity surprising both you and him. But still, his smile grows bigger.

“I’d like to take you. One day,” he says. You smile, happy that he’s not pushing you to make a decision to go back with him when he leaves like you thought he would. “When you are ready, my daughter.”

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finleyjayne · 4 years

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Living a Lie: Chapter 1

Thank you for everyone who helped with this fic. Including the amazing @kittykatlow, the wonderful beta for this fic.

Summary: Penelope Grace Darling: the name you live by, the only name the world remembers. That doesn’t keep the memories of Y/N out of your head. All you ever wanted to do was create a better world. You thought you were doing that until some unexpected visitors to your hometown turn your world upside down. Can you leave your past behind you in order to keep your loved ones safe? Or will your fragmented memories keep you from the truth?

Pairings: Past Winter Soldier/Reader, Plus sized!Reader. Slow burn Bucky Barnes/ Reader.

Warnings: Dub/Noncon, Rape, Kidnapping, human trafficing (referenced), Underage Rape, Swearing, PTSD, Anxiety attacks, Unhealthy coping mechanisms, Non consenting drug use, underage Drug use, Violence, Domestic Violence, I’m trying to remember what else comes later in the series.

This is a Dark Fic if you don’t like it Don’t Read It!

Ten sets of feet all in nicely polished leather-soled shoes, all connected to well-tailored suit pants.

Nine men sitting in chairs, all supposedly listening to the man standing on the other end of the table from where you sit curled up underneath.

Eight bottles of alcohol sitting on the dark mahogany sideboard. Beautifully cut glass reflects the firelight and dim room lighting as if they are made of stars. Clear globes sat on top of their stoppers, looking like witchballs, reflecting the horror story that had become your life.

Seven Matryoshka dolls, each colored with similar traditional faces, bellies painted with cityscapes and cathedrals sit on the mantle above the fire. Their faces mock the tense atmosphere with cheery smiles and laughing eyes.

Six books are housed on the other end of the mantle—each written in the Russian script, Cyrillic. From what you can read on their spines, they are books of traditional fairytales, as if this wasn't the central office of the Bratva, the Russian Mafia.

Five… five… looking around trying to find something that was five, you curl up a little tighter underneath the far end of the antique mahogany table. The panic rises in your body as your brain starts wandering from the little game of eye-spy to what had happened the night before. It was not the first time you had exchanged masters. You were a high commodity to these people. Young, talented, naive, strong enough to withstand what they wanted, and apparently unwanted. No! Stop! Back to the game, stay in the moment.

Four. Four panels on the door.

Just as you thought that, your eyes focusing on those panels, the men all stand up and make their way out of the ominously formal meeting. Leaving you in the room without a glance; you are seemingly unnoticed. You freeze in place to keep it that way. You glue your eyes to the wall with the mantel and fireplace.

What am I going to do?

The man that everyone keeps referring to as Krestniy Otets is pacing behind you in front of his throne. What if he’s like the others? Of course, he's like the others. The thought draws a small whimper from your throat. I have two options: let it happen and hope that he isn’t too sadistic; or fight and hope that he finds it fun. Either way, there isn’t anyone to save you. You know you have to find a way to protect yourself. You close your eyes, trying to come up with a plan as you listen to the man's solid footsteps. Who am I kidding? There is only one option. Make him WANT to take care of me. Play the perfect little pet. Innocent, think babydoll, lolita, submissive. Puppy dog eyes, tears, fear, hope. Keep hope they say that makes you seem like a little doll. What did Gammy use to say? Erwarten Sie das Schlim und seien Sie froh, dass es besser passiert. Expect the slumber and be glad it happens better? No… ummmm schlimmste not schlim, that’s it. Expect the worst, and be glad when better happens. That’s it-

The steps stop suddenly, halting your thoughts in their tracks. your body tenses impossibly tight to keep yourself from flinching. No need to draw any more attention, he’ll remember me when he is finished with his business. A deep chuckle resounds from behind you, sending a shiver up your spine. Or you know right now.

“Посмотрите на это, такой милый маленький котенок я купил себе [Russian: Look at this, such a cute little kitten I bought myself.]” The man's voice is deep and robust as he speaks. His tone was pleased but held a note of sadistic teasing. “Little котенок, what are you still doing under there? I thought you would’ve moved to get more comfortable.”

You tuck your head shyly into your shoulder as you look back at the grim-looking man with the biggest, sweetest doe eyes you can, “you said to sit and stay, sir.” Your voice trembles slightly as you whisper the words, It takes everything in you not to break down or vomit, but you manage.

A dark, possessive look passes through his eyes as a self-satisfied smirk graces his lips. “Хороший котенок [good kitten], now come we have things to do.”

Lithely, you roll to your feet, careful not to hit your head on the underside of the hardwood table, and follow him out the four-paneled door, your gaze following the bottoms of his black wingtips submissively as you walk further into the lions' den.

With a gasp, you wake in your soft bed, eyes open but unseeing. Blinking in panic, you wait for your eyes to turn the colorful blobs into precise shapes. The fear strangling your lungs only grows until your hand hits a hard form on the bed next to your pillow, clutching them you hold them inches from your eyes, glasses. Your brain finally catches up slightly, you realize it was just a dream. Taking a deep breath, you slide the thick-lensed glasses onto your nose. Eyes finally focusing. Looking up to the eastern facing window to gauge the time from the slight light slipping through the barred basement window. Sighing at the slivers of light that tinge the sky a rusty red, 8 o'clock. You roll off the bed, standing on your good leg. A hiss escapes your lips as the other tenses with phantom pains. Pushing you to sit and take a second to look at the unfeeling flesh covering the mechanics underneath. After a few moments of movement and messaging the joints beneath the flesh, your brain finally links to the wiring, stopping all sensation from the limb.

You take a few more moments, stretching out the tissues of both legs. Running through the diagnostics tests that have become as familiar as the back of your hands. It takes a few tries to get through the set without any glitches or pain spikes from the living tissues. After the twelfth run, you finally give up hobbling your way into the bathroom with a change of clothes, praying you won't be late for work.

You take care to keep your eyes off your reflection, keeping your eyes on the waterstained wall before rushing to clean yourself under the rusting showerhead. The water barely has enough pressure to send the suds from your body wash down the drain. You keep yourself distant, running through your schedule as you rub the suds over the ripples in your skin. The slight pull of stiff scar tissue against the plushy fat was invisible to the eye but felt as though it were neon stripes painted on your flesh. Your eyes burn with unshed tears, the scalding hot water feeling ice cold.

In a blink, the water is off, and your black, high-waisted skinny jeans and favorite pink peplum top are on--a calming compress to your suddenly overactive nerve endings. Finally looking into the mirror, you brush a hand over the flowing fabrics. Staring at your reflection's hair agitatedly, quickly doing what you can before letting the fading green and blue mass do what it will atop your round face. A quick brush of your teeth, and you are ready to head out the door.

You count the twelve stairs that separate your calm dark haven from your family's chaotic life, immediately running into your frazzled-looking mom. She looks up to meet your eyes, greeting you with a robotically cheery smile that burns the backs of your eyes.

“Good morning, Penelope Darling, are you working today?”

“Yeah, Mom." you choke out, each happy word leaving a metallic taste in your mouth. "Then I’m going to my appointment, I was told I’ll be back around 9,” you respond quietly, grabbing a fresh peach and a knife from the counter before sitting in the office chair at the cluttered kitchen table.

Making quick work of peeling and pitting the peach, you eat while letting your mind drift. It doesn't take you long before you slide on a pair of sandals, bending in half to do up the straps. You grab your bag off the floor next to them, tuck your phone into your pocket, and head to work.

“Bye dear, remember to thank that nice doctor for helping you.”

“Yes’m,” you reply demurely, leaving with a sigh, letting the door into the garage swing itself closed behind you. Walking to your sun-spotted 1996 Mazda 626, you run your hand over her roof, savoring the burn of the hot metal against your skin as you pull the key from your purse and unlock her.

“Heya Gertz, today is gonna be a hard day, but we can make it,” You tell her as you climb into her clean interior, turning the key and listening to her sad little purr. “Yeah, I hear you. Seems we both need an oil change.”

Once at work, you check your phone for the time, ten minutes early, five minutes late, same difference. Anxiously, you hurry into the backdoor of the small shoe store that you work for. Flipping on the lights, you make your way to the register, clocking in as the bossman comes out of the back office.

“Morning, you know you don’t have to be here for another 10 minutes." His cheerful teasing eases the tenseness that your brief interaction with your mother gave you. "I’m going to be outta the store for this morning. I’m leaving you in charge. Daisy should be here in a few minutes, but there is a lot of traffic heading into Salt Lake. Apparently, there is going to be a Stark conference at The U this weekend.”

Your heart dropped at the thought of fighting traffic to get to your appointment. Subconsciously you let out a groan, “If that’s true, I’m going to need to leave a little earlier today. I can just close up if you leave your key, but I have an appointment that I can’t miss.”

“Sure thing, Penny. I’ll be here before we close, so I’ll do it.” He sends you one of his easy smiles, melting away any of your insecurities.

“Thanks, good luck today! Be careful.” You smile back.

“Will do, call me if you need anything.” He says, walking out the back door.

Breathing deep, you start your opening routine, turning on the radio connected to the PA system of the small, main street store. Breathing in the scent of leather, polish, and warmth, you plug in your phone, setting it to play a mix of all the songs you have liked over the year of Spotify that is Utah appropriate. Russian opera, Ballet arrangements, Vivaldi, Frank Sinatra, some pop stuff, Alt. Rock, Jazz. A playlist that is long enough to play music for literal days without repeating a song. Turning on the volume moderator feature and adjusting the stereo's volume until it settles into the background.

As you pull the vacuum onto the main floor, your bustling, bubbly, blonde coworker bounds through the back entrance. She squeals when she sees you, giving you elevator eyes. “Penny! You look cute today. Do you have a date? Please tell me it’s with the guy who I gave you the number for. Did you hear about the Stark expo thingy? Apparently, Mr. Stark and the rest of the Avengers are coming here for it. Can you believe it? All those people are coming to UTAH of all places. And so close to us!? We could run into them at any time! Like seriously! There is even a chance that they will stop in Bountiful on their way to the DATC. We do have some of the best hiking in the area, after all. Just think, Pens, they are going to be here!”

You chuckle softly when she stops for a second. “Breathe, Daiz,” you instruct, resting your hands on her forearms to get her to pause her rant. “Slow down. Don’t want you to hyperventilate again. One question at a time. I can only answer you if you give me a chance to.”

The beautiful young woman bounces on the balls of her feet, heels tapping out a quick staccato against the ground while she takes a few deep breaths. After three, she loses patience and squeals out, “Pens, the Avengers are coming here! I can feel it in my insides! And you know my insides are never wrong!”

“Daisy, you can’t just say that your insides have psychic powers. Especially when the last time you quoted something from them, you ended up breaking your arm in three places.”

“Oh? Well, I trust my gut, and it says good things are coming.”

You think as you open your mouth to give some sort of salty reply, but she cuts you off

“Stop being such a grumpy pants. I know today is gonna be a great day!”

“Whatever you say, Daisy. By the way, I have to head out early, Bruce should be in to cover the last hour with you.” You say going back to vacuuming the storefront.

“You know I’m right, Penelope!” She yells back at me, grabbing the Windex from under the counter to wash the mirrors.

After a slow morning, Daisy goes out to get herself lunch. You perch behind the counter during a lull of customers on a petite but tall stool. Your foot rests on the seat where only half of your bottom fits, knee to chest, chin resting on your knee, looking uncomfortable, but enjoying the stretch across your lower back. Your eyes follow a plane cutting across the sky as you listen to the clock on the wall ticking patiently to your right. The speakers overhead switch from Led Zeppelin to a personal recording of a Russian Lullaby.

The jingle of the door cuts through the peace. You turn my head smiling, “Welcome to Anderson’s Shoes, what can I help you find today?” you say, sitting up a little straighter as a pair of redheaded women and a disinterested man come into view of your seat. As they look your way, the man’s face perks up a bit. You unfold yourself from the stool, prancing around the counter. The women turn to you, smiling friendly.

“We are window shopping and heard the music, then saw the cute golden sandals in the window,” said the shorter of the two redheads in a distinctly Slavic accent.

Taking a shot in the dark, you smile, “Well, Pani, you must have good taste, both of the things you’ve just mentioned are favorites of mine.”

