#we got into enough trouble messing around with sticks in the yard can you even imagine if we had swords

[benevolenterrancy]

magical powers add whole new dimensions to the "annoy your sibling beyond the bounds of sanity" game

#mdzs #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #wei ying #yunmeng bros #yunmeng siblings #twin prides of yunmeng #the untamed #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #wwx #i can perfectly imagine exactly how intolerable my sibling and i would have been with magic abilities #we got into enough trouble messing around with sticks in the yard can you even imagine if we had swords #ah the inevitable repercussions of your own actions x2 #my art

[emf005]

Cramps

James Sirius Potter x Female! reader

Warnings: Puberty, James being the cutest thing ever, pain, couple cuss words for pizzaz(Maybe)

:readmore:

“Oi! Y/L/N!” You smiled as you saw the one and only James Sirius Potter strutting up the hallway with his band of trouble makers behind him. Most of them were his family, but a few were unrelated family members(Very Very close friends.)

“Oi! Potter!” You called back teasingly.

“Having a bad hair day today?” He smirked, looking you up and down. You rolled your eyes and touched your crappily put in braid. It may have looked like it, but you weren’t having a bad hair day. You were just crap at doing hair.

“Nope. Having a hard time coming up with insults? Am I too perfect for the James Potter to insult me?” You joked. You always took the teasing light heartedly. You listened to this song over the summer called Sarcasm. It was pretty good. But one of the lines that stood out to you were “Sticks and stones can break my bones but anything you say will only fuel my lungs”. It wasn't like you let him get to you before this, but you had only rarely hit him back with a come back. Now, you always threw one back.

“Ha! Perfect? You? Those two words shouldn’t be in a sentence together, Y/L/N.”

“You’re right,” you nodded, leaving him confused. You strode off down the hall with a swing in your hips. “Perfect is too dull of a word to describe me, Sweetheart!” You called over your shoulder with a wink. You disappeared behind the corner as you heard his friends laughing.

They knew you were light hearted about it. You were actually pretty close with a few of them. But James was competitive in everything. And for some reason he had chosen you to be his muse for picking on. You didn’t know why, nor did you actually care. You always liked a bit of banter, especially around this time of the month. And no, you weren;t a werewolf (Though you would gladly take that over having your period)

See, all periods come with their… side effects. Hormones bounce crazily off the walls and make some moody. Some get cramps. Some get both. Some break out and others(A very few minority) just have it without anything to think about. You had it worse than anyone.

Cramps. That may have been all you got, but they were so bad that walking, breathing, talking, or even moving could be impossible. You were once nearly paralyzed for a whole week and a half. You only moved to go to the bathroom. Your mom had to actually feed you. You were a very active person, you can only imagine how insane that made you.

Madame Pomfrey, your great Grandmother and god mother because that woman is a queen, always took care of you during these times and often threw things at you because you weren’t taking good enough care of yourself. You loved the woman dearly, but wow could she yell at you.

You watched James and his crew head down to the quidditch pitch for practice while you skipped down to Hagrid's. You loved to play quidditch but never wanted to play on the team. You knew you weren’t good enough for that and you would rather have just messed around with some friends.

“Hey Hagrid!” You said happily and plopped down by a pumpkin. He turned around from tending his garden and smiled at you.

“ ‘ello, Y/N. How ‘er you today?”

“Alright I guess. How about you? Any new creatures come crawling around?”

“Not yet. But I suspect they’ll show up soon.”

“Need any help?”

“You know where the tools are.” You hopped up, but not too fast because.. Well.. you know, and grabbed a pair of gloves and shoved them in your pocket in case he let you tend to the Biting thorns again. You had a knack for everything Herbology and Magical creates. You were Professor Longbottom and Hargrid’s favorite student, you knew it. I mean, you definitely were, no doubt.

About three hours later you started to get a stabbing pain in your lower stomach, losing your breath for a moment.

Shit

“Hey, Hagrid, I think I’m going to clean up before dinner. I only have a few minutes and I doubt anyone wants to be sitting next to my smelly butt.” You laughed, the stabbing getting worse.

“I’ll see ya there, Y/N! Thanks fer tha help!”

“Anytime!” You jogged away from him and a relaxing Fang so you could visit your great gran. Well, she wasn’t technically related to you. She was a close friend of your grandmother’s. They had gone to school together and been (And still were) closer than sisters. You grew up with her and she had become very over protective of you.

You waltzed into the hospital wing with a smile on your face. You were used to the stabbing pains. You had a very high pain tolerance, I mean, you had to.

“Gran!” You yelled out, not even flinching when you felt another annoying stab.

Madame Pomfrey came walking over to you with her arms crossed over her chest.

“You haven’t come to see me all week. Does this mean that you have finally come to your senses?”

“Oh, you make such a big deal out of everything. I barely have felt anything so far, and plus it's only Wednesday, perhaps I was just busy.” She gave you a knowing look. She always knew. You didn’t know how, but she always did. “Well, anyhow, I was helping Hagrid and the stabs were a bit worse than normal. Got anything that’ll just subside that?”

“I have the potion you should've been taking since the beginning of the week, young lady.”

“It's nothing major, Gran. Just something small. I don’t need the whole nine yards.” She sighed. You were the only person who she would give into.

“Fine, but don't come crying to me when you are hurting so badly that you can't move.” She was about to walk away when the doors banged open. You two looked over and saw James and his crew walking in. Madame Pomfrey sighed. “What is it now, Mr. Potter?”

“Don’t know I-”

“Fell off your broom and landed wrong while you were trying to do some wicked trick. I know. Set him on the table. I’ll be there in a-”

“I have to take a shower, Madame Pomfrey. I’ll come back later. Feel better, James! Hi guys!” You waved at them all and jogged off, ignoring your gran calling after you. Oh, yeah, another thing about you. You really didn’t like attention. You also didn’t like the fact that there was someone in more need of help than you and you were getting the help first. James needed more help than you did, you would just come back later… You thought you would.

You had planned to go back after dinner, but you didn’t. A friend asked you with help on the Divination homework. You decided to go the next day. Asked to help first years. Friday? No. Dueling club and extra studying. Before you knew it, it was Saturday and you were in so much pain. But you just kept going.

You were headed down to the quidditch pitch to watch Lysander and a few of his buddies play against Albus and Scorpius and a few of their friends. It was just a scrimmage, nothing major, but they all liked to have an audience. And since they all knew and liked you, they asked if you wanted to join. What you didn’t count on was James being there.

“Well well well. Look who we got here?” You looked over to see James, alone, walking over to you.

“Hey, James.” You said a bit weakly and short of breath.

“You alright?” You just nodded. He seemed to get more concerned. “Are you sure? You don’t look so good?” You laughed.

“Yeah well, I have my good days and my bad ones,” you joked, thinking he was teasing you again. He wasn't.

“Y/N. Stop for a second.” You did and turned to him.

“Are you sure you're alright? You look really pale and tired.”

“I’m fine. I promise.” You smiled and continued down to the pitch with him besides you. That's when the worst one you have had in a while hit you with full force, knock every ounce of wind out of you.

You collapsed and held your stomach, trying to take deep breaths like you had taught yourself to do.

“Y/N!” You felt a hand on your back and another on your arm.” What's wrong? What happened?”

“N-nothing. I’m-Ah!” You collapsed completely to your knees. The throbbing hurt so bad. It was like someone was digging a knife in you and just twirling it around.

“Obviously something. What can I do?”

“Take-take me to-to Gran. Please.”

“Gran, who's Gran?”

“Sorry. Madam Pomfrey.” He nodded and helped you up, putting an arm around you to keep you up.

“You're explaining that to me later.” You laughed, which only made it worse. “Can you walk faster? You're getting paler by the second.”

“This is… as fast… as I can… go.”

“Here,” he moved in front of you and bent down. “Get on my beck, it’ll be faster, alright?”

“James you really don’t have-”

“I want to. Come on.” You wrapped your arms around his neck and he, carefully, hoisted you up. He quickly walked to the hospital wing, being cautious as to not bump you around too much. “Madame Pomfrey!” He yelled when he banged the doors open like he always does. A dramatic entrance for a dramatic boy. You heard the oh so familiar sigh.

“What did you do this time, James?” She walked around the corner and saw you on James' back, her eyes widened in horror and she quickly moved into action. “Put her down here,” she opened up a section and he set you down carefully. She quickly ran away and started to gather stuff. James stood beside your bed and stared at you oddly.

“What?”

“What happened? You seemed fine the other day. Are you sick or-”

“I’m really fine, it's just.. Um… girl stuff?” His eyes widened in understanding (Not horror).

“OH! Oh Merlin, are you ok? What do you need, like literally anything?” You furrowed your eyebrows.

“It's just cramps,” you shrugged, confused by his reactions. Normally anything under the topic of puberty or periods boys were off running. Even your own brothers.

“Not just cramps, young lady.” Your gran scolded and walked in, holding a bottle of the potion you were supposed to be taking. It really didn’t do much. And it tasted horrible. “These are getting worse as you get older.” You glanced at James.

“Ok. You don’t have to be talking about this with him here. No offence.” He just shrugged.

“You have to start taking this seriously!”

“Gran, I do! I was just busy!”

"You came in and then you left without taking it, telling me you would be back!”

“I got side tracked! And James was in more pain than I was!” Your voice was horse and it was getting harder to talk and breathe. She handed you the potion and you chugged it.

“You left because of me?” James asked. You swallowed the rest of the foul tasting liquid.

“You needed her attention. And then someone needed help on homework and it just” you coughed, making your stomach knot again. “Got out of hand.”

“Thank you for bringing her up, Mr. Potter. You can leave.”

“But-”

“She needs her rest.”

“Tell the boys I’m sorry I missed the game.” He hesitated but nodded and left. Your Gran scolded you for a few moments before she left and told you to get some sleep, which you did.

The next day your friends visited you and you ignored the pains. They weren’t as bad as yesterday’s, but they were still pretty bad.

Soon they left and that just left you sitting hour after hour. You were still awake when it was one in the morning and you heard footsteps coming towards your bed. You figured it was your gran coming to check on you so you shut your eyes and pretended to be asleep.

They set something on the table and you opened your eyes seeing James.

“James?” He was startled and jumped a bit. He looked down at you with guilt on his face.

“Sorry,” He whispered. “Did I wake you?” You sat up slowly.

“No. I’ve been up. Kind of hard to sleep.” You moved over and motioned for him to sit, which he did.

“Cause of the…”

“Cramps?”

“Yes.”

“Yep. You know, you’re a lot cooler with this stuff than a lot of boys your age are.”

“I never understood that. I mean, it's something that happens. Why do guys have to be so weird about it? Plus my little sister goes through it so…”

“That's right! Your sister’s Lily.”

“Yeah. She gets pretty bad cramps too, but not as bad as you, I think.”

“No one gets them as bad as me, which I’m grateful for.”

“So the potion doesn't really work?”

“Takes a bit of the edge off, but other than that? No.”

“I’m sorry.” You just shrugged and shifted. “Is there anything I can do to help?” You smiled.

“You’re sweet, James. But, I’m afraid not.”

“Well, I do know one thing I can do.”

“What?” He grabbed whatever he had sat on the bedside table and set it on your lap. It was a basket full of chocolates. Your eyes lit up at the sight.

“Holy Merlin! Where did you get all this?”

“I have my ways. I remember Lily said chocolate always makes her feel better so I figured it would help you too.”

“Wow. James! Thank you! Can I…”

“No. Absolutely not. I just brought it down here so that it can stare you in the face. You aren’t allowed to eat one piece of it.” You smirked at him and didn;t reach for a piece, just to see what he would do. “Oh my go, I was joking.” You laughed.

“I know I know!” You grabbed two pieces and handed one to him. He looked at it and then back up at you before taking it. You opened your piece quickly and bit into it. “Eat! Come on, you are stayen for a bit aren’t ya?”

“Why would you want me to?”

“Because you're my friend.”

“Why would you consider me that?”

“Because you helped me out a lot and you gave me food. We also talk all the time. Why? You don’t want to be friends?”

“I figured you wouldn’t want to be mine.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve bullied you countless times.”

“That was just playful banter. I've seen you bully people. You were just teasing me.” He stared down at the candy.

“But still…”

“James, listen. I want to be your friend. If you don’t want to be mine I guess that's alright, but I've always wanted to be your friend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You seem really cool. And you are really nice. I've seen you with your siblings and your friends and have always been kinda jealous. I've never really had that," you shrugged and took another bite from your chocolate bar.

"You have all sorts of friends, though."

"Yeah but I'm kind of the replaceable friend. And then my family is a bucket load of insane. So I guess I’m sort of jealous. Like this.” you motioned to the chocolate and at him. “I have been having this happen since first year and my friends come in once to check on me unless they need help on something. I guess it's kind of childish, but-”

“No.” You looked at him, a bit shocked at his tone. “That's not childish at all! How are they your friends if you’re in pain and they don’t come to see you unless they need something?”

“James, it's not that big of a deal. I have a high pain tolerance and plus I have gran worrying over me.”

“Oh please explain that to me. You're her granddaughter?”

“Well, sort of. Great granddaughter, and honorary. Her and my grandma were as close as sisters when they went to Hogwarts and stayed that way throughout life. And when I lost my great gran and both my nans, she stepped up. Very over protective of me.” He smirked and leaned on his legs.

“I’d say. ‘Get out, Potter. I appreciate you bringing her up but I don’t want you here.” he mimicked her voice, and not too terribly. You started to laugh, making your stomach knot in protest. You groaned and fell back on your bed. “Oh! Sorry. Do you need another pillow? More blankets? Chocolate?” You smiled gratefully at him.

“No. Just gotta wait it out. Thank you though.” You smiled at him gratefully and you two talked until you fell asleep. He smiled, finding it odd how much he actually liked you. Every “conversation” he had he always enjoyed. Always enjoyed your banter in the halls and in class, but he had never actually talked to you before.

He stood up and pulled the blanket over you more so that your shoulders and arms were covered. He put the chocolate on the bedside table and brushed the wrappers off of the bed so that it wasn’t a mess when you woke up in the morning.

He then snuck out of the infirmary and back into his dorm room. James was surprised to see that his last thought before falling asleep was of you and hoping you felt better. He really hadn’t realized how much fun you were.

You weren’t in classes that day. Madame Pomfrey seemed to be punishing you and kept you in bed, bringing you meals from the great hall while you survived on James’ chocolate. You were reading over your notes when someone cleared their throat. You looked up, chocolate half in your mouth, to see James standing with a plate and his school bag.

“Hi James! Back already?” He laughed and sat down where he had sat the other day.

“You weren’t in class or the great hall. Wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“That's sweet. Thank you. I’m feeling lots better, but Gran won’t let me go to classes yet. She wants to monitor me and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

He slid the plate of food and your face lit up. Sweets and meats, your favorite.

“Figured you would be hungry.”

“Starved! Yet again, thank you.”

“It's what friends do,” he said with a nod. You smiled happily. Friends. You had finally made it to friends with James Sirius Potter. “I also brought notes. In case you wanted to copy them.” He pulled his notes from his bag and handed them to you. You grabbed it and started to flip through the surprisingly clean and crisp notes. This boy took better notes than you do. That was unexpected.

“Thank you, James! I was a bit worried I was going to be overrun again.” He shrugged and stole a swipe of Mashed Potatoes off your plate. You smirked at him but didn’t say anything.

He sat and talked to you while you ate and then helped you with homework when you set your plate aside and started to work on notes.

“Here. Like this.” He moved next to you up by the head board and held your wrist, showing you the proper hand motions for DADA. You tried to focus on the correction and not your burning cheeks.

Damn hormones.

“There you go. Now try it without a helping hand.” You shoved him and laughed.

“That was terrible!” He smiled crookedly, fixing his glasses.

“Yeah, but you laughed.’ You bit your lip and shook your head.

“You, sir, are utterly ridiculous.”

“Oh, I’m sir now.” He joked, settling back by your feet. You kicked his leg lightly. “OW! OH MERLIN SHE KICKED ME! I THINK MY LEGS COMING OFF!” He fell to the ground dramatically causing you to burst out from laughter and your stomach to continue to knot up over and over, but you couldn’t stop. He was twitching dramatically on the ground like a dork.

Madam Pomfrey came over and tapped her foot agitatedly.

“This is no place for fooling around, Mr.Potter. Either stay and behave or leave.” She turned and cast you a glance before walking away. You two burst out laughing when you heard her door shut. He popped back up onto the bed.

“So, what have you been up to? I've caught you up on all you’ve missed.” You just shrugged.

“Studying. It's really all I can do. She won’t even let me stand up.”

“Well that's no fun. You haven’t even been outside?”

“Nope. Her one rule is stay in the bed. Not allowed to stand, unless it's to go to the bathroom, which has to be the one in this room.”

“Why so specific.”

“Second year I went to the restroom, on the fourth floor on the other side of the castle.” James chuckled and looked over his shoulder.

“Well, how about we make her get even more specific?”

“What did you have in mind?” He snuck over to where the wheel chairs were and rode it over. A wide grin spread across your face.

“Your carriage awaits.” You laughed and quickly hopped in. He then ran, pushing you in front of him. You two ran through the castle laughing like mad people.

“What's this?” Fred asked, a smirk on his face as he and Erinie Longbottom came out of the great hall.

“Never thought I’d see you two get along, let alone laughing.”

“Mischief is mischief.” James shrugged and stood up on the back of the wheelchair.

“Madame Pomfrey has forbidden me from walking.” You explained. “James just wanted to get me into some trouble.” Ernie looked at the wheel chair, a slow grin spreading on his face.

“Why don’t we all get into some trouble then.” He cast a spell on the wheels on the wheel chair before making three more appear. “Now, you can control it on your own and so can we.” He sat down in his and went zooming off. You, Fred, and James watched with smiles on your faces. They quickly sat into theirs and the three of you chased after Ernie. Who knew you would become such quick friends with James and that would leave you to get into a bit of mayhem with him.

You four raced down the halls but all stopped abruptly by a tapping of a foot. You all looked up to see Madame Pomfrey standing there with her arms folded across her chest. You swore under your breath.

“Madame Pomfrey!” Ernie squeaked and fell out of his chair. “Uh, we didn’t see you there?” You shook your head at the lame excuse.

“Madame Pomfrey I-”

“You, with me, now.” You sighed and rolled after her. Waving bye to the boys. They waved back and watched you go.

“So.” Fred said with a smirk on his face. “Finally come to your senses?”

“Shut up.” James muttered, feeling a bit guilty that you were the only one who got into trouble. It had been his idea after all.

“I told you that it wasn’t a smart idea to get out of your bed!” Your gran scolded as she wheeled you into the Hospital wing.

“Technically you said I wasn’t allowed to stand up unless it was to use the restroom. I was not standing up, I was sitting down. And what's the big deal? I’m fine! It's almost over anyhow!” She groaned in frustration. “Gran, I’m in 5th year. I think I can make decisions for myself now.” She looked at you for a moment before sighing.

“Alright. But, you have to promise me, when you start to get bad you will come straight-Oh!” You hugged her tight around the waist and she patted your head.

“Thank you, Gran.”

“Yes yes. And you should be careful around that Potter boy.”

“Which one?” You asked cheekily.

“Now don’t you get cheeky on my young lady. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t you go falling in love with him. I’ve actually had girls come in because they said that he broke their heart. Like his name sakes,” she shook her head and walked away leaving you thinking.

You wouldn’t get a crush on James, would you? I mean, sure he was tall and cute and a dork with an adorable personality that kind of made your heart flutter. But that didn’t mean you- You smacked your head.

“Dammit. How could I have let that happen?” You muttered to yourself. You silently cursed your gran. You had been blissfully unaware and now you were very much aware that you had a tiny crush on James Sirius Potter. This ought to go over well.

Xx

Over the years you had only grown closer to James and his friends. Mostly James though. It was rare not to see you two together. You both would jam pack your schedules so you would have each other in classes. You knew he did it because of your cramps and how you didn’t really discuss it with anybody or like to bring it up. So when they got too bad and you couldn’t go to classes he would bring you your notes and help you study, like you didn;t help each other study any how. But now, now it was all going to change. You had passed your last year at Hogwarts and were now lying on your couch in pain. You had taken the potion your gran had sent you but the potion had seemed to do less and less over the years while James had done more and more.

You had a pile of letters in the corner that he had sent you. You two had sent back and forth non-stop, both of you now having your own separate apartments that were, sadly, not very close to each other. Of course, you could just apparate to the others house but you wouldn’t really do that on a daily basis, sadly.

You had sent him a letter the other day and found it weird you hadn’t gotten one in response yet, but you weren;t the most important thing in his life, sadly. As you and James had grown more attached, your crush on him had grown and grown and grown. Being away from him for so long, This was your first month, and knowing that you weren’t going back on September first to see him and your other friends was killing you. How could people live without knowing if they would ever go back to Hogwarts? It may sound cheesy and a bit cliche, but it was and forever will be your home.

There was a knock on the door as another wave hit you and now you had to stand up and pretend you were alright. You looked at your empty chocolate bag, you really should’ve stocked up after the last time.

You opened the door and leaned heavily on it as you looked up into the familiar glass covered eyes.

“James!?” He beamed happily.

“Miss me that much? We’ve only been out of school for about a month.” You chuckled and shook your head.

“You’re such a dork. What are you doing here?” He held up a abox.

“Figured you would have forgotten to restock since Hogwarts, like you always do.”

“How do you remember these things? And why would you want to?” You opened the door and let him in. He strode in and looked around your apartment. He wasn’t familiar with it yet.He set it down on the kitchen counter and jumped up onto it to look around the place, nodding in approval.

“Nice place.”

“You say that everytime you come over.” You said sarcastically as you grabbed the jacket you had thrown on the floor after work. It caused your stomach to cramp and you were stuck for a second because you were trying to breathe.

“Ok, couch, now.” James said, grabbing your arms and leading you over to the couch, setting you down and taking your jacket.

“James, you really don’t have to-”

“Yeah I do. Stay.” He left your side and went to the box. “Did you take the potion?”

“Yeah. Did nothing as usual.” You whined, he sat back down and opened the box, pulling out two candy bars and handing you one, like he always did, and keeping one for himself.

“Sorry, kid.”

“I am like a week younger than you!”

“A month and a half,” he corrected. You glared and bit into your chocolate, making him laugh and look around your apartment until his eyes landed on a moving picture you had put up. It was from the first year you two became friends. He walked over to it and took it off the wall. “You still have this?” You smiled.

“Of course! That was the first Weasley Summer I had! It was the best summer of my life!” You laughed lightly smiling at the memory of James trying to get you on a broom. And then you had crashed into four trees until you semi-got the hang of that.

“Didn’t you get a concussion from that summer?”

“Don’t know, wouldn’t let anyone check.” You laughed, your stomach cramping again, but not as bad as usual. He smiled and hung it back on the wall. He sat back down next to you.

“How've you been, though? You always sound like you're doing great in your letters.”

“It's been alright. Adult life isn’t terrible and my job’s pretty fun. I've been thinking about getting a dog.”

“Really?” He asked excitedly.

“Yep, and I was going to name it Sirius.” His face turned disappointed.

“You know, I brought you chocolate, you can at least be a bit nicer to me.” you giggled.

“I’m joking, I'm joking. But yeah. I do want a dog.”

“Get lonely up here already?”

“Definitely. How are you? You seem like you are having a good time in your letters. Var hopping every weekend.”

“You can join us. We’d love to have you hang with us.” You shrugged.

“Well, definitely not this weekend.”

“No, definitely not. Though you look like you could use a bottle of fire whiskey.”

“I need two.” He laughed and put his arm around your shoulders, you rested your head on his shoulder.

“I felt ya there.”

The rest of the night, James hung out with you. Chocolate and talking and radio and, when you were feeling up to it, he made you dance with him because he’s the biggest jerk in the world.

It was now near midnight and you two were on the couch listening to old muggle records because why not. You were half asleep on James’ chest. He was playing with your hair and humming along to the song. It was a familiar position for you two. Madame Pomfrey had once caught you two like this, though James had been the only one awake. She had looked at him and then at you back in sixth year.

“Be careful there, Mr. Potter. I do not want her getting hurt.” And then she turned and left. He had planned on telling you that morning, but the thought that he would hurt you in any way had kept him from saying anything. But now… Now he couldn't help it. The smell of your shampoo and the way you smelt like chocolate and… and he couldn't help it. This had been the most fun he had had since Hogwarts had left out. All because he was with you.

“Y/N?” He whispered, just in case you were asleep. He knew how hard it was for you to actually fall asleep when you got these cramps.

You hummed in response. Half asleep, but not completely. He took a breath.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

You hummed again.

“I love you.” He didn’t get a response this time and thought you had fallen asleep. He was a bit relieved that you hadn’t heard. The other part was a bit disappointed.

“What?”

Shit.

“I-I love you.”

You sat up and looked him in the eye. He knew this look. You were trying to detect a lie, he let you look. And boy, did you take your time.

“You-You do?”

“I do. I get it if you don’t in return but I just had to-” You grabbed his collar and pressed his lips to your quickly. His eyes widened in surprise before he quickly kissed you back. You pulled apart and both of you were smiling messes.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” You said, biting your lip.

“Seriously?” He pulled back from you with wide eyes. You nodded nervously. “How long?”

“The first time you helped me, I guess. And I wouldn’t have even realized it if Gran hadn’t said anything to me.”

“You’re joking.” You shook your head.” He kissed you again, taking you by surprise.

“Why? How long for you?”

“End of fifth. I was going to tell you in sixth but…”

“But what?” You looked at him. “James…”

“Your Gran scared me.”

“What did she do?” You sighed.

“Nothing!”

“James, I am too tired, what?”

“She just told me not to hurt you.” You frowned and looked at your hands.

“And you planned to?”

“No! No no no no.” He pulled your face up to his and smiled. “I was scared that I might. I got scared that I would be the reason you were in pain. I didn’t want that. I didn’t even want to think that I would be the reason for that. So, I thought it was better to not do anything but be there for you.” You stared at him for a moment and bit your lip, thinking over and being completely touched. And you believed him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I-I was scared.” You rested your head on his shoulder to hide your face, embarrassed that your feelings had been reciprocated this whole time.

“Of what?”

You muttered something that he didn’t catch.

“Come on, I spilled my heart out to you, your turn.”

“That I’d lose the best friend I've ever had.” You muttered a bit louder. He heard this and couldn’t help the soft smile that spread across his face. He pulled you onto him and leaned against the arm of the sofa so you were on top of him. You looked at him, confused. You head was on his chest again and your eyes were fluttering shut again.

“You’re not going to lose me, Y/N.” He said with a smile. You smiled into his chest and wanted to say something but your mind was already powering down. You felt his lips press against your hair. “You won’t ever lose me. Good night, Y/N.” You murmured an incoherent goodnight, but he got the point and smiled before falling himself.

You woke up in the morning to smell the most wonderful smell you ever had smelt before… Bacon.

You groaned and sat up, a bit confused as to why you were smelling bacon. You thought it was just your mind at first and your mind wandered back to the dream you had had of James. You wished it were true. The kiss seemed so real, so perfect. You pushed yourself off the couch and your foot hit a box. Your eyes widened immediately. You opened it and saw a group of empty chocolate wrappers.

Oh no…

You turned around quickly and saw James’ back in your kitchen over the stove. Then you heard the sizzle of food cooking on your unused stove, since you were a wreck in the kitchen. ANd then you heard James’ humming. That wasn;t an illusion.

“James?” He turned around and smiled.

“About time you woke up. I thought you were dead for a little while there.” You pushed yourself off the couch and stumbled into the kitchen. “Coffee in the cup.” You looked down to a steaming cup.