At that, the Sokovian title the girls’ ears perk, and the shorter’s eyes take on a blithe quality, while the taller’s look unphased after the slightest twitch.

“My name is Penny, would you like me to measure your feet before I go grab a couple of pairs for you to try on?” you say, gesturing to a set of comfortable looking chairs upholstered in an outdated green.

“I’m Wanda, This is Natasha, and the doof standing over there with his mouth open is Clint, I am 37 European, I don’t know what that means American Sizing…”

“No worries, Wanda,” you say with a small genuine smile, “your choice of shoe is a European brand, but for future references, a 37 usually translates to a 7 US unless you're getting a Louboutin, those tend to run a half-size short. But the best thing to do when buying shoes is to try them on. Would you also like to try on a pair as well, Natasha?”

Natasha smirks and gives a small shake of her head. “Thank you, though.”

With a polite nod, you slip into the stockroom, silently making your way through the creaky back halls of the store, picking up the desired gold sandals, as well as a pair of black stilettos in a nine. Guessing about the yet silent woman’s preferences, and unable to help but feel the need to grab them, feeling them calling to her.

Coming out of the back with the two boxes, you find the girls laughing at Clint. His face is scrunched up in concentration as he tries to balance on the tiny stool. Before you can reach the front of the store, he has majestically teetered on the seat. He straightens a bit, throwing off his balance just enough to send him sprawling onto the hard floor. The girls' peals of laughter only grow as he scowls at them. He's rubbing his most likely bruised tailbone when you finally reach where they are sitting.

Chuckling softly at the embarrassed expression he gives you, you offer a hand up to the grounded man, “Don’t take it too harshly if you were trying to sit like me, I doubt even Hawkeye could perch on that stool comfortably. If I’m honest, I’m not sure how I end up on it myself." Pulling him up swiftly, you turn to the girls. "I feel like you should try these shoes, Natasha. They were calling to you. And here are these for you, Wanda.” You say, handing the boxes with their respective shoes to the women as they burst into even louder laughter.

After some more friendly banter, and happy sighs as the girls put on the shoes you handed them. Clint, seemingly determined to prove he is indeed as dextrous as a plus-sized girl from the 'burbs, starts trying to pose on the chair a different way every time you turn your back to him. Natasha, though still guarded, seems to have settled when Clint fell the first time, free with her lip twitches that were clearly her version of a smile.

Watching them and spewing facts about the shoes to them as they walked around the store, the minutes tick by; 5, 10, 15. Curiously, nobody else makes their way into the store while they were there. Right as the girls made their way to the register with their original shoes in the new shoes’ boxes, Daisy walks back into the door and stops in her tracks, whatever exciting news she was going to undoubtedly tell me stuck inside her cheek.

“Thank you, I really hope that you enjoy your new shoes. If you have any problems or need anything else, just let us know-” you start saying until Daisy cuts me off with what you can only describe as a blood-curdling scream, causing all four of you to jump and take up fighting positions.

“PENELOPE GRACE DARLING! DO YOU KNOW WHO IS STANDING IN FRONT OF YOU OR DO I NEED TO KICK YOU?! IT’S THE SCARLET WITCH!” came a rush of semi-intelligent squeals from Daisy’s mouth.

Looking genuinely confused as you try to place the name with the context, your eyes flipping between the four people who were now staring at you. Three highly amused with your confusion and one completely flabbergasted. “Daisy calm down a bit? I am apparently missing something here, and you yelling is definitely not helping me piece it together.”

At this, Clint bends over himself, clutching his sides as his laughter rips through his chest. What a sexy laugh? Even though it’s at my expense. Nat smirks a little longer than her usual quick flashes. Wanda, ever the peacekeeper, extends her hand, “Hello, My name is Wanda, but I’m usually more recognized by my superhero name: The Scarlet Witch. These are my teammates and friends; Natasha, or The Black Widow; and Clint, also known as Hawkeye. It’s very nice to meet you, Penelope. We definitely appreciate the help with the shoes.”

Chapter 2

If you want more Winter Soldier fics check out @darkficsyouneveraskedfor. They have a great one called Breach.

Thank you all for reading. Tags are open for this fic, I am also curious to see what you all think. Share your truth with me.

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but-first--tea · 4 years

Text

LFRP: Omori Kaya

THE BASICS

Full name: Omori Kaya

Pronunciation: Oh-Moh-Ree Kay-Uh (Omori is her surname, Kaya is her given name)

Nicknames: n/a

Height: 5'6" (quite tall for a midlander hyur)

Age: “A lady never reveals her age.” (adult)

Nameday: 32nd Sun of the 3rd Astral Moon

Languages: Doman, Common

Occupation: Not getting caught.

Current Residence: "Traveling abroad.“ (Basically living a tourist’s life in Eorzea, hoping to never be called out as the fraud she is. She’ll spend time as someone’s guest here, staying in a hotel elsewhere the next month, etc…)

Relationship Status: While she has never actually been married, the identity of the woman she pretends to be is a young widow and heiress. (Single)

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Pale, silvery grey

Skin tone: Fair

Body type: Slender, athletic but not in an obvious way.

Scars: none

Accent: Doman

Posture

Poised, athletic– though she’s no master shinobi, she is her mother’s daughter. Her training began at the age of four, and it’s still evident in the way she moves, observes, and behaves. Others who have trained would likely notice it easily. She carries herself with quiet dignity, and moves (or refuses to) deliberately, as if she expects each action to be read for significance, and takes great care not to reveal too much unintentionally. Though, in the very rare instances when she lets down her guard, this facade can fade away, revealing that she’s still a girl who can be amused, and charmed, and is easily mesmerized by beautiful places and things.

Accessories

She’s almost never seen without jewelry, though all of it is merely decorative– the trappings of the life she’s stepped into. None of it is personal, or carries meaning beyond appearing as she’s expected to.

Apparel

Her taste ranges from the classically dramatic to the outright exotic- not out of a sense of vanity, but in an appreciation of what is more or less wearable art. She most frequently wears black and white, though she also favors blue and occasionally red. In keeping with her heritage, she tends toward modesty in her dress. Of course, most of these clothes once belonged to a woman whose identity she has stolen, and she’s begun to add Eorzean fashions to her wardrobe to stand out less. The more she blends in, the fewer questions about her past she needs to dodge...

CHILDHOOD

Place of Birth: Doma

Siblings: none she knows of

Parents: The samurai Masanari and an Imperial Shadow named Harue, though Kaya has never known her biological father, as she was still less than a year old when he disappeared.

Upbringing: Raised initially by her mother, and later trained by grandmother once her affinity for magic became apparent. (More details can be found in her character history.)

PERSONAL

Personality

Outwardly, she is polite and mysterious, with a demeanor ranging from businesslike toward strangers, to an unexpected sort of mischievous and rebellious streak around the rare soul she’s begun to feel comfortable around. She’s evasive and distant. She rarely connects with others easily, which leads to most people assuming she’s either very shy, or rather snobbish, at first impression. She doesn’t trust easily, isn’t prone to showing any emotion in public if she can avoid it, and is often the one who, from an outward appearance, seems to be just another quiet wallflower enjoying the view.

Beneath the surface, however, she feels everything perhaps far too much, watches everyone with the wariness of someone who knows all too well what people are capable of, and deeply craves the connections to others she doesn’t seem to be able to form easily. She’s always searching for the few who can see the world the way she does- as something equally beautiful as it is deadly, meant to be lived in, not just endured. She’s a powder keg of passions always kept under a tight lid, hidden away for safe keeping.

Still, she is difficult to anger, and it’s a cold anger when it happens. She knows that engaging in violence and revealing her training would likely break character entirely, and being discovered as a fraud wouldn’t end well for her. As a result, she’ll try to think her way out of any situation, instead.

Motivations/Goals

If asked what she wants more than anything else in the world, she’d probably say to be able to do what she wanted, not what she was told, or allowed, or expected to. She craves freedom in all its definitions, but nearly always denies it to herself out of fear or pragmatism. While playing the role of a young, noble heiress she feels the restraints of her gilded cage all too keenly. She must behave in the way one raised to the role would be expected to. As a result, she finds small ways to rebel that aren’t likely to be noticed. Her fierce and defiant nature, thus repressed, will see her doing seemingly pointless things like rearranging the furniture in hotel rooms, stealing small items she could easily afford, or finding ways to secretly get even with those who have behaved poorly.

Financial Status

Ostensibly wealthy, though not one gil of it was ever truly hers. Still, she feels no guilt in obtaining the Omori family’s accounts considering they would have otherwise been seized by the Garlean government following Lord Omori’s assassination.

She has been quietly seeking a way to invest ‘her’ money in a way that would divorce it from her stolen inheritance, make it more truly hers, and greatly reduce the risk of losing everything should her false identity be uncovered.

Weapons

While she was raised to the blade and bow for most of her childhood, she hides her training and doesn’t carry a weapon openly, if at all. If cornered and forced to defend herself, she’d mostly likely attempt to disarm an opponent and steal theirs, or improvise.

Vices

Seemingly none, as she has striven to present herself as a woman of proper graces. However, she is prone to self-indulgence and spending far too much gil merely because she can, which she considers a vice in herself and tries to resist.

Likes

People who are intelligent, interesting, vibrantly passionate and alive. Watching people do things that require specialized skill, especially combat training or constructing something.

Constructive debate and interesting challenge. Trying/learning new things.

Music, dancing. She’s often wished she could play an instrument, but has never learned to.

Nature, gardens, fireflies, birds, waterfalls, the ocean/seaside. Traveling to anywhere with a spectacular view or vibrant culture. Learning about said cultures.

Exotic spiced foods or just about anything she hasn’t tasted before that doesn’t look absolutely disgusting. Tea. Fruits, chocolate, and spiced cider or tea. Have I mentioned tea?

Unusual crystals and/or gemstones. While she’s generally unfazed by wealth or status, she appears to be positively mesmerized by sparklies.

Dislikes

Politics, rumor mongering, cattiness, insults, and general poor behavior.

People who think getting drunk is the best kind of fun to be had.

Addictive drugs, and those who sell them.

Being forced to do anything, feeling not in control over her own life.

Overly objectifying unwanted attention, awkward social situations/obligations/expectations.

Being cold, biting insects.

Hobbies

Reading, especially the arcane.

Learning the history of different places and cultures.

Collecting small, easily transportable items (generally clothing or jewelry) in local styles from each new place she visits.

Pets: None, currently. She once had a magpie as a pet when she was younger, and maintains a fondness for birds of all kinds.

RP HOOKS

She’s looking (quietly) for a way to launder, er... invest her money to gradually eliminate the need to rely on her stolen identity and foreign contacts for access to funds. Have an opportunity?

A trusted lady’s maid, retainer, or guard type to help her maintain appearances.

It’s possible that someone from her past in Doma might recognize her, or perhaps have known the real Omori Kaya.

The woman she is impersonating is an ill-fit for her. She is fierce, independent, and rebellious... the exact opposite of the demure and soft character her stolen identity demands. But, her mother risked everything to secure her new identity, and she won’t cast it off unless forced to. Still, she isn’t perfect. Someone could catch her in a mistake, and become curious...

The Lady Omori Kaya appears elegant, mysterious, ...and wealthy. Potential suitors aren’t unlikely. (Romance is an option, though she’ll be hard to pin down at first, for obvious reasons.)

She has a (stolen) soulstone in her possession, and has been working to unlock its secrets.

Open to brainstorming other connections, past associations, or jumping into -your- existing plot!

OOC

I make my own schedule. I can be available pretty much any time from 8 am to 9pm CST. Sadly, I can rarely do late nights because I need to do that sleeping thing.

OOC communication is a priority for me.

I have been RPing for 20+ years. I am comfortable with both in game or Discord RP, and anything from short, quick posts to multi para. I do this because I enjoy writing!

I am not interested in random ERP outside of a long-term character interaction. I do love writing ships as long as there's strong chemistry between the characters, and both the character and the writer of said character are mature adults. However,I will not consider ships with alt or AU characters, as this is my one and only RP character. (No multi-shipping.)

I prefer a RP style that works with what is plausible within the scope of the lore. I'm open to creativity, as long as it makes sense. I prefer to stay away from void-heavy, AU, inserts from other universes, and anything involving cross-breeding with non-playable races/beings. (These are only my personal preferences, and everyone else is free to do whatever they like!)

Absolutely no: rape, harm to children, or graphic torture.

I do enjoy game content as well, and prefer company over doing so alone! I am currently sitting in my own personal FC house, but would consider joining a real FC if it makes sense for my character.

Confession: I probably spend way too much time decorating virtual houses.

#ffxiv rp #updated character sheet #Omori Kaya #hyur midlander #Doman

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hermadnessmacwrites · 3 years

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A Game of Puzzles (Making the Pieces Fit) Chapter 4

Summary: With the war over and Sasuke home again, Sakura is more hopeful for Team 7’s future than she has been in a long time. She’s quickly disappointed to find that nothing in the Village fits quite like it used to—not her old bedroom, not her clothes, and definitely not Team 7. Join Sakura as she scrambles to understand her place in this new team dynamic.

If she has a place there at all.

-OR-

It takes three dorks a painfully long time after moving in together to realize that they all belong together.

It’s the first time Sakura remembers October 10th ever being this...jovial.

The streets are always crowded this time of year, but the laughter seems oddly out of place. Gone are the mournful monochromatic clothes she’s used to. Everything she looks at—the clothes, the storefronts, the people—is so bright she has to work to avoid squinting.

“Oooh, Sakura, look, there’s a dango stand!”

Brightest of all is Naruto. He’s actually wearing less orange than usual, having been convinced into a pair of dark tan pants, but his expression more than makes up for the loss. Each street vendor and colored lantern is taken in with equal amounts of awe. He looks like a kid at his first birthday party, which…

...it’s a painfully accurate description. Sakura tries not to think about it.

“Didn’t you just eat like five bowls of ramen?” she teases. Naruto opens his mouth and closes it, looking for an excuse, but Sakura elbows him lightly in the side. “Just kidding, let’s go grab some. I heard they were going to add a new flavor today, too.”

Naruto’s eyes widen comically. “For me? Really?”

“Of course it’s for you,” Sasuke cuts in from behind them. Walking three across really isn’t possible in these crowds, but, like most genin teams, Team 7 feels most comfortable navigating public spaces in a loose triangle formation. “It’s not like Konoha has anything else to celebrate today, right?”

The pointed question isn’t lost on Naruto, who visibly deflates. Sakura spins to glare at Sasuke and catches a flash of a frown as his gaze drops to the pavement. It’s not Naruto that Sasuke is annoyed with, but that’s exactly who he’s hurting with his bitterness. It doesn’t take much for Naruto to swing to extreme sadness when he’s this happy, which Sasuke knows. She had hoped he would mind his temper today.

“Hey.” Sakura draws Naruto’s hand into hers and gives him her best smile. “Why don’t you take Mr. Killjoy and find a spot to sit for a bit. I’ll bring the dango over, okay?”

Naruto’s smile starts small, but quickly grows as she holds his hand.

“Yeah, I’ll keep him out of trouble,” he agrees, “Could you grab a couple different flavors?”

“As many as I can carry,” she assures him. Sakura sends one last pleading look at Sasuke before they disappear. She’s pretty sure he rolls his eyes at her, which isn’t exactly a promise to behave, but it does mean that he got the message. Probably. Hopefully.

Once Naruto is out of view, Sakura takes a quick second to get her emotions back in check. Sasuke’s right. The Village’s abrupt one eighty in its treatment of Naruto grates her nerves if she lets herself think about it for too long. They’d gone from disdain to reverence in the span of six months. Technically this is a festival celebrating the end of the war, but there’s been a fair amount of Uzumaki branded treats and well-wishes from strangers as well.

At least she had apologized.

A couple deep breaths later, Sakura’s pushing through the crowds towards the stand. There’s a line forming, but the vendor calls Sakura forward as soon as he sees her. Embarrassed, Sakura ducks her head in a small apology to the people in line as she moves past them. She doesn’t want to make more of a scene than she already is, and she really wants to get back to her team as soon as she can.

“Could I get two Hanami dango, a mitarashi dango, and a”—she cranes her neck to get a better look at the name of the new flavor from the poster on the side of the cart—“and one Uzumaki dango, please?”

“Absolutely! Would you like a Team 7 dango as well?”

“Oh!” There’s nothing about a Team 7 dango on the sign. Is that actually a thing? Did he make that up when he saw her? “Um, yes, please. Thank you.”

By the time Sakura’s done counting out her coins, the dango are being shoved towards her. She scrambles to put her money pouch away and grab her sweets without holding up the line any longer. Four of the dango end up in one hand while a white, pink, and orange dango ends up in the other. It takes her a second to realize that this is supposed to be the Team 7 dango. The anger kicks in a second later.

To be fair to the vendor, she’s never actually seen blue dango before. Then again, she’s never seen a red habanero dango before today, and that’s definitely one of the flavors on the Uzumaki stick. Choosing the white dango for Kakashi feels like a dig at Sasuke. Sakura bites the orange dumpling off the stick and chews furiously. There. Now it just looks like a partially eaten Hanami dumpling.

That “Team 7” roll better not be on the actual menu. For the vendor’s sake.

Sakura finds Naruto and Sasuke sitting on top of one of the tables in an eating area, of all places. She has no idea who’s idea that was. It’s an extremely rude thing to do with so many people looking for seats, but Sakura doesn’t really want to be joined by the type of people who are deterred by her teammates’ antics right now.

Naruto spots her first and starts waving wildly—as if she could have missed the pair of them. Sasuke turns to see who has caught Naruto’s attention. When he recognizes her, he pulls one of his legs off the bench and onto the table so she’ll have a place to sit. Naruto follows his lead, pulling both his feet off the bench and into a criss-cross position. So they were trying to deter people from sitting with them.

She’s not even mad.

“One mitarashi dango, one hanami dango, and one Uzumaki dango,” she declares, handing over her loot. Naruto cheers, promptly digging into the hanami stick as soon as it’s in his hand. He’s two dumplings deep before Sakura’s even fully seated.

Sasuke’s eyebrow raises as she nibbles on her own dango. “You got two hanami dango for yourself?”

Busted.

“Uh, one of them is for you?” she tries. At Sasuke’s unimpressed expression, she relents, “Fine. Yes, I got two hanami for myself.” He still looks skeptical for some reason, so she tries for classic misdirection, “You might actually want to try the red dumpling from the Uzumaki dango, though, I’m pretty sure it’s spicy.”

“It is?” Naruto pauses his munching on the mitarashi stick to take a bite of the red dumpling before recoiling immediately. “Ack—it is! Why is it spicy?”

Sakura laughs. “I think the colors represent your family. The orange and yellow are pretty self-explanatory, so the red is probably for your mom. For the Uzumaki hair, I’m guessing. I don’t know why they didn’t choose cherry or something, though—that would have gone better with the rest of the flavors.”

“Her nickname was the ‘Red-hot Habanero,’ so that’s probably it,” Naruto explains, his smile dimming. It’s Sasuke’s turn to glare at her, and she winces, appropriately abashed. She always manages to stick her foot in her mouth when the conversation turns to parents. “Anyway, you should try it, Sasuke. It’s not sweet, like, at all, so I bet you’ll like it.”

Sakura figures the odds are skewed sixty/fourty in favor of Sasuke rejecting the offer, but Sasuke doesn’t actually say anything at all. Instead he bends down and bites the rest of the dumpling right off the stick that Naruto’s holding. Some of the drizzling sauce clings to his lower lip, and his tongue darts out quickly to wipe it clean.

She’s not even the one holding the stick, but Sakura is absolutely certain her heart fucking stutters to a stop at the sight. Poor Naruto looks appropriately shocked. His lips are parted in a gentle “o” of surprise, and his eyes are, dare she say it, looking a little glazed over. He rallies quickly, though, shoving the rest of the Uzumaki stick right under Sasuke’s nose.

“Try the orange one next!”

“Ugh, no.” It’s Sasuke’s turn to recoil. “That one probably is sweet, dumbass.”

"Come on," Naruto wheedles,"Just take a little—wait. Wait, are you saying my mom tastes better than I do?"

"Why do you have to phrase it like that!"

The words are different, but the cadence of her teammates bickering is familiar enough that it quickly fades to the background of her attention. She works through the rest of her "hanami" roll at a leisurely pace, scanning the crowds as she does. There's so much laughter. Even actual festivals haven't been this boisterous for years.

Most of these people weren't on the war front. It's easy to resent them for that—for celebrating the anniversary of such a trying day. Victory is not a reward granted, but a luxury paid for in blood and flesh by the pound. She understands the relief, but is this much pomp and circumstance acceptable? Does a life saved by a black market kidney still deserve celebration?

Sakura doesn't know.

A child screams, high and piercing, shattering through the joyful murmur of the crowd. Her teammates' argument grinds to a halt. Sakura swivels to locate the source, and, in her periphery, she notices the majority of the adults around her do the same. Chakra flares around her as ninja spread their senses in search of a threat.

"Kenta!" a petite woman scolds, bending down, "What did I say about screaming?"

"Not to," the child mumbles. He's small enough that a picnic table nearby obscures him from Sakura's view.

"Unless?" the woman prompts. If Kenta answers, it's too quiet for her to hear.

Everyone in the vicinity, ninja and civilians alike, visibly relaxes. It's sobering to realize how on-edge they all are despite the upbeat atmosphere. Life has not been kind to Konoha's residents.

How self-absorbed of her.

No, the civilians around her didn't watch Neji die. They didn't despair as the Ten-tailed beast appeared in the battle-ground. To say they didn't know fear—didn't know suffering—is terribly short-sighted.

Konoha is a thriving militaristic society. Has been for decades. But having the pointiest sick doesn't ensure safety. Often the wielder becomes a target of others struggling to create their own rags to riches stories.

Or revenge. Pointy sticks are great at poking avengers into action.

Point is, Konoha has been leveled three times in Sakura's short time on this earth. If the civilians don't get to celebrate the peace she fought for, maybe she doesn't get to celebrate the Village they rebuilt.

Food for thought.

Sakura lays her finished dango stick on the table. The untouched dango stick sags in her hand with her increasing disinterest. Her recent train of thought is more than enough to derail her appetite entirely despite the fact that dango is one of her favorite treats.

"You okay?" Naruto asks immediately. He glances at the dango dangling in her grasp pointedly.

Sakura doesn't even have to force the smile. His concern forces its way through the heavy stormcloud of her thoughts like the sunbeam he is. Sweet. Naruto's just so sweet.

"I'm fine.” She fans herself with her free hand. "Just kinda hot, yeah? It's killing my appetite."

Naruto's expression clears immediately. "In that case, let's go get some shaved ice soon! I think I saw a vendor on our way in."

"I did not sign up to wrangle the two of you on a sugar high," Sasuke interjects sourly. Sweet sauce is smeared across his cheekbone, and there might be a crumb of fried dough occluding one nostril. Sakura chokes on a giggle which clearly earns no points from Sasuke. "No more sweets."

Sakura raises her hands in surrender, but Naruto isn't as quick to acquiesce. They start bickering, again, and as Sakura watches a dango skewer slides dangerously close to Sasuke's eye. Idiots. That does explain the out-of-place dough and sticky sauce, though.

The reprimand on her tongue withers at the enthusiastic sparkle in Naruto’s eyes as he advances further and further into Sasuke’s personal space. And Sasuke—brooding, angsty Sasuke—has a smile playing at his lips as he avoids the sticky dessert. He’s making a good show of being annoyed by his teammate’s antics, but if he was really done he’d be slapping the blond away. Angry Sasuke wouldn’t lean back unconcernedly on his only hand like that, and he certainly wouldn’t let Naruto rest his stump on his shoulder as he pesters him.

Bright. It’s so, so bright out today—ridiculously sunny for October—but no amount of sunblock would protect her from their megawatt smiles.

If the fight gets enthusiastic enough to disturb the table, she'll step in, Sakura decides, turning her head to give them a little privacy.

Or the illusion of it, anyway.

Sakura’s not sure how her teammates are able to ignore all the attention they’re attracting. The picnic table they have selected is on the outskirts of the eating area, but they might as well be on center stage. Her skin prickles under the weight of the public’s stares.

Logically, she knows the curious civilians don’t mean any harm. It’s rare that Team 7 is out in the public eye for such an extended period of time. That doesn’t stop the shinobi buried deep beneath her medic persona from sharpening her kunai warily. Sakura doesn't resent the instinct exactly—that's what keeps her alive—but she does try to shake it. The eyes on her aren't dangerous.

Just oppressive.

It’s in pretending to look out across the crowd—and ignoring the alarming number of heads that whip away from her that she does—that she notices them.