“I’m not so convinced yet.” He chuckled and slid the food onto two separate plates handing one to you. “I didn’t even know that worked.” You muttered looking at the stove.

“Figured. You can’t cook to save your life.”

You threw a piece of bacon at him, which he gladly ate.

“Did you stay all night?” You asked half way through breakfast.

“I figured we should talk this morning.” You nodded and bit your lip. So it did happen.

“Right so we… kissed.”

“Yep.”

“Yeah.” The silence turned awkward.

“Ok, I’m just going to say it, then. I don’t know how much you remember but everything I said, I meant. I really do like you, Y/N.” You bit your lip and smiled.

“I-I think I remember enough to know that I have told you the same. And I-I meant it to.”

“Really?”

“Really, James. I meant it all and I really do like you alot.” You smiled. And he let out a sigh and collapsed into his chair.

“That is a huge relief.”

“Tell me about it. So what do we do now? What happens?”

“I think I'll ask you out.”

“And I obviously would say yes.”

“And then we go to a… quidditch game?”

“And I’d buy the snacks after arguing with you about money.”

“Right. And then I would completely sweep you off your feet when I book the stadium for afterwards and teach you how to ride more.”

“Of course, unless I blow you away with my mad skills.” He beamed.

“Which is very possible with the way you ride.” You laughed.

“So when would this hypothetical date take place?”

“Saturday at six?”

“I think I could be there. If you were to ask me, of course.”

“Well maybe I’m getting there.”

“Maybe you should hurry up before we spend another three years without each other.”

“Y/N, would you go out with me?”

“Yes.” You said smiling. He returned your smile with a crooked one of his own.

“Then I’ll pick you up here, and I am buying the snacks.”

“James you are no-pop-James Potter you get back here!” You yelled to the open air laughing as your best friend-boyfriend- apperated from your apartment.

You bit your lip and leaned on your hand.

You got a date with the boy you loved. And who would’ve thought it would all be because of a terrible time dealing with cramps?

#james sirius potter #hp fluff #fluff fic #james potter x y/n #james potter x you #madame pomfrey #chocolate fic #one shot

[astralaffairs]

voltaire to versace 02 | thomas jefferson

title: voltaire to versace 02

pairing: professor!thomas jefferson x reader

words: 8.7k

warnings: honestly not much. sex jokes n references, dolley simping for james, broke college student meals

desc: from francis bacon to foucault, descartes to dante, your political philosophy seminar doesn’t promise to be a blowout — and yet, one mysterious stranger and a risqué evening later, your burberry-clad professor gives you the feeling it won’t be quite the snoozefest you’d expected.

tags: @lunariasilver @tinywhim @nyxie75 @wreakhavoconmacroissantdiggs @checkurwindow @katierpblogg — let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future parts!

"Dolley, holy shit; please tell me you're already home." Y/N's words were breathless as she hurried across the quad, muttering under her breath into her phone. She'd darted out of her lecture hall the moment they'd been dismissed, having no desire to stick around for the confrontation she knew was inevitable.

"I'm just getting out of class, dear," Dolley responded, but when she continued, her words were teasing. "What sort of trouble did you manage to get yourself into while I was gone?"

"I cannot begin to explain." Y/N let out a huff, glancing over her shoulder and ducking her head as she whispered, "but it's not good."

"Oh, good lord, Y/N; I was joking." She could hear the genuine worry begin to creep into Dolley's voice and couldn't help but wince.

"Yeah, I wish I was, too." She chalked the subsequent rush of static through the line up to Dolley's sigh. "Where are you right now? Can I meet you somewhere?"

"Want to go to dinner?"

"Too broke for that."

"Packaged ramen from the drugstore on the east side of campus?"

"Now you're speaking my language." Y/N grinned, and she could only picture Dolley rolling her eyes from wherever she was. "I'll be there in a few."

"You'd better. I can't wait much longer to hear what sort of nonsense you've been up to."

-                              

"You slept with a professor?!"

"Shh, Doll; not so loud," Y/N hissed, pulling her back into the soda aisle and frantically checking for any prurient eavesdroppers. Her voice was low when she added, "It was the guy at the bar last night. I had no idea he was a professor here."

Dolley let out a dry, disbelieving laugh, pinching the bridge of her nose. "This is... a mess."

"You're telling me."

"So, what's the plan going to be?"

When Dolley folded her arms, raising an amused eyebrow (a little too amused, in Y/N's humble opinion), but Y/N furrowed her brow. "What d'you mean, 'what's the plan?'"

"What are you going to do the next time you run into him?" Dolley asked. There was a pause; Y/N hadn't thought that far. "You don't really think you can make it through the semester ignoring this, do you?"

"I... Maybe? I don't know!" Y/N let out a frustrated huff. "That's what I need you to help me figure out. What else are you here for?"

"Oh, you make an excellent point," Dolley sighed. "All I do is pay half the rent and help you get laid at bars downtown."

Y/N scowled. "You helped me get laid by a professor. Just help me."

"Mmh, I don't think I heard a 'please' in there."

"Please, Dolley, my white knight to whom I owe my life," she pleaded, clutching her roommates arm and sighing wistfully. Dolley's lips were pressed into a line, but that didn't stop her smile from showing through. "I would be nothing without you; just please, do me this one final favor."

"Alright, alright," she conceded with a huff, shaking free from Y/N's grip. "Drama queen."

Y/N shrugged shamelessly. "I bring excitement into your life. Don't be ungrateful."

"Whatever you say, dear." The defeat in her words made Y/N grin. "So back to your excitement, then."

"I'm so lost," Y/N groaned, finally emerging from the soda aisle with shoulders slumped in defeat. "If the sex hadn't been so good, I'd probably just pretend it never happened."

Dolley creased her brow. "Was it really that good?"

Y/N turned to her with a serious demeanor, a hand on her shoulder as she looked her in the eye. "Dolley. I am covered in hickeys from my neck to my hips. That man damn near threw my back out. I won't bullshit you; there's no way I'm gonna be able to sit comfortably for—"

"Okay, alright! A 'yes' would've sufficed," Dolley cut her off, pushing past her to the shelf of instant noodles. Y/N looked disproportionately self-satisfied when she followed. "That's about enough details for one evening."

"You asked!"

"But you can't spend the entire semester ignoring him, Y/N," Dolley continued, ignoring her words. "That class is notoriously difficult — the only people I know who didn't frequent his office hours were the ones who got 'C's."

Y/N sighed, rubbing her temples as her roommate pushed cup after cup of beef ramen into her basket. "So then shouldn't I just put this whole thing behind me? I can't really start asking him to help me analyze Kant if I open the conversation with, 'hey, good to see you again, you're almost as good at teaching as you are in bed.'"

Dolley laughed at her dry tone. "I don't mean that, of course."

"Then what do you mean?"

"If you never agree to put this all behind you, I think it's going to be on both of your minds for the rest of the semester," she said matter-of-factly, hesitating when the freezer at the side of the room caught her gaze. "Should we pick up pizza rolls, too?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course we should," Y/N scoffed, brushing past her toward the Totino's section. "But if he and I both just ignore it, wouldn't that be an easier way to put it behind us?"

"Oh, grab a bag of the cheeseburger flavor, would you?" Dolley leaned in to look over Y/N's shoulder, ignoring her words altogether, and she glanced back with a raised eyebrow.

"Can you focus for five seconds?" She dropped three bags of pizza rolls — pepperoni flavor — into her basket with a huff. "Anyway, the cheeseburger flavor is disgusting. Get some taste."

"Don't discount the nostalgia of it!"

"Dolley." Y/N fixed her with a pointed look, and she sighed.

"We both know ignoring it is a poor idea, even if it is the easier option." Dolley didn't waste a second in pushing right past Y/N when she stood, grabbing a bag of the cheeseburger pizza rolls (an oxymoron in itself, as Y/N would've told her) before the freezer door could fall shut. "Just talk to him after class one day. Don't make it take more than five minutes."

"I don't even know where I'd start with that. I've dealt with awkward fallout from one-night stands before, but never with a professor." Her footsteps stalled within the last yard of the frozen section. "I've just gotta ignore it and focus on the coursework, Dolley. Wanna get some Ben and Jerry's?"

"Are you trying to distract me with a pint of chocolate fudge brownie?" Dolley asked incredulously, before adding, "Because it's working. Let's get two."

She grinned. "Excellent."

Y/N figured that was the end of it, that two pints of ice cream and an incredibly vague game plan would be enough to satiate her friend for the time being, but after they checked out, trying to figure out how many meals they could extend one pack of ramen to (because, really, if you just add more water, doesn't it make the servings bigger?), Dolley felt the need to return to it as they walked through the sliding glass exit doors, her words holding an air of finality.

"If you really want to insist on not just communicating with the poor man, Y/N, then fine." Y/N raised a quizzical eyebrow, not yet following where Dolley had abruptly turned the trajectory of their conversation. "But after his lecture on Wednesday, when you realize that leaving the subject untouched just makes it more unbearable—" ("'When'?" Y/N muttered dubiously.) "—then I need you to agree to go talk to your professor."

Dolley didn't wait for her response, squinting at the nutrition facts on the ramen labels as her focus drifted elsewhere (sure, it said two servings, but she was fairly sure that only the bourgeoise couldn't have stretched it to three), but Y/N let out a surrendering sigh.

"Wednesday's going to be just fine," she said, realizing but not caring that Dolley was no longer listening. "But if it isn't, I'll talk to him."

-                        -         

Wednesday was not 'just fine.'

Y/N spent the entire class on edge, trying futilely not to let her thoughts drift back to the other night in the bar, then on the street in front of her building, then in the elevator, in her living room, even in the kitchen— but no, she was getting off track. Little did she know, Thomas was having precisely the same issue.

She jotted down his words almost robotically, the meaning of them going into one ear and out the other, more focused on the sound of his voice than on what he was actually saying.

Only once did she manage to focus for long enough to actually process a thought, but when he was fielding questions about the material, Thomas conveniently managed to miss her having raised her hand from where she was seated. She supposed she'd just positioned herself too far back and thought no more of it.

Despite how 'not fine' that day had been, she dismissed it as a fluke, showing up the next Monday with her head on straight, her readings prepared and annotated, and took a seat several rows further forward. Her motivation may have been misplaced, leaning a bit too far toward wanting to impress her professor and not far enough toward a desire to understand the material, but she was familiar enough with the content to feel comfortable giving her input on the questions he posed to the class throughout the lecture.

Again, her efforts bore no fruit. Her notes were better that day, so that was certainly something to count as a plus, but she left feeling put-out by the fact that she hadn't even had a chance to participate. Usually, she wouldn't have been so perturbed by this — sitting through a Socratic seminar playing tetris on her laptop was no unfamiliar experience — but this class accounted for six of the twelve credit hours she still needed for her chosen major. She didn't suppose that it'd be a good look to have the class dragging down her GPA to be the same one she was supposedly most passionate about; generally speaking, that wasn't what graduate schools were looking for.

Besides, she liked the subject, too. Surely that had to count for something?

And that was how she kept pushing off the inevitable conversation with Thomas — sorry, Professor Jefferson — and coming up with increasingly creative excuses as to why her efforts were being so plainly ignored, not only that following Wednesday, too, but also the Monday and Wednesday after. She'd made it through three weeks of classes before she could finally work up the nerve to confront him.

Unfortunately, that task proved to be no easier than her previous one.

Thom— her professor was always the last one into the lecture hall and the first one out, leaving no opportunities for chatter, or in her case, a supposedly inevitable clash she'd already begun arming herself for. She'd nearly caught him in the halls at various times, but he always seemed to have somewhere he urgently needed to be. The same doctrine followed in his office hours; apparently, another student had scheduled a meeting with him three minutes after every single time she arrived, without fail, so could she please just come back another time? Surely, another time would be better for both of them.

That time never came.

It was near the end of the fourth week that she was entirely fed up. They'd moved from Kant to Machiavelli, and so far, The Prince had her ready to tear her hair out. It didn't help that they'd all just finished the book, their first paper of the year on it due the next Monday.

She was far past lying to herself about her motives being purely academic while she continued to privately just want his attention — no, by then, she was hopped up on forty ounces of sugary coffee and just a touch of RedBull, and she hardly had a thesis for her paper. She'd read the same passages time and time again — she likely could've recited them word-for-word by the time she demanded feedback — and any shallow, vain desires for recognition were the furthest thing from her mind. She needed a professor, and she was pissed that Thomas didn't seem to have any interest in acting like one.

It was late Thursday evening when she marched across the green from the library to the building that housed his office in a fury. Yes, it was the last week of January; yes, the entire city was still coated in snow, but no, she could not bring herself to care about the very real possibility of frostbite as she trudged through the snow in sweatpants, slippers, and a tank top. Practicality wasn't her priority. Finishing her paper was.

Thomas's office hours were from 7 to 10 PM every evening, a schedule he stuck to religiously. It was 9:24 when Y/N began tracking snow through the bottom floor of his building, and 9:31 when she finally managed to locate and reach his actual office.

It was reluctant when she finally knocked, struggling to resist the urge to simply bust in and rip him a new one, but to her relief, it was simply met with a 'come in.' That was when she threw the door open in a fit of annoyance.

"You've been avoiding me," she said, eyes narrowed and tone accusatory before he could so much as react to her presence.

"Y/N, I—" His eyes were wide; he seemed to be at a loss for words as his eyes drifted down to her sweatpants and Hello Kitty slippers. He couldn't have convinced her it wasn't a dignified look even if he'd tried. "What are you doin' here?"

"We need to talk." She dropped her bag into one of the chairs in front of his desk, though she chose not to take a seat, instead glaring down at him, arms folded.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and though his head was down, his shadow of a grimace told her everything she needed to know: he'd been dreading this conversation far more than she had. "Look, right now really isn't a great time. I've got—"

"Don't bullshit me, Thomas."

"Professor Jefferson," he corrected her, the words hissed through gritted teeth, and she huffed, rolling her eyes.

"My bad. Don't bullshit me, Professor Jefferson." Y/N scowled as she took another step towards him. "Your office hours don't end until ten. There's no way you have time for a meeting between now and then if you haven't already started one."

He let out a heavy sigh. "Alright. Alright, fine. And I know what you're gonna say, but—"

"Do you really?" she challenged him, head cocked to one side. "Because the fact that you haven't given me one chance to speak to you in almost a month tells me pretty clearly that you don't. Generally, you find out what people have to say by listening to them."

"We can't have this conversation here. You've gotta come find me some other time." The urgency in his voice only served to infuriate her further. What right did he have to be dictating this when he'd tried to stop the conversation altogether?

"Oh, believe me, I've tried," Y/N huffed. "I'm done accommodating. If you wanted to talk about this some other time, I would've been happy to, but we're well past that."

He held her burning gaze warily for another moment, but she didn't let up. Finally, he sighed. "Fine. Say your part. I'm listenin'."

"You've been completely freezing me out. You haven't been answering my questions in classes; you haven't been letting me contribute to discussions; you, most recently, haven't let me talk to you for more than five seconds, hence why I'm here." She launched into an irate monologue without any further encouragement, and to his credit, Thomas at least had the decency to look guilty. "You've been turning me away at your office hours; for fuck's sake, Thomas, you haven't even answered any of my emails!"

"I know, I know," he said, and though she could see the exhaustion written across his face, she didn't let him continue. "But you've gotta understand—"

"I'm not done," she cut him off, and it was then that he raised an affronted brow. "Anyway, I get why you're keeping your distance. Really, I do. And honestly? I can't really blame you for it."

"Well, great, so—"

"But with that said," —she gave Thomas an expectant look as she continued to speak over him, challenging him to try and interrupt— "You've been doing more than keeping your distance. You've been outright ignoring me, and that's where I'm drawing a line in the sand. Refusing to engage with me doesn't help either of us."

She let out a heavy breath when she finally reached the end of her rant, and though he was certainly taken aback, Thomas looked unimpressed.

"May I speak now?" he asked mockingly, and she scowled. "Or are you just gonna keep cuttin' me off?"

"Depends how much bullshit comes out of your mouth."

He rolled his eyes. "Sure." He put his pen back into the cup on the edge of the desk before drawing himself up to the fullest height he could reach in a rolling chair. With how he was looking at her, with how cross his tone was, Y/N may have backed down in another context, but quite frankly, she was beyond having anything to lose. "I understand that you're hurt, Y/N, and for that, 'm honestly sorry, but—"

"I'm not hurt, I'm ticked!"

"Y/N." That time, his hard voice, his barely-contained anger, did make her shrink away, just a bit. "You've gotta realize that what happened is in the past. It was a mistake. I didn't know you were a student here — you even told me you went to school in Chicago."

"I did, for two years."

"Doesn't matter. Moral of the story is that you've gotta leave that in the past. I'm your professor now, and that's a boundary that can't be crossed. We both need to stop dwellin' on it." His saying 'we' rather than 'you' certainly didn't go unnoticed, but Y/N deemed it not worth addressing.

"Great. It's behind us. Can you stop ignoring me now?"

"Come on, Y/N—"

"Seriously? You're gonna argue with that?" She threw her hands up in a huff, beyond exasperated and crossing the line to indignance. "You wanna remind me that you're my professor? Then stop acting like I don't exist. It's that simple, Thomas."

"It's Professor Jefferson. And I'm not tryin' to ignore you," he defended. "But don't you see the position this puts me in? My job's at stake here. This can never happen again!"

"And who said I wanted it to?" she bit back immediately, and for just a moment, Thomas was rendered silent.

"If that's not what you're lookin' for, then what are you here for?" His voice was quiet, his gaze searching, and Y/N sighed.

"Seriously? I haven't made myself clear enough?" She raised an eyebrow, but his blank look told her all she needed to know. The tension in her shoulders dropped; her combative stance went neutral when she reached into her bag, pulling it from the chair in front of his desk. "You're the one who keeps emphasizing that you're my professor — and that's what I need you to be right now."

He raised an eyebrow, clearly lost as she withdrew Machiavelli's The Prince from her bag, beaten up and slathered in colored tabs around the edges. She added in a small voice, "I've been struggling with the reading. I did it all, but there are just a couple passages that... I need help with."

Thomas — no, Professor Jefferson (god, was she ever going to struggle with getting that down) — looked stunned, plain and simple. Y/N had expected all of his assumptions for why she'd shown up there. Two weeks earlier, they may have also been accurate ones, but ultimately, she was still just a student. He'd really had to have had a big head to think he'd take priority over that for any extended period of time.

His eyes were wide. He continued to look toward her, but his gaze was blank, slowly drifting to his desk, until finally, he sighed. "Well, shit. I, uh... I'm really sorry, Y/N. Really." If the growing guilt behind his shock hadn't been clear enough in his demeanor, it was woven tightly into his voice. His stare flickered back up to her, and despite her lingering irritation, the apology in it softened her. "I got so caught up in my own problems that I didn't even consider. I didn't mean to assume that you... y'know."

"Came here to try and get dicked down?" Y/N supplied, voice dry as she watched him expectantly. He cracked a sheepish smile.

"Somethin' like that."

"As though it'd be worth the effort," she snorted. "There are, like, thirty frats on campus, and I have a paper due Monday — in case you'd forgotten. If I wanted to get laid, I'd do it much more efficiently."

"Mm, but would it be as good?" At the clear ego in Thomas's playful stare, Y/N's eyebrows shot toward her hairline.

"Now who's crossing boundaries?"

Despite the skepticism in her voice, Thomas laughed. "'M just kiddin'. Promise."

"Hilarious." Her small, persistent smile undermined her sarcasm, and his gaze was soft.

"Alright, alright, come take a seat. Show me which pages you're strugglin' with."

"Yeah, so it's less full pages and passages than it is key phrases I just can't seem to connect to the rest of the work." Y/N lowered herself into the chair that wasn't already holding her bag as she flipped open her book to her third pink tab, turning it to show him. "Like, here. Chapter 19."

"Mhm."

"I understand what the whole page is getting at, but look at this..."

They sank easily into the text, despite being focused more on one another's voices than on the writing itself. Ten PM had long since come and gone, but as the night stretched on, the pair only continued to pass Y/N's book back and forth, bouncing from passage to passage, idea to idea as though no time had passed at all. Neither of them bothered to check any sort of a clock until Y/N let out a loud, drawn-out yawn. Thomas raised an eyebrow.

"You gettin' tired?" Y/N gave a halfhearted shrug as he finally checked his watch, and his eyes widened. "Shit, it's past eleven. We should get you outta here."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right." Her voice was weary as she lifted herself out of her seat, tucked her book back into her bag. "I've got everything I need for my paper, anyway."

"Glad to hear it." Thomas reached for his coat as she made her way to the door, but she paused when he asked, "You're not thinkin' of walkin' home, are you?"

She glanced back over her shoulder. "What if I am?"

Thomas furrowed his brow. "Tell me that's a joke. That's gotta be a joke." Y/N shrugged, and Thomas groaned lightly. "In that outfit, you freezin' and gettin' abducted are equally likely, you know that?"

"Aw, thanks for letting me know! Now I feel so much safer," she said, plastering on a mocking smile.

"Lemme call you an Uber," he offered, and Y/N quirked a brow.

"Are you that much of a one-trick pony?"

"If makin' sure women get home safe is my only trick, I think it's a pretty good one to have," he said matter-of-factly, and Y/N had to laugh.

"I can appreciate that. An Uber would be great." Y/N pulled her bag up her shoulder as she returned to his door. "I'll see you Monday?"

"Mhm. Your driver's named Amy, and she's drivin' a blue Camry, by the way," Thomas informed her, and Y/N smiled. "G'night, Y/N."

"Night, professor."

             -           

From then on, Y/N began frequenting Thomas's office hours, only hesitantly at first. While her motives were genuine, all of them being centered around getting into grad school, she didn't want to become overbearing, especially with the one night, the sixteen stolen hours that still hung over their heads. She stopped by twice the following week, neither time staying long as other students began to trickle in, peeking nervously around the corner toward his office, knocking so quietly at first that neither Thomas not Y/N realized someone was there. She didn't need him any more than her classmates did, so she yielded her time gracefully.

Moreover, she knew that only very little of the time he offered to students wasn't already occupied, and while the reason for that was certainly clear to her, she wasn't sure whether it'd gone over his head. It wasn't until the fourth time she went to meet with him that she found he was every bit as aware as everyone else.

"Hey, Thom—" Y/N cut herself off with a wince. "Professor Jefferson, you around?" she called down the hall to his office, nose still buried in the email from the anthropology department that she'd pulled up on her phone (apparently they were having a bake sale on the east green; Y/N didn't bother to read further and learn why once she saw they'd have caramel brownies). She only glanced up when she didn't receive an answer, instead hearing chatter drift down the hall, and her footsteps slowed as she neared his doorway. Her eyebrows shot up.

Y/N recognized the woman seated — well, hardly still seated, at that point — with her back to her as Lucy Hart, who sat front and center during every single one of their lectures, who was now all but draping herself across Thomas's desk, leaned onto her forearms and with a pen between her teeth.

Though she seemed to find whatever Y/N had just missed to be hilarious, Thomas's amusement was forced, uneasy as he eased his hand away from where hers had fallen to cover it, holding the book open by one of its ends.

"Alright, Miss Hart, we'll see." Whatever the question was, Thomas wasn't about to give her a straight answer, but Lucy seemed to take that as a challenge. Her cleavage finally spilled back into the neckline of her dress when she sat back in her seat, but she traced one finger up Thomas's forearm.

"I guess we will," she replied. She hadn't seemed to have caught on to how wildly uncomfortable she was making him — Y/N could only assume Lucy had decided she'd left him 'flustered.' She reached for his copy of Hobbes's Leviathan, her perfectly manicured fingers brushing over his as she did so. "Now, where were we?"

Ahem.

From the angle they were seated at, neither Thomas nor Lucy had noticed Y/N standing in the doorway, an eyebrow raised — when she cleared her throat, though, they both jumped. Their reactions to her presence couldn't have been more disparate. The relief written deep in Thomas's tiny smile was obvious, but Lucy was looking her over with a scowl.

"Hey," Y/N finally said, taking a step forward. "I hope I'm not interrupting?"

"'Course not." It was Professor Jefferson who answered, tone formal and body language neutral, but how quickly he'd answered, overtly cutting off Lucy, told Y/N she wasn't misreading the situation. "What can I do for you, Y/N?"

"Yeah, Y/N," Lucy furthered, eyeing her dubiously. "Why are you here?"

Y/N's gaze flickered between the pair of them, the tension in Thomas's shoulders subtle but clear as he inched his arm further from Lucy's. "Last I checked, Professor Jefferson, we had a meeting scheduled for right about now."

Her smile was genuine despite how Thomas knit his dark brow; she hadn't yet moved past finding the ordeal wildly entertaining. "Do we?"

"I thought so," she added with a shrug, and when her pointed gaze fell to Lucy, who still looked irate sitting in the small tufted chair across from him, Thomas sighed, and Y/N felt confident it'd been a sigh of relief. He seemed to have realized the escape rope she'd thrown into his lionness's den. "Unless I got the time wrong? It could've been tomorrow evening, I—"

"No, no you're in the right," he cut her off a little too adamantly, and though she'd already begun to dig through her phone for the nonexistent calendar event, she looked up with her eyebrows raised. "'S my bad. I took the timing down wrong."

Y/N had to bite down her self-satisfied smile. "Are you sure? Because really, we can reschedule; I'm also available—"

"No. Now's just fine," he assured her, and the indignant look Lucy shot him had the beginnings of a smile creeping past Y/N's innocent mask. "Made a promise, and it'd be only right to keep it, wouldn't it?"

"It is your responsibility to model integrity, professor."

"Then I guess I've gotta make sure I don't give anybody the wrong idea."

Y/N wasn't sure whether the words, 'the wrong idea' were pointed at her or at Lucy, or whether they were even pointed at all, with her simply reading too far into a nonexistent subtext to take them at face value. She didn't dwell much longer.

"Well, thanks for stoppin' by, Miss Hart—" Vindication flashed in Y/N's eyes when she noticed his electing not to use Lucy's first name. "—I hope all this discussion's deepened your understandin' of Hobbes's view on human nature."

"Oh, I've learned quite a bit about human nature," Lucy said as she stood, and Thomas's discomfort hadn't faded. Y/N was struggling to comprehend what about her words possibly justified her tone being so suggestive. "I hope I can come back another night for you to teach me a little more of it, Thom— oh! I mean, Professor Jefferson."

She glanced bashfully at Y/N with her final few words, her sheepish front fooling no one. Y/N wasn't sure to what end, but this was a clear ploy for her jealousy — she'd been around the block once or twice. Y/N genuinely struggled to contain her amusement as Lucy shot him a wink before turning to leave, exaggerating the movements of her hips. The door fell shut behind her.

It wasn't until Lucy's footsteps were out of earshot that Thomas let out a heavy sigh, sinking down in his chair, and Y/N let out the laugh she'd spent the past ten minutes swallowing.

"So, Lucy Hart, huh? That's who you've been spending all your alleged 'office hours' with?" she started, and Thomas's glare was weak.

"C'mon, Y/N."

"Is that why your door's locked half the times I show up here? Today wasn't very subtle, you know."

"Y/N." His voice was hard when he gave her a pointed look, but with how tired he looked, she didn't push it further, just smiled.

"Relax; I'm just kidding." She shrugged off her jacket. "I know that if you were to sleep with a student, it wouldn't be Lucy. Don't worry."

He raised his eyebrows at her audacity, her smug grin, but he couldn't prevent the amusement that showed through to his expression. "Really? You're gonna go there?"

"Go where?" When she knit her brow, plastered on a confused frown, Thomas had to swallow his laugh. "Now, I'm just not sure what you're implying, professor. Do you plan on sleeping with Lucy?

"Hilarious, Y/N." His rolling his eyes left her undeterred. "In all seriousness, though, I think she really believes she is bein' subtle."

"Unfortunately, I'm well aware," Y/N sighed. "I've seen her at a few too many parties to have any illusions about what a painfully tactless flirt she is."

"You're tellin' me."

"Has it been like this all semester?" she asked. Sure, Y/N had seen how shameless Lucy was during lectures, leaving no stone unturned to draw attention to herself, but this seemed a new level of egregious. Yet, Thomas nodded.

"Once a week, every week. Least, when it isn't more than that."

"Sometimes it's more?" Y/N let out a breathy, disbelieving laugh, and Thomas nodded his solemn confirmation. "Jesus. So this is why you look pissed every time she participates in class. I figured you just hated the sound of her voice as much as I do."

"Believe me; I've been startin' to."

"That's so harsh!"

"Aw, c'mon, and you wouldn't?"

Y/N shrugged, pursed her lips, but her eyes glinted with hubris. "Well," she said, "It'd depend on how hot the student was. I mean, in my opinion, if Lucy was me, it just might be a different story."

Thomas couldn't bring himself to look annoyed. "Yeah, yeah. Alright," he said, shaking his head at her words. "You think you're fuckable. I get it."

"Glad we agree." Y/N's lips quirked up into a smug smile, but Thomas raised his eyebrows.

"Hang on, now. That's not quite what I—"

"But if she's really bothering you," Y/N continued, altogether disregarding his protests, and Thomas sighed. "You know you could just, like, talk to Lucy about it, right? You're the one with the power, here."

She couldn't put her finger on exactly why he winced at the latter sentence.

"Guess so, I just... I dunno. 'S really no big deal; I'm just gettin' fed up with all that." He gave a halfhearted shrug that made her raise an eyebrow. "But don't worry 'bout that. Why're you here, if not for the meetin' we've supposedly got scheduled for tonight?"

His tone was light, playful with the question, but Y/N was still stuck on what he'd started with. "Hold on; you can't just deflect that easily."

"Deflect from what?" He furrowed his brow, but Y/N just huffed, walking toward the near side of his desk.

"From whatever you're getting 'fed up with all of,'" she said, and when she eyed him skeptically, his fatigued sigh told her she wasn't imagining things. "Can I sit?"

"Yeah, sure, join me." Thomas beckoning her toward his empty chairs was almost absentminded. "But really, it's nothin'."

"No offense, but I don't know if I believe you." As she sank down into one of his guest's seats, a conflicted look flickered across his gaze, building further on the concern in her words. "What's up? C'mon; talk to me."

He hesitated. "'M serious, Y/N; it's not—"

"Thomas."

He raised an eyebrow, but it took her a moment to notice her own error. "Excuse me?"

"Professor Jefferson, I mean. Of course." Her smile was sheepish, but it just made him chuckle.

"Alright, alright. 'S nothin' serious, anyway, but 'm just gettin' sick of not bein' taken seriously."

Y/N's words were hesitant as she raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean? People take you seriously."

"Mm, but do they?" He sighed as he sat back in his chair. "I'm the youngest professor on campus; half my office hours are taken up by undergrads hittin' on me. It's hard to feel like I'm gettin' a lot of respect when you don't even treat me like a professor."

"Hey, come on, I respect you," she defended, and he shook his head.

"I don't mean you, specifically, Y/N. Just... your whole class. I'm already hardly old enough to be teachin' at a university, but it also kinda sucks to see how many people pretend to care about learnin' just to get my attention," he said, and his voice was soft. His quiet sigh made Y/N frown, especially as his absent gaze wandered through his own office.

"I'm sorry," she said, and he glanced back over to her. "Keep in mind, though, you made the first move on me. Not the other way around."

Despite her having been entirely serious, her words made Thomas laugh — a full-bodied laugh, too, one that couldn't help but make her smile in return. "Thanks for lettin' me know," he said, and though she rolled her eyes at his sarcastic tone, she was glad to see him lightening up. "Sorry to say it, sweetheart, but not everything's about you."

Neither noticed his casual term of endearment. "What a shame," Y/N sighed.

"Mm, I'm sure. I guess I just..." When he trailed off, Y/N raised a brow, and the concerned look in her eyes was what prompted him to continue. "I know I'm smart, 'n all, but it never feels great to feel discounted. Especially bein' new to the faculty."

"I hear that," Y/N said, her tone light but gaze solemn. "For what it's worth, I do come to your office for help because I know you can and want to provide it, not because I have some ulterior motive."

"Glad to hear it." Though his tone almost suggested he may have been being facetious, Y/N could tell that he wasn't making fun. "But on that note, thanks for givin' me an out with the Lucy fiasco. What'd you need, comin' here?"

Y/N's smile was small, all but apologetic as she unzipped her bag after pulling it into her lap. "Right. So, I know this isn't your job, and all..."

When she trailed off, Thomas eyed her suspiciously, especially as her lips only seemed to stretch further into a grin. "What's this about?"

"Is there any chance you'd be willing to read over my paper for my constitutional law seminar?" At the hopeful look she wore as she withdrew her printed essay from her bag, he had to laugh.

"Really? You're not even here for somethin' about my class?"

"Yes or no, professor?" She raised a brow, waving the packet back and forth expectantly.

"And why'd you decide to come see if I'd look through it? What makes you think I'm gonna?"

"You read over my French paper last week!" she pointed out, and Thomas sighed.

"Yeah, 'cause I speak French."

"You speak English, too. And you worked in government." Y/N shrugged, putting the paper down on his desk regardless. "So, please? I'd ask my roommate, but she's studying business, and you must know how that goes."

"You trashin' on business majors?" Thomas raised an eyebrow.

"If I was, would I be wrong?"

Her deadpan stare made him laugh. "Can't argue with that. Give it here."

He held his hand out for the essay, and she gave it to him with a wide grin. "You're the best."

"What else is new?" he asked, and despite how dry his tone was, his eyes were teasing. "You wanna go through it with me now, or should I get it back to you some other time?"

"Any chance we can go over it now?" she asked. "It might sort of be due in two days."

His eyebrows shot up. "Are you tellin' me I'm some kinda last resort?"

"Of course not!" she defended, but she hesitated before continuing, "Just an eleventh-hour supplementary resource who's going to help me get a diploma."

"I'm sure," he said, and the skeptical look he gave made the corners of her lips twitch. "You owe me, y'know that?"

"Really. I should start paying you, one of these days."

"To be fair, you do pay my salary."

"Mm, maybe some students do, but I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you."

Thomas furrowed his brow, confusion permeating every aspect of his expression as he looked back at her. "What, you 'n Elizabeth Warren linked up in a personal campaign for free college?"

"No, but the president of financial aid and I did." She shrugged. "Honestly, they saved my ass. Sorry I'm not raising your salary, or anything, but I hardly pay to go here."

When he slowly nodded, she could see the small, subtle smile tugging at his lips. "I'll try not to hold it against you. 'M glad you ended up here anyway."

Y/N's grin was exaggerated, a fact she did nothing to conceal. "Aww, professor, I knew you secretly liked having me here."

He rolled his eyes, but his smile mirrored hers. "I meant that I'm glad that money isn't holdin' you back from gettin' a good education."

"I'm sure you did."

Thomas cocked a brow. "D'you want me to read your paper or not?"

At his words, Y/N had to bite back her cocky grin, and she nodded. "Yes, please."

"Then get off your high horse 'n listen." Despite his words, amusement sat heavy in the way he was skeptically eyeing Y/N.

"Of course, professor."

-                         

"It's been shockingly chill."

Y/N was sprawled out on the carpet of her living room, a styrofoam cup of ramen in one hand and chopsticks in the other, while Dolley sat curled up at the end of the couch flipping through Netflix on their TV.

"No lingering sexual tension?" Dolley challenged, glancing down to where Y/N was slurping her noodles (she'd asserted that ramen on the couch was too high of a stain risk). Y/N shook her head, and Dolley raised an eyebrow. "Really? No secret desire to end up bent over his desk?"

"Okay, listen, what I want and what I act on are two very different things." She pointed her chopsticks at Dolley accusatorily. "I can have it both ways."

"So you're still looking for another night of fun?" Dolley raised a playful eyebrow, and Y/N only grinned.

"Are you offering?"

"I could be convinced, dear." The wink Dolley sent her made Y/N laugh, broth sloshing down the side of her cup that she didn't hesitate to lick off of the back of her hand.

"Mhm, because my sex appeal is through the roof, I'm sure."

"Alright, I'll confess. I am only joking, after all," Dolley sighed, a wistful look in her eyes as she scrolled through the Netflix TV dramas category. "But only because things with James are going better than I expected."

Y/N's eyes widened; she spun in her spot on the floor. "Dolley, oh my God, spill! You've been holding out on me."

"There's not much for me to spill, really." She shrugged, and the smile she wore was coy. "He and I have just been getting on well. Nothing more to it."

"No. Uh-uh." Y/N shook her head, setting her near-empty instant ramen onto their coffee table. "You're gonna give me more than that. You have to. Clearly something's been happening."

Dolley bit her lip. "So, would we rather watch Stranger Things or The Good Place?"

"Don't you dare change the subject!"

"Alright, alright," she finally sighed, and her gaze was soft when she finally met Y/N's eyes. "So, we've been seeing each other more often. Getting coffee, grabbing lunch between classes. He's even had me read over different drafts of his thesis."

"Aww, he's using you as an editor? How romantic!"

"Make fun all you want, but he trusts me with it. Isn't that worth something?"

"Of course it is, Doll." Y/N smiled, unable to tease Dolley further when she had such a sappy look in her eyes. "But if you've been dating, why am I just finding out?"

She didn't meet Y/N's gaze, fiddling with the cuffs of her sleeves. "We haven't been going on dates, really."

"Oh yeah? This is how you talk about hanging out with everyone else you aren't dating?" The challenge in Y/N's tone made her scoff, roll her eyes, but they both knew she had a point.

"It's nothing official."

"But do you want it to be?" Y/N quirked a brow. Dolley's smile was faint.

"Maybe a little," she said quietly, and Y/N's grin broadened.

"That's adorable. I'm thrilled for you," she said, but there was a heavy pause before she hesitantly added, "but be careful with him."

Dolley furrowed her brow, finally turning toward where Y/N sat. "What d'you mean?"

"You have a habit of quickly getting attached to men who turn out to be terrible for you. Remember Henry?"

"Knox or Clay?"

"Either. You're making my point." Y/N gave her a knowing look, but Dolley didn't seem overly offended. "You're just too quick to give people the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone deserves it."

"But that's what you love about me, dear."

"Don't you turn my undying love and affection for you against me!" Y/N protested, and though she rolled her eyes, Dolley appeared to be entertained. "I adore you for what a sweetheart you are, but it's also what men take advantage of."

"Yes, I know; you've given me this talk before," Dolley sighed. "But really, I think this time might be different. I really like James."

Y/N pursed her lips. "It'd better be. Otherwise he's gonna have hell to pay."

"I'm not too worried."

"I am."

"Would you feel better if I gave you a chance to screen him?" Y/N raised an interested eyebrow at Dolley's words. "Because I invited him to come over Wednesday night for dinner. If you'd like, it'll be a prime time for you to interrogate him."

She sighed. "I dunno, Doll. I don't want to third wheel."

"You live here. You won't be third-wheeling," Dolley pointed out. "And you wouldn't have to stay! You could just pop in, say hello, and either leave or just go wait him out in your room."

A small smile grew across Y/N's lips at her words. "And you'll seriously let me interrogate him?"

"Have at it."

"I'm in."

-                                  

Dolley 🥺💋 sent: James is coming over in five minutes, so get home whenever

Dolley 🥺💋 sent: unless of course you've decided to grant him your tacit approval

Y/N sent: be home soon 😪

Dolley 🥺💋 sent: see u 😘

"Y/N?"

It was Wednesday evening, around 6 PM. Y/N's political philosophy seminar had just been let out, but she'd really spent most of her focus over the past three hours on figuring out exactly how to determine whether or not James was a piece of shit. Apparently he was bringing takeout to her and Dolley's apartment for all three of them, which she saw to be a point in his favor.

However, as her classmates filed out of the lecture hall, Y/N stood idly, taking hesitant steps forward out of her row as she tried to multitask, neither eager to stop texting Dolley or to trip all the way down the steps to the front of the room. It was Professor Jefferson who knocked her out of the reverie that'd been induced by the promise of James delivering what she imagined to be the best food she'd had in weeks.

She looked up with a brow raised, tucking her phone back into her pocket. "Hey, professor."

"You have a second to talk?"

"Oh, um..." Despite her deep-seated motivation to get home before dinner was cold, she supposed it could wait just a little longer. She nodded. "Yeah, sure. What's up?"

She pulled her bag onto her shoulder as she stepped out onto the hall's staircase, maybe three rows up from where Thomas stood at the bottom floor.

He leaned nonchalantly against the first row of desks. "So, the TA I've had since first semester's leavin' in a week or two. He's goin' abroad to South Korea for the fourth quarter, 'n he's decided to resign from bein' my assistant at the end of this week, so that he can make sure he's got everything in order for the next three months."

She frowned. "That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear it." She folded her arms, paused before adding, "So what, you want me to break the news to the class that we aren't getting those papers on the Enlightenment back anytime soon?"

At her quirked brow, her playful smile, Thomas had to give a light laugh. "Mm, I'm hopin' it won't come to that."

"You should probably get to grading instead of keeping me from dinner, then."

"Oh, 'm sorry; how dare I, really?" He responded, a hand over his heart, and she had to bite back her entertained smile at the irony in his indignance.

"Honestly. I can't imagine why I put up with it."

"I'll make it up to you," he said dryly. "But seriously, 'm not just tellin' you that for the sake of small talk. What I'm sayin' is that I have an openin' to find a new TA."

"I see," she said, raising an eyebrow. "And where, pray tell, do I come into all this?"

It wasn't that his train of thought was hard to follow, nor was his implication, but until he said it outright, Y/N had no desire to make any sort of an assumption.

He smiled. "You have any interest in becomin' a TA?"

"Seriously?" She furrowed her brow. "I mean, I appreciate it, but why?"

"First off, your work's consistently at the top of this class," he said matter-of-factly. They both knew she was well aware of this, after the hours in his office she'd spent grilling him on the historical context of every one of Voltaire's assertions and the implications of every early revolution. "You're a good writer, 'n you're more than capable of reviewin' other students' work. You've also already taken most of the other classes I teach, so you're familiar with all the material."

She nodded slowly, folding her arms, and though her expression would've conveyed that she was deep in thought, she couldn't suppress her growing smile. "I see. So it doesn't have anything to do with how attractive or charming I am?"

When she raised a playful eyebrow, he laughed outright. "Whenever your charm can start gradin' thirty ten-page papers a day, I'll start takin' it into account."

"Don't underestimate it."

"Alright, alright, I'll keep it in mind." He shook his head, and his lingering smile made the corners of her lips twitch. "'M serious, though. If you've already got enough on your plate, and you don't wanna take on another commitment, that's cool 'n all, and I can always ask someone else. But would you want the position?"

She pursed her lips, eyed him hesitantly. "Will I need to apply for it?"

"Nah," he said. "By the university's policy, you've gotta send me your resume and transcript, but if you wanna be my TA, you've got it. So?"

When she bit her lip, his eyes flickered down to her mouth so briefly that she almost didn't notice it. "I don't know, Thom—" He raised a brow. "Professor. Is there any chance I can think on it and get back to you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, 'course. I can give you 'til the end of the week, if that's enough time?"

"That'd be great." As she held his gaze, she couldn't help but ponder exactly what she was being asked. She was sure his motives were pure; she couldn't imagine for the life of her Thomas giving her a job with the intent of breaking down professional boundaries so he could sleep with her, but that was where her mind was going regardless. "I'll stop by and let you know on Friday."

"I'm countin' on it." He wore a wide grin that shouldn't have and usually wouldn't have put her on edge. Her mind had fallen down the rabbit hole of fixating on just how much more time she'd be spending with him as his TA — he saw enough of her during his office hours, but she was of two minds with that. On one hand, what would a few more hours change? However, on the other, all she was hearing was that he didn't mind spending a few more hours with her. "I'll see you then?"

When he raised an eyebrow, she finally realized she'd spaced out for a solid minute, and she fixed on a smile, though it was tense. "See you then."

She left without another word.

James proved to be a nice guy when Dolley had him over; he brought burgers and milkshakes for all three of them. However, Y/N knew she'd only find herself on Dolley's bad side however many hours later. As much as he was talking, Y/N didn't retain a single word he shared about himself, despite having promised she'd use the evening to formulate her opinion on him. So much for protecting Dolley.

Instead, Professor Thomas Jefferson occupied every one of her thoughts.

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[coeurdastronaute]

The Story, Ch. 2

Previously on The Story

June was hot, thick with stagnant heat that refused to rustle or move the tiniest branch of a tree nor leaf on a stem. Hotter than any other summer that she could remember, Jamie toiled daily on her garden and the grounds, lugging water to and fro, nurturing the seedlings in the greenhouse, fretting over the last bits of her bountiful spring bloom and hoping to survive until the first cooling summer storm. It was tough work, all-encompassing work, and she’d learned a little late in her life, how important it was to keep busy. 

Never one to understand or listen to the story beneath the sound, Jamie missed the subtle changes that had undertaken the manor. Too preoccupied and exhausted from her battle with the sun and the dirt and the grounds itself, she hadn’t given another thought to how often her glances looked back toward the house, nor did she think twice about how she migrated around her duties, following the laughter of the children closer than ever before. Unaware of so much of her movements, her head stuck in the dirt and her hands tangled in the safety of the roots, Jamie was somewhat aware of the fact that she had not spoken, at least not directly or alone, with the au pair since their very first conversation. That was done with such purpose that she spent a large portion of the day willing it to both happen and un-happen. 

But things changed in their sullen existence. Homemade decorations littered the stairs and railings while entire science experiments meant trousers rolled up to ankles and wading in the fountain. The curriculum changed with the feeling of the day, and when school was over, the children were happy to take to learning the finer points of housework, turned into games by the crafty au pair who understood how important such things were. Slowly, the gravity fo the grounds shifted from the chaotic mess left behind with such glaring absences. 

Like all features at Bly, Jamie knew that the au pair was a novelty and would soon become not unlike the furniture or the statues. She would become innate to the property, just as Owen and Hannah and herself had, she would be usual and familiar and it would pass, Jamie promised herself, unpracticed in physics as she was.  

But the addition of the au pair had changed the manor, and in part, had changed many of those left within its universe. Where before there was cold and silence in the absence of the parents of the orphaned children, now nights brimmed with laughter and games, where plays were acted out by the entire cast, and learning was hands on, often out of the classroom and with the help of the rest of the staff. There was this community that popped up, a kinship among those who remained, all loosely tied together by the newest addition. 

It was all so sorely needed after the last au pair and the exceeding tragedy that plagued the beautiful land. 

It was hard not to want to be part of the liveliness of the manor now. Jamie found herself peaking over hedges to find the au pair reading books as the children drifted and lazed in the grass, and she too, listened to the words and gentle voice, her trimming slowing as a result. And clearly the children were taken with Dani, with Flora becoming much like a shadow, following her about, weaving her dolls and flowers for her hair. Miles became less despondent, though not enough for the au pair’s opinion. Still prone to their bouts of melancholy, it felt as if they returned to being children again sometimes. 

Unlike before, Jamie didn’t leave without stopping into the house to see if she might get accidently pulled into an adventure. Before, she would leave without much more than a honk or a wave. But the heat made her shoes stick to the grounds that much more despite the growing exhaustion. 

There was something about staying that made Jamie uneasy. It wasn’t in her composition to remain and attach. 

“It has to break soon,” Jamie sighed to herself as she pressed a sweating glass against her neck. The chill lasted a moment and that was all, gone in an instant. 

“I’ve got ever window open in the house and there hasn’t been so much as a breeze in a week,” Hannah shook her head and continued the slow, gentle fanning of herself. 

The ice adjusted, breaking apart and clinking in a glass. 

“There’s not much more I can do to save the lawn on the south side. It’s getting burnt. It’ll take ages for it to bounce back if we that rain doesn’t hurry.” 

“But the produce has been otherworldly,” Owen offered happily. “What you’ve been harvesting has blown my mind. I haven’t seen such bounty. At least I could never manage it.” 

“I don’t know if it’s saying much then if that’s the comparison.” 

“Laugh at my expense, but it’s true. I’ll gladly trade the lawn for those carrots.” 

“What about you, Hannah, eh? An afternoon of rain or larger heads of cauliflower?” 

“I get more than enough veg, thank you. Owen, you’re looney if you think a breeze isn’t worth every pea in her garden.” 

“I never claimed to be any different,” he grinned before taking a sip of his drink. 

The patio hummed with the crickets and heat so that even their words were too much hot air, and perhaps unwelcomed in the perfect summer evening. It was late, well after sundown, and yet the employees earned a certain run of the place as their own home after dark, when the semblance of adults could be disbanded. 

The two prattled back and forth, much to Jamie’s amusement. The absurdity of how blind they both were, or perhaps Hannah’s staunch refusal for no reason at all didn’t much make sense to the gardener. It wouldn’t be right for someone like Hannah to refuse happiness-- someone who deserved it so completely. Jamie couldn’t understand that choice. 

“There she is, welcome, welcome,” Owen greeted the au pair as she made her way onto the patio. 

The light from inside glowed against her, and Jamie could see the sweat on her neck and the wet ends of her hair that escaped an incredibly high and incredibly tight pony tail. She smiled into her drink at just the thought of it. 

“Still having trouble getting to sleep are they?” Hannah asked as Dani took a seat at the small table of friends. “The heat isn’t kind to them.” 

“Thank you,” she nodded and took a heavy gulp before she winced at the alcohol content she hadn’t been expecting. “They are just so uncomfortable. I don’t even know what to do.” 

“Put them outside,” Jamie offered before three faced turned towards hers. “What? You’ve never slept outside before?” 

Two of the three shook their heads, while Owen perked up excitedly.

“We’ll sort them out tomorrow, don’t worry, Poppins.” 

“I’m willing to try anything at this point. You should have seen Miles’ face when I told him to just sleep in his underwear.”

There was laughter among the group, and across the table, Jamie watched the au pair more curiously than she ever had before. In the faint glow of the evening, she shamelessly stared, observing the interactions, slunk back in her chair and disinterested with much else. 

There’s always been a distance to them that the few feet that separated them now seemed too little, and such an easy stretch to cross. The gardener had seen the au pair in the yard with the children, running and climbing and playing in the sun, her blonde hair whipping around in a swirl as she moved quickly. The gardener had seen the au pair on the terrace, reading in the shade in those damned shorts and her pale skin practically glowing. They shared meals together, but always at polar ends, directly missing each other.

But never had the gardener so unabashedly stared at the newest addition to the trio, or rather the finishing piece of their quartet. She chalked it up to curiosity, because never before had she been so close to an American with a smile like that, or rather, never before had she been close to a smile like that or an American. 

Even when Dani met her glance, Jamie didn’t look away, but rather wondered more about the stranger before her. 

“I thought I was escaping the heat,” Dani shook her head as the company drew toward the end of their drinks. “This is worse than I could have imagined.” 

“It’ll break soon,” Jamie repeated with a bit more assurance. 

“You can’t listen to Jamie’s superstitions,” Hannah shook her head. “She thinks her flowers whisper to her.” 

“That sounds a bit mental. I’d never say that. But it is going to break. You can feel it.” 

“I never would have thought to accuse you of reckless hope,” Owen teased. 

“And you never should,” Jamie said as she stood, finishing her drink. “But the trees are dry and the creeks are hard. It’ll break because it always does.” 

“Got a timeline on that?” Dani asked, looking up at the body in the dark. 

“Sadly, I don’t,” she sighed. “But I believe in the rain.” 

As Hannah and Owen debated the weather and belief, the gardener smiled at Dani and nodded her good night. 

“I’ll see you lot tomorrow. I reckon it might be time for a camp out.” 

Dani smiled, cradling the glass to her neck and cheek. Jamie didn’t look away. The worst of it was, she hadn’t seemed to decide on anything at all. Her mouth just moved and now she was stuck. 

XXXXXXXXXX

“It doesn’t seem safe,” Miles complained as he helped lug an armful of bedding. 

“It’s perfectly safe. It’s not like you have to worry about anyone walking around the property,” Dani promised. “It’s just like being at a campground or in the middle of the woods, except much closer to the bathroom.” 

“We’ve never been properly camping before,” Flora announced. “We did sleep in the living room a few times, and tell stories, and drank cocoa.” 

“Well camping is supposed to be fun.” 

“Supposed to be?” 

“I’ve never gone either,” she shrugged, wiping the sweat from her brow. “But I’ll do anything to avoid the heat.” 

“It’s the same temperature outside as inside,” the little boy reminded the group as he tossed his pillow down on one of the carefully placed bedrolls, foraged from the deepest recesses of the garage attic. 

“It’ll chill come evening,” the au pair promised. “I never thought you’d be afraid of a little adventure.” 

“I don’t mind adventure, but I mind the mosquitos.” 

“We’ll take care of that, don’t worry.”

“It’s absolutely splendid, isn’t it, Ms. Clayton?” Flora brimmed as she spun around the camp on the back lawn.

With a surprising show inf ingenuity, it was true that the gardener with help from the chef, had transformed a spot beneath the hornbeam trees into a safari. The fire was already crackling to life as the children finished their last load of blankets, the beds were pallets and the chairs were from the patio, but the true gift was the open-faced tent, hung between a few branches of the wide tree so that the open wall faced the fire and the house. 

“It’s better than I could have imagined,” Dani agreed, smiling as she surveyed the set up until she found the person responsible and softened. “It looks amazing.” 

When Jamie made the suggestion, the au pair hadn’t really considered it happening, but when she showed up the following day ready to do it, enlisting Owen and even Hannah in some ways, Dani didn’t think twice about joining the event. 

“Just a bit of ingenuity and fierce, god-like strength,” Jamie winked, flexing a bit before grinning. “And Owen.” 

“It’s nothing,” the chef promised as he checked the sturdiness of his work. “I was a Scout Explorer. Fifteen years worth of survival and outdoor training with a healthy dose of community service.”

“And what was your reason for being so outdoorsy?” Dani turned to Jamie as she teased Miles’ shoulder, making him look. 

“Oh, I was raised by wolves,” Jamie explained, quite seriously, earning a look from the smallest of the party. “True story. Walked on all fours until I was older than you, Flora. Used to be able to talk to them, but it’s been so long.” 

“That didn’t happen,” Miles shook his head. 

“If you ever run into a pack of wolves, just say you know me.” 

He rolled his eyes but thought it over to himself as Dani accepted a drink from Hannah and took a seat, the hard work of setting up complete and the night working its way to them. 

It might have been psychological, or it might have been the fire, but the evening did seem to get cooler. It wasn’t a blustery winter by any means, but it felt tenable for the first time in too many days. 

For Dani, the best kind of moments were when the children were just that, giggly and smiling, living loudly and with exteriority. When Miles would flash a smile, absolutely smitten with everything Owen was telling him about knots and pocket knives and his own adventures in the woods as a boy. When Flora would lean against the side of the au pair’s leg and pat her knee excitedly as she had to get close to speak so quickly about how important it was to not burn the marshmallows. She could love them better, she believed. It didn’t seem an impossible task sometimes. 