A trio of girls sit at two tables away from them at a diagonal. Four older women share the table, but there's enough space between the two to make it clear that they're separate parties. And anyway, the women are laughing, with clenched eyes and wide smiles. The younger ones, though, they're tittering. The sound is sharper than the murmuring of the crowd around them, which is probably why they stood out to her in the first place.

In their mirth, they haven’t noticed Sakura’s attention. One of the girls has a blush dark enough to match the hair of the girl digging an elbow playfully into her side. She can’t see the face of the final member of the trio, but her shoulders shake in obvious laughter under long, black hair. Suddenly the girl’s arms come up in an exaggerated stretch before dropping to her hips so she can make a show of twisting and stretching her back. Not bad for a civilian. Sakura would have almost believed her if not for how quickly she turned back to her friends after a less than sneaky peek at Team 7’s table.

Any amusement she might have held for the girls’ antics slip away immediately. Clearly the trio isn’t looking at Sakura, or they would have noticed her attention. The number of times they’ve all slid glances her direction is too high to be a coincidence, however, which only leaves one option.

The boys.

Now it’s abundantly clear what the brunette is being teased about. It’s been a while since the Academy, but Sakura has sent her share of moonstruck looks a certain Uchiha’s way. She knows what it feels like—what it looks like—to laugh and tease over crushes. Her eyebrows narrow fiercely for all that she tries to keep her expression neutral. The only real question left is: which boy are they looking at?

Four years ago, the answer would have been Sasuke hands down. His sharp features and aloof personality are easily misread as the mysterious persona of at least fifty percent of the love interests in romance novels. Barely dodged war crimes have tamped down the general enthusiasm for Sasuke, though there is always the chance the girl thinks she has a thing for “bad boys.”

Sakura hopes not, for her sake. Sasuke’s particular brand of “rebel with a cause” needs at least three years of serious training and an instruction manual the size of one of her medical textbooks to have any chance of walking away unscathed. Even then nightmares and traumatic events are pretty much a given.

Naruto laughs, loudly, and throws his head back enough to give a clear view of the syrup that drips down his chin. The brunette’s expression softens, and Sakura can hear the lovesick sigh she heaves from twenty feet away. So Naruto is the object of her affection. The realization makes her stomach twist.

There’s a sharp crack, and Sakura’s dango drops to the grass beneath them. She blinks, confused. The bottom half of the stick is still clenched tightly in her fist. It takes longer than it should to notice the splintered edge of the stick and piece together what happened.

“Are you alright?” It’s Sasuke that asks this time.

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine.” Sakura bends down to grab her dango from the ground. She hadn’t planned on eating it anyway, but the grass coating the dumplings means that’s not an option for later anymore. “I just, ah—”

Before Sakura can come up with an excuse for her ill-timed use of super strength, the tittering behind them grows in volume enough to catch Sasuke’s attention this time. Sakura’s eyes flit to the trio of girls automatically, and they are looking at her now. Great. Even the blushing brunette has joined in the action, so Sakura knows that the laughs are meant for her. She grinds her teeth together. They’re civilians. Sakura can’t go around just laying civilians out because she feels like it.

“That’s enough time in the sun,” Sasuke declares, sliding off of the table top. He shoots a viscous glare over his shoulder. Sakura shouldn’t find so much satisfaction in how rapidly the giggles grind to a halt, but she does. The knots her intestines have tied themselves into loosen enough that she can take aim with a sharp smile of her own.

“Guys…?” Naruto asks. He can tell that something is going on, but doesn’t have enough information to piece the story together as Sasuke did. Blonde eyebrows furrow lightly as he glances from his teammates to the girls’ table.

The brunette has the audacity to sigh again. Every muscle in Sakura’s body tenses for a fight, and she doesn’t even pause to think about how ridiculous her reaction is. It’s not like she has any sort of claim over Naruto. Sasuke is the one who has been messily sharing finger food with him this whole afternoon. If anyone has any right to feel the sudden rage coursing through their body, it’s him. How dare that girl assume she has a chance when Naruto is clearly taken?

Sure enough, Sasuke’s expression has doubled in intensity. Disgust and possessiveness mix in equal measure on his face as his lip curls up and over his teeth. He probably doesn’t even realize what an overprotective boyfriend he looks like, and Sakura can only watch smugly as the girls wilt under his glare. Serves them right.

“We’re getting out of here,” Sasuke declares, firmly. He turns away from the trio before hefting Naruto off the table and over his shoulder in one fluid motion. Naruto squawks in surprise, understandably, but Sasuke’s malice is clearly not directed at him, so he allows himself to be carted away with only token protests. “Let’s go, Sakura.”

The urge to gloat is irresistible. Sakura tosses a taunting wink that the girls are too shell-shocked to react to before falling into her place at her boys’ backs. The rage and, okay, she’ll admit it, jealousy that bubbled up so unexpectedly earlier washes away in the face of her contentment. Maybe neither Sasuke or Naruto are hers in the romantic sense, but they’re hers in all the other ways that matter.

Sakura will guard their backs for as long as they let her with a smile in her heart.

Read the rest of the chapter on ao3

#hermadnessmac writes #Team 7 ot3 #NaruSasuSaku #Team 7 moves in together #A Game of Puzzles (Making the Pieces Fit)#Read on AO3

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toosicktoocare · 4 years

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prompt: I love your witcher in need fic! For a prompt- maybe a monster or robber or something tries to use jaskier as leverage over geralt? Or as a hostage? And geralt realizes how scared that makes him?

/shrugs. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good hostage fic.

Mentions of this fic.

Geralt and Jaskier spend the next few days in town upon Geralt’s stern insistence, the latter wishing to allow Jaskier a chance to fully rest and recover from a nasty wound received after a rather terrifying encounter with a couple of Kikimora soldiers.

However, while Jaskier’s wound slowly heals, his health takes a turn in the opposite direction, leaving him with harsh, barking coughs and a near-constant fever that’s got him bedridden, more so with each passing day. Geralt’s initial fear was infection, but Jaskier’s wound isn’t an angry swollen red, but rather a faint pink around the edges, leaving Geralt to settle for Jaskier’s insistence that he merely caught a chill after being pulled under water by one of the Kikimora soldiers, though Geralt has his doubts with Jaskier’s rapidly deteriorating condition.

Geralt’s taken to the town each day Jaskier can’t find the energy to move from bed, asking around for a mage, a doctor, any single person who has even the slightest ounce of medical knowledge, yet the small town proves sparse in the medical field. Still, Geralt goes out each day, moving along a hint of desperation, and when he’s not asking each and every person he crosses paths with, he’s trying to make sense of Jaskier’s many medical books, finally pinpointing on a section detailing an infection of the lungs. His eyes dissect each symptom, and he applies each to Jaskier: the alarming coughing, the gripping fever, the inconsistent chills, the fatigue, and more recently, the rattle coated along each wheezing breath.

When he wakes on the fourth day to Jaskier’s harsh, labored breathing, face pinched in discomfort, Geralt doesn’t hesitate to slip into his clothes and seek help, medical book in hand. He moves about the town for hours, and those who do agree to stop and hear him out only offer non-descriptive medical help, instead detailing vague accounts of their own children who were stricken down with the same illness. When one woman tears up, claiming this apparent infection of the lungs claimed her seventeen-year-old son’s life a year ago, something pulls in Geralt’s stomach, a clear sense of uneasiness and fear that twist and mold together until he’s starting back to the inn to ensure his bard is still breathing.

When he steps into the inn, despite moving through familiar motions, the uneasiness in his stomach grows into a pit, his senses chasing an odd feeling that something feels terribly off. He takes to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, before he’s throwing the suite door open, eyes zeroing in on the empty bed.

“Jaskier,” he growls, hand instinctively moving over his shoulder, fingers brushing against this hilt of his sword. He can still make out the lingering smell of Jaskier’s illness, of sweat and pain, but there’s a second smell mixing in the air that has Geralt creeping to the bed, light and quiet on his feet. The comforter is knotted on the floor, and the sheets have been pulled half-off, revealing the old, worn mattress underneath, the bed showing clear signs of a struggle.

Geralt rests his hand atop the sheets, taking note to the faint, damp warmth that coats his palm. Not long ago, he thinks, and he moves through a quick sweep of the rest of the suite, checking every inch and coming up empty with every narrow drag of his gaze. The pit in his stomach grows, fear swirling to the center, and his fingers curl tightly around the hilt of his sword as he bounds down the steps, stopping before the inn-keeper.

“My companion is missing,” he announces bluntly, pulling the inn-keepers attention toward him with a deep growl.

“A man stopped by, said he was a doctor here to help.” The inn-keeper’s voice is distracted, her attention already flicking back to her book, but Geralt presses, voice deep, threatening.

“There are no doctors in this town.”

“Maybe he’s from the next town over.”

“The next town is three days away even on the fastest horse--”

“--look, Witcher,” the inn-keeper spits out, voice colored in a clear tone of annoyance. “I don’t know where your lover went, but maybe it’s for the best.” She drags a slow gaze back to her book, and for the briefest of moments, anger sweeps across Geralt’s vision, but just as quickly, he blinks through it, sighing lowly as he moves away from the wooden counter and out the door.

He pulls a narrow gaze around his nearest surroundings, relying solely on his senses, and he starts toward the woods surrounding the small town, figuring he would have already heard a commotion if Jaskier’s been taken through the center of town.

His instincts prove accurate when he walks around a few trees and spots a series of faint footprints in the mud, one set unsteady and pulling in a different direction compared to the other even set. He moves with the footprints, often losing them at times, but he keeps in a single direction, taking note to leaves ripped from vines, to small tree branches looking as if they’ve been unwillingly broken, a second sign of a struggle.

The uneasiness shifts to a muted burn of desperation within his stomach, moving and mixing with the fear up to his chest, past his rib cage to fight against his slower heart beat. His hand brushes against the sharp edges of a broken tree limb, and then he hears an incredibly faint yet frighteningly clear sound of muffled coughing that’s got him moving quickly toward it.

The air around him, though fresh and clear, is beginning to take to a familiar scent that has hope trying to push to the front of Geralt’s thoughts, and he chases the sound and scent, through bushes and around towering trees until he’s stumbling into a small clearing where a lean man with a pointed nose has Jaskier pinned to his chest by a knife pressed to his throat, just hard enough to warrant a small trickle of blood.

Jaskier’s eyes go wide with relief, yet they’re still clouded in fear, glassy with fever, and he mutters Geralt’s name around the cloth tied against his mouth, a few, ragged coughs following. Geralt can hear the deep rattle with each, struggling breath, the shallow, choppy inhale and exhale through Jaskier’s nose, and he tries to will his mind and heart to steady so he can fully assess the situation.

Moving may prove fatal for Jaskier, so while he keeps his shoulders squared and he tightens his grip on the hilt of his sword, he doesn’t move, only offering a small tilt of the head in silent question.

“You are quite difficult to track down, Geralt of Rivia.”

Geralt recognizes the voice, and he casts his eyes down to the dirt below him as if searching for an answer along the mud, brief patches of grass, and footprints.

“You don’t remember me.”

Geralt pulls his gaze back up with a frown, and the man groans, pressing the knife a little harder to Jaskier’s neck.

“Three years ago? You killed my brother.”

For a brief moment, Geralt’s mind chases the new information back to a small town three years ago, a town he had been sorely unwelcome in the second he and Roach stepped foot into their territory, specifically to a small group of men known as the tavern regulars. Though small, the town was quite rowdy, and he remembers sleeping at the inn, only to be pulled awake by a knife piercing his shoulder. He remembers moving on instinct, reaching for his sword, and then he remembers pulling a knife from his shoulder, the scar still prominent to this day. He remembers stepping over lifeless bodies, and he remembers tipping the inn-keeper well.

“Your brother and his friends tried to kill me.” He finally says, blinking away the past.

“No, they only wanted to rough you up!”

“I think my sheer act of self-defense having been woken by a knife to the shoulder was severely warranted,” Geralt presses, voice low and eyes dangerously narrow.

“They were never planning on killing you!”

Geralt remembers now, those same words being yelled at him as he had pulled himself up to Roach’s back.

“They were just,” the man starts, voice abandoning the squeaking cry and turning to a darker, malicious tone, “roughing you up a bit, just as I’m doing.” He presses the knife deeper against Jaskier’s neck, eliciting a small whimper from Jaskier that Geralt clings to, fear now gripping at his heart.

“Rough me up, then. The bard’s done nothing to you.”

“No,” the man draws out, a devilish grin tugging at the corners of his lips, “but he’s my ticket to you.”

He moves to make the final press to Jaskier’s throat, to slice clean through the small, bleeding slit, and suddenly, Geralt’s potion is weighing a hole in his pocket, but he can’t reach for it, he can’t move against the pure, icy, terrifying clutch of fear that’s pushing against him, freezing his limbs in place, but then Jaskier’s swinging his head back away from the knife, bashing the back of his head to the man’s face, and Geralt takes the brief moment to snag his potion, ripping the lid off with his teeth and dumping the contents down his throat in one, long swig.

His eyes coat to a deep black, and his veins jut out underneath his skin, and then he’s moving, drawing his sword while pulling Jaskier away from the man while the man’s staggering a few feet away, cradling a bloody nose.

Jaskier hits the ground, coughing miserably and wincing at the pain that jolts up and down his arm, his sutures pulling against the sudden jerk and pressure. He drops to his side, and he can barely watch as Geralt moves effortlessly along the effects of the potion.

Geralt moves without thinking, swinging his sword until the man’s running off into the woods, sobbing and leaving a pooling trail of blood, and only when he’s sure the man’s gone, listening closely to the fading footfalls, does he turn to Jaskier, movements aggressive, desperate. He yanks the cloth from Jaskier’s mouth, and Jaskier struggles to suck in a ragged breath, lungs quaking, failing, and then he’s coughing over and over until blood trickles past his lips.

And true, unaltered fear hits Geralt like a crashing wave in an ocean, fear of Jaskier’s condition, fear of losing Jaskier, an endless push of fear that Jaskier’s death would be his fault. He scoops Jaskier into his arms, so quickly it’s almost dangerous, and he spins on his heel, stopping when black eyes lock onto sharp, purple ones.

“Yennefer?”

“Looks like your bard’s dying,” Yennefer starts, sighing, “again.”

Jaskier’s unconscious in Geralt’s arms, barely breathing, chest moving in quick, shallow motions, and Geralt brings a gaze from Yennefer, to Jaskier, then back, and his voice is shaking despite the potion bleeding strength to every crevice of his body.

“Can you--”

“--yes,” Yennefer interrupts, already turning sharply on her heel. “I’ll save your lover.”

Geralt doesn’t think of anything other than the shivering bard in his arms, and he follows Yennefer back to the inn. His potion begins to wear off when he sets Jaskier into the bed, and he backs away, Jaskier’s ragged coughs sounding far too loud to his ears, until his back hits the wall across the room. He slides down the rough wood, hitting the floor with a low thump as Yennefer works through touch and magic. He watches with bated breath, only exhaling when he hears Jaskier suck in a deep breath, no rattle clinging to his lungs. He can hear Jaskier’s heart beat slow to a steady, rhythmic thump, and he cranes his neck to see the pained, flushed expression fade to smooth lines and pale cheeks.

“He’ll sleep for a while, but he should be well when he wakes,” Yennefer announces, heels clicking against the wooden floor as she turns from the bed and starts to Geralt. “I even worked on the wound. Some of the sutures ripped out. It’ll scar, but,” she pulls her gaze over her shoulder to the sleeping bard before dragging it back to Geralt, “it will be healed when he wakes, as will his neck.”

“I can pay you,” Geralt starts, voice still shaking slightly. “I’ll do whatever you would like to repay you for this,” but when he moves to stand, to retrieve the money he’s earned from jobs, Yennefer stops him with a single sharp gaze, a single hand raised.

“I don’t want your money, Geralt,” she draws out, sighing, voice tinged with slight annoyance. “All I want is for you to realize that your kind doesn’t mix well with his kind.”

“What--”

“You’ll get him killed one of these days.” She walks out of the room, and Geralt listens as the faint sounds of her heels disappear, her words pushing around his mind as he slowly gets to his feet. He stumbles to the bed, crawling in beside Jaskier, desperate to drift off to the comforting sounds of Jaskier’s beating heart, but then Jaskier rolls over until he’s facing Geralt, and his eyes flick open.

“Jaskier--”

“She’s wrong,” Jaskier whispers, voice thick with sleep. “You won’t get me killed. I trust you completely.”

You shouldn’t, Geralt thinks, but he only pulls Jaskier to his chest, pressing his lips to the top of Jaskier’s head. “Rest, Jaskier.”

256 notes · View notes

seriouslyhermione · 4 years

Text

Wanna Bet? [1/2]

Summary: After Ron insists Fred doesn't have a chance with Hermione, he decides to put money on it. The bet? Simple: Hermione must agree to go on a date with Fred before the New Year. Fred thinks it should be fairly easy to pull off--as long as Hermione doesn’t kill him when he tells her.

Warnings: Language, American writer attempting to use British slang, mild Ron bashing (necessary for the plot and not exactly ooc)

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fred Weasley

Word Count: 5.5k

Request: fremione fake-dating??? maybe someone did a bet that fred couldn't date her and everyone was being mean to her bc ron is w lavender and they expected her to be w him, and fred (who has feelings for her obv) is like "not oN MY WATCH" and he's like "let's fake date so we'll get money out of this suckers" idk!!! hi hope you're well

Fred watched Hermione smile the way one might watch a child fall off a training broom after trying to mount it for the first time: fond, pitying, just the slightest bit amused.

None of the others noticed it, the way her eyes didn’t light up in joy or how her smile was a bit too stiff to be natural. But he did. Likely because he had been the only one to elicit a real, genuine grin out of the witch in the past six months or so. He spent enough time staring at her, he should certainly know the difference by now, even if no one else did.

Harry, he would give a pass to as he had his hands a bit full with his godson running around the room and being forced to sit through wedding planning with Molly as Ginny only rolled her eyes in the background. Poor bloke really was stretched thin these days, and Fred knew he still made a conscious effort to reach out to Hermione and include her in his life despite it. Not noticing her silent suffering in a room filled with noisy celebrations was almost understandable, all things considered.

Ron, on the other hand, was on thin fucking ice.

He should have noticed how uncomfortable Hermione was the second he announced that Lavender Brown would be coming to their family Christmas. Should have given in when Hermione politely tried to extract herself from the event in anticipation of the unbearable awkwardness that was sure to come with attending a dinner with your ex-boyfriend, his annoying new (old) girlfriend, and said ex-boyfriend’s entire family.

But then again, Ron did have it right when he (rather untactfully) pointed out that she didn’t exactly have anyone else to spend the holiday with.

He was supposed to be the one who knew her best though, despite their (mostly) amicable break-up nine months ago. They were still friends, after all, and they were better as such anyway. But it would be uncomfortable for anyone to watch their ex-boyfriend/best friend intermittently sneak off with his new girlfriend that he just so happened to have a rather spotty history with, only to come back to engage in conversation about their other best friend’s wedding and oh Won Won, I just love the way the cream napkins set off the lavender table clothes. I do hope we can incorporate that color scheme in our wedding, never mind that they weren’t even engaged.

Fred was feeling rather nauseous himself, if he was being honest, and he had never been in a relationship with either of them. He couldn’t imagine how Hermione felt, standing with her back against the fireplace as though she were just waiting for the opportunity to make a quick escape through the Floo network. But the forced smile and uncomfortable way she was hugging herself as she clutched her wine glass in a vice grip told him enough, even if no one else could be bothered to notice.

“You’re staring again,” a voice nearly identical to his own warned from next to him, and he immediately averted his gaze. But it was too late.

“Still pining, eh Freddy?” Charlie teased, flopping down next to Fred on the sofa, throwing his arm over his shoulders.

George scoffed into his glass of firewhiskey at his other side, and any gratitude Fred held towards him for the too-late warning faded instantly. He caught Bill’s eye from where he sat in the armchair to their left, and his rather wolfish grin told him that he had noticed as well, though he kindly chose not to say anything.

Which was precisely why he was his favorite brother. After George of course.

Well, after George on a good day. Today just happened to not be.

“Of course,” George said, rolling his eyes in what could only be described as fond exasperation. “I don’t know if he could make it more obvious at this point.”

“I am not obvious,” Fred hissed, hoping they would understand and lower their damn voices before they drew even more attention to his unfortunate state of being.

That is to say, his rather inopportunely timed attraction to one Hermione Granger, of course.

“You stare at her,” George said, tone flat and uncharacteristic frown tugging at his lips. “You send her ‘trials’ from the shop like a dedicated husband would send his wife flowers. You have dinner with her once a week just to ‘catch up,’ like either of you are really that interesting—”

“Oi!”

“—and you get this look on your face whenever she laughs, like she’s made your entire day just by existing.”

“Right,” Charlie said, though he sounded a bit unsure. Fred didn’t blame him. No one knew him like George did, and usually his twin had the good grace not to blab his business to anyone else. But apparently his tongue got a little too loose after three glasses of firewhiskey and four months of watching his brother pine after a certain curly-haired witch. “What he said. But you know that nothing can come of it right?”

Fred grit his teeth and ignored the sympathetic look George was pulling in an attempt to convey his own feelings on the subject. He simply sipped at his drink and hoped that his obnoxious and overly intoxicated brothers would find something else to talk about before he lost his temper.

And really, when had that been a problem before? Fred and George were both known for their laid-back and carefree demeanor, but he supposed there had always been something about Hermione Granger that got under his skin and brought out the worst (and best) in him. Thoughts of his fourth year and an attempted attack on Malfoy came to mind, and his lips twitched up without his permission as they so often did when he thought of Hermione.

He really was in trouble, despite his efforts to play it cool. But no one else needed to know that.

“Lay off him,” Bill finally cut in, taking pity on him. “He knows better, no sense in rubbing salt in the wound, yeah?”

And suddenly Percy was Fred’s favorite brother, which was a rather clear indicator of where all of the others currently ranked on his shit list.

“Do I though?” Fred couldn’t resist challenging with a mischievous smirk, if only because he was completely over this conversation and everyone telling him what he can and can’t do and who he can and can’t fancy.

“Fred,” George warned lowly, regret for having started his conversation clear on his face. “Let’s not get into this here, yeah?”

Fred inhaled deeply, ready to concede and make a quick retreat to his room before another voice cut in.

“Get into what?”

All four Weasley brothers turned their head as one to look at their youngest brother. Fred would have been amazed that he had managed to extricate himself from his lovely girlfriend who had a habit of clinging to him like an octopus in heat were he not so concerned that he had just overheard every word they had said leading up to this interruption.

“You’re not talking about ‘Mione, are you?”

Which he had, apparently.

Fred shrugged, feigning indifference even as his heart started beating uncomfortably fast in his chest.

George, ever faithful to his twin, downed the rest of his (rather full) glass of firewhiskey and used the subsequent burning of his throat as an excuse not to respond.

Charlie shifted uncomfortably and looked at a particularly fascinating wall across the room, far away from Ron’s expectant eyes and Hermione’s completely oblivious form, still reclined against the fireplace.

Bill got up and walked away without a word. Fred had always suspected he was the smartest of them all.

“You are!” Ron exclaimed, and Fred braced for the impact of his anger, fingers twitching against his wand in anticipation of casting a silencing charm before he could cause a scene. But then Ron was laughing, and Fred almost wished he would yell at him instead.

“C’mon mate,” Ron chortled, falling gracelessly into the seat Bill had vacated. “Hermione? You can’t be serious!”

“Careful there, Won Won,” George cautioned when Fred only raised a brow in a bid to keep things from escalating and catching the attention of a certain witch. “We haven’t questioned your current… romantic interests. You would do well to return the favor.”

Ron snorted and Fred felt his temper rise in kind.

“Relax, I’m not trying to start anything. Just surprised is all,” Ron answered, voice a bit calmer, though the amusement was still clear on his face. Fred knew that he really had gotten a better handle on his temper after the war, but he suspected his laidback attitude had less to do with self-control and more to do with a complete lack of concern. He tried not to be offended by the implication.

“I mean, really. Hermione?” Ron said again, as though just repeating her name would make Fred realize how hopeless it was. As though he didn’t already know. “I couldn’t make it work with her, and we’ve certainly got more in common than the two of you would. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Try as he might, Fred was officially offended. And when Fred was offended (and admittedly, slightly inebriated), he tended to make poor decisions.

“Oh really? Care to make a wager?”