For a second, she also lost herself in the magic of the evening. As Flora and Miles chased lightning bugs through the field, exhausting themselves after dinner, and Dani found herself in the company of who were quickly becoming what she might refer to as friends. The three caretakers of the manor and its inhabitants, slightly more willing to stay later for a moment like this as well. 

Three s’mores and four stories later, the late hour did it’s best to win out over the young campers. Huddled around the fire, they covered up and listened attentively as the gardener wove a wild story. Dani sat across, her legs stretched out and feet near the fire while Hannah held a bottle tightly beside her before carefully re-filling their cups. 

“I almost hate to admit what a good idea this is,” Hannah chuckled before re-corking their bottle as she sat it on the ground. “But they certainly are enjoying themselves.”

“It means a lot to them, for you all to be here and so interested. They don’t know it yet, but they will one day,” Dani nodded, looking over the flickering flames as Miles adjusted, pulling up the blanket, completely engrossed in the story. 

“I couldn’t be anywhere else. I’ve been with this family for… goodness, it’s been my whole life it seems.” 

“Still, you chose to stay. That means something.” 

“I’m not sure what, exactly,” the housekeeper sighed. 

“Love. Loyalty.” 

Dani watched a small smile creep into Hannah’s cheeks as she stared at the gardener, but didn’t hear a thing, so deep in thought was the housekeeper suddenly that she disappeared, or so it seemed. 

Jamie kept talking though, her story winding its way this way and that, hoping to be long enough to tire out the children. Her voice was growing lower to persuade them, and in just a few minutes, Flora fell asleep, her cheek pressed against the gardener’s chest, a blanket wrapped over them both. Dani wasn’t sure when she began to smile at the scene, only that she was and Hannah watched her take a drink to hide it. 

“The night we found out about the Wingraves, she spent the entire evening playing with them. When I got the call, I didn’t know how to say it, so we waited for their uncle to come tell them, and I remember Jamie watching them run up and down the stairs, playing some made up game that we couldn’t understand. And she was the one who made us wait. Let them be kids who have parents for just another hour, she told me. Another hour.”

Miles stretched slightly, his arm dipping until his head was on the pillow. 

“I’m sorry for the loss,” Dani offered as Hannah looked away from a sleeping Flora. 

“They’re adapting. Somehow.” 

“You all are helping, you know that, don’t you?” 

“Sometimes I’m not sure, but then I look at that,” Hannah nudged her chin at the sleeping children, at Jamie not bothering to move Flora, but holding her tight. “And I know that even in the most inopportune environment, even something kind and loyal and loving can emerge, whether they know it or not.” 

“What happened?” 

“She ended up here somehow,” she sighed and took another drink before standing. “Let me help you, dear. Don’t want to wake her after finally getting her to sleep.” 

Dani didn’t move as she watched the careful task of detaching Flora and tucking her in safely, all in hopes of not having to tell another story to put her back to sleep. The au pair watched Jamie’s movements with a keener eye. She traced the outline of her jaw and cheeks, saw neck and clavicle when the flannel she’d brought slipped down a shoulder with the movements, as if something, some tick, could explain everything that seemed to be an impenetrable fort. 

“And with that, I’ve had enough nature,” Hannah decided. “I’m going inside to my bed.”

“Booooo,” the other adults teased. 

“I’m too old for sleeping in the dirt, and so are you lot. We’ll see who is in better shape in the morning.” 

“I’ll, uh,” Owen stood, patting off his pants. “I’ll walk  you in. Grab some more water for us.” 

“I know the way.” 

“Good, you can help me find the kitchen.” 

With a wave, they moved back toward the house, their lanterns swinging as they reached the door. Across from her, Jamie took to a chair, electing to stretch after sitting on the hard ground and beneath another human, tiny as she was, for so long. 

“I swear my arse went flat sitting there all night,” she mumbled, picking up the bottle Hannah had left behind. “Gardener by day, lawn chair by night.”

“I don’t think I’m as good with flowers as you are with them.” 

“No worries about me pilfering your job, Poppins. I find them exhausting and they are quite taken with you.” 

There was a fondness hidden beneath the feigned annoyance as Jamie surveyed their sleeping forms, resting comfortably with the fire flickering light into the tent. 

“They like you.” 

“What’s not to like? I’m quite a stirring specimen. And I make a damn fine s’more.” 

Dani couldn’t help but roll her eyes as she stood and meandered toward a chair, the stiffness that Hannah warned about nestling into her joints until she was certain she’d be locked in the seated position forever. 

“You’re not going to abandon me out here with them are you?” 

To her credit, Jamie considered it before tossing a lopsided smile toward the au pair who joined her. 

“It was my idea to sleep outside, wasn’t it? Can’t miss this. Plus,” she paused to finish her glass of whiskey. “I’ve been drinking. Not too safe to drive.” 

“I feel like I should thank you again for all of this. It’s… it’s amazing.” 

The stars were bright, unburdened with any rules of order, scattered throughout to the horizon and tree tops. The fire glowed but did not dim them at all, merely enhanced by attempting to add its own embers into the heavens, offering the sacrifice for permanent consideration, though none made it that far. 

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t doing anything else. I’ve had worse nights than a campfire and half-decent company.” 

“I’ll take half-decent.” 

“Oh, yeah… uh, I was talking about them,” Jame furrowed as she looked toward the sleeping children. “Juries still out on you.” 

“I’ve been known to be a good time,” Dani promised. 

Despite the teasing, Jame tilted her chin to appraise the au pair in the firelight, as if trying to discern if the statement was actually true. She cocked her head to the side as Dani readjusted, becoming oddly self-conscious of the look. A little nervous, she sipped her drink and winced against the burn. 

“I might be inclined to believe you, except you ended up here, same as us, and I’m not sure anyone here knows how to be a good time.” 

“I don’t know. You put all of this together.”

“A rare flash of brilliance,” Jamie shrugged. “We’ve been dying to know what brought you here, you know?”

“I’m that interesting?” 

“New, maybe. Interesting is to be determined.” 

Dani smiled into her cup, her body constricting tightly into itself as she was forced to think about things she’d hoped to forget. 

“But you don’t have to share,” Jamie added quickly, feeling the shift in the mood of the night. It was far too lovely out and the au pair was far too pretty sitting there, politely looking for a way out. “Doesn’t matter how, just that you got here. In my experience, it’s a bit of ill-fate that brings anyone here. Hannah and the cheating husband. Owen and the sick mother.”

“You, and the love of plants?” 

“Yeah,” she grunted. “Me and my curse for growing things.”

Jame ran her thumb along her cup before turning back to the au pair beside her. She wasn’t fond, suddenly, of upsetting her, and she didn’t want the conversation to end because unlike most others, she was incredibly invested in simply hearing Dani’s voice.  

“And me,” Dani decided, stiffening her spine a little with a deep breath, “Running away from everything back home because I just…” she looked at Jamie, willing her to understand how cowardly and weak she felt. “Couldn’t handle the pain anymore.” 

Her glance was strong, was inquisitive and kind, and Dani looked away from the warmth it offered. 

“You don’t have to run anymore. And you don’t have to have anymore pain.” 

It was an oddly comforting option and perhaps promise, Dani realized, one that she knew Jamie was in no place to give, but still she did, and for the first time, despite all of the people at the funeral and the hospital and in her life who let her off the hook, or at least thought they did, she felt as if she might be able to finally do it. 

Jamie’s hand was warm in her knee where it gave a squeeze, but did not let go, resting there as the gardener moved her head, twisting to be in the au pair’s view. Dani looked at her and couldn’t help but smile slightly. 

“I know you’re not alright. That’s okay, too. You don’t have to be yet.” 

Simultaneously, the weight grew and shrunk on her chest, but Dani relaxed at the feeling of it all. 

“I’m around, you know? Not really the best at talking, but I’ve got ears that occasionally work.” Dani couldn’t help but chuckle. “There it is, Poppins. No sense in having a pretty girl upset. It’s probably the greatest sin around.” 

“The greatest?” she scoffed, clearing her throat as the hand on her knee was retracted. 

“I haven’t been to church in a while,” Jamie confessed. 

“I couldn’t tell.”

“That’s what happens when you’re raised by wolves.” 

Once again, she filled up the cups, and Dani felt the gardener relax slightly beside her. She found herself envious of the apparent ease with which she moved through life. 

“I almost believe you.” 

There was another grin, lopsided and knowing. It was oddly frustrating, to feel so bare and understood by someone who was unreadable, but Dani challenged her before taking a drink. 

“Wolves don’t have to howl in the night and live in the forests or have fangs and claws.” Jamie paused and swirled around her drink. She looked up to see the lantern of their third returning. “Sometimes they wear suits and work at the bank or a department store, and they find a weakling and they do what wolves do. Suit or fangs, there isn’t much difference. I was raised by wolves.”

Dani didn’t register Owen’s return. She looked at Jamie who refused to look at her, but rather smiled as the chef sat down, prepared to tease him incredibly for his display with the housekeeper. But the au pair was struck with the first thickly veiled, but honest moment she might have ever had with the stranger beside her. She wanted more. She wanted to press and learn what it all meant, not the story, not the tale of it, the fiction and flowers and metaphors. But she found it was enough for the moment. 

“I found out why Poppins is at the Manor,” Jamie announced proudly as she tossed Owen the bottle. “She robbed a bunch of banks.” 

“I think she might be pulling your leg,” he shook his head. “Doesn’t seem the type to care about money.” 

“She did it for the thrill. She’s mad. Hide the silver.” 

“Don’t tell people that,” Dani scolded, hitting Jamie’s arm. “I’m just a teacher.” 

“A notoriously underpaid lot. She definitely did it for the money. Owed huge gambling debts. I don’t know what to tell you, Owen,” Jamie shrugged. “That’s the truth.” 

“Please don’t believe her.” 

“I hardly ever do,” he promised. 

NEXT

[izzielizzie]

Hey Iz, could you do a one shot about Natewyn growing up, based on It's Nice to Have a Friend?

Yes! I feel like we talked about this a long time ago and then I never wrote it. Here it is Jane. 

I realize that it doesn’t snow in San Diego, but let’s pretend shall we? Lyrics in italics. Definitely go listen to INTHAF by Taylor Swift, it’s one of my favorites. Enjoy!

(sorry for any typos, I wrote this really late at night)

School bell rings, walk me home

“Hey!” Bronwyn turned, and she saw a familiar looking boy waving at her. He had black hair and deep blue eyes. Bronwyn paused and smiled as he caught up to her. His black jacket was open to reveal his untucked shirt. Even at the age of nine, dress code violations annoyed Bronwyn. But there was something about this boy that interested her. He was funny, but he was kind too. Just last week, when someone was picking on a boy named Chad, Nathaniel Macauley had stepped up to defend him. 

“Hello Nathaniel,” Bronwyn answered. 

“It’s Nate, okay?”

“Okay. What’s up?”

Nate paused and looked at the ground. “Can I walk you home?”

Bronwyn hesitated. It was only earlier that year that her parents had decided it was safe for Bronwyn to walk the seven blocks to her house, and she was rather proud of the responsibility. But, company, she had to admit, was welcome. Especially when she had to cross the intersection with the grumpy crossing guard. After careful deliberation, during which Nate watched her patiently, Bronwyn came to a conclusion: “sure.”

Nate smiled at her, and he followed her onto the sidewalk. 

Sidewalk chalk, covered in snow

The flurries were light, but strong for Bronwyn, who had never seen snow before, and they were concerning. “Will they block the hop-scotch board?” Bronwyn asked Nate fretfully. Every day at recess, Bronwyn religiously drew the sloppy board in chalk with her best friend Olivia. Hop-scotch was one of Bronwyn’s great joys.  

“You do know they melt right?” Nate asked, looking askance at the girl he had, up until this point, considered to be the smartest person in the world.

“Of course I do,” Bronwyn snapped.

Nate’s smirk softened. “Sorry. That was mean.” 

Bronwyn smiled at him as they turned the corner. They both looked up at the sky, and, without thinking, stuck their tongues out to catch the thinning flurries. They laughed and jostled against each other as they walked down the street, side by side. Bronwyn marveled at how easy it was to be around Nate. She didn’t have to be perfect. If she had stuck her tongue out around Olivia, Olivia would have been scandalized. And Maeve, well, Bronwyn wasn’t quite sure what Maeve would have thought about her older sister sticking her tongue out like that. Bronwyn realized with a pang that her little sister wouldn’t be well enough to leave her hospital bed and look out the window to see the snow. She considered telling this to Nate, but she learned from talking to Olivia that other people didn’t want to hear about those types of things. Bronwyn didn’t tell Nate, but she thought that maybe one day she might be able to. 

Lost my gloves, you give me one

A few feet after the intersection with the guard who growled at people when they took too long, Bronwyn noticed Nate was shivering. “Are you scared of the guard?” Bronwyn asked him. Nate shook his head. His teeth chattered. 

“I’m cold. I lost my gloves, and my hat doesn’t fit me anymore.”

Bronwyn looked at Nate. His coat was still open, and his head and hands were bare. Bronwyn looked down at her own small gloves, with the fur inside. She pulled off the left one and handed it to him. “It might be small.”

Nate looked as if he was going to argue, but Bronwyn grabbed his hand and placed the glove in it. “You’re gonna get pneumonia.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Nate said.

Bronwyn didn’t answer, seeing as she didn’t know what it was either. She did know that it was bad though, and that people got it when they were cold. Instead, she pointed at his coat with her gloved hand. “You need to zipper that.”

“It’s stuck. I can’t get it closed.”

Bronwyn looked at the zipper for a few moments before tugging him towards her. She wiggled it to the left so it was straight, and pulled it up to his chin. “There.”

Nate smiled at her. They walked to Bronwyn’s house in silence after that, and they hovered at her door for a moment.

Wanna hang out?

Bronwyn bounced on the balls of her feet anxiously. She was waiting for Nate to say no. She was waiting for him to leave her. She was waiting for her life to go back to silent, too-large houses, anxious parents, and constant fear. 

Yeah, sounds like fun

Nate didn’t want to trek back to his house yet. Being with Bronwyn was a new type of comfort he had never experienced before. 

Video games, you pass me a note

“You really don’t have any video games?”

“Nope.”

They had tugged off their wet things and were curled up in front of the fireplace. Bronwyn watched as Nate looked around the living room, which was filled with books and board games and pictures. No video games in sight. 

“Fine. Do you have Battleship?”

“Of course.”

The next day, a note was dropped on Bronwyn’s desk. She picked it up and read five simple words: “Video games at my house”. For the first time in her life, Bronwyn couldn’t wait for school to end.

Sleeping in tents

It had taken a lot of conversations between their parents, but Nate and Bronwyn were finally going on a camping trip. Of course, they were only going to the end of Bronwyn’s yard, but she couldn’t wait. They spent the entire evening telling stories, laughing, and eating more marshmallows than generally acceptable. When it came time to sleep though, Bronwyn started to panic. She had never slept anywhere other than her white metal bed with the lavender quilt. She was about to admit defeat and head into her house when she felt a hand slip into hers. Nate squeezed her hand, and that was enough to calm her down. 

It’s nice to have a friend

It took Bronwyn five months after the night in the tent to tell Nate about her little sister’s cancer. He didn’t judge her, or pity her. He just pulled her into a hug and told her he was there for her. He didn’t tell her it was going to be okay, which she appreciated. Because sometimes it wasn’t.

It’s nice to have a friend

Nate spent a year calling Bronwyn his best friend before he told the clever, grey eyed girl that sometimes his parents’ yelling scared him. Without knowing how it happened, Nate spent every Friday with the Rojas in their house, where, for the first time in a long time, he felt safe.

Light pink sky, up on the roof

“Should we be up here?” Bronwyn asked fretfully. They were seventeen now. Half child, half adult. Some things, like Bronwyn’s cautious nature, hadn’t changed yet. When Maeve had made an offhand comment about how it was possible to get to the roof from her bedroom window the previous Friday, Nate was insistent he wanted to try it. Since it was as much his house as Bronwyn’s at this point, he did just that. Bronwyn went with him of course, since she was the one who made sure he stayed out of trouble.

Nate ignored her. 

Sun sinks down, no curfew

“I don’t have to be anywhere,” Nate assured her. When she still questioned the validity of their current location, Nate waved a hand at the sunset in front of them. “It’s so pretty Brownie. Stop worrying.”

Bronwyn blushed at the silly nickname. She wasn’t sure when her crush on Nate developed, but it was still lingering in her subconscious, no matter how many times she tried to suppress it. 

Twenty questions, we tell the truth

“Let’s play a game,” Bronwyn said, to get her mind off how far they were from the ground.

“Twenty questions,” Nate responded promptly. They always played that game.

You’ve been stressed out lately? Yeah me too

“I’m sorry Bronwyn.”

Bronwyn shook her head. “It’s fine. I just, Maeve hasn’t been feeling well and I don’t know if I’ll get into Yale, and I’m just so scared of messing up my future Nate.”

Something gave you the nerve to touch my hand

Without thinking, Nate reached over and placed his hand over Bronwyn’s. He was transported, suddenly, to the day she gave him her glove as they walked home. It was at that moment he knew he loved that bright, kind girl he watched from afar. He never knew that he would become as much a part of her life as she was in his. Nate vowed, at that moment on the roof, that he would do everything in his power to take the pain of her life. 

Without thinking, he leaned forward, and pressed his lips against hers. He was surprised to find that she was kissing him back. He was enveloped in the smell of green apple shampoo, and Nate could have sworn that he was in heaven.

It’s nice to have a friend

“Girlfriend?” He asked as they broke apart.

It’s nice to have a friend

Bronwyn held up their hands, their fingers intertwined. “Boyfriend,” she confirmed. Their grins spoke every word they couldn’t say out loud.

Church bells ring, you carry me home

Bronwyn was laughing as she watched her sister lean in to Luis. She had just caught Bronwyn’s bouquet, and Bronwyn knew her superstitious sister would take that as an omen. She shrieked however, when Nate picked her up at the bottom of the church stairs, bridal style, which, Bronwyn supposed, was incredibly accurate.

Rice on the ground, looks like snow

“The rice looked like snow,” Bronwyn said as they drove towards their apartment. They wanted to spend their honeymoon at home. 

“Like the day we became friends,” Nate agreed.

“The best day of my life.”

“Better than today?” Nate asked with a cheeky grin. Bronwyn poked his shoulder.

“Maybe.”

The car behind them honked for what felt like an eternity before they pulled away from their kiss. They spent the rest of the drive laughing. 

Call my bluff, call you babe

“I hate this dress,” Bronwyn grumbled as she nearly tripped over it as Nate set her down.

“No you don’t. You’ve been gushing over it all day.”

Bronwyn swatted Nate’s arm. “Whatever you say, babe.”

Feels like home, stay in bed

“I love this place.”

“Me too.”

“Should we finish putting up the pictures?”

“You, Mrs. Macaulay, are staying in bed with me. We can do that tomorrow.”

“Hmph.”

The whole weekend

“Nate, it’s Monday.”

“No it is not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s too cozy to get up.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

It’s nice to have a friend

“I love you Bronwyn.”

It’s nice to have a friend

“I love you more Nate.”

It’s nice to have a friend

“You were the best friend that ever happened to me.”

“Agreed.”

#one of us is next #one of us is lying #nate macauley #bronwyn rojas #nate and bronwyn #izzielizzie's fics

[midas-or-khaos]

The Ones Above Us. Chapter 1

Date:- September 30th, 2008, 14 days after initial discovery.

Time:- 18:42 pm

Flicking a cheap Poundland lighter, sparks spat in the morbid matt of a pure black atmosphere out on location in the back arse of nowhere (somewhere far off Ireland’s version of the M6 he’d been told). Winter winds were of the worst kind: didn’t matter how far inland you made it, or how thick the walls on your house were, they traversed the land with albatross wings wide and undaunted by what they came into contact with, smacking into any surface with no regards to slowing down. They didn’t seem to have any regard for detective Arthur Fleming‘s Malboro either, a stiff left hand shaking at the switch, and the right vainly trying to create shelter for the cigarette.

“For FUCK sake.” Singed fingertips for his troubles.

“Serves you right. No smoking on the job detective, you know better.”

Head Forensic Pathologist Fatima Alvi. A 4’9 willowy thing with a short, plump bob, damn near bobblehead proportions and a tendency to get right under his fucking skin like the irritating shit she was. She’d succeeded young and now all that arrogance she hadn’t quite worked out her system from (what should be mandatory in his opinion) the hard labour of working up the social ladder had only boosted her tendency to tighten her favourite black brogues far too tight, straighten her back like a bloody ballerina and fix that rod she’d shoved up her arse however many years ago a little bit deeper.

“I’m ten yards from the sodding site and wrapped in a white, walkable body bag, I think we can both agree me being over here isn’t going to tamper with shit. And not to challenge ur dictatorship, luv, but you’ve got winged lashes big enough to take off under those goggles o’ yours. Now you go back under those useless gazebos, and I’ll happily freeze my arse off out here.” Turning back round to face the empty, Arthur cursed himself for getting a 4 buzz cut rather than a short back and sides a week ago.

Fatima despised this part of the job. Working with middle-aged, greying twats like this one that clearly hated their jobs, but seemed to have this vendetta against the mere mention of career change. Yes, she was aware as you age, getting a new job gets harder. Surprise though, so did being fresh out of uni. Life sends these little tests to fuck us all over, not just you mate. Must be the bitter taste of Thatcher’s rule that’s left him slow to change. Scarred from the days when not having a job meant not eating, full stop. Doesn’t give the trout-mouthed, once-upon-a-time aryan flag pole a reason to snap like Chihuahua.

“Why don’t you stop trying to get your next sad excuse for a hit from nicotine, and come over here and do your actual fucking job?”

“No respect.” Muttered Arthur to himself, giving up on his lost cause and unzipping the top half of his polymer suit to shove the cigarette into his oversized shirt pocket.

Finally the standing misery addressed the stout woman face to face, a shaking clinging to each syllable, “What the hell d’you need me for? It’s obvious this isn’t a normal murder case, IF we’re even call it a murder case. I mean for god sake, Fatima, the grave is over 50 feet long! Whatever we’re uncovering obviously isn’t a human, it’s a fucking dinosaur! Why am I here in the back-arse of all points nowhere, rather than a load of archaeologists?”

“Because what we’ve found so far isn’t making sense, and last time anyone checked, dinosaurs were fossilised. BONES, detective, not skin. This body is so fresh, there’s absolutely no decay at all! That’s impossible. Then there’s the skin, it hasn’t even been stained by acid or mud, like the skin is coated in some hydrophobic matter. None of this should be possible.” A sigh slipped the last of Fatima’s adrenaline-fuelled spitting out, she was tired. Tired of him, tired of working, tired of being in the cold. “Look, personally I think this is probably an elaborate hoax some twat on YouTube with a fringe or whatever has decided to plant in a well known historic location for views. The arseholes will probably be waiting for the news report on TV so they can have a laugh at our expense. None of this is natural, and frankly it’s starting to look ridiculous. However, so long as our shitty superiors believe this to be a murder case we stick to finding out how this thing died, understood?”

Scathing way of saying it, But a hoax was something Arthur was desperate to cling to. Of course, this was nothing but staged and faked beyond belief! None of this could be real. Give credit where credit’s due though, the bell-ends that did this were thorough. Tutting, Arthur knew he couldn’t argue his case anymore, and started to strut off on those stilts for legs back to the beams of spotlights, Fatima trotting along after him just to keep up.

“Glad to see you’re helping.”

“Just talk to me about what’s going on so we’ll be able to document this and go back to the hostel.” Spat Arthur in retaliation. He hated this job. These people. But most importantly, that thing.

Entering through the only available entrance, the two nearly ran into another detective. Useless idiot. Despite this temporary flimsy building being the size of a football field, there was barely enough space among the number of personnel of all ranks and professions, technology, storage facilities and dig sights to separate the wood from the leaves. To add to the misery, despite being as frosty inside as it was outside, the scent of dank earth and petrol from the excavation diggers still managed to permeate the trapped air. God it stunk.

Taking on a note of interest as she got into her element, Fatima called out as she moved out the way, “Right, so we are at the feet end, and up there at the other end of the canopy is our head. We’re going there first because that’s what the two witnesses found during their initial dig.”

Taking off briskly, the forensic pathologist seemed unfazed by the sheer size of the foot sticking out like a meteorite fallen to earth just a couple of meters from the entrance, not even gracing the thing a glance. Arthur had no such laissez-faire-attitude, frozen in tunnel vision. This is why he didn’t wanna come back in. The damn toes had the familiar, unique swirling pattern of calloused skin seen on humans, and blotches of brown that must’ve been freckles, as they lacked the blotchy, wet texture of mud. Veins passing like eels under ice became exposed near the epidermis, shining icy blue. On an intellectual level, the aged detective knew a foot his height in length couldn’t possibly exist in the real world. If they did, someone would’ve surely reported such a sighting.

On a primal level, instinct was sending adrenaline shooting to his heart, and his lungs could scarcely fill themselves in time to keep up with the demand of oxygenated blood. Those feet looked too alive. The raw power those hands must posses, accompanying such ginormous feet! All of it reminded him of his honeymoon with his wife on Safari, watching a pack of saltwater crocodiles descend in a snapping furry upon shared prey, crushing a zebra’s skull in its death roll, red and bloodied teeth and palate facing the animal’s terror-struck gaze whilst it still vainly screamed for its herd to come to its aid. The vocal cords snapped, eventually silencing under the sheer force of those jaws collectively ripping the head off n one piece. Two crocodiles sent the thing flying twelve feet in the air in pure territorial aggression, neither caring that they’d just murdered another being, before the Wiley victory went after the splattering mess to claim its prize. None of the herd even dared approach the brutality. Would these others do the same if he were captured? Would they leave him to the beast?

“Arthur, c’mon.”

Back to reality. “Sorry.”

Just focusing on Fatima’s back seemed to do the trick, heart rate levelling out below 100bpm. Don’t look round and it won’t be there. Arthur didn’t have it in himself to self scold for such a ridiculous reaction; he knew he should’ve stayed outside.

Still set on her headlong track, Fatima chose to not bother with looking back and risk painfully smacking into some poor soul, so delegated talking to the air in front of herself, hoping he heard her through the ruckus around them. “The head hasn’t decayed, following suit to rest of the currently exposed limbs, though there does appear to be damage. Face appears to be male, middle-aged 35 to 50’s. Noticeable marks being three precise third degree burns across the face resembling a striped pattern. No sign of healing or breakdown within the exposed areas either, which would suggest the burns were created after death.”

“Has anyone tested a sample of skin to see why there’s no breakdown?”

“We tried, but every single time someone has come in with a scalpel to remove a piece, once removed from the body the entire piece seems to crumble instantly to a fine blue dust and disappear.”

“What, Like Indiana Jones style? We found the crusader knight?”

“Please try and take this seriously Arthur, I wouldn’t mention our findings if they were false.” Tutted Fatima.

Arthur knew he was deflecting to shield himself. “I am. Can we at least try collecting the dust?”

“No use, I meant it when I said everything disappears.”

“So anything we test or observe must be on the body at all times or it’s essentially worthless?”

“Correct.”

Well that made everything just that little bit harder. JUST! They’d been reduced to the detective abilities of the bloody Edwardian period. No testing beyond what could be extracted from the soil (and judging by the lack of messy bodily fluids, the thing probably didn’t have any), and they had yet to uncover the rest of the body to see if there were any signs of obvious trauma that would account the reason behind the death. This was going to take forever. Every waking moment in this shithole was a second wasted. Whoever made this thing was one sick fuck.

“If I ever find the shitheads responsible for this prank, I’m gonna hand em a fucking life sentence. The law be damned.”