Ron scoffed, George paled, Charlie choked on his drink, and Bill circled back around to listen in at a careful distance. Fred didn’t care. Ron was being a git—to both him and Hermione—and if he had to do something that was extremely likely to blow up in his face to make a point well… no one had ever accused him of making sensible decisions, had they?

“A wager? What are you on about now?”

“Well, Won Won, you just implied that Hermione would never date me,” Fred answered, speaking slowly in the way he knew made Ron feel like a bit of an idiot. Which he often was. “I think you’re wrong. Are you willing to put money on it?”

“Fred,” George cut in as Ron’s face turned an alarming shade of red, “I don’t think this is a great idea. Maybe just let it go, yeah?”

For the briefest moment, Fred considered taking his twin’s advice. He was, after all, the closest thing Fred had to a voice of reason.

But then, from across the room, Fred heard a simpering voice—

“Oh Hermione, didn’t you bring someone with you? You look so lonely over there all by yourself!”

—and he knew that this had to stop, one way or another.

“No, George, I don’t think I will let this go. If Ron is so sure that Hermione would never be interested in me, then what does he have to lose by putting a little money on it?”

Of course, Fred was smart enough to know that there was plenty of things wrong with making Hermione the object of a bet, but he also knew that he would deal with that after he wiped that smug look off of Ron’s face.

And if the fierce frown on his bright red face was anything to go by, Fred had already succeeded there.

“Alright, fine,” Ron seethed, “if you want to be a git about it, sure. Twenty galleons says you can’t get Hermione to go on a date with you by the end of the year. Deal?”

Fred knew he should refuse—twenty galleons was a lot of money, New Year’s Eve was only six days away, Hermione would kill him when she found out—but what he said was, “Done.”

And then he stood up and strode over to the woman of his dreams without another word and, realistically speaking, without a hope in the world of getting her to agree to a date with him once she knew what he’d done.

.:.

The holidays were the hardest, Hermione knew.

At first, it was just the reminder of all they had lost during the war. Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Dumbledore, Moody, even Snape. Her parents were the worst though. Despite the fact they were both alive and perfectly happy in Australia, it stung to know that they would never know they once had a daughter who had to erase their memories of her to keep them safe.

(And, if she were being honest, that’s what hurt the most—knowing they were so happy without her, even if she was relieved that they were able to live safely without knowledge of her world.)

But it also reminded them of what they still had but very nearly lost.

Fred, who was in a coma for weeks before finally waking up after the wall collapsed on him.

Lavender, who Greyback had mauled, but had thankfully been ripped away by Hermione’s hex before he could do any fatal damage.

Which brought her to why holidays still sucked, three years after the war and nearly a year after her split from Ron.

“Oh Won Won, come over quick! There’s mistletoe in the kitchen that I didn’t notice before!”

Hermione was over Ron, she really was. After two years of giving it their best, their relationship never did feel as comfortable as it had when they were just friends: they fought too much and shared so little in common interests once defeating Voldemort was taken out of the equation. He could never follow her when she talked about her workday or projects she was working on, and it only served to make him feel stupid and lash out.

They really just weren’t suited for domestic bliss, something they had both finally admitted and come to terms with. Luckily, they were still friends thanks to this mutual understanding.

However, there were certainly downsides to remaining close friends with your ex, and one of those happened to be sitting through an awkward holiday celebration where said ex swapped a concerning amount of spit and wedding talk with a woman she had once been terribly jealous of.

Now, it was just annoying and uncomfortable, watching a family she considered her own in so many ways fawn over Ron’s new girlfriend and leave her to hold up the fireplace all on her own without so much as a “How have you been Hermione?”.

It was preferable to conversation though, as whenever she did engage it was always met with comments like oh Hermione, you really would have made such a beautiful bride, but I suppose it’s all for the best now or Hermione, did you know that Lavender works in the Ministry as well? She’s already been promoted after a year! Isn’t that just so impressive.

She knew they (as in Molly Weasley specifically of course) meant well, but it still stung to be treated like old news when she had been assured (and perhaps foolishly believed) that she was still family, with or without her relationship to Ron.

She was beginning to think staying at home alone would have been preferable after all.

“Hello, Ms. Granger.”

Her head whipped around, shocked out of her silent self-pitying by Fred Weasley’s smooth baritone and warmth as he sidled up next to her, firewhiskey clutched tight in one hand while the other draped itself across her shoulder. Her lips twitched up without prompting, perhaps the first genuine smile of the night, even if it was a rather pathetic one.

“Fred,” she greeted in return. “I take it you’re enjoying yourself?”

“Not really,” he answered in that casual way of his even though his eyes appeared to be piercing straight to her soul in their intensity. “Just came away from a rather unfortunate conversation with Ickle Ronniekins.”

Hermione glanced over Fred’s shoulder, unconsciously looking for the spot across the living room where she had been stealing occasional glances at Fred (and the rest of the Weasley brothers of course) throughout the night. What she found were three Weasley men staring at them in intense captivation and a fourth with seething irritation, and she winced in sympathy. She couldn’t imagine what sort of “unfortunate conversation” resulted in a stare down like this, but she knows that she feels bad for Fred for being on the receiving end of it. Even if he did probably deserve it.

“Oh Merlin,” she sighed in what can only be described as fond exasperation—a common occurrence since she started to become better acquainted with Fred. “What have you done now?”

“Something I probably shouldn’t have,” he replied before draining the rest of his firewhiskey in one gulp and turning to face her more fully, completely obscuring her view of their audience.

She only raised a single eyebrow, a practiced move that typically had Harry and Ron spilling their guts but only served to make Fred’s lips twitch in amusement.

Though he did appear almost… nervous. A strange look for Fred Weasley, and one that made her a little apprehensive of what exactly he did do. But in the blink of an eye, the look was gone and suddenly his face was much closer to her own.

“In the spirit of honesty,” he murmured, the whisper of his words brushed against the shell of her ear, the warmth of his breath on her skin and the smell of the Firewhiskey on his tongue causing an involuntary shiver to run down her spine, “I need to tell you something.”

“Oh?” she returned, trying to keep an air of calm unaffectedness despite the goosebumps that started where his lips had brushed against her skin and spread down her neck like wildfire. She sipped on her wine and stared at the Christmas tree that she could just see over Fred’s broad shoulder, pretending that her attention wasn’t entirely focused on Fred and the way his lips were still so close to her now hyper-sensitive skin. And if his responding chuckle was any indication, he very well knew it.

“Mmmm,” he hummed, the sound and vibration causing a flush to rise to her cheeks in a way she hoped could be attributed to the drink in her hand and not the man draped across her. Honestly, how had no one noticed that he was practically absorbing her into his own body at this point? Were they all really that oblivious or was she simply imagining things? Or were the four Weasley brothers still just watching this rather strange show in silent fascination, placing bets on what would happen next? “But I can’t tell you here.”

He pulled back abruptly, and Hermione instantly felt bereft of his heat, though the feeling was immediately chased away by her annoyance at that fact. It took her a moment to even recall what it was he was saying (which was, admittedly, not much).

“And why not?” she shot back once she remembered that this was supposed to be a normal conversation with her ex-boyfriend’s brother, not an exhibition.

Fred’s grin was decidedly predatory, and Hermione tried her best to not relish in that fact but Merlin, had he always been this attractive, or was the wine getting to her?

“A couple reasons. But the one that really matters right now is that it’ll really piss Ron off if we disappear upstairs together. So, what do you say?”

Hermione knew it was petty of her to get a little thrill out of causing one of her oldest friends any sort of irritation, but after the last four hours of standing by the fireplace with only backhanded compliments or outright insults for company, well… her answer was fairly obvious.

“Your room then?”

Fred’s grin only widened as she polished off the last of her wine, set the glass on the mantle, and led the way up the stairs.

If she had glanced back, she would have seen four identical looks of shock on Bill, Charlie, George, and Ron’s faces as she silently reached back and snatched up Fred’s hand on the way.

As it was, she kept her head held high and shoulders thrown back as she tugged Fred up the stairs, trying desperately to appear calm and collected despite the nerves that were tying her stomach in knots as she considered just what it was Fred wanted to confess to her.

.:.

“So,” Hermione starts as soon as Fred has closed the door behind them, “What do you need to tell me?”

If Fred had looked slightly nervous before, he looks positively anxious now. All the smug amusement that had previously dominated his face was gone, and he stood with his arms crossed and back against the door, almost as far from where she stood in the center of the room as he could get. The change was off putting, to say the least.

She frowned when he didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Is everything all right, Fred?”

His lips pursed and for a moment she thought he really wasn’t going to tell her what this was all about, but then he said, “I’m not sure yet. I have a feeling you’re about to be very angry with me,” and she was both relieved and anxious all at once.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “best to just get it over with then.”

Fred looked like he didn’t agree with her, but he ploughed on regardless. “I made a bet with Ron.” When she didn’t respond in the pregnant pause that followed, he continued. “It involved you.”

“Involved me how, exactly?” Hermione cut in when it seemed like he really was going to leave it there. And if her voice came out sharper than she intended, Fred didn’t appear to notice, too caught up in trying to figure out how to say whatever it was he had to say.

He took a deep breath, then, and let it out in a rush of air: “I bet him twenty galleons that I could get you to go on a date with me by the end of the year.”

Whatever Hermione was expecting to hear, it certainly wasn’t that and all she could think to say in response was a startled “What?”

And though she had to pull the truth out of Fred sentence by sentence before, the words came pouring out of him now.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it was a stupid thing to do. But I was just so tired of Ron acting like he’s the authority on you and telling me what I could and couldn’t do. As though he really knows you that well, considering he practically forced you into attending a party you knew would be uncomfortable and then does absolutely nothing to make it easier on you. The bloke is completely oblivious ninety percent of the time, but anytime I try to talk to you or ‘take your side,’ suddenly he’s there and telling me to back off. Like he’s the only one that has a right to show any interest in you despite the fact you haven’t been in a relationship for nearly a year and you’ve barely even seen each other since. Not that I blame you of course. I’d rather not see him myself, especially when he’s constantly attached at the hip with that whiny little girlfriend of his. I mean, I suppose she wouldn’t be that bad if she could just stop talking about herself or her dear Won Won for more than a bloody minute. Honestly, George and I thought you and Ginny were exaggerating your sixth year, but obviously—”

“Fred Weasley,” Hermione finally cut it once it was clear this confession had gone off the rails completely. “Are you rambling?”

“No,” Fred shot back defensively, followed by a less sure, “well, maybe.”

“Definitely,” she corrected, grinning widely.

She was somehow thoroughly amused rather than irritated as she knew she should be. Being the object of a bet between her ex and his brother should have infuriated her completely. Especially when it concerned her love life, something neither of them had any right to even discuss.

But this was Fred. Fred who was kind to her when everyone else in the Weasley family (save Ginny) was too afraid of Molly’s wrath to even speak to her during the first month after her break up with Ron. Fred who sent her “care packages” that consisted mostly of WWW products that she would never use but appreciated for their brilliance. Fred who went out of his way to make her feel included during the few Weasley family meals she still attended. Fred who was often on the receiving end of Ron’s glare as a result. Fred who made her smile for the first time that night. Fred who touched her so lightly but incited a warmth in her that she hadn’t felt in ages. Fred who was so much taller than her, and warmhearted and funny and clever and brilliant and—

Dear God, did she have a crush on Fred Weasley?

Well… that changed things a bit.

She bit her lip, suddenly unsure of whether the plan forming in her mind was wise or not. Hermione really wasn’t one to rush into things or make a decision without thinking through all of the possible outcomes, but well… Fred was still staring at her with cautious, heartbreaking brown eyes and he looked so earnest and Ron really was being a bit of a git.

And if even one outcome resulted in her and Fred being happy—possibly even together—then she was willing to risk it. She was a Gryffindor after all.

“Twenty galleons you say?”

Fred blinked at her as though he didn’t understand. “Uh, yeah. Twenty galleons. That was what we bet.”

“Seems like a lot,” she teased, smile slowly forming on her lips as she became more confident in her decision. “You must be very invested in my love life.”

Fred narrowed his eyes at her, entirely aware that she was taking the mickey out of him. But he answered her with a seriousness that sobered her quickly. “You could say that.”

“Well…” she swallowed, unsure of how to take that but hoping it meant what she thought it did. “I assume we’d split it then?”

“Of course,” Fred answered, though he suddenly looked uncertain, as though he couldn’t possibly imagine where she was taking this. “It’s only fair.”

“Then are you free tomorrow?”

“Am I—what?”

Hermione’s smile only grew, finding Fred’s confusion endearing. She had never seen him so shaken before, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy it.

“Are you free? For our date? I know it’s short notice, but he didn’t exactly give us much time to work with, and the sooner the better.”

This may have had something to do with her fear that she would overthink it if given more time, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You’re serious?” Fred asked, looking like he had just been told Percy was quitting his job at the Ministry to become a pole dancer. “You’re not mad at me? You’re actually agreeing to go on a date with me?”

“Well, first of all, I’m not agreeing to do anything. I’m asking you to go on a date with me—a distinction you may want to make clear to Ronald,” Hermione corrected, smile turning less teasing and more sly. “And while I do wish you would have consulted me first, I understand that that wasn’t exactly an option at the time. And… I appreciate your honesty. You didn’t have to be up front with me—you could have just offered to take me on a date and I would have had no idea it was with ulterior intentions. So… yes, Fred Weasley. I would like to go on a date with you. If not for the ten galleons, then to see the look on Ronald’s face when I tell him.”

“And for my stimulating company, of course?” Fred waggled his eyebrows, looking much more like himself than he did only moments ago. Hermione’s heart warmed at the sight, pleased that she had that effect on him.

“But of course,” Hermione practically purred, her voice taking on a quality it had never possessed before. One that made Fred’s face flush and his heart beat erratically. “And make no mistake, Fred Weasley. Even if we’re going on this date to win a bet and prove your brother wrong, it will be a real one. I expect you to plan something nice, all right?”

“I can do that,” Fred agreed easily, grin only growing. “On my honor as a wizard, it will be the best date you’ve ever been on Hermione Granger.”

Her responding grin was just as bright. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Shall we then?” Fred asked after a pause that seemed to increase the temperature of the room by about ten degrees. He opened the door wide, gesturing grandly for her to go through first. Hermione rolled her eyes but walked through without complaint. Fred’s grin only brightened.

That is, until they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Mistletoe,” Hermione breathed as she came to a sudden, jarring stop at the bottom of the stairs, her gaze locked on the offending bit of magical flora that floated above their heads.

Fred’s gaze, however, was locked on a face nearly identical to his own, though his twin was smirking rather than glaring as Fred was. Next to him, Ron appeared ready to combust.

“I’m sorry,” Fred apologized immediately, gaze turning soft and pleading as he turned to look down at her. “I had no idea—”

“I know,” she answered, already guessing at who had moved this wonderful bit of magic to trap them at the bottom of the stairs. Normally, she would be angry that yet another choice had been made for her. But after three glasses of wine, an intense conversation with Fred, and the promise of a wonderful date tomorrow, she was feeling a bit reckless. “Might as well let them know my answer now.”

“What are you—”

She cut him off with a press of her lips to his still-open mouth, and though she had initially intended for it to be chaste, she used the opportunity to slip her tongue inside and taste him properly. His answering groan told her she had made the right decision.

It was a bit uncomfortable, as far as first kisses go. He was a step above her on the stairs, and as he was already taller than her, it meant she had to stretch up on her tiptoes and yank him down by the collar to even reach him. Not to mention she could practically feel the eyes of their friends and family boring into her back. But when Fred stepped down and tugged her closer, never breaking free of her hold on him, they really found their stride.

She had no idea how long they stood there, her fists clenched tightly in his jacket and his cinching her waist despite his overwhelming desire to bury them in her hair, their lips moving and caressing each other seamlessly; but eventually someone cleared their throat and she pulled away with a pop that would have embarrassed her if Fred weren’t currently looking at her as though she was the best thing he had ever tasted.

“Well,” Hermione said after an awkward beat of silence, turning to find that everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing to stare at them, eyes wide and mouths gaping. “It’s been lovely, but I think I’ll go home. Thanks for everything Molly, Arthur.” She nodded to his parents as she separated from him, heading directly for the Floo.

She picked up a handful of powder, ready to throw it into the fireplace, before she turned back to face him at the last second, grin mischievous. The sight nearly brought him to his knees. “Oh, and I’ll see you tomorrow Fred. What time are you picking me up?”

“Six?” he suggested, lips curving up to match hers as his family continued to watch them in a sort of stunned fascination.

“I’ll see you at six then,” she agreed before disappearing is a swirl of green flames.

Another tense silence followed her departure, and Fred took great pains to not meet the eyes of anyone in the room. If they were horrified, surprised, or disgusted, he really didn’t care to know. He had just snogged Hermione Granger senseless, and he planned on ridding this high as long as possible.

“I think I’ll head out too,” Fred decided, sparing his twin one last glance as he made his way to the fireplace. “See you at the flat, George.”

In the seconds it took him to grip the Floo powder and throw it down, the room seemed to come back to life. Molly Weasley started screaming questions at him so fast he couldn’t even begin to decipher them, Ron called out “What in the bloody hell was that?”, Charlie was applauding, Ginny was wolf whistling, but Fred didn’t care. He was already flying through the Floo Network, hoping that no one (save George) was stupid enough to follow him.

He had an important date to plan, after all. And if he had any hope of getting Hermione to agree to a second one, it had to be perfect.

Notes: This got a bit longer than I meant it to, so it's split into two parts. The second part should come later this week. Any thoughts on what our lovebirds should do on their date?

#harry potter #hp fanfic #fremione #Fred Weasley x Hermione granger #fred weasley #hermione granger #fremione fanfic #fake dating #christmas fluff #mild ron x lavender #lavender is obnoxious #ron is a bit of an ass #sorry #I know its a terrible tropee #but it's so easy to use #and furthers the plot nicely #my writing #requested #hope you enjoy

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katehuntington · 4 years

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Title: In Bad Waters - part two Word count: ±1550 words Episode summary: Still in possession of the Winchesters’ belongings, Zoë meets up with the hunters on her next case. When it turns out to be a little more complicated than anticipated, she accepts their help in order to make an important deadline. Part two summary: Zoë wakes up from another horrific flashback and tries to put the pieces together. Episode warnings: Dark! NSFW, 18+ only! Descriptions of domestic violence/child abuse. Drug use/addiction. Angst, gore, violence, character death. Description of blood, injury and medical procedures/resuscitation. Swearing, alcoholism. Supernatural creatures/entities, mentions of demon possession. Descriptions of torture and murder, drowning. Illegal/criminal practices. Mentions of nightmares and flashbacks. Author’s note: Beta’d by @winchest09, @kittenofdoomage & @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish. Thanks, girls!

Supernatural: The Sullivan Series Masterlist

S1E02 “In Bad Waters” Masterlist

Paragould, Arkansas November 25th, 2005 - Present day

Gasping for air Zoë bolts upright in her bed. Breathing heavily, she stares at the wall in front of her, her eyes wide. It takes a moment before it settles in what just happened. Chill, take a breath, it was just another vision.

She swallows thickly, fighting the panic that got triggered. Closing her eyes, she inhales and lets the air slip from her lips, counting the seconds as she does so, waiting until her heart slows down. Exhausted she falls back on her pillow, worn out by the terrible night’s sleep. Fuck, that was worse than a bad trip. She feels like she just got out of a car crash; beat, sore, and confused. The restless dream has covered her skin in a thin layer of sweat and yet she feels stone cold.

A gaze at the clock on the cabinet informs her of the time, it’s 7:15 in the morning. She huffs, and she had hoped to sleep in. The familiar migraine pushes itself to the foreground and she squints; wonderful, just what she needed.

With her eyes still half closed, she does her best to ignore the golden morning light coming from the tall windows. After throwing her legs over the side of the king size bed, she walks over to the luxurious bathroom; time to freshen up and at least come across as respectable again.

Every time she wakes up from one of these damn things, she’s unprepared for the blinding pains and black spots, even though she has experienced them plenty of times before. She's not really sure why she's still surprised by the effects, the aftermath has been very consistent so far.

Without looking at the faucet - her eyes narrowed to shut out the beams coming from the ceiling lamp - the huntress turns it on, the hot water steaming up the large mirror. She takes off her shirt and shorts and quickly finds comfort under the warm shower. As soon as the droplets hit her skin, a feeling of relief and relaxation washes over her.

Now that she’s getting back to her old self again, the tiredness sets in. How long did she sleep, an hour or two, maybe? After an exhausting eight hour drive - including a quick shower stop to get rid of the smell she was still carrying with her after her previous case - she finally arrived in Paragould. She checked into the first four star hotel she could find, got out of her clothes, and crashed on the bed.

As the warm water cleanses her, Zoë starts to take out the details of the images that she just saw during her sleep. It was the same dream she had the night before, the setting identical. She concentrates and brings back the memories she has been playing over and over in her head.

“- that’s good news for the locals down there, let’s see if Brian can give us some positive news about the weather.” “Well Julia, that I can. Looks like it’s going to be another sunny day in Greene County tomorrow. Clear blue skies, a mild, refreshing breeze from the southwest and a temperature of, brace yourself, 83° average, which is rather warm for this time of the year. Even when we look further up this week, it seems like this mild weather just keeps on going. Great circumstances for September and fall isn’t coming to Arkansas any time soon.”

She could hear it so clear in her dream, the six o'clock weather forecast of the local TV station, somewhere September this year. After some research she found Greene County, in the far north east of the State of Arkansas. Over 38.000 people live in this county, with Paragould as its metropolitan area with a population of almost 25.000. Besides the fact that it seemed obvious to take a look in the largest city first, for some reason when that name appeared on her computer screen, she just knew this was where she needed to go.

Zoë turns off the shower and steps on the warm rug outside the cabin, after which she grabs a clean towel from the drying frame. For a second she glances at the stitched bullet wound next to her bellybutton, an injury which she suffered almost two days ago; it’s healing fine. With a second towel folded around her head and the other tightened around her chest, she walks out into the main room. It is a lot better than the previous motel; the colors are fresh and the room spacious. The furniture dissipates class, an abstract painting on the wall that could have been a Picasso only adding to that.

Now that the bad headache finally starts to fade, she can face the sunrise outside. Even though the temperature isn’t as high as it would be during July or August, the forecast hints for a lovely autumn day, even this late in the year. It’s just now that Zoë sees the cemetery in the distance. She chuckles; she sure picked her spot.

As she scans her environment, her thoughts wander off to Sam. She’s not exactly sure why she can’t stop thinking about him, but she has a hunch. Her dreams, his dreams, their dreams. Zoë was quite surprised when Sam mentioned he has been having nightmares, it got even weirder when she learned that he dreams about bad things happening to people, and it became scary when she realized his dreams actually come true. Familiar? Just a little, but not entirely, though. Sam apparently sees things that are about to happen, while she herself sees what already has. Zoë can’t help but wonder how it’s possible that two complete strangers have these visions, not to mention the chances of those two people meeting. Think about it; what if they are not the only ones? A sigh escapes from her lips; there was a time that she could barely picture seeing the past or the future to be possible. What a weird world they live in.

She turns around and gazes at her messy bed for a moment. It seems to invite her back in and she would gladly like to crawl under those warm covers again and sleep some more. Then again, what’s the use if she’s going to wake up an hour later with the exact same images in her head, feeling just as horrible as she did a moment ago? She needs to charge her battery, though, able to count the number of hours she slept last week on two hands. No human being can keep this up, and if she wants to make good time on this case, she needs to be awake.

Contemplating, Zoë glances at the suitcase, custom made to fit the saddle bag of her Harley. After pulling the towel from her head and drying her hair with it, she tosses it on the bed and walks over. The huntress picks up the case and lays it on the bed, taking out her neatly folded clothes until she sees the lining. She folds back the seam, exposing a small zipper. Staring at the hidden pocket, she bites her lip. The doctor she was meant to be says she’s out of her fucking mind, but let’s face facts here: she’s running out of fuel. Just one line, she tells herself, taking out the little zip bag, containing a pinkish powder. Just to kick start this day and get this job over with.

It’s not cocaine, nor is it meth; she’s not that suicidal. But a dose of amphetamine sulphate, otherwise known as speed, will give her the rush she needs and help her focus, despite the sleep deprivation.

Having done this numerous times already, Zoë takes the small mirror from the back of her suitcase and lays it down on the side table. She crushed the crystals at home already, powder taking up less space. Carefully, she tips what she estimates to be half a gram onto the reflecting surface, closing the bag before taking a scalpel blade and a short straw from the same secret compartment, tearing it out of the plastic. Skillfully, she chops the small particles and sweeps them into a line of about three inches with the blade. Holding one side of her nose closed and placing the straw up her other nostril, she positions the tiny tube at the end of the line and chases it, inhaling the drug swiftly. Zoë kicks back her head and takes a deep breath, feeling the chemicals prick between her eyes as her sinus cavity absorbs the amphetamines. She sniffles and wipes her nose, getting to her feet to clean up.