Just missing a collision with another photographer, the head finally came into full view. Even from this vantage point above ground, the thing didn’t seem small in any way. If he’d thought the foot was massive, the head was a new beast entirely upon its own pedestal. Surprisingly peaceful for a dead person, no expressions of pain or strain, just a suspiciously perfect sullen face (aside the burns of course). Knotted, greying-blond hair splayed out in dregs from the skull like old depictions of the sun’s rays, haloing the face and drawing you to the pair of closed lids. He wasn’t pretty by any standard, Arthur vainly self-noted. Weak chin jutting thin lips out from the round face, a high hairline accentuating the large forehead and a heavy brow ridge. If he weren’t the size of a four story building and significantly burnt, he’d have been extraordinary ordinary. Forgettable even. The detective knew he shouldn’t be saying that. It was a ‘victim’ after all.

“If we can’t remove any body parts, can we perhaps open the body up instead and take samples of anything inside the stomach, lungs, chest cavity etcetera?”

A grimace pulled at the woman’s lips, marring her usually stoic face, “Already done it, we had Liam go inside with a contamination dry suit whist you were outside. It’s the kind of stuff sewage divers wear at human waste plants.”

Arthur couldn’t help turning his own nose up at the prospect as well, shuffling unconsciously just a little further away. “And?”

“There were important pieces missing. A full, undisturbed respiratory system: lungs, trachea, the works. Oddly, absolutely no digestive or reproductive organs what so ever. Weirder yet, there were no signs of sabotage or surgical removal, it was like they were never there in the first place. What really caught my eye on the camera feed was that he had, what we think, are a series of air sacks integrated along the connection between the lungs and the diaphragm.”

“Meaning?”

Poor Fatima was looking at Arthur like she was trying to explain how to use the toilet to a three year old, a strong side eye from her place parallel to him

“MEANING this thing had an incredibly resourceful breathing mechanism.”

“So no basic necessary functions like the need to eat and reproduce, but a top quality breathing system. And you wonder why I’m not taking any of this seriously? Why couldn’t we just send a report saying it was a hoax and save time? It technically doesn't even come under the scientific detention of alive.”

“Well certainly not now it doesn’t.” Arthur gave his own stink eye back.

“... Look, why don’t we try and get the body transferred over to London? Our proper, large-scale testing equipment will be at our fingertips, and we’d be able to at least stick this problem on some stupid lab rats and be done with it, what d’you say?”

Fatima finally stopped half-hearting her disgust to focus on Arthur face to face. “Arthur, where d’you think that kind of space and discreetness would be possible in the middle of London city? This body is over fifty feet all, we wouldn’t even be able to keep it cool enough to stop potential decay-“

Arthur butted in, “- This thing has been out the ground for two weeks, Fatima, and hasn’t so much as lost a hair naturally. We don’t need to worry about decay. Yes, transferring the body would disturb the ‘crime scene’, but if we get this thing sent off as archeological dig remains, the disturbance won’t matter, and we’d be off the case. I don’t wanna be stuck with this shit anymore, do you?” Was he sounding too desperate?

She knew she shouldn’t mention it, not to herself and DEFINITELY not Arthur, but within her selfish consciousness, Fatima couldn’t agree with that. This may be a hoax to Arthur, but all these findings were starting to settle saplings in the garden of her imagination. These Findings weren’t Styrofoam cut outs painted with acrylic, nor were they polymer clay held together over a skeleton. whatever material this was, it was unlike anything she’d seen before. Maybe all this was a hoax, maybe all this was a waste of time.

But secretly, she wished it wasn’t.

“...I’ll see what I can do.”

#the ones above us #ocs #original character #g/t #gianttiny #giant tiny #giant tiny story #giant male #giants #giant #drama #original fiction #original story #original writing #g/t oc #sfw g/t #g/t writing #g/t fearplay #g/t angst #gt story #g/t story

[all1e23]

Swallow [Epilogue]

Epilogue: Nearly Eight Years Later. 

Pairings: Bucky x Reader

Summary: It was time to let go

A/N:   It’s the end! Thank you for sticking with me. I love this so so so so much, and I don’t normally say that about my writing. lolol.  It’s a bit long for an epilogue, but I felt it was needed. The friend Steve mentions in the letters in the first half is Phil, and when he says the garage, he means the club. Gotta talk in code. Prison, ya know? Send me love because I’m needy.  No beta so read at your own risk. ;-)

***My fics are not to be saved or posted on any other sites without my written permission. Reblogs are my jam though! Thanks!*

Buck, 

Of all the dumb things you’ve ever done telling Y/n you’re over, and she needs to move on has to be one of the dumbest. You know she’s been writing you? She tried to come up and see you and they sent her away, but I’m guessing you know all that since you have to refuse.

She won’t wait around forever, you know? Or, maybe she will. The two of you I swear… 

I don’t know if you really thought about what you asked of her. Have you really thought about losing her to someone else? You keep pushing her away, and you might get your wish. She loves you. Don’t be an idiot. 

We are good. Garage is doing good. We miss you. 

I’ll write you soon.

Stay out of trouble. 

——

I don’t expect you to write me a love letter or anything but at least let me know your smartass mouth hasn’t gotten you killed, okay? 

Henry & Emma miss their Uncle. I was thinking about bringing them up to see you. Peggy thinks it would be good for everyone. You’re my family, no matter what. You’re my brother. 

Everyone is good. Garage is good. 

Y/n… is good. She misses you. 

Bring the twins for the fourth? Might do you some good. 

——

If you don’t answer me, Buck, I’m coming up anyway. 

Don’t shut everyone out. 

Everyone is good. Garage is good. 

—— 

I’m not dead. 

No. I don’t want you or the twins here. 

Y/n will move on. Just takes time. 

Tell her it takes time. 

—————

Six Months

—————

You’re a stubborn ass. 

Nice to get something back finally. I have to say, it hurt Y/n to know you’re writing me. She was visiting Peggy when I got the letter. Can’t you write her back once? It’s been six months since you went in. 

Six months is a long time, Buck. 

When are you going to let go of this bullshit and let me come see you?

Everyone is good. Garage is good. Thinking about a change. 

——

Never. Stop asking. 

Please stop talking about Y/n in your letters, Steve. Stop bringing her up. Stop telling me how she’s doing. I need to keep her out of my head if I am going to make it without her. 

Tell her I stopped writing. She can’t move on if she’s waiting on me and she needs to move on.

A change? 

——

You’re a bloody idiot James Buchanan Barnes. I don’t think I have ever met someone as foolish– Do you even know how a woman’s heart works? Or love for that matter? Are you really senseless enough to believe that Y/n could simply walk away from you? Forget you existed? 

Stop being utterly ignorant and let her come see you. 

Sorry about that. Peggy says, hi. 

Okay, Buck. I won’t bring her up again. 

Henry and Emma added some drawings. I don’t know if they will let you keep them. I hope they do. You deserve something for Christmas. 

Yes, a change. It’s about time, I think. Tony is ready to retire, and I think the rest of the garage is tired of working on cars day in and day out after everything. We all want something new. Nothing is for sure. I’ll let you know if we decide to close the shop doors for good.

Merry Christmas, Buck. 

——

Merry Christmas, Steve 

————-

One Year

————

Hey, Buck. 

Been a few months since I’ve heard from you. I know the longer you’re in, the harder it is. Don’t be mad, but I had a friend check up on you to make sure you’re okay. He said you’re staying quiet and keeping to yourself. I told him to keep an eye on you. 

Bitch all you want. At least I know someone is watching your back when I can’t. 

Twins are doing good. Ems is doing ballet now. You should see her in the little pink glitter tutu they make her wear. It’s adorable and I kind of hate it. I’m in trouble, Buck. Big trouble. Henry is good. Smartmouth. Takes after you. Always getting into fights. That one might be on me. 

Everyone is good. Garage is good. 

Write me back.

——

Six months and no word? Fine. I get it. You don’t want to talk, but I won’t abandon you. I won’t let you do this alone, no matter how determined you are to punish yourself. 

Nothing has changed much. Henry started playing football. Emma is still dancing. Peggy says you’re still an idiot, but she loves you. 

Sam is good. Pissed you won’t let him visit. 

Everyone is good. Garage is good. 

————–

Two Years

————-

Dance is a thing of the past. 

Emma has moved on to cheer and, man, do I hate cheer. Hate it, Buck. Henry is still playing ball. Pretty good, I think. Peggy says too young to tell. 

Everyone is good. We all miss you. Garage is good, but I think it’s time we talked closing up shop. Tony is retiring at the end of this year. Wants more time with Pepper and Morgan. I don’t blame him. Working all the time, I miss the twins. 

They are growing up fast. 

I miss you, Buck. 

—–

I don’t even know what to say. I wish you would let me know how you are. Give me something here, Bucky?

Everyone is good. Garage is good for now. 

I know you don’t want to know, but she’s okay. 

—————

Three years

—————

Merry Christmas, Buck. 

I sent you money to your commissary so you could at least get a few magazines and maybe some smokes. How are you doing? We miss you. The twins miss you. Sam misses you. 

Got your outstanding debt paid off and gave your bike a tuneup. She’s purring real pretty, but don’t worry she’s still your girl. I’ll make sure she’s in good shape when you get home. 

—-

Thanks for the smokes. I was about to lose my mind. Oh, and keep your ugly ass off my girl. 

Miss you all, too. Don’t tell Sam I said that. 

I’m glad she’s moving on.

—————

Four Years 

—————

Since you’ve ignored my last ten letters, I’ll take it you don’t want to talk. Fine. I added pictures from the twin’s birthday, and before you get pissed, there aren’t any pictures of her. I didn’t think you would want them. 

I made sure to throw in a couple of gifts from you into their mountain of gifts. Emma is over tea parties, but she’s really into make-up, so expect a makeover when you get out. Maybe your niece can get you to cut your hair? 

You’re nearly there, Buck. Hang on a bit longer, and you’ll be home. 

If you change your mind, about the pictures, just say the word. See you soon. 

——

Just one. Please.

————–

Five years 

————–

Don’t you have a wife and kids to take care of? A sam, too? Instead, you’re spending all your time writing to me.  Sixteen letters is a bit much, Stevie. 

I’m okay, punk. I’m alright. 

Listen, I know you want me to come and stay with you when I get out, but I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t work for the garage after this mess. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay at your place. I don’t want to mess up your life now. Drop it for now, okay, Steve?

I know I never said, but, thank you for the picture. I miss her. Just thanks. 

——

If you would write me back regularly this wouldn’t be an issue, you know? I wouldn’t feel the need to check up on you several times a week. Now, what the hell are you thinking, Buck?

Where are you going to go if not home? This has been your home your entire life. You come home, stay with us, and figure out your next step. You will always have a place here so quit trying to get out of it punk. You’re family. 

You’re welcome. She misses you, too. We all do. 

——-

I hear there was an incident at the prison. Schmidt was found dead. In the one corner of the rec yard that has a blind spot from cameras? That’s a tough break. 

——-

I was in solitary for mouthing off to some guard – Coulson I think. Wasn’t there. Too bad I missed it, but we are all better off. 

————-

Six Years

————

It looks like the garage will be settled at the end of the year. I’ll save your share from the sale for when you get out. I talked to Fury, and he said one of us can be there to pick you up. I am guessing that it will be me? I won’t bring the kids or Peggy. Give you some time to get your head together before I bring you home. 

Peggy is talking about getting the spare room set up for you. It already has all your things packed up in boxes from the garage. You can stay here for as long as you like. I”m sure the twins would love to have their uncle back and I wouldn’t mind having my best friend back either. 

Let me know the date once you’ve got it figured out and I’ll be there with your girl. I haven’t touched her! I swear no one has touched your bike. 

Y/n is okay, too. Stubborn, but good. 

We will talk soon… Hell, I’ll see you, I guess. 

Soon, Buck. Just a few more months. 

——

Steve, 

It’s good the garage settled. 

It was time to let that go; time for everyone. 

I should still go. I know I don’t have to. I know I can stay with you and Pegs. I’ll always be grateful to you for everything you’ve done, but I can’t. 

We both know that. 

A lot can change in seven years. You’ve got teenagers. Do the twins really remember me? Might be weird to have a stranger hanging around they have to call their uncle. You and Pegs deserve time alone, and you don’t need a third wheel hanging around. 

To be honest, I don’t know if I can see… her. She’s moved on, and I’m glad. I really am. That’s all I wanted for her. I didn’t want her to waste her life waiting for me to show back up so I could fuck it up again. I just… I can’t watch that. I can’t handle seeing her with someone else, and I won’t make her leave town and leave her family again. 

There’s no place for me here now. 

Besides, I’ve always wanted to take my bike and hit the road. Go from coast to coast. See what shit is out there. Maybe this is my time? 

I think Fury sent you the paperwork with my release date. If you could, bring my bike and my bag. Just drop it at the gate. I can’t face everybody. I won’t leave if I do.  Thank you for everything and thank you for watching over her when I couldn’t. 

I’ve only ever wanted her happy. Maybe now she can have the life she’s always wanted.

See ya around, Stevie. 

—————————————————–

Seven years, three months and six days

—————————————————–

“Barnes! Let’s go!” 

Bucky tucked his longer than usual hair behind his ears and ran his hand over his leather jacket, staring at the missing patch as he followed the guard in front of him. He was glad the club shut down last year. It was more than time to kill it. His father started the club to keep his neighborhood safe, but it has only ever led to more destruction. He should have shut it down when his father died, but what would he have done to support you? Yeah, it sounded stupid and old fashioned. He knew he didn’t have to support you, but he really did. That was just the man he was, and outside of being a mechanic and an outlaw, there wasn’t much to him. 

Honey and amber-colored rays were barely peeking up over the tops of the trees. Bucky wasn’t sure where he was going to go, but he knew his place wasn’t in this town anymore. Everyone grew up and moved on while he was locked up, and it was time he did the same.

The gate slowly rolled open, and Bucky stepped onto the other side, his shoulders sagged in relief. It felt good to be out, but he still felt empty after everything he had to give up to get this… freedom. Bucky always thought when he was finally free of the club, it would be for you; he would have you. The part of him that couldn’t let you go, even after all these years, wondered what you were doing right then – getting ready to have dinner, taking your kids to see Clint, or having dinner with your husband, maybe? Bucky didn’t know if any of that was reality or a painful joke his head invented to hurt his heart. Truthfully, he didn’t know anything about you anymore, and he needed it to stay that way if he was going to live without you. He couldn’t bear to hear about the life you built without him, but he hoped you had all that and so much more. 

He hoped you had everything you ever wanted. 

The gate shut behind him, and Bucky could breathe again – as best he could without you anyway, it would take more than seven years to learn how to breathe without you. Bucky eyes scanned the parking lot until he spotted his bike in the far corner, and his heart dropped. He told Steve he didn’t want anyone to see him off. He couldn’t handle saying goodbye again, and of course, the little shit didn’t listen.

Because there you were. 

You gently pushed off the bike and started towards him. Bucky’s eyes dropped to the ground, and he shook his head; as angry as he wanted to be, he couldn’t find it in himself to upset. 

He was so relieved to see you.

Bucky stopped in front of you and sighed, “You weren’t supposed to waste your life on me. I told you to find some good ol’ boy and get married at the church and all that. What happened to starting your life?” 

You shrugged and closed the gap between you, “You can’t tell me what to do. And who says waiting for you was wasting my life? I get to decide what my life looks like not you.” 

“Stubborn,” Bucky huffed with a grin. 

“Impossible,” You countered, grinning right back. 

Bucky wanted to explain why he didn’t write or call, tell you why he wanted you to move on, but he knew you understood. You always understood. You knew his heart better than he did – you’ve held it for longer than he has. 

He looked down, and the guns n’ roses t-shirt made him grin. Fourteen years later and you’re still wearing that old thing. It’s faded a bit since he bought it for you, but damn you looked good in it. In the middle of the rose, resting comfortably was your ring hanging from his old chain. Bucky licked his lips and hooked his right index in your ring, giving a gentle tug. 

“Rings go on your finger, sweetheart.”

You reached back to undo the chain and finally parted the ring from the chain, letting it sit on his index finger but only for a moment. You held your left hand out, and he slipped the delicate band on. He never thought the first time he would get that ring on your finger would be as a convicted felon, standing in the middle of a prison’s parking lot. That didn’t matter he supposed. None of that bullshit has mattered for a long, long time. The only thing that mattered was you, and you were here. 

You were really here and still his. 

“I can’t go back.“ He tested warily. 

One last chance. An out. He was giving it to you freely. He wouldn’t be angry with you for taking it. He understood the burden of loving him and what it meant for your future. He would never blame you for not being able to handle that weight. Bucky’s loved you for more than half his life, and he knew better than most, sometimes, loving you meant letting you go for a bit. You’re never really lost in the end. 

Whether he had to let you go or not, he was going to go on loving you till his last breath.

A quick nod towards the back of the bike he spotted your bag strapped on top of his and that old wooden box of his dads tucked comfortably between them. You already knew, and neither of you was going back home. You were both starting over somewhere new just like you always wanted.

Bucky captured your lips in one quick swoop, and it was just as he remembered – sweet and sure, the only thing that has kept his heart beating these last twenty-odd years; your love and those sweet kisses. His forehead rested against yours, and his hands tightened around your waist. He just had to make sure you were real and not another dream. You tugged at his leather and took a deep breath, breathing him in after seven long years, and nothing at all had changed. You smiled and let your hands wander up his chest and wrap securely around his neck, tiny fingers finding their way into delicate strands.  

“Can we start our life now?” 

He grinned and dropped one more kiss to your lips.

“Yeah, baby, we can start our life now.” 

A yelp echoed in the nearly empty lot as Bucky’s arms tightened around your waist and lifted your feet from the ground, carrying you to his bike and grinning the whole way. He had planned on riding off with no destination in mind and a heavy heart dragging behind him, but somehow he got another chance, and he wasn’t sure what he did to earn it. He certainly didn’t deserve it or you. It didn’t matter why he got it. Now that he had it, he was going to spend the next few decades making up for every secret and lie, every tear shed and every second spent apart. 

You always find your way back to each other, and he was stupid to think this time would be any different. 

The bike rumbled to life under you both and Bucky settled back against you for a moment, letting his hand rest on your leg – a little pause to be sure. His reassurance came as a lingering kiss to his cheek. He sat up and let your arms envelop him; one around his waist and the other draped over his shoulder. And, then, all you could see was a sunset glow and blacktop. Bucky pulled your left hand from his chest and placed a kiss to your swallow before letting it rest back over his heart. A stoplight and a soft whisper in his ear asking where you were headed and a simple answer, wherever you want, pretty girl.  He could go anywhere as long as you were there. You didn’t respond or mention a destination, so he was going to drive till one or both of you got tired. 

You’ve got plenty of time to figure out where you were headed, but he was stopping at the first chapel he sees. Maybe he would take you on out to California. That ring on your finger might sparkle different in that fancy west coast sunshine. Bucky wouldn’t mind finding out, but for now, he would just drive. Your weight melted against his back, relaxing into his warmth and it ignited a deep, hidden piece of his soul that’s only ever been meant for you. He met your eye in the small triangle-shaped side mirror and winked as his wrist twisted forward, lurching the bike ahead. The squeal that fell from your lips had him laughing, loud, and unbridled. Of course, his first real laugh in a decade was because of you and everything was just as it should be. You tightened your arms around him, and he placed a hand over your own, guarding his heart and yours. 

Just like always. 

Previous // Masterlist

#biker!bucky x reader #biker!bucky #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #biker!bucky au #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #MC!AU #mc!bucky #alternate universe #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes

[hollypastl]

the disappearance of [REDACTED] ch.3

miya atsumu/reader

Summary: "MISSING: MIYA Y/N" It reads. Underneath is a picture of yourself. Age, height, weight. Everything important is listed. How embarrassing.

Genre: angst/mystery

Warnings: missing persons, time skip spoilers

Notes: crossposted on ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726002/chapters/70566306#main

[y/n] 10:27pm: i’m heeeereeeee

[y/n] 10:29pm: i said i’m here you asshole

[y/n] 10:29pm: hurry tf up

[y/n] 10:29pm: did you fall asleep

[y/n] 10:29pm: i’m leaving if you don’t respond in the next 30 seconds

With a painful squeak, the window slides open. “Wouldja shaddup?” He hisses. “Yer gonna wake up ‘Samu if ya keep buzzin’ my phone so much.”

“Too fuckin’ late, asshole.” Osamu groans. You can hear him rolling over in bed and Atsumu disappears from view, courtesy of a pillow flying towards his face at light speed.

You take over the spot he’d been occupying to pop your head in and lean over the windowsill. “Hey, how are you?”

“Tired.”

“Then go back to sleep, stupid ‘Samu.” The killer arm flies out again and this time the pillow lands. Atsumu’s head gives a sick crack against the drywall.

You let out a low whistle. “Nice one.”

He finally sits up and comes into view. “[l/n], right?” He’s obviously tired, and you feel kind of bad for waking him up.

Your face quirks a performative smile, remembering that you do still have to respond. “The one and only.” You straighten your arms and hoist yourself up, over, and in through the window, taking a seat and holding out your hand to shake. “Hey, you don’t mind if I call you by your first name, do you? It’d be kinda weird to call you Miya when I already call Atsumu, Atsumu. You can call—”

Without warning, you shoot to the other side of the room and stick yourself to the wall.

The door swings open.

From where you stand, Osamu’s eyes connect with the person at the door, darting towards Atsumu for a split second. He realizes there could be big trouble really quick. His mom might be pretty chill, but having a random girl sneaking into their room? Does he realize that? He was suffering from brain damage at the moment.

A silent conversation takes place between the brothers and their mom, who stands silently at the door. It kind of freaks you out, how you can see her shadow splaying out from the light in the hallway and not hear a sound.

“Go to sleep.” She commands, slamming the door shut.

A breath of relief leaves all three of them.

It swings back open. “Sorry fer slamming the door. G’night, love ya.”

“Love ya, too.”

“Love ya, mom.” They chorus, slightly out of time with the other. When they speak in tandem like that, you can’t tell who’s voice is who’s.

“And close the damn window; it’ll mess with the AC.”

The door clicks closed, the lights in the hall are flicked off, and footsteps walk away.

You hop over to give Atsumu a hand up. He’s still sulking against the wall. “Like I was saying, you can call me [y/n].” You pat him on the shoulder, which is slightly awkward because the boy is so much taller than you. You wonder what their mom feeds them. Then you remember why you’re here in the first place. Seems like the trauma of almost getting caught redhanded was getting to you.

“[y/n] can we hurry up and go?” Atsumu whispers in your ear. You’re not paying attention, you’re too busy rustling through their closet and dresser.

“I’m kinda busy, right now. And we’ve got plenty of time. What difference is a few minutes gonna make?” You slide one drawer open after the other. “Eww. Teenage boy sock drawer.” Atsumu kicks it shut and you almost lose a finger in the process. You can’t see it, but intuition tells you he’s red in the face.

“Do I even wanna know what you two are up ta?” Osamu drawls.

“We’re breaking into an abandoned sweet potato farm.” You throw a different shirt at Atsumu. “Change into that.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

“I meant why are you breaking into an abandoned sweet potato farm?” Osamu corrected. You faltered. Why did their voices sound so similar?

“The third years are planning a party to kick off summer break, but they need a location. We just need to check if it’s safe, and we’re in.” Your head shot back at Osamu and you ignored Atsumu stripping in the corner of your eye. The room was dark enough. “Wanna come?”

“Uhh, I’ll pass.” He flops back down on his mattress with an audible whump and throws the duvet over his head.

You shrugged. “Suit yourself.” You turned to Atsumu, now dressed in a shirt that wasn’t cringy as hell. “Ready?”

He was already lifting himself out the window and extending a hand to you. “Bye, Osamu!” You whisper-yelled. “Sleep well. I promise Atsumu will try to not wake you up when he gets back.”

Outside, it was much brighter. From the light of the moon and stars, you could fully appreciate the scowl Atsumu directed at you. “What?”

He shuts the window first, obviously struggling not to slam it. “Didja have to spend twenty minutes flirtin’ with my brother?”

He’s already hiking his way up the hill that they called their front yard, probably looking for his bike. “Oh, was I? I didn’t even realize.” It takes you a second but you find it fallen in the bushes of his neighbor’s lawn. “Can you blame me? He’s pretty cute.”

Atsumu sputters, yanking the handlebars from you. “Will ya stop teasin’ already?”

He’s so easy to rile up. “I’ll have you know I’m never anything but truthful.” He swings his leg over the bike and checks the road.

“Hurry up and get on. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, one sec.” Without warning, you stick your thumb and middle fingers in your mouth and whistle nice and quiet. Wouldn’t wanna wake the neighbors.

The hair on the back of his neck shoots up and he waits a good thirty seconds for the lights to switch on in one of his neighbor’s houses. “WHAT THE HELL?” He whispers. When he looks back, you’re just tapping your foot and debating whistlin’ like a banshee again.

“Just callin’ our friend.”

“Wha—”

Finally, a giant dog bounds up from the woods, surprisingly silent for his size. “Good boy, coming here.” You rub his face affectionately and finally sit yourself down on the back of the bike. “Taro, meet Atsumu. Atsumu, meet Taro. Taro-taicho, really, but he’s not militaristic about his title.”

“Whydja introduce the dog first?” He grumbles, toeing the kickstand up.

The bike jerks forward and you wrap an arm around Atsumu’s waist to balance yourself. It’d be inconvenient and uncool to fall off. A piece of dried jerky is also tossed to Taro with your free hand and you call for him to follow.

The air feels nice, breezing through your hair and tickling your skin. July heat has been unbearable, you’ve hated it ever since you were a child. But it felt nice with the sun being long gone. Even the crickets and cicadas relentless buzzing was oddly tolerable. Maybe you should make late night summer outings a habit.

After twenty minutes of coasting up and down hills and towards their destination, Atsumu breaks your comfortable silence. “Yanno, this is kinda romantic.”

“Huh?”

“You. Me. Alone. Under the stars.” Objectively, he’s not wrong. Last time you heard, sneaking out with a boy in the middle of the night did fall under the spectrum of dumb high school romantic activities to engage in. You might have even entertained the thought of playing along if Atsumu hadn’t carelessly pointed it out.

“Don’t forget about Taro.” You reminded. “Or that I wanted your dreamy brother to come along—” You fail to deliver the line flat and a laugh bubbles up.

“Will ya stop with that?” He lurches forward and peddles twice as hard, putting his frustration into kinetic output.

You cackle and lean against him. “C’mon, I can’t help it, Atsumu.”

“Help what?” He sounds exasperated, like he regrets even agreeing to this whole adventure in the first place.

“Making fun of you whenever you try to flirt with me.”

He scoffs. “M’not flirtin’ with ya! That’s just how I am!”

“M’kay.” You hum. You don’t buy it for a second. “Well, that’s just how I am too.”

“Fine.” He huffs.

“Fine.” You mirror his tone and he isn’t sure if you’re teasing him again or not. “Turn here.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.” He swerves to the left and you let out a short whistle to alert Taro. Just because you’re feeling extra nice tonight, you toss the dog another piece of jerky, which he leaps in the air to catch.

“Hey, want some jerky?” You’re already pulling apart a nice, soft piece for him. You’ll feed the tough bits to Taro.

“You mean the stuff you’ve been feedin’ the dog?”

“It’s for humans, too.” It definitely wasn’t.

He thinks it over for a second. “Only if you feed it to me.”

Oh, the stuff that just pours out of his mouth. Does he think before he speaks? You’ll miss hearing it someday. Just to play along, you let your breath catch. It’s just loud enough for him to hear.

“C’mon, my hands are busy, just give it here.” He argues, turning his head slightly so you can see his mouth but he can still see the road.

“‘Kay.” You pop the meat in his mouth. “Huh.” You stare at your fingers.

He groans. “What now?”

“I’m just surprised you didn’t try to suck on my fingers or anything!” You explain.

At that, you can feel him stiffen up immensely. “I—If anything, y—you’d be suuuuuh…” He trails off.

But you know exactly what he wants to say. “I’d be…?” You almost miss the sign. “Oh, hey we’re here!” You bounce off the bike before Atsumu has a chance to stop, and run up to the gate. “Wow, lucky it’s only rusted shut.” You give it a few good kicks before the metal snaps open. “It would’ve been so annoying to lug my bolt cutters all the way back here. Hey, you’ve got your tetanus shot, right?” You shoot over your shoulder.

Taro beams ahead once he can wiggle through and you’re right behind, waving the flashlight on your phone around and picking your way through overgrown weeds. You’re glad you wore tights under your denim cutoffs or else your legs would be itching like crazy right now.

“Atsumu? You coming?”

He shakes his head and runs his hand through his hair. He must be tired. It is almost midnight after all. After a moment, he follows after you. Even from several feet away, you can see his eyes drooping and the sluggishness in his step. Right, he did just bike forty minutes with you balancing behind him and not helping in the slightest. Not to mention your personality can be… grating. Or so you’ve been told. When he gets close enough, you offer your hand and he takes it without any fanfare. This old place is creepy as hell and he’s not gonna say anything to make you take it back.

To Taro, you direct three short whistles, signaling him to lead the way, but stay close. He picks his way through the field carefully and you follow dutifully behind. The fields are full of holes and pits, you’re again glad that you wore clunky hiking boots with ankle support over some flimsy sneakers. The LED light on your phone can only help so much.

“Should you be wavin’ that thing around?” Atsumu asks, voice low with trepidation.

“What thing?” You ask.

“Yer flashlight.” He clarifies, halfway between a hiss and a sigh.

Your brow involuntarily furrows. Where had he gotten that idea? “Why? Kind of need it to see, ya’ know?”

“But what if someone sees?”

You stop in your tracks, drop his hand, and turn around. “There’s no one around for miles, Atsumu. Nobody’s gonna see.”

“Then why are we even here?”

“To check if it’s safe, I told you that.”

“From what? Some old farmer’s ghost?”

“When did I— Actually, you know what? That’s a good point. I didn’t think about the place being haunted.” Considering what you knew about the history of the property. You continued to mutter under your breath and swiped your phone on. Did you have a signal here? Could you download a ghost detector app? “Maybe I’ll just have to borrow one from the paranormal club at school. They owe me a favor, after all.”

“Can you PLEASE stop rambling and tell me what we’re doing all the way out here in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night?” His palms land on your shoulders. From the way his fingers dig into your skin, you’re glad he religiously clips his fingernails.

“—”

He shakes you, roughly. “EXACTLY?”

You dropped your arm from where it was held in the air, trying to get a better signal for your phone. “We’re checking for bombs.”

The annoyance in his expression drops and leaves you looking at… You didn’t really know what that emotion was. “What?”

“I told you it was abandoned in the 40’s.” Maybe you hadn’t been clear enough when discussing it with Atsumu the day before. In your defense, it seemed pretty obvious. Why did he think there were people here? You had said it was abandoned.

“You’re tellin’ me...” He sputters.

You cock your head to the side. “I mean, why did you think I brought Taro?”

His eyes dart behind you to where the dog is patiently waiting.

“We’re leavin’.” Before you know it, Atsumu has a vice grip on your wrist and is dragging you back the way you came. But you can’t leave yet, you haven’t cleared the property. At the very least, you wanted to make it to the old farmhouse and see if the floorboards were safe for dancing!

A sharp twist and tug of your wrist frees you for a split second, but his reflexes are quick, even when he’s not looking and it’s dark out. “Let go!” You whine. He doesn’t. Any attempts, physical or emotional, are useless. You’re caught off guard by just how much stronger he is than you and you’re not sure what makes it more infuriating: that you’re weak, or that you’re stupid for not knowing.

Taro barks and your eyes widen. On instinct you grab the arm Atsumu’s dragging you with and throw your entire weight back. By the grace of the gods, it’s just enough to send him stumbling back and you both topple over in the thistle.

“Owwwww.” You moan, already second guessing yourself. There are thorns digging into every inch of your skin and Atsumu’s bony elbow has planted itself in between your vital organs.

Slowly, he lifts himself up. “What the hell was that for?” By now, Taro has bounded over and is shoving his nose in your face. He growls when Atsumu extends a hand.

“Taro, heelAHHH!” One after the other, you take the proffered hand up, tell Taro off, and rise up. Except when you put weight on your ankle, it screams in protest. Tears prick your eyes and you grip onto Atsumu for support. You feel bad for him. Your nails probably hurt.

“Don’t step back.” You warn, remembering at least that through the pain searing itself up your leg.

He shifts his weight and Taro barks a warning again. “Is he barking because of the…”

“Yeah.”

From your spot hanging onto him, you can hear his heart beating faster and faster. It wasn’t a situation you were familiar with. Should you just tell him not to be scared? But that tactic never worked for you in the past.

He’s the first one to work up some courage and kick his mind back in gear. “Can you walk?”

You test it, setting some weight on your heel. Probably not as carefully as you should have because you hiss in pain.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He sighs, gingerly turning around and crouching down, listening for Taro’s warning the whole time. “Hop on.” You comply. “Taro-taicho? Lead the way.”

The dog stares Atsumu down while you bury your face in his back. You’re so angry. At what? You’re not quite sure. Definitely not Atsumu. It’s not his fault. Then again, why did he get so mad anyways? It’s not like you were purposefully— That’s a lie. Abandoned farm from the 40’s wasn’t specific enough. Even with the additional context of your bomb sniffing hound. You let him assume and from how quiet he’s being, he’s pissed. You would be too if the roles were reversed.

Vaguely, you process him helping you back onto the bike, giving his shoulder for you to hang onto. The person you’re mad at is yourself.

“Why’re ya snifflin’?”

If this were a movie, your tears would be shining in the moonlight as the wind whipped them off your cheeks. But it isn’t and you’re glad he’s not looking at you.

“I’m sorry.” You choke out. Your throat is closing up and they’re the first words you can think of. “Are you mad at me?” They’re whispered as loud as you can make them, but you can’t put any real force behind them because the frog in your throat is getting bigger by the second. The atmosphere is nerve wracking. His answer can’t come quick enough because your mind is already jumping to different, more effective, ways to apologize. What should you do? How do you make it up to him? You’ve never been good at gift giving. Was running an option? Let him take you home and then lock the door before he can say anything. Delete his phone number and ignore him at school.

The manipulative bitch inside you wonders if giving him a piece of yourself would suffice. Would he even want it? He sure spoke like he did. Sometimes. How far would be enough? A kiss? On the cheek, or lips? How long? What if he wanted more?

He had asked before. Half joking, half serious. Unwilling to commit. Back then, your rejection had been painless. The both of you laughed immediately after and went back to normal.

But that was then and this is now. 'Now' is painful and suffocating. It's a shot in the dark, but maybe the opposite action would give you room to breathe.

#miya atsumu #atsumu x reader #haikyuu

[eat0crow]

Jasonette Prompt! Mari and Jason first meeting but it’s after a bunch of thugs tried to jump her (she beat them uppp). anyways they’re both in civilian form and she’s validly untrusting and he calms her down.

Bullies count as thugs, right?

116%

Partly by accident, mostly by self-preservation, Jason figures out that, in order to get everyone to stop looking at him like the poor-orphan-charity-case Bruce Wayne had taken in, he needs to instead get them to write him off entirely.

It’s a genius plan. Gotham Academy is nothing if not judgemental. All he has to do is wear his uniform loose, his tie undone, tell everyone exactly how little he thinks of their petty power plays, and get into a screaming match with his xenophobic history teacher about how people working minimum wage, “Absolutely should be making a living wage. Screw you, you bootlicking capitalist fuck!” within the first month of school. Honestly, he’s surprised he lasted that long.

So maybe he’s a little out of line, it’s not like he’s wrong. And it’s all worth it just to see the look on Bruce’s face when he walks into the principal's office. The man’s eyebrows are practically up to his hairline by the time he hears that Jason, in the face of his teacher's warning, had the audacity to ask, “What are you going to do? Expel me? unfucking likely.”

“It’s not like I’m actually going to be expelled,” Jason says. “Half the school’s annual budget comes from the money you donate. If I’m expelled I’ll have to go somewhere else. You’re not going to invest in a school I’m not attending and they’re not going to those funds.”

With unmasked glee, Jason watches the growing horror spread over his principles face-he’s a smart brown-nosing man after all. He knows exactly what kind of trap he’s walking into. It doesn’t matter that Jason’s history teacher is glaring the man down, looking like he's’ just bitten a lemon. Nope, Jason is not going to be expelled.

“Jason,” Bruce, simply sighs, looking far more put out than he has any right to be.

They settle for him being suspended for the rest of the week with detentions taking place after school on Mondays and Wednesdays for the next two months.

As all interesting gossip tends to, the rumor makes its way through the school before the day is even over-rich kids have way too much time on their hands-by the time Jason comes back the following Monday everyone seems to have decided that he’s a troublemaker unhinged just enough to be dangerous.

It marks the end of people trying to suck up to him, they all seem to have collectively decided that if they mind their own business and leave him out of it, he’ll do the same.

The thing about Jason Todd- fourteen-year-old high school freshman- is that he’s really bad at minding his own business. Like Dick’s Discowling suit levels of bad at it. He's a Robin, after all, you couldn’t be a Robin if you were actually able to keep your nose out of where it shouldn't be. It's practically a rule.

Never once has Jason ever had any fondness for bullies, it doesn’t matter if they were school kids or criminals or one percenters-looking at you Jeff Bezos, looking at you. He’s seen enough of them growing up in the Narrows, and maybe, it’s because his dad, the utter asshole, had been a bully. Maybe he just spends too much time fighting against people who think they can get away with pushing their weight around. It doesn’t matter.

Jason Todd could not bring himself to turn a blind eye, which is why by the beginning of his second semester he’s gained the title of actual-punk-you-know-the-kind-who-fight-the-man with his biweekly detentions being upgraded to triweekly and extended indefinitely. The number of fights he’s gotten into in the last couple of months has easily erased whatever Golden Boy standing Dick had established. Jason is confident that the only reason he’s yet to be kicked out is the fact that Bruce had almost doubled his donations.

So really, when he hears raised voices and the distinct sound of someone being thrown against a wall just as he’s leaving detention for the third time this week, he has to investigate.

Disgust is the first thing Jason can register when he turns the corner because there’s a ring of five students- two girls, three guys- all crowded around the new girl from France. Jason’s pretty sure he shares a class or two with her, maybe. She's easy to miss, small as all hell and stick thin.

This, this isn’t a fair fight. Or a fight she even has a chance of winning. Jason has a bad feeling about this.

But-

But Jason takes a closer look. Her back is pressed against the side of the building, yes. Her bag has been thrown to the ground and she’s shaking but that stance, it definitely doesn’t belong to someone who doesn’t know how to defend themselves. Sure these idiots have her backed into a corner, one point them, but her feet are firmly planted on the ground, her back is straight. She’s not going to run, at least, not before she throws a punch and, judging from the way she’s holding herself, a good one too.

Jason doesn’t really know how to approach this. This girl looks like a deer caught in headlights who will spook the second she hears a loud sound. Getting a teacher would be the most sensible thing to do. It would also require leaving, Jason isn’t confident enough in the situation to do that.

He’s almost talked himself into it, sure it might be a little off-brand for him but this seems slightly out of his depth, when Idiot Number Three, the smirking brunette addition, makes a move toward Marinette-Jason only just remembers her name-and Marinette lashes out.

Dead silence overtakes the yard as the girl goes down, her body crumpling to the ground like a wet paper towel. Marinette’s fist is still curled, her arm still outstretched. She looks like she can’t believe what she just did. Everyone stands frozen for one disbelieving moment before one of the guy's snarls, lunging to grab Marinette’s jacket.

If she was a deer in headlights before, Jason isn’t quite sure what to call her now. She looks like she’s on the cusp of a panic attack, frantically babbling a mishmash of jumbled up words. Jason sees what she’s going to do a second before the bully does, but by then it’s too late.

Marinette, with way more force than someone her size should have, brings her knee up and kicks her would-be attacker in the balls. Jason does not want to feel sympathy pains. He doesn’t, but still, if the way Idiot Number Five falls to his knees is any indication...well.

Idiots Numbered One, Two and Four run off without much fanfare taking their downed Idiot Number Three with them. Jason has a distinct impression they’re going to snitch and Marinette, who was only defending herself and is in no way capable of explaining her side of the story right now, is going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Nope, not on Jason’s watch. He makes his way over. Closing the distance in three precise non-threatening strides. “So I’m thinking, this isn’t exactly what you had planned,” he says lightly.

“Fuck you, Todd.” Eloquent as ever Idiot Number Five.

“No thanks. You seem like you’re having enough fun clutching your balls for the both of us,” he says cooly, crouching down just enough to make eye contact. “Between you and me, I would run if I were you. Before she decides to come and knock your teeth in.”

“Like she would,” the bully scoffs.

“We both know she could and you know I would let her. Hell, I would help her if it kept your mouth fucking shut.” Jason cracks his knuckles, casually pressing his elbow further into the prick's collar bone. “Fuck, I kinda want to do it too. You really piss me off.”

At least he has the good sense to take Jason seriously. Jason can’t help the satisfaction that comes from watching him get to his feet and limp off. Some things really are poetic. Serves the bastard right, even if he promises that, “I’ll get you back for this, Todd.”

Jason snorts, as if he’d worry about what some schoolyard bully was going to do. Have you seen half the lunatics he fights on a monthly basis? “You good?”

“I-no!” Marinette cries, sinking to her knees in shock. “I am so going to be expelled. God, I’m going to be deported. I’ve only been in Gotham for a month! One whole month and already I’ve

messed this up. Momma is never going to let me out of the house. That’s if they don’t send me to jail. Oh, they’re going to send me to jail, aren't they? I can’t go to jail, orange is a terrible color!”

That's ... a lot to unpack. Jason feels something flutter in his chest. He has the strongest desire to comfort her. So, he does the only thing he can think of, he reaches out, wraps his arms around her waist, and promptly gets punched in the face. Hard.

He staggers back, clutching his eye, Jason barely registers Marinette’s steady stream of. “I’m sorry, so sorry I didn’t mean to hit you.”

Self-consciously Jason shrugs, he’s had far worse. The only thing in danger is his ego. “It was my fault. You were literally being threatened a minute ago, I shouldn’t have touched you. Sorry about that.”

“I’m panicking a bit,” Marinette says, pulling at the end of one of her pigtails. “I’m not usually...I just-I don’t want to be expelled.”

“You're not going to be expelled, Hermione,” Jason says dryly. “Yeah, those bastards are going to snitch but you were just defending yourself. They got what they deserved.”

“Do you think anyone’s going to believe that?”

Jason takes a moment to look Marinette over. There is so much earnest hope on her face that Jason...he feels really bad but... “Of course not. You kicked Pattrick Thomson in the balls, his dad’s on the school board. There is no fucking way any one of these teachers is going to believe that he actually got what was coming to him. No matter how much of a prick he is.”

“I’m doomed,” Marinette cries.

“You’re not doomed.” Jason catches Marinette’s look of pure utter disbelief and continues, “You’re not going to be expelled because you’re not the one who is going to be taking the fall for this.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly,” Jason says scooting down to sit next to Marinette. He makes sure to leave a good foot between them. One black eye is enough, thank you. “Unlike you, I won’t get expelled, trust me this isn’t anywhere close to my first fight. If they could have axed me, they would have like a month in. The good news is that this is the one corner of the school security cameras can’t see. So as long as we make our story sound believable, no one is going to question it.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re all going to find it sketchy when no one can agree on who threw the punch.”

“See you would think that but, no offense, you’re a literal wafer cookie. A strong breeze could blow you over. No one is going to believe you took down those idiots. Not when it’s so much easier to blame the one who’s admitting it.”

“I did take them down,” Marinette says, narrowing her eyes.

“And it was badass, but for this to work, we need to milk as many of their sexist assumptions as possible. So,” Jason starts, pressing his hand a little further against his eye, there’s a bit of blood slipping onto his fingers. Marinette got him good. “This is what we’re going to say. We’re going to keep it simple. Tell them that those guys were picking on you and I came over to see what was happening. Things got heated, Thomson punched me in the eye and I bumped into what’s-her-face. You were panicking and didn’t really pay attention until you saw me knee him in the balls. Short, sweet, and believable.”

“What are we going to say when they ask about why everyone is blaming me and not you?”

“Well, why were they bothering you in the first place.” Jason shrugs reaching out to grab some of the stray papers that had fallen from Marinette’s bag. “Just use that. Trust me, Thomson’s going to jump at the chance to save face. Once he changes his story the rest will follow.”

Marinette grimaces. “It feels wrong.”

“Please,” Jason snorts. “They’re rich, they’re cheating at life. They’d get away with murder if they dropped their wallets. You could tell them all exactly what happened word for word and the teachers would still only hear their side of the story.”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s Gotham.”

Marinette falters, as if she wants to dispute the inherent corruption of this city. She stares at Jason, who would probably be blushing if it wasn’t for the excruciating pain coming from his right eye.

“You’re sure.” Marinette bites her lip, nervously picking at her nails. “You’re absolute, one hundred and twelve percent sure you won’t be expelled.”

“I’m one hundred and sixteen percent sure,” Jason says and then Marinette smiles.

It’s a nice smile, Jason doesn’t think he’s ever experienced the full force of someone's relief before.

“Thank you.” Sincerity is dripping off every word, so much so it almost aches. “I-you’re really nice Jason.”

Marinette knows his name. That’s-not necessarily surprising given the act that yeah they do share classes, probably. It’s just this is the first time they’ve talked.

“It’s cool,” Jason says leaning further back into the wall. He can hear people coming, it won’t be long before they have teachers to deal with. Jason might as well get comfortable. “You’re Marinette, right? I think we have English….Math..something together.”

Marinette nods, scooting closer to him. “Yeah, I’m Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I sit three rows over in Math and two seats up in English.”

“It’s nice to meet you Marinette. Officially.” Jason takes the hand off of his eye and holds it out to her. “Jason Todd.”

Slowly, Marinette’s smile slowly morphs into a look of pure horror. “You’re eye!”

#maribat #crow writes #jasonette #prompt fills #jason todd #marinette dupain cheng

[dorizardthewizard]

The Revival of Akillian: Chapter 5

Prologue / Chapter 4 / Chapter 6

5. THE HOLO-TRAINER

After making a few final adjustments, Clamp touches - not without a hint of apprehension - the white launch button on the touchscreen of his console. No lightning or spitting this time: the controls turn green and data is displayed, indicating that the system is charged to its rated power and ready to operate. Clamp leans back in his chair with a satisfied smile and folds his hands behind his neck.

- Voila! It should work perfectly now.

- "Perfection", - emphasizes Aarch. - That is exactly the word I was looking for to describe your machines... when they work!

Much more relaxed, Clamp still makes a few adjustments, which do not cause any catastrophic reaction from his devices: on the contrary, they beep, chirp and click with gusto.

- Do you think we’re going to get much turnout? Maybe football doesn't interest anyone on this planet anymore...

As if in response, the doors of the elevator at the back of the room - the first thing Clamp repaired so he could get all his crates of equipment down there - slide squeakily and dump a dozen young people, proudly led by Micro-Ice.

- Voila! - he declares to his buddies, who are amazed by the vastness of the place and the buzzing machines. - There are still plenty more coming! - he tells Aarch and Clamp.

The coach looks at the scientist with a mocking smile:

- How’s that?

Eyes wide, D’jok considers the enormous white cube in front of him, which seems to him like an elevator car for giants. From the open door springs a dazzling light.

- What is that thing?

- Well, it's… (Clamp clears his throat: he hadn't thought of giving his device a name yet). Uh… it's a holo-trainer, - he improvises. - A virtual training machine, in a way.

- Okay well, I'll be leaving now... I’ve got no reason to be here, - says Micro-Ice, returning to the elevator.

- You don't want to take part? – queries Aarch.

- No thank you, no way! Tests aren’t really my thing. Just hearing the word makes me feel like I'm in school!

- In any case, thank you for everything, kid... we can really say you fell in at the right moment!

Micro-Ice smiles at this joke that only he understands and stands in front of the elevator, ignoring D’jok's look of disappointment at him. The moment he raises his finger to press the call button, the doors creak open again...

On a dream creature.

Thin oval face carried by a slender neck, delicate nose, curled lips, huge brown hair pulled up in a thick ponytail, a perfect body in a princess costume… and huge blue eyes that land on an amazed Micro-Ice. His joke in Maya's cave, about the pretty girl and the treasure, comes to mind… if he hasn't found the treasure, he sure found the pretty girl!

The girl pulls away from Micro-Ice and enters the room, along with a dozen new candidates. A woman follows her, much older, also dressed elegantly in a coat with a Garo fur collar: her mother is oblivious, because she speaks vehemently to the visibly annoyed girl:

- Are you listening to me, Mei? You have to show them that you are the best! You understand? The best!

- Enough, mom!

“Wow, even her voice is awesome”, thinks Micro-Ice to himself, contemplating her graceful step dreamily. Love at first sight? He isn’t sure what that is, but what is certain anyway is that his heart is pounding hard and it is making him so hot inside...

- What's the matter, Micro-loser? You look even more silly than usual!

Sinedd! In terms of cold showers, it doesn’t get worse than this. Micro-Ice suddenly descends to earth, but his natural wittiness quickly takes over:

- What are you doing here? We came to practice football. Not your nutty card game!

- Exactly, losers like you and your friends don't stand a chance here! -  Sinedd scoffs. - Make way for the real players!

- So you think you're a real player, huh, Sinedd? - D’jok intervenes.

- Maybe my ball is causing his ankles to swell, - laughs Thran.

- Can't wait to start the trials, so I can humiliate you all! None of you come close to my level. You're going to take a huge beating!

Pushing past Micro-Ice and his buddies, Sinedd joins the crowd massed in front of the holo-trainer with an already victorious stride.

- We’ll see about that! - challenges Micro-Ice.

- Ah, so you're staying after all? - remarks Ahito.

- By the off chance, it wouldn’t have anything to do with that girl over there, would it? – quips D’jok, nodding at Mei, who is stamping her foot, still being harassed by her mother.

- You need to position yourself on offense, - she explains to her. - The biggest football stars are strikers!

- I get it, mom!

- A girl? What girl? - Micro-Ice blushes, ostensibly turning his back on him.

His friends burst out laughing, which makes him blush all the more.

- Well, we can start, - Aarch decides. – As far as I can see, we will not have more candidates...

- Think again, Aarch, - Clamp rebukes. - Look, the elevator is bringing more people!

Indeed, the doors slide open again with a horrible squeak of rusting metal. But it is not more candidates who come out this time...

It's Ballow and his three thugs.

- Hello, everyone! I see you have decided to have fun without us?

Aarch and Clamp exchange a look of apprehension: will this situation ever come to an end?

- Always so good at ruining the mood, this guy! - murmurs Micro-Ice from the middle of the crowd.

- Don't worry, guys, he's not going to stay long. - promises Thran, mysteriously.

- Okay, kids, get the hell out of here, and fast! - hollers Ballow at the gathering. – It’s not you we’re after...

With that, he walks wickedly towards Aarch, followed by his henchmen, who have drawn their tasers again.

Suddenly a bright light swirls down from the hole in the ceiling, accompanied by the characteristic whistle of turboprop engines. In the light a rope unwinds along which Callie Mystic, the Arcadia News star reporter, glides nimbly, filmed by her trusty flying holo-cam. She lightly jumps to the ground and immediately begins her speech:

- What did I tell you, dear holo-spectators? With Callie Mystic, nothing remains a secret for long!

She winks and gives the thumbs up in the direction of Thran, who returns the gesture, to the amazement of his friends.

- Did you call her? – blurts D’jok.

- Well, - Thran answers with a smirk, - I thought since we knew where Aarch was, it was worth telling Arcadia News...

Callie walks confidently towards Arch, sticking her microphone right under his nose.

- Aarch, it can be said you’re hard to find. But it takes a lot more to escape Callie Mystic's curiosity!

- So what do we do, boss? - asks Ballow’s big bald henchman.

- Arrrgh! Well, we massacre everyone on live television, that will give us publicity! Is that a stupid enough answer for you or do you want me to think of some more? - He shoves past his men and walks back to the elevator with an angry step - Come on, come on, let's get out of here!

- Well! - Callie resumes. - Aarch, how about explaining to our dear holo-viewers a little bit about this machine and what you expect from all these kids?

***

Onboard his jet-snow, Rocket rushes towards the Windy Plateaus, where he can hit real bursts of speed on this flat and empty plain, cracked with faults that add a little spice to the pleasure of sliding. The odometer is already reaching 150 km/h, but it can easily go up to 200. Beyond that, it becomes risky from a grip and stability point of view: you are at the mercy of the slightest bump or rut... but where’s the thrill, if there is no danger?

Suddenly a weird sound complements the regular growl of his turbo: a sort of roar accompanied by spitting... he checks his controls - it would be a problem if he broke down so far from Arcadia - but everything is normal: the sound is not coming from his vehicle…

It is coming from the sky.

A flying machine passes him with a thunderous noise, at a dangerously low altitude. Rocket slows down to better identify it: it's a Red-Bee-type shuttle, commonly used by moon dwellers on Obia or Tanaga to descend on Akillian. It seems in trouble: ominous smoke escapes from its reactor, the roar of which is interspersed with jolts and rattles. The shuttle plunges behind a hill - an instant later a low rumble echoes and a large plume of smoke rises.

The shuttle crashed!

Rocket steps on it and reaches the crash site in less than a minute. The Red-Bee is buried in a snowdrift, its cockpit broken, its wings twisted, its engine is spitting out sinister black smoke. Without thinking, Rocket jumps off the jet-snow, runs towards the machine and slips into the cockpit through the broken glass.

A young girl lies unconscious in the pilot's seat.

“She's not old enough to fly this,” thinks Rocket. “No wonder she messed up!”

There is not a minute to lose: smoke is invading the cockpit, it smells of burning in the back, sparks fly from the circuits... he gives violent thrusts against the airlock with the twisted door, which he manages to unlock. He grabs the girl by the shoulders and drags her outside. No sooner has he walked a few yards than the Red-Bee explodes, throwing burning debris around. Rocket throws himself into the snow and covers the girl with his body to protect her.

The blast and the sound of the explosion pulls her from her unconsciousness. She half-opens her eyes, flickering a pretty sea green. An Obiane, Rocket recognizes by her small size, her pale complexion and her silver hair.

- Aarch… I have to find Aarch… - she mumbles in a faint voice before relapsing into unconsciousness.

***

Rather than giving Callie Mystic a private interview, Aarch prefers to present his project live to all applicants:

- Let me introduce myself: my name is Aarch. You must have heard of me... whether for good things or bad. I was part of Akillian’s last great football team, before the Catastrophe. I came back because I intend to create a new, even more talented one. And this will be thanks to you! I am sure the Akillian Breath can be reawakened. Professor Clamp, here, will co-lead the trials today. We will only take the best. I'm counting on you to give your all! Well, good luck!

During Aarch's speech, Ahito almost fell asleep, awakened by a nudge from D’jok. Micro-Ice, placed "by chance" near Mei, kept his eyes fixed on her… eyes full of stars. He was paying attention, though, for he asks:

- By the way, sir, how are we going to do the trials? I see no football field...

- An excellent question, - Clamp intervenes. - I just need a volunteer. Come closer, boy, and put this on, please (he hands him a yellow and purple jersey and shorts filled with sensors). You're going to get changed in there (he points to the second white cube, the smaller one). And then you'll go in here.

He nods towards the illuminated entrance behind him.

A minute later, Micro-Ice shows up in front of the holo-trainer. Half blind by the light, he can only make out a white floor and black walls. Nothing very exciting in principle... he turns to his comrades, who support him:

- Yeah, go ahead, Micro-Ice!

- Show them what you can do!

But it's Mei's gaze on him - at whom he smiles - that gives him the courage to step into the light box. Clamp taps on his console, and the door slides closed again behind Micro-Ice.

He walks to the middle of the cube, taken aback. Is this a training ground? Where's the ball? Where are the goals, the opponents?

Suddenly, the black walls are erased, replaced by an artificial "sky"; the white ground turns green, the lines of the center and the penalty area are imprinted, virtual goals appear at each end. The whole place takes on the dimension of a real football field, much larger in appearance than the cube itself.

- Woah! – marvels Micro-Ice, breathless.

He kneels down and feels the ground with his hand: it seems real...

- Okay, let me explain (Aarch's voice comes from everywhere at once). See the red line at the other end of the field? You have to get there as fast as possible, dribbling the ball.

With his hand as a visor to protect himself from the bright light, Micro-Ice spots the line in question, in front of the goal that seems very distant to him. A ball materializes near him. He feels it with the tip of his foot: it is solid... he holds it under his heel and gets into position.

- Yeah, piece of cake!

- Obstacles will appear on your route - Aarch continues. - You will have to dribble past them without wasting time.

- Ah… smaller piece of cake.

- Ready… and go! – sounds Clamp’s voice.

Micro-Ice takes a leap forward, kicking the ball away. A few meters in front of him is virtualized a Shadow player, a completely realistic Fulmugus avatar… not that realistic actually, because Micro-Ice dribbles past him easily. Then markers appear on his course, which he must avoid in an increasingly tight slalom. If he touches one, it flashes red, emitting an unpleasant sound: a deducted point, no doubt.

- Uh oh… looks like things are getting complicated!

Seven terminals suddenly stand in front of Micro-Ice and rush over to him. He has no choice but to jump over them while maintaining control of his ball. As soon as he touches the ground and retrieves the ball, three Fulmugus avatars try to stop him, as the virtual goal appears in sight. He manages to dribble past the first by squeezing the ball between his legs, narrowly avoids the second with a turn-back, then shoots towards the goal from which the goalkeeper appeared - who catches the ball in his chest and disintegrates. The ball returns, Micro-Ice leaps to retrieve it and shoot at the goal again. But he doesn’t make good contact with the ball, he falls and slips on the pitch, pushing the ball with his foot… slipping between the spread legs of the third Shadow defender… who fades behind him. Micro-Ice turns his head… gives a smile of victory: the red line is there, just under his neck!

- Woooooooo!

The holo-trainer's door opens on a radiant Micro-Ice, immediately surrounded by his pals.

- So? How was it? - asks Thran.

- Absolutely awesome! – exclaims Micro-Ice.

- Very good, - Aarch smiles. - And now, who's next?

A good thirty arms rise immediately: “Me! – No, me! - Me, sir, me! - To me, to me! - Please, sir! - I am the best! … ”

***

Finally, she regains consciousness.

Rocket had carried the little Obiane on his jet-snowboard to his secret cave. Along the way, he considered taking her to his father's house, but quickly gave it up, imagining the scene: “Who is this girl? Where is she from? What were you doing on the Windy Plateaus instead of going to deliver my flowers? We must call the police and send her to the hospital! As if I don’t have enough worries without this…!” In short, the adventure would quickly come to an end, but it's not every day that Rocket meets someone - better: save a girl from certain death. A very pretty girl in addition: thin and petite, the face of an angel with thin, silver hair that he wants to stroke, and beautiful green eyes...

Raised by his father, his only family (since his mother passed away when he was a baby), Rocket is a loner, with no friends, and of course no girlfriends - girls are a total mystery to him. He's out of school, educated by Norata and Educator, TTV's (Technoid's) interactive education network. Norata fears that his son will one day leave the family home. This is why he employed him very early on in his small florist business, and plans to make him his partner and then his successor. Rocket only knows the world that his father allows him to know, and what he secretly learns from TTV - especially Galactik Football... because this reclusive and lonely life would be very sad and miserable if Rocket had not maintained that secret passion for GF. Like D’jok, who believes he has an extraordinary destiny, Rocket also dreams of becoming a great soccer player, of following the path of his revered uncle. But Rocket knows very well that this is only a dream, that as long as he lives by, for and in the flowers, this destiny will never knock on his door.

Until Aarch's miraculous appearance last week... his dream suddenly took shape and substance, and turned into a mad hope. A hope that Norata is working to bring down, but Aarch exists, he's on Akillian to recruit a new team - Rocket saw Callie Mystic's report on TTV. If he could be part of it... but how? Now here is this girl falling from the sky, who also wants to find Aarch… another sign of fate?

Lying on the only seat in the sparsely furnished cave, she stirs and sighs… her eyelids blink, her large green eyes rest on Rocket in surprise.

- Hey, are you okay? - he asks her, full of concern.

He tries to tend to the large bump that is blooming on her forehead with ice and bruising spray he has from the pharmacy. She puts her hand to her head and grimaces, but doesn't answer.

- What... where am I?

- Don't worry, you’re safe here… my name is Rocket.

- I'm Tia… (she walks around the cave lined with football posters, a surprising sight) Do you really live in this cave?

- Uh, not exactly, but let's say I come here very often. Do you need some ice?

Rocket breaks a piece of icicle, which he hands to her.

- For what? - Tia is suspicious.

- For your injury... it keeps it from swelling.

She carefully places the ice cube on her forehead: indeed, it relieves the pain.

- What happened?

- Your shuttle crashed... I pulled you out of it just before it blew up. You're from Obia, aren't you?

Again, Tia ignores his question. She throws the ice cube and stands up abruptly before Rocket's stunned eyes. It is true that the Obians, despite their fragile appearance, are actually very hardy… the harsh living conditions on this small moon without an atmosphere have something to do with it.

- I have to meet Aarch as soon as possible! - Tia looks at the photos, banners and posters again, stopping at Aarch's giant figure. - From what I can see, it looks like you're interested in him… do you know where he is?

Shy, Rocket can't think of anything better to do than kicking his ball, making it jump from one foot to the other.

- Well… to tell you the truth, Aarch is my uncle.

Tia's eyes light up, a smile on her face.

- For real? But that’s awesome!

Rocket pouts and kicks his ball, which bounces off a shelf of odds and ends, dislodging the box containing his collection of badges.

- Yeah, except I barely know him… I only spoke to him once.

- Is that so? - The ball returns to Tia's feet, who blocks it. – Still, I have to find him at all costs!

- Why? Do you want to be part of his new team?

Like nothing, she also kicks the ball, apparently without even aiming. Still, after a twisted trajectory that Rocket rarely did, the ball went straight into the hole next to Mark 10 - the most difficult one. His eyes go wide in disbelief.

- Yes, I’m counting on it! - Tia smiles. – What about you?

- Well… it’s not like I don’t want to, I just… hey!

Tia had rushed outside and jumped onto the jet-snowboard that she's now trying to set in motion. Rocket runs up to her.

- What are you doing?

She manages to start the vehicle, which begins to whistle.

- You have exactly two seconds to get in behind me. Otherwise, I'm going without you!

- Wait a minute, Tia. First, it’s my jet-snow, and I prefer to ride it myself. And you don't even know where Aarch is!

She backs up into the passenger seat, letting him take the handlebars.

- So go ahead, take me there!

#galactik football #the revival of akillian #gah sorry for the wait! end of semester was crazy #we finally see tia and mei here; and some cool details on where tia comes from!

[badwithten]

quatervois |  (n.) a crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one’s life

lucas x reader part 9

gang au

this story will contain violence, drug use, swearing, angst and possibly suggestive scenes

masterlist | prev | next

“Are you sure you guys don't want anything else?” Lucas nods his heads towards the two cups of coffee placed in front of you and Winwin. “I mean look at all I've got” He then gestures towards the large bowl of soup and hamburger he ordered.

“We’re fine Lucas, me and Winwin had time this morning to make a big breakfast because someone wouldn't wake up” You turn to look at him and raise your eyebrows to prove a point, not that he's focusing on you, his attention is towards the food on his plate.

“Ok, whatever can we just eat now?” As much as you are also close with Winwin, you have to admit that there are times where he is the third wheel, like right now. Sitting across the booth from you and Lucas, your hand rests on his leg and his arm around your shoulder. Plus the little bicker you guys just had.

The day was good, there was a warm breeze, the sky was clear of any clouds and you got to spend it with your favorite people. It was a new cafe that you had heard about online, Lucas sounded interested until you told him where it was. You didn't know why it put him off so much until you saw Taeyong come through the door with two other men. The whole table became tense.

“I told you we shouldn't of come here” Winwin whispered through clenched teeth, all of you were frozen, you didn't know much about what was happening here, but you knew it must be bad news. Despite the fact you're all doing your best to blend in, soon enough Taeyong heads over to your table. The guys he was with were spreading out to a different table, presumably to get lunch.

“Hey, guys” He grabs a chair from a table nearby and pulls it up by your table. “Hey Y/N. I thought you told me you weren't with these guys”

His voice is bitter, if you didn't know any better you would expect him to be a lot kinder than he is. Your words are stuck in your throat, you're not sure how to reply. If Lucas and Winwin weren't here you'd probably run your mouth, but now that they're involved, and now that you're working with them. Things are different, your actions affect them.

“She's not” Luckily Lucas covers for you. “She's an old friend”

“Judging by where her hand is sitting she's more than a friend isn't she pal” Taeyongs eyes are glued to your hand on Lucas’ thigh, making you pull away from him. “I heard my dream boys caught you outside of Parker a while back, I thought they already taught you a lesson, but considering you're now sitting in my cafe. Apparently not”

“What do you mean your cafe?” The words come out before you can stop yourself, both Lucas and Winwins eyes go wide. You must come off as a dumbass by the way Taeyong laughs.

“Oh, so she does talk. You see sweetheart, this whole town used to be ours. Then your boys came round and started taking my corners. We came to an agreement on what parts they can have. But as you can see someone doesn't like to follow rules.”

“Get out of here” You can tell Winwin is losing his patient, his temper slowly coming out.

“Don't make a scene” Taeyong reaches forward and slides the steak knife Lucas had off of the table and into his lap where he fiddles with it before Winwin flinches, a look of pain shoots across his face. “Now before this gets any worse I suggest you all leave”

Lucas doesn't wait a second further to stand from the booth and drag you with him by the wrist. You don't have time to look back to see if Winwin is coming along but Lucas doesn't seem worried about him. The grip he has on your wrist is so tight that you're sure it'll leave a bruise but that doesn't stop him from continuing to drag you along. The pace of his walking is too fast for you to keep up.

“Lucas stop” Your words must just bounce off of him as he shows no sign of even slowing down, his frantic pace causing you to zig-zag throughout the city. “Lucas!”

Your voice is louder this time, more pained as you pull your arm out of his grasp. This finally snapped him out of his haze. “What happened?”

“I don't know”

“What about Winwin?”

“He’ll be fine we just need to get you out of here”

“Has Winwin done this before?” You ask Yangyang who is sitting with you on the couch as you watch Lucas from out the window. He's going in between having a smoke and kicking a ball at the wall.

“Never for this long” Lucas is in a panicked state, stress running high. He shouldn't have left Winwin alone in that cafe. It's been 3 days now, and we still haven't heard from him. It wouldn't have been the first time someone had just conveniently disappeared after getting on the bad side of Taeyong. But never has it been to someone he's so close to. “I just can't believe its Winwin, he's the only one who Lucas really trusted”

“Do you think he's, you know? '' You look at Yangyang in hopes that he knows what you're talking about. If you had to say it, it would only make things more real.

“I don't know” Although your attention is focused on Lucas you realize how hard this must be for everyone. They're like family and now one of them is missing. You feel out of place for their grieving, sure you don't know if he is gone, but the possibility is there.

“He's gonna end up popping that ball,” You say as you stand away from Yangyang. “Talk to me if you need to”

Yangyang nods up at you and continues to stare blankly out the window. You sigh and walk towards the front door to the yard where Lucas is currently sitting on the edge of the porch, a smoke in his hand.

“I didn't know you smoked” You sit down next to him, regretting doing so as a wave of smoke hits you.

“I don't,” He says as he brings up a cigarette to his mouth.

“Right” You try to focus on something else, try to distract his mind although that isn't going to be easy. “Do you wanna watch a movie or something tonight? They finally added the new spiderman movie onto Netflix.”

“Do you want to watch it now?” He puts out the smoke and finally looks in your direction, his eyes are drained, the bags under his eyes tell you he hasn't slept even once these last few days. You stand and take his hand, taking him towards his room. He makes himself comfortable in bed while you sort out Netflix on your computer. But by the time you make it into bed yourself, he's already asleep. Not that you can blame him. You're just happy he's getting some rest. You close your laptop and pull him close to you, letting him snuggle into the crook of your neck and hold onto your body. His grip is surprisingly tight for someone who's asleep, maybe he just doesn't want to lose you either.

You don't remember being that tired, you don't even remember going to sleep. But the knock at the door wakes you up. You feel shattered as you climb out of bed, slipping out of Lucas’ arms. You open up the door to Hendery standing out of breath.

“Its Winwin”

“Those mother fuckers” Lucas searches round the mess of his room, ripping our draws and tearing up piles of clothes. He doesn't stop until he pulls out a pistol from his top drawer, taking it and tucking it into the back of his pants.

“Lucas please stop”

“How do you expect me to calm down Y/N?” He stops to stare at you and fear shots throughout your body.

“Winwin is ok now, there's no need to be this fed up”

“You think that's ok? Did you see him?” It was true, Winwin wasn't in the best condition. Bruises covering his body, blood oozing out of partly closed wounds. “I can't sit here and just pretend to be fine with that”

He sits on the floor and ties his shoelaces so tight you wouldn't be surprised if he loses circulation to his feet. “Lucas please don't go”

“I'm sorry” He stands and grabs your face, pulling you into a kiss that’s far to aggressive for your liking. But you take what you can get. Especially when you know its a goodbye kiss. 

“Kun please come back” You cry down the phone, the rest of Wayv watching. Lucas had only been gone an hour, but you haven't heard from him since then.

“Y/N you need to calm down and tell me what's happening” Kun tried his best to understand whatever nonsense you were sobbing down the phone, but was having trouble trying to focus on the road and what you were saying. Ten had enough of watching you struggle and decided to take the phone out of your hands.

“Lucas went after Taeyong.'' Ten doesn't waste any time on details and Kun finally understands the importance of this situation.

“Holy shit ok” The line is silent for a while as Kun tries to come up with a plan. “Meet me at Graham street, Y/N needs to stay back with Winwin”

They hang up the phone and get ready to leave, the tension is high but it gets worse when they see you grabbing your stuff as well. “Y/N you need to stay here”

“Why?” The room goes awkward at your tone and no one knows how to answer. “Lucas is my friend to you know? It's not fair.”

“Look, Kuns orders ok. Stay back” Ten finally breaks the silence, everyone continues getting ready.

“Fuck what Kun thinks, I am coming with you guys” Ten looks around at everyone else, they all just shrug.

“Fine”

“Guys, your one job was to not let her come,” Kuns says as if you can't hear him, it didn't take long for you all to arrive at your agreed meeting place. It started to look familiar, the same place you ran into Taeyong your first night here.

“Who cares? we don't have time for this” Ten is getting more fed up by the second.

“Ok Y/N you stick with me, everyone else goes round to the front” Kun moves away from his car and heads down the street, you on his trail. You start to get more anxious as you see the building from your first time here come into view. The same sick feeling bubbling up. Kun must notice your energy and stop for a second. “Are you going to be ok?”

You don't trust your words, simply nodding in response, you make your way to the back of the warehouse where the large doors are left open. Giving you a view of what's going on inside.

The sick feeling intensifies and suddenly your head is spinning. You feel like you're floating on adrenaline. Your vision goes blurry and a physical pain comes over you at the sight you see.

Lucas. On his knees. A gun pressed to his head. With Taeyong at the other end.

This is it.

#lucas #lucas imagines #lucas scenarios #lucas x reader #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct x reader #nct gang au #nct mafia au #mafia au #gang au #wayv #wayv imagines #wayv scenarios #wayv gang au #wayv mafia au #wayv x reader #kpop #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop x reader #nct

[wafflefries13]

The Consequences of Late Night Calls

Happy birthday to the world’s best blasty boy! 

This is the first fic I’ve written for tumblr, so let me know what you think!

Warnings: None, I think. Some cursing, some guy talks smack for a bit. 

Genre: Fluff

~~~~~~~~~~

The call shocked you out of a deep but impromptu sleep. You jerked up from the noise, a page of lecture notes sticking to your check. It fluttered back to the desk covered in its own mess of loose leaf documents, used textbooks that cost more than a weekend trip to Disney World, and a laptop missing three of its letter keys. 

You dragged your tongue against your teeth, trying to get rid of the cotton feel coating the inside of your mouth. Rubbing stars into your tired eyes, you wondered when exactly you had fallen asleep. Was it somewhere near memorizing the latin terminology for court rhetoric or around reading the case file and trial records you were going to be tested over on Monday? Deciding wondering was basically pointless, considering you had pretty  much forgotten all of it anyway, you pawed blindly around for your phone. 

“Hello?” You answered, eyes still closed, although it probably came out and more of a mumbled groan than anything else.  

“(Y/NNNNNNNNN)!” 

You pulled the phone away from your ear, wincing at the sudden loud noise. Blinking bleerally, you looked down at your phone. You had taken the caller ID picture a year ago, at a sorority Halloween party you barely remembered aside from the copious amounts of alcohol consumed followed by an ill-advised scavenger hunt that ended with a call to the police and the dean’s car somehow ending up in the agriculture department’s greenhouse crowded with Jack-O-lanterns. It was a profile shot of Bakugo Katsuki, his mouth opened in a mid-yell scowl, as was his standard expression, and eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. One hand extended to try and block the camera, the other clutching a brown bottle. He was wearing a fantasy barbarian king costume, chest bare to show off the taut muscles he worked so hard for all of high school to get. When he’d shown up in it, or, rather, when Kirishima had dragged him along in his own dragonborn costume, you couldn’t believe he still had it. You remembered sitting in your basement in 9th grade, pricking your fingers with a sewing needle as you and the rest of your newly formed D&D group, Bakugo and Kirishima included, spent way too much time and effort into creating your costumes. 

Rubbing at the bridge of your nose in a vain attempt to chase away the headache you could already feel forming, you brought the phone back to your ear. You could hear the low thump of bass heavy music in the background. 

“Hi, Suki,” You said, trying not to sound condescending, but it came out like that anyway. 

“Hey!” He said sharply. The rest of his reply was slurred smooth. “I told you not to call me that.” 

You smirked. “It’s cute.” 

“It’s embarrassing! ‘M not cute.” 

“No, you’re calling me at-” You pulled the phone away again to check the time. “Katsuki, it’s like two in the morning, what the hell?” 

You heard someone shout something on the other side of the line that Katsuki mumbled a reply to. To you he said, “Was thinking about you.” 

You felt yourself blush despite yourself. “You were thinking about me?” 

There was a clunk and a bump. You could imagine him falling against a wall and sliding down to sit until the room stopped spinning. “Yeah. I don’t like it.” 

You ignored the jab in your heart. “Well, thanks.” 

“It keeps happening. I’ll just be, like, doing stuff, and then I just think, ‘What would (Y/N) think of that?’ ‘I wonder what (Y/N)’s doing right now.’ ‘(Y/N) would know what to do now. She’s so smart. And her hands look so soft. And her eyes are so pretty.’” He was quiet for a second. “It’s annoying. I can’t stop thinking about you. And it’s worse when you’re here.” There was a shuffling as you heard him try to stand up then give up again. “Why aren’t you here? I want you here.” 

You were wide awake now. You clenched and unclenched your hand, trying to process the information your obviously drunk friend had just confessed. Your stomach churned in a mix of anticipation, anxiety, and straight up butterflies. 

What the hell did all of that mean? Well, of course you knew what it meant, or you knew what it meant when spoken by a sober person of sound mind and body. But there was no way, you tried to rationalize, that The Bakugo Katsuki, the guy you’d known since freshman year of high school when he’d punched a guy who had flipped up your uniform skirt on the first day, the guy who had surprised just about everyone in home economics when he busted out a three tiered cake like it was no one’s business, the guy whos ego was big enough to have its own gravitational pull, was confessing his feelings to you in a drunk rant at two in the morning. 

“Katsuki,” You said in a soft voice. “I-” 

There was a retching sound from the other end of the line. Katsuki coughed, tried to say something, then threw up again. “Aw, fuck.” 

That headache was back with avengence now. You sighed, looking for your keys. “Katsuki, where are you?” 

“Uhh, on campus? At the Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever house. There’s a party. Why aren’t you here?” 

“You know I hate all the Greek life bs. Stay where you are, okay? I’m coming to get you. You’re completely wasted.” 

“‘M not. I can handle what I drink.” There was another pause before he wretched again. 

“Did you just throw up again?” 

“...No.” 

“Cool. I’ll be there in ten.” 

You didn’t wait for him to respond before hanging it. You didn’t think your heart could take it if he kept going on like he had been. Grabbing your keys and heading out of your crowded studio apartment, you hopped in your car to go save your drunk friend from making any other ill advised decisions that night. 

You realized that you were probably over thinking the whole phone call as you drove through deserted streets. You couldn’t help it, it was a bad habit you had formed as a kid that now  made you obsess over court documents and testimonies in class. But now, instead of helping, it was picking you apart. What did Katsuki’s tone imply when he was talking to you just now? Could you trust the tone of an inebriated person? What did he mean when he said he thought about you a lot? You’d known each other for years now, being involved in almost all the same activities. Wouldn’t it be natural to think about someone you spent so much time with? But you’d known Kirishima for just as long, not to mention the rest of the self-named “Baku-Squad.” You’d never gotten a late night drunk call from any of them. Heck, Katsuki had known Izuku way longer than he had known you, and you were pretty dang sure Katsuki had never called him going on and on about how he always thought about him. 

Stopping at a red light, you pressed your forehead into the soft faux-leather of your steering wheel, willing your thoughts to calm down and just come to a rational conclusion already. Expect, you know, a rational conclusion that wasn’t that the guy you had carried a torch for for almost as long as you had known him might actually have feelings for you back. 

You turned on to the street lined with sororities and fraternities across from the main campus. You had to slam on your breaks almost immediately to avoid running over a tipsy, giggling co-ed who was stumbling out into the road. She didn’t even look up at you. 

You didn’t know exactly which house Katsuki was stranded at, considering you could see at least three different parties all going on at first glance. His “Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever” wasn’t very helpful, either, considering all the Greek letters adorning the houses blended together in your mind at some point. And you really didn’t want to tramp through a bunch of different houses tonight. 

Thankfully, you were saved the trouble when you saw Kirishima’s 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle park half off the curb in front of one of the houses. You’d know that car anywhere. Kirishima had dragged your group to various scrap yards and auto-repair stores all summer after he got his license, the first of you all to do so, in an effort to fix up the worn down Chevelle that he’d bought for a hundred bucks and a turkey sandwich. 

You parked on the other side of the street then jogged across to the house that was practically vibrating with heavy music and Greek life energy. Stepping over a semi-conscious frat boy laying in the doorway, you scanned around the house for any sign of Katsuki’s pomeranian-puff-ball hair. 

You spotted Denki lounging on a couch, a lampshade on his head and a tangle of phone chargers clutched in his fist. His hand sparked every now and then as he used his quirk to recharge the collection of phones. 

You lifted up the edge of the lampshade. “Hey there, Pikachu.” 

“Heeeeeey~” He said, giving you a thumbs up. You could already tell he was too far gone, although you didn’t know if it was from drinking or the over use of his quirk. 

“(Y/N)!” You heard a voice call behind you. A body fell heavily against your back. Sero wrapped his arms around you in a backwards hug. “Where you been? We missed you!” 

“Studying. I’m boring, remember? I’m looking for Katsuki, you seen him around?” 

Sero snickered. “Bakugo, huh? He’s been looking for you for a long time, right, Denki?” 

“Heeeeeey~” 

You swallowed hard. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” 

Sero snickered again, flopping on the couch next to Denki. “Can’t tell. Part of the bro code. And he said he’d kill me.” 

“That does sound like Katsuki.” 

Sero covered his eyes with his arm, head leaning back. With a wide smile, he waved his hand in the vague direction to the back door. “I think he’s out by the pool or something.” 

You waved bye. “Thanks, I’ll go check it out. You guys take care of yourselves, okay?” 

“Look at ‘em go,” Sero said to Denki as you left. “You think they’ll have a spring wedding?” 

“Heeeeeey~” 

*~~~~* 

You managed to weave your way through the crowd of bodies clogging the house to finally spill out into the back yard. You had no idea how people were able to stay this energized this late into the night with this many other people around. You remembered once being stuck at another party, early on in your college days. When it became super clear you didn’t want to be there, overwhelmed by the noise, the crush of bodies, and the suffocation of social enterprise, Katsuki had dragged Kirishima over to you, planting him in front of you as your ‘extrovert shield.’  He’d stayed with you behind the boisterous redhead for the rest of the night. 

You wondered if Katsuki remembered doing that, if he remembered any of the small nice gestures he did for you over the years. And now, with his call, with what Sero said, with your over analyzing brain, you were dissecting every interaction you could remember. Was the time he opened a door for you a signal? Was the reason he would ask to study with you for chemistry, when he was way better in practically every subject than you, just so he could be close to you? Were the times he had given you his jacket when you were cold meant to be a more intimate moment? 

God, you were going to go crazy. 

Walking around the pool, you finally spotted the hot-headed blond. He was sitting slouched over on the end of one of the reclining pool chairs, forearms braced on his knees.  You almost called out to him, stopping cold when you saw the girl behind him. She had draped herself over his back, chin rested in the crook of his neck, one had massaging his shoulder, the other conspicuously sneaking under the hem of his shirt to rub circles on his abs. 

You clenched and unclenched your hands, worry gnawing at you as a headache at the back of your skull. Had something changed between the time he had called you and now? Had there been nothing there to change at all? Had you been misreading this situation the whole time? 

Katsuki looked up, his permanently affixed scowl even deeper. The second his jewel-red eyes met yours, you felt your heart skip a beat. He jumped to his feet so fast the girl behind him fell back against the chair. He tried marching over to you, which was made only slightly less intimidating by the drunk sway to his step. 

You didn’t remember him being so tall. You’d just seen him this afternoon. There was a flushed blush across his face, adding a surprising softness. Were his arms always that strong looking? Were his eyes that piercing? Was his jaw that strong? 

“You came,” He said, voice rough as whiskey soaking into gravel. 

You spread your hands. “Well, you said my name three times, so, here I am!” You laughed nervously, trying to ignore how his gaze pinned you down. 

He took another step towards you, hand reading up. “(Y/N), I-” 

His cheeks turned from pink to green. Lurching to the side, he vomited into the pool. You tried to help him back up, hunched over and trying to catch his breath. The crowd of people around you groaned in disgust before rolling in to sarcastic applause. Katsuki flipped them off. 

“Alright, Suki,” You said, rubbing his back. “Let’s get you back home.” 

He grumbled, leaning his full weight against you. You almost stumbled and fell with the sudden shift of balance. Katsuki slid his arm around your waist, hand firmly grasping your hip, as if he was the one trying to prevent you from a drunken stumble. His fingers felt like fire through your clothes. 

You decided to go around the house instead of trying to push your way through it. Soon you were making your way across the street. It took some maneuvering to unlock and open the passenger door. You practically dropped Katsuki in where his head fell back with a groan. You grabbed his seat belt and stretched across him to fasten it. It wasn’t until he started petting your hair that your realized your position of half-way laying across his lap. You jerked back, some of your hair getting caught in his fingers. He made a disappointed sound at the loss of it. 

You slid back into the driver's seat, trembling hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. You had to take a few steadying breaths before you were ready to start the car. Pulling out of the neighborhood, you glanced over at Katsuki. His eye brows were furrowed, eyes closed, mouth pulled in a small frown. 

God, he looked adorable. 

You hit the break harder than you meant to at the light. Adorable? Where the hell did that thought come from? He’d probably be furious if he knew you ever thought that. 

But…

You risked another look at him. When he let his face relax like this, you could see the slight chub that still clung to his cheeks. Another thing he would hate to know that you thought was how much you loved the softness that it leant him. It was cute. 

Almost without your realizing it, you lifted your hand. You were overcome with the sudden urge to poke his cheek. A car horn blared behind you when your finger was less than an inch from his face. You let out an undignified squeak, hands slamming back to the wheel. Katsuki grumbled and turned in the seat, head resting against the window. You could feel the blush burning up your face. 

A few minutes later, you pulled back to the apartment complex. You both lived in the same building, Katsuki directly below your own unit. And now you were overthinking his reason for not living on campus. 

When you opened the passenger door, Katsuki almost fell out. You jerked forward to catch him then dragged him out. He half woke up, as feeble on his legs as a newborn horse. 

You lugged him through the lobby. He was muttering under his breath, but most of the words you could make out were curses. Not unusual for him. You pressed the button for the elevator repeatedly. It just blinked back at you. You sighed in frustration. They had been doing maintenance on your building all week, but now might have been the absolute worst time to do the elevator. 

You shook Katsuki’s shoulder a little bit. His head jostled like a bobble-head. “Suki, I’m gonna need your help here for a minute.” 

His head lolled forward, forehead coming down to press to yours. In a quiet voice, he whispered, “I’d do anything for you.” 

You shoved him upright, face burning. “Then walk up the damn stairs yourself!” 

Despite that, you still ended up half-carrying him up four flights of stairs. You were uncomfortably sweaty when you reached the door to Katsuki’s apartment. The two of you had traded copies of your apartment keys when you had moved in. “In case something happens to your dumb ass and I need to come save you,” He had said. He would frequently stop by, usually when you were hours deep into an all-nighter. He’d bring his laptop and work on whatever 12 page essay way due on your bed while you poured over case reports. You’d sit in silence, just together, sharing the same space, content with nothing more than knowing the other was nearby. Or he’d bring you real food to make sure you weren’t just eating ramen all the time. In turn, you’d pull him out for game night with the squad, make sure he’d actually call his mother once in a while, and lend an ear to his semi-nightly rants on whoever he decided to hate that night. 

You fumbled with the keys, jamming the key in the lock then pushing it open with your shoulder that wasn’t currently occupied by a half-asleep, full-drunk boy who had at least 50 pounds and ten inches on you. 

There was always an expectation with the rooms of single college boys. Greasy pizza boxes, empty bottles of booze displayed like expensive decor, at least one poster of a half-naked girl somewhere, probably a basket of clothes that should have been washed weeks ago. And while you knew plenty of guys who fit that description, Katsuki defied expectation. His apartment was always immaculate. His shoes were lined neatly by the door, a calendar above his desk  color-coded with assignment due dates, bed made. Katsuki may give off the persona of a punk, but you knew he was a straight-laced nerd through and through.  

With the last of your strength, you lugged him across the room, dropping him on his bed. With a groan, you stretched your arms up until you heard a satisfying pop in your back. Hands on your hips, you watched as Katsuki moaned, burying his face in his pillow and pulling his feet up from the floor. You sat on the end of the bed, tugging his feet to you to unlace his shoes. You let them fall haphazardly to the floor, too tired to care about his level of neatness.  

You grabbed a bucket from his hall closet, putting it next to the head of his bed for when he inevitably woke up vomiting in the morning. Checking his bathroom, you put a couple of painkillers and a glass of water on the nightstand with a post-it note saying “Drink Me.” 

Brushing your hands off, you looked around and checked your work. Satisfied that he wouldn’t kill himself between now and when you would inevitably check on him in the morning, you decided it was finally time to head back upstairs and get some well deserved sleep. 

But… 

You turned back at the door. Katsuki was splayed like a starfish, gently snoring with his mouth wide open. You also noticed his blushing red fluffy cheeks. 

You tapped the door knob a few times before sighing in surrender to temptation and turnin back. You knelt down next to the bed. For a moment, you just watched him sleep. He looked so peaceful now. You reached out. Your index finger sunk into his cheek like it was a marshmallow. You couldn’t believe you had never done this before. God, he really was adorable. 

Your thoughts were abruptly cut off as Katsuki’s hand shot up and grabbed your wrist with an iron grip. With a shriek, you tried to scramble backwards. Katsuki lazily opened his eyes, not at all bothered by your struggles. With seemingly no effort on his part, he tugged you forward. Off balance, you fell into his chest. Katsuki wrapped his arms around you in a bear hug, slinging a leg over yours, trapping you on the bed. 

“Katsuki!” You hissed. You squirmed in his hold, not getting any extra room. He just hummed, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. You were pretty sure your face was hot enough to start a fire. “Katsuki, let me go!” 

“No,” He mumbled. His voice rumbled against your skin sending shivers through your whole body. 

“Katsuki!” 

“You can’t leave. If you leave, you won’t come back.” 

You stopped struggling. “What are you talking about?” 

He squeezed you tighter. “I’m loud. I get angry real easy. I fight a lot. And you…” He trailed off, his breath catching and rattling in his chest. “You’re so much better than me. You’re nice and smart and talented and pretty and caring and… and…” You could feel the hot tears landing on your skin. He was starting to shake. His grip had loosened enough for you to get out, but instead you brought your arms up and pulled him in closer. “If I let you go, you’ll see how much better you are than me. And you’ll leave. You’ll leave me because you’re better and you deserve so much better. But I’m a selfish bastard and I just want you for myself because I love you so damn much.” 

Your heart dropped into your stomach. You wiggled your hand up, threading your hand into his hair and tilting his head to look up at you. 

“I love you too,” You said softly. “And I’m not going anywhere.” 

Katsuki crushed you to his chest, letting out another loud sob. You could feel hot tears pressing against your eyes. You had no idea Katsuki felt this way about anything; about you, about himself, about your relationship. 

But one thing you knew for sure: You loved Bakugo Katsuki. 

~~~

The first thing Katsuki noticed when he woke up was the head ache. His head felt like he had a railroad spike jammed through his temples. God, what did he do last night? There was the party at Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever house. It’d been fine for a while, hanging out with the guys, playing beer pong, winning some extra cash from freshman in poker (where did he put that money anyway?). And then…

And then someone had said your name. He’d heard it across the room, an amazing feat in and of itself, but his ears were trained for any news of you. He’d jerked up right when he heard it, missing his shot at the beer pong table. He gladly took his drink and went prowling through the house. Who had said your name? Were you here? Were you coming?  

It might have been selfish, he knew how much you hated loud crowds, but damn it, he wanted you here. He remembered the last Greek life party you had been at. He’d lost you at some point between getting into an argument with that damn Deku and pulling Denki down from a keg stand. He’d finally found you huddled into some back corner, looking like a rabbit about to dart from a hungry fox (he wouldn’t mind being that fox, honestly, he could eat you right up.) You’d lost the color in your face, hands shaking as you clutched your red Solo cup almost hard enough for your nails to pierce the plastic. 

He snatched Kirishima by his collar as he carved a path through the room. He planted the extroverted red-head in front of you, creating an extrovert shield between himself and the love of his life you. He’d spent the rest of the night talking to you. Nothing special, he couldn’t even really remember what about. But he did remember the relaxed slope of your shoulders, the spark in your eyes, the smile that played on your lips at whatever lame joke he had just made. 

Back in the present (or last night, whatever), he was still stalking through the halls looking for whoever had mentioned you. He heard it again, the tail end of your name, coming from the living room. 

“-(/N) never had it so good.” There he was, lounging along the bottom stairs with a smug look on his face as he regaled the small crowd he had attracted. Katsuki recognized him as one of those legacy kids, the one who showed up to the first day of orientation in a sleek black Bugatti and took up three parking spaces, talked in almost every one of his classes when he even bothered to show up, and was, without a doubt at every party on or off campus. 

And now he was telling a story about you. What were you ever doing with an asshole like him? 

“You would never guess it from how she dresses, you know,” The guy continued, lazily waving his half-empty beer bottle. “But she is stacked.” 

Katsuki tensed up, his heart jumping into his throat. He pushed aside the crowd until he stood right in front of the bragger on the stairs. “What did you just say?” He asked through clenched teeth. “You're talking about (Y/N) (L/N), right?” 

He lazily swept his gaze up, grinning wide when he saw Katsuki. “Yeah, (Y/N)? You know, she comes across as a frigid bitch, but let me tell you, she’s an incredible lay.” Katsuki’s vision went red. The crowd started to subtly shuffle away, feeling the cold change in atmosphere. “Not much besides that, honestly. Thank god her tits and ass are amazing, cause her face sure wasn’t doing it for me. Super boring, too, heard she’s failing her classes. Oh, well. Hey, I could use a side-piece when I’m running my own firm, you know?” 

The asshole never saw it coming. In the span of a heart beat, Katsuki had grabbed his designer jacket and hoisted him off the stairs, pinning him to the wall so his feet kicked to try and reach the ground. 

“You listen to me, asshole,” Katsuki hissed. “You never talk about (Y/N) again. You never look at her, you never talk to your shit-stain friends about her, you sure as fuck never tell another lie about her, or so help me, you’ll get to find out what color your liver is.” 

Katsuki was half-way sure the jerk had pissed his pants. He dropped him in a heap, landing in the puddle of spilled beer on the floor. He brushed his hand off on his jeans, eager to get whatever germs the gossip had off him.  

He was almost out of ear shot when he heard the rich kid spit and say, “Fine. She’s probably crawling with it if you’re dicking her down.” 

The kid’s head made a dent in the wall as he richoched back from the impact of Katsuki’s punch. He would easily have a black eye and a broken nose, the chipped tooth would just be a  bonus. 

Katsuki’s head was fuzzy with rage, stalked through the house, bee-lining it to the nearest source of inebriation. How dare he? How fucking dare that absolute ass-wipe ever even think of saying such horrible things about you? He wasn’t even worth knowing your name, much less saying it. Not to mention the fact he must be blind to think you were anything less than stunning. Ever since he had known you, you had been nothing but kind and smart and caring and funny and…

“Baku-bro, you doing okay?” 

Katsuki didn’t realize how tight he was holding his fists until he relaxed. His nails had made half-moon indents in his palms, his knuckles brushed red from the punch. 

Kirishima had his mouth pulled down in that stupid puppy dog pout. “I’m fine,” Katsuki brushed him off. He grabbed a beer out of an iced cooler, twisting off the cap in a single motion and chugging half the bottle. 

“Well, that’s good, cause I don’t think Tim Flood is making it out of here without a few stitches.” 

“Good.” Katsuki finished the beer and chucked it into a recycle bin. He grabbed another and stalked out of the room. Everything felt too hot, too tight. His head was pounding. If you were here, you’d get a bag of ice and press it against his forehead. You’d probably call him an idiot for getting into another fight, that he needed to learn how to manage his temper better. He’d call you a dumbass but let you lead him away somewhere dark and quiet, away from all the other more insufferable dumbasses. You’d find some pain killers, get him some water, because that’s just the kind of caring person you were. Maybe you’d bring him upstairs, lead him to an unoccupied bedroom. The two of you would sit together on the bed, maybe just a little too close. You’d hand him the water, his hand would brush against yours. You’d look down, shy, blushing cutely. He’d lean forward, thread his hand through your incredibly soft hair, angle your face up to him. Your plush lips would part slightly and he’d lean forward and - 

“Are you sure you’re good?” Kirishima asked, abruptly cutting off Katsuki’s impromptu fantasy. “Cause you don’t look so good.” Katsuki bit his tongue. “Is it because of what that guy said about (Y/N)?” Katsuki whipped around, glaring daggers. Kirishima smiled and put his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, bro, it’s okay! No one believed him, anyway.” 

Katsuki scoffed, taking a swig of the beer. “(Y/N)’s too good for him anyway.” 

“I bet you think (Y/N)’s too good for everyone here, right?” 

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means you need to hurry up and tell (Y/N) you like her!” Sero shouted, jumping in out of nowhere. 

Katsuki dropped his bottle, Kirishima catching it just in time, and grabbed Sero by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. Sero just grinned his stupid, wide grin. 

“Come on, Katsuki,” Denki said, slinging an arm around Katsuki’s shoulders. “We all know you’ve had a thing for (Y/N) since high school. Why don’t you just put us all out of our misery and tell her already?!” 

Katsuki felt his face heat up. “I don’t- I haven’t - Fuck you!”  Katsuki couldn’t remember why he was friends with these three idiots as they all burst out into laughter.

 He snatched his bottle back and pushed through the crowd. He needed some air. He heard Sero yell after him, “You have to tell her eventually!” 

And… That was mostly it. Katsuki’s memories of last night sort of started to trail off after that. He knew that he drank, he drank a lot. At some point he ended up by the pool. And maybe he’d called someone? Oh, hell, he hoped he hadn’t called someone. 

His eyes snapped open at the soft groan. There you were, just inches away from his face, fast asleep and tucked in his arms. You were pressed close, breasts pushing against his chest, legs tangled with his, one hand clutching his shirt. Your lips were parted ever so slightly, breathing heavy and even. 

And you were so fucking close. 

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His arms tightened around you and he tensed. How the hell did this happen? Did you actually come to the party last night? When, and why? What had called you down there-? 

Oh. Oh, the call! He had called you last night? Some time in his drunken haze he must have figured out to bypass the timed lock he had put on it specifically to avoid calling people with a too-honest tongue. But had you…?  Nervously, he looked down. He sighed in relief. You were both still dressed. At least that was one mistake he knew he hadn’t made. 

Alright, that was one problem. Now, on to the next one: How was he going to get out of here without waking you up? Craning his head around, he checked out the room. Wait, this was his room. He was in his apartment! A picture of last night started to form in his mind. He’d called you, blabbering God knows what, and then you’d been a good person (why were you such a good person?) and had come to get him, to make sure he was okay. And then what? He’d somehow seduced you into his bed? No, it was more likely you had stayed to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit, maybe sat on the bed because it was the middle of the night and you were exhausted, and then… This. 

Okay, okay, no, this was fine, he could fix this. He could slip out, let you keep sleeping. He’d make some breakfast in the kitchen and then you’d wake up, wander in rubbing the sleep from your eyes in that cute way you did when you pulled an all-nighter studying. He’d chastise you for lugging his drunk ass up here, for being out so late at night. You’d wave him off, compliment his cooking, tell him to take better care of himself, and then smile up at him with that blindingly beautiful smile and sparkling eyes. 

“Morning.” Katsuki yelped at your greeting. He stared, wide-eyed, down at you, as you look back up at him lazily with those sparkling eyes. “It’s kinda hard to breathe here.” He realized then just how tight he was holding you. He jerked backward, his shout of surprise cut off as he fell off the bed. He rubbed his sore hip, looking up when he heard your giggle. You were leaning over the bed, smiling shyly when he caught you staring. 

He gulped hard, feeling his face burning up. “Hi.” 

You tucked a loose threat of hair behind your ear. “Hi.” 

He should say something. He needed to say something. God, why wasn’t he saying something? 

“I-“ Katsuki stopped with an incomplete thought in his mouth. He suddenly felt uncomfortably hot, his stomach clenching and throat going dry. Your face dropped as you lunged forward, dragging a bucket in front of him (where did that even come from?). He surged forward, clenching the sides of the bucket in a white knuckled grip, and threw up. 

You slid off the bed and knelt next to him. You rubbed small circles in his back, whispering small comforts as he coughed up bile and alcohol and who knows what else. You reached over behind him and grabbed a glass of water from his nightstand. 

“Here,” You said. “Rinse and spit. Don’t swallow or gargle, it’ll just mess with your gag reflex.” Rubbing the spike of pain growing in his forehead, he did what you said. When he caught his breath, he accepted the pain killers you had and dry swallowed them. You really had prepared for everything, huh? 

Katsuki shoved the bucket away with his foot, leaning back against the bed. “Fuck…” 

You hummed in response and scooted to sit next to him. “So,” You said. 

“So,” He said back. 

“I don’t suppose you remember much from last night?” 

He clenched his jaw, mouth going dryer than it already was, if that was possible. He tried to laugh, but it sounded forced and strained, even to him. “Hey, we’re both still wearing pants, right?” You didn’t laugh back. 

“So that’s a no then?” The seriousness with which you said that made him pause. 

“I, uh, think I called you?” 

“MmHmm. You didn’t sound too great, so I came to pull you out.” 

“Huh. Thanks for that.” 

“Yup.” You paused for a second. “Do you remember… anything else you said?” 

Fuck. 

“Uhh, I owe you breakfast?” 

You looked away. “Is there anything you maybe told Sero that you wouldn’t want him to tell me?” 

Double fuck. 

“If this is about Halloween last year, Mina was the one who brought the Ouija board.” He smirked at you, waiting for you to laugh with him. Instead you didn’t even look up, staring a hole in the carpet with the intensity of your gaze. 

You let out a sigh through your nose, pushing off your knees to stand. “I’m gonna head out,” You said, rubbing the back of your head and still not looking at him. 

Katsuki jumped up, immediately regretting as his head began swimming. “(Y/N), wait-“ He cut himself off with another surge of nausea and lurched towards the bucket. 

“Katsuki,” You said, sounding frustrated. “Look, I…” You sighed, running a hand through your hair and turning back to him. “We’ve known each other for a long time now, right? And for all the time I’ve known you, you’ve been stubborn and pig-headed and aggressive and just, you know, you. But still, in all that time, despite everything, I still…” You pressed your lips, looking for the right words. “I’m happy when I’m around you, Katsuki. I feel at ease, I feel protected, I feel like I can be better at anything. And I’ve thought about this a lot, so much that it makes my head spin and my heart hurt, but through all the trouble I still think it’s worth it. Because at the end of the day it means I still get to be with you and sometimes I just feel like that’s enough, but now I…” Your lip was trembling, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes. Katsuki wanted nothing more than to take a big step forward and wrap you in the biggest, tightest hug of your life. Finally, you sighed in defeat. “But if you can’t say it, if the One and Only Katsuki Bakugo can’t say it, then how the hell can I?” 

Your voice broke on the last word. Katsuki was so stunned and suddenly pinned with guilt that he couldn’t move when you spun on your heels and rushed out of his apartment. 

Oh, fuck. 

~~~

“Idiot,” You murmured to yourself as you fled up the apartment stairs, furiously wiping at your eyes to get rid of the oncoming tears. “Idiot, idiot, idiot.” By the time you reached your apartment and slammed the door behind you, you weren’t sure if you were talking about Katsuki or yourself. 

You felt sick. Anxiety gnawed at your mind like a starving coyote. Had you really just confessed your feelings to Katsuki? Had you really just confessed your feelings to Katsuki like that? Would he ever speak to you again? Would things just become too awkward that you’d be edged out of your friend group? They had known Katsuki much longer than they had known you, after all. God, what if he was calling Kirishima right now and telling him about the disaster of a morning, after you had taken advantage of his blitz out state and slept in the same bed with him? 

Well, no. Kirishima was probably still knocked  out from his own night of heavy imbibing. Not to mention that even he, the most kind-hearted and patient person you knew, would have to draw a line at listening to Katsuki rant while dealing with a massive hangover. 

And no, Katsuki wouldn’t do that to you. Despite his rough deminor, his abrasive personality, and his profane tongue, Katsuki was actually a sweetheart deep down. Maybe really deep down, but still. He wouldn’t be so intentionally cruel, even if you told him that you shared all of his baby pictures of him playing in his All Might onesie online. 

So then why were you still huddled on a heap on the floor, back pressed against the front door, crying? Why was this pit of loneliness blooming in your chest?  

You yelped at the sudden banging on the door. Who could be here so early in the morning? You had paid rent this month, right? You sniffed, rubbing your eyes and smoothing out your clothes. You hoped your cheeks weren’t the blotchy red they got whenever you were upset. You took a deep breath to steady your voice for whoever was outside. 

Opening the door, you looked up at a wide-eyed Katsuki, panting hard with determination set on his face. You groaned internally. 

“Katsuki,” You began,” About what I said, I’m sorr-” 

Without waiting for you to finish, Katsuki surged forward. You tried to take a step backward, almost falling, but he caught you, a strong grip on your shoulders. Without waiting for you to get your bearings, Katsuki leaned in, smashing his lips against yours. 

It wasn’t a graceful kiss, all clashing teeth and urgency rather than romance. His eyes were screwed closed. He stayed pressed against you, not moving, grip so tight on your upper arms you thought there might be a mark later. 

Just as suddenly as he had come forward, he jerked back, but kept his hold on you. You both breathed heavily, eyes locked. Your mind whirled, a hundred voices shouting at the same time. For once, you decided to ignore them and let your body do what it wanted. 

You reached up, wrapping your arms around Katsuki’s neck and pulled him back in. This kiss was controlled, soft and sweet. His hands dropped from your shoulders to wrap around your waist. He pressed in harder, adding desperation in the kiss, as if he thought you would vanish any second. When you both pulled away this time, he leaned his forehead against yours, noses bumping into each other, sharing the same breath. 

His voice was rough. “Sorry,” He said. “I had to brush my teeth first.”

#bnha #bnha x reader #bnha fanfic #fluff #happy birthday katsuki #fanfic #i'm a sap for a happy ending #bakugo katsuki #bakugo katsuki x reader

[thiswasinevitableid]

For a fic prompt! How about Duck and Indrid are childhood best friends who are college roommates. Indrid has been in love with Duck for years, but when Duck starts dating Minerva it throws Indrid into a deep depression. Ideally Duck and Indrid do get together in the end (though hopefully Duck and Minerva’s breakup isn’t nasty) and you can get as angsty as you’d like! Honestly the angstier the better is my motto! Also I’m all for Indrid still having future sight, if you’d like! Thank you SO MUCH!

Here you go!

Quick content note: it contains trans Duck, including a scene where Indrid takes his side when he comes out in PE and, it’s implied, that coming out is not well recieved.

Indrid Cold lays face down on his bed. His phone is shoved under the black cotton of his pillow case, and he’s drawn the windows shut against the warm August air. 

This is a misery of his own making, he knows this. He can’t decide if the fact that it’s a misery nearly two decades in the making is impressive or pathetic. 

To understand the origins of it, one has to rewind the tape of his life back quite a ways.

——————————————————-

Duck Newton is six years old and hunting for miners lettuce in his backyard, when he feels like he’s being watched. 

Looking up, he finds a face framed with shaggy dark hair, glasses perched on a pointy nose, peeking over the fence at him. As soon as the face sees him, it ducks back down. 

Weird. 

He goes back to foraging, only to find the face watching him again a minute later. This time, when it disappears, he clambers up the oak tree alongside the fence and scoots carefully out onto a limb that sticks out into the neighboring yard. The face, which belongs to a boy about his age, is staring up at him, as if he expected Duck to appear. He’s standing on the edge of the decorative fountain the old neighbors put in the yard. 

“Why’re you watchin me?”

“I wanted to know what you were doing.” 

“How come?”

“I’m bored. My dads are putting the house together and I don’t want to draw anymore.” He points to a stack of pictures, next to some crayons that are melting in the sun. 

Duck thinks; he hasn’t had anyone to play with since school got out. Leo, who lives down the block, is nine, so not as interested in having Duck trailing after him like a little brother as he used to be.

“…You wanna go see a huge crawdad?”

The other boy perks up, “I have no idea what that is.  But yes.”

“C’mon, meet me in the front yard. What’s your name?”

“Indrid.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“What’s yours?” Indrid crosses his arms, eyebrow raised

“Duck.”

Indrid stares at him, wide mouth curling up at one side. His stare is a bit unnerving, and Duck feels the need to explain himself.

“It’s a nickname.”

————————————————————

“I think that’s the same large one from last year.” Indrid peers over his sketchpad, staring down at a crawdad scuttling through the clear creek.

“Told you we shoulda put a colored tape on them or somethin so we could keep track.” Duck looks at the crustacean, and then back at the project he’s working on.

They’re nine years old, hazy and sleepy in the summer afternoon. This part of the creek is shaded, keeps them hidden from passersby and parents alike (they’ve learned to tell at least one parent where they’re going, after Greg, one of Indrid’s dad’s, panicked looking for them). 

“What are you making?” Indrid wiggles next to him in the grass, gnawing his pencil as Duck shows him. 

“S’a reed raft. I’m gonna see how far I can float it down the river.”

“I will draw a flag for it.” Indrid scribbles, and Duck grins at him. He continues, “I’m glad you’re back. I hate when you got to your uncle’s during the summer. I have no one to talk to.”

“You could talk to Dani.”

“She’s busy a lot.”

Duck looks a little guilty, “Did you get the postcards?”

“Uh huh.” Indrid nods, smiling at his friend to show there’s no harm done. He knows it’s not up to Duck where he goes. The postcards are pinned to his wall, along with his own drawings, some horror movie posters, and the postcards from the last two summers. 

“Oh, look at what I found while we were at the lake.” Duck reaches into his pocket, pulling out a smooth, wiggly-striped stone, “Uncle Jeff says it’s agate.” 

He holds it out and Indrid takes it, runs his fingers along the smooth, cool surface. It feels lovely. And it reminds him of what he likes most about being Duck’s friend; Duck can make anything, even a rock, seem interesting and special. 

Indrid is reminded of another reason he is lucky to have Duck the next morning. 

All the adults are down in the living room, talking worriedly. There’s been a car crash on the nearby highway, and one of the trucks was carrying something toxic. The school is closed, and everyone has been told to stay home because the air could be unsafe. 

Indrid is under all his blankets, his sketchbook thrown to the other side of the room.

“‘Drid?” The door creaks as Duck enters the bedroom. 

He wants to beg him to hide under the covers with him. He wants to tell him to go away. 

He sniffs, wipes his nose on his arm, and hears Duck turn towards the bed. The covers slowly lift, and Indrid blinks blearily, tearily up at him.

“Have you been cryin?” Duck looks worried. 

He nods. 

“Did you know someone who got hurt?”

“No. I, I saw it happen. In my head. Over and over last night. I thought I was imagining it. But then it happened. Th-that happens a lot, ever since my birthday. It’s like, like I see things and then sometimes they happen and sometimes they don’t. I draw them but, but I’m afraid if my dad’s find out they’ll, they’ll think I’m wrong, somethings wrong with me.” 

As he’s talking, Duck sits down next to him, rests his arm around his shoulders. 

“Nothin’s wrong with you ‘Drid. This is weird, but it don’t make you bad. You should tell you dads. They’re nice, they’ll help you.” He squeezes Indrid’s arm, smiling at him as he rests his head on his shoulder, “I’ll help you too.” He slips the agate from his pocket and into Indrid’s hands, moves their fingers over it in tandem until the motion