It will take a moment for the drugs to kick in, but when it does, she knows she will feel unstoppable and sleep will be the last thing on her mind. Deep down she’s walking a dangerous path, but isn’t that all she does? She’s a hunter for fuck’s sake; life doesn’t get more dangerous than that. Honestly, she stopped caring a long time ago. Death is inevitable, and with her lifestyle it’s going to be sooner than later. She might as well live on the edge and have some sweet nose candy along the way.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to reblog my work or buy me coffee (Link in bio at the top of the page)

Read chapter three here

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commander-orca · 3 years

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COTW FANFICTION

CHAPTER 7: FEELINGS INTO THE FOG

At bedtime, Orca repeatedly recalled Suoh's words about the dead. He had read all kinds of things about the Mud Whale’s traditions in the Empire's archives, both accurate and wrong recollections, modified or entirely rewritten to the glory of the Country. He had read about the making of their wicker baskets, used to transport their dead and had suspected that the power of the Daimonas must be lying dormant somewhere at Faleina’s core. But Orca had never heard of the Walls of the Dead. And yet, he believed it without hesitation. Sometimes one could hear funny voices in the air and he knew from his sister that many people had had strange visions.

The nights that followed turned out to be less restful than the previous ones. His new home, which had seemed to him a hamlet of peace and safety, conducive to restorative sleep, now gave him the impression of entering a funerary monument. The atmosphere in the room did not seem much more welcoming to him, but hostile and cold like the tomb of the dead. The simplicity and space he had enjoyed now took on a meaning of desolation. Obviously this was only a subjective impression, the fruit of Suoh's thoughts, the small room had not metamorphed before his eyes. But despite these injunctions to himself, Orca felt changed by this revelation.

He felt he was starting to lose his mind the longer he stayed locked up here. He could barely sleep a few hours in this bed, thinking about those who had lain there before. From time to time he found himself kneeling in silence, whispering apologies, begging for forgiveness. One night, he had hugged one of the walls, pressing his ear to the wall, wishing to feel something, but certainly not waiting for an answer. He was a little angry with Suoh a few times, regretting his previous insouciance. But those moments never lasted long since he esteemed Suoh and considered that his ignorance, that sleeping in the innocents’ beds unaware, without care for their lives torn away, would have been much worse.

His sister and Itia had noticed the deterioration of his state. When he emerged from the war councils and they took him out to eat, they were attentive to the dark bags which hollowed out his eyes and his pale face. Orca had decided not to mention the issue; he knew they would offer him a kind of sympathy he didn't deserve.

That day, Orca and his sister were sitting in the palm grove, resting on the brown grass. They were sharing a bowl of fried rice and handfuls of steamed vegetables, sheltered under a large shrub leaf. Faleina was unrecognizable; silently cutting through the waves and not a bird to accompany her on her way, she swiveled from time to time to change course. This autopilot navigation reinforced the spectral aspect the mist assigned to any object that was not at fingertips. The clay waged a fierce battle, its only weapon being its will to stand firm and hold the walls. The curtain of gray clouds enveloped the landscape in an opaque fog and it seemed to them that, beneath this torrential rain, the island harboured them only, the long palm and the few blades of grass which bent in the wind, not far away. The abandoned meadows and bare windows gave some reason to believe that at least. Both had folded their legs to avoid getting wet, to the side and against his chest for Lykos, who watched the water fall from the sky, thoughtful. There was something gloomy about this weather, like a curse creeping in, slowly poisoning the air.

"You look absent," Orca said, trying to strike up the conversation.

Even though he was eloquent and could boast about being able to improvisine galvanizing speeches, talking aimlessly in order to hang his audience on his lips or lose it, his sister was a different matter altogether. Facing her, he froze, overwhelmed by his incapacity. She knew everything about his superficial oratory, as she knew everything about his inner sensibility. It was this undeceivable look that was most unsettling. His strong alter could have taken on the task, of course, but this one was just only a fool when it came to feelings. He was abrupt and insensitive. Orca wanted to follow Kannavi's advice in spite of himself and make room for the Orca his sister knew intimately. Even if it meant being vulnerable.

"And you look preoccupied," Lykos replied, his worried eyes making their way through her hair.

Orca bit his lip, tempted let her remark fall flat.

“I simply don't like this weather. Falei- No, the Whale is as though hands and feet tied in the dark ”.

Lykos nodded, understanding. A slight smile hollowed out her cheeks and her fingers began to play with the strands of her braids.

“I disliked this before too. There has been a few days like this since I got here but ... It distressed me ”.

Orca refrained a burning urge to get closer to her. Instead, he darted discreet eyes into her face.

“But no sooner did the rain fall that the people here all raised their arms to the sky, as if they were thanking or praying. It was explained to me that it is because it doesn’t rain often on the Whale and that it is a sign of fertility and luck.

-They celebrate the rain ...? His brother whispered, watching the flood now with brand new eyes.

However, it did not go without saying that this unpleasant feeling did linger. The mood on the island was gloomy and the rain falling like a cage chasing them endlessly. But if the Whale was already a cage in itself ...

They fell into a new silence that lasted a little longer this time. And, for the first time, Orca seemed to notice this significant space between them. This ambient coldness which paralyzed them both. Her sister's body was stiff, curled up on itself, her chin resting on her knees and she was standing away from him. They weren’t saying a word. It was laughable; the man had hoped that his arrival on the Whale would be the trigger for a revived bond. But this tense atmosphere did not fade away and although so close, it was undeniable, they were still and always within a universe of each other. 'I would like you to stay,' her sister had said. However, the past was not intact. It had not waited for them to meet again to start moving forward. Dressing in colorful clothes, walking barefoot on the sand, living on love and fresh water was a nice interlude but it would not be enough. It wouldn't be enough to forgive his mistakes, nor to erase that look of distrust in her sister's eyes. Never enough to erase the terror she must have felt when he had forced her to live as a wildling, when he had forced her to see her friends die before her eyes, or when he brutally had had her kidnapped in Amonlogia.

" Brother... "

Orca flinched slightly at the words. They were too tender to name the destructive relationship they had had in recent years.

"… You're pale these days. Is something bothering you?"

The latter shook his head sharply. He didn't want to worry her. It was nothing.

"Everything is fine."

“I hope so," Lykos said, looking away from him.

He would’ve wished to scream, to tear his lungs to evacuate this frustration which rotted in him like a parasite. But how could he admit to her that he knew no way to get to know her again. That he couldn’t risk being close to her again... His heart had been torn anyway when he had realized his wish and his subsequent efforts in order to get closer to his sister, had only pulled them away from each other even more. What were they doing here? They were two strangers who had loved each other. This period was over. What held them here were the chains of nostalgia for their childhood. They were not and could not be for each other, what they had been in the past.

"Forgive me ..." Orca whispered almost imperceptibly.

His sister turned to him, taken aback.

"For what?"

Her hand automatically came to her heart and grabbed her garment. She didn't like the look her older brother showed when he was losing himself in thought and seemed to slip away from the world, inflicting loneliness on himself even when in good company.

"Big brother, I have already forgiven you" - Lykos' eyes searched tirelessly for his - "When we were on Karkarias. No need to continue torturing your mind”.

Orca lowered his head lower to the ground. He would have liked to disappear.

"Forgive me ... I forgot how to be a good big brother ..."

Lykos' surprise turned into an expression full of reassurance and gentleness. Her fingers found her brother's and she came to press her palm against the back of his hand. The action was confusing for both of them; Lykos felt a shock wave run down her spine and beside her, felt her brother also dumbfounded, his jaw slightly left open. It was neither the cold, nor their frozen skins, nor the rain that had just redoubled in intensity, but suddenly they were shaking. Lykos was the fastest to come back from it.

“I don't think you’ve forgotten. I just think… You're afraid to try again ”.

Orca tried to deny it as his self-esteem would have liked, but he could see deep down that it would do no good. It wasn't the first time he had been told these words. He was hiding his face into the sand and he knew it.

"The Whale is already taking effect, isn't it?", he breathed, the sound of his voice dimming into the wind.

"Yes ... It shows. I can see the emotions on your face ”.

She knew from her own experience that feelings did not flourish in the same way or at the same rate within everyone. In her case, it only took a few days to be able to feel with force her own feelings that the island allowed to release. Although at first it didn't seem like a release, rather a brutal form of torture. Lykos looked at him without further detours now, scrutinizing every detail of his face. His long locks waved in the breeze, revealing the pallid scar and she could see it all; a dozen feelings escaped from a jerky flutter of eyelashes, the curvature of his mouth, the tilting of his head or the slight agitation of his crimson irises. She wasn’t hoping to understand what was going on in her brother's mind. He was probably not suffering as much as she had, he who had occasionally had access to the sarx since he had graduated in the army. This sensation was certainly not that painful since he had been able to feel each of his emotions intensely in his veins during his time on that island. That island ... What was it still called?

"Does ... does that mean your dream has come true?"

Their eyes met and Lykos' heart leaped out of his chest. She was out of breath. If in that moment the earth had cracked in two, taking away everything, she couldn’t have noticed anything other than the flame which ablazed his pupils.

"If your dream came true, then why aren't we happy ...?"

Lykos lowered his lids over his eyes for a second. Something was burning in her chest. Her hand on his squeezed it tighter and intertwined their fingers tightly.

“On Karkarias, I told you that I wanted our minds and hearts to be able to meet. We still need some time, that's what I think. But I am sure of this wish, this time we will succeed. And everything will be ...

-Everything will be as before? You know that's not true ... "

The remorse in his brother's eyes was reflected with the clarity of a window glistening in the sun. The sight was sharp, but Lykos put up with it the best she could. It was hard to tell herself that she could forgive everything, but at the same time, what could she do other than throw herself into the arm of the one she loved most in the world? She felt that the only way she could stand the sight of all this pain because she too was overwhelmed with regret. Regrets that she had not been able to save him, to keep him from becoming that terrifying and dangerously disillusioned man. Remorses that she had been the cause of everything that had happened. If only she hadn't crossed that bridge on that cursed day ... It was the only way she was able to counter those sharp waves of pain cutting like knives through her stomach. Because she was looking into a mirror and seeing the reflection of her mistakes.

"Yes ... Nothing excuses what you did. The others made it clear to you. But you have been used. You had lost everything then, even your reason for living and you were acting on despair. They’ve done terrible things to you more than one would have solved with death. But you did not die. And your remorses will repent you”.

Orca's mouth twisted and his eyes were swollen with water. He refused to cry. It was stupid. It was all he had done since he had arrived, cry.

“Brother... “

The hand holding his fingers was cold. And yet, the one that came to contain his cheek and bring him comfort was warm. It couldn’t resist it, he couldn't continue to keep his distance. Drawing the comfort he was looking for in this gesture of tenderness, he turned to his sister and sagged in her arms. His face was on her neck and her sister's hands held him close to her, pressed against his shoulder blades. Since when had she grown so much?, was a question that vaguely crossed his mind as he tried to lean against her body. He had never noticed ... Maybe because he had always wanted her to stay small, the one he had to protect...

"I wouldn't have wanted you to see this ..."

But their roles were now reversed.

Lykos held him against her, hugging his trembling body as if trying to contain his tears.

"I know. I know it ... But I'm so happy to have seen all of that. Because now I finally understand you. We can finally meet halfway ”.

Orca made a muffled sound and his chest heaved in a jerk. With both his hands he framed his sister's face. Her oh so precious face.

"This man ... This man who held you and Itia captive, who threatened us, Chakuro and me ... He hurt you ... I promise you, I’ll do anything to destroy what is left of him."

Yes, their roles had now reversed, no matter what he would do and no matter how much he wanted to go back. Things were moving forward, whether he chose to take an active part in them... Or let himself be carried by the flow.

"Brother... You know... You still are the person I love most in the world."

But surprisingly, some things never changed. Even after the crossing of Hell. Orca hugged his sister for a long time. As long as she was there he felt alive and also felt their dream was just around the corner. In the thick mist of that macabre day, it was the only thing he could see, this dream glowing would be the lighthouse guiding them.

#cotw #cotw fanfiction #orca #lykos #lycos

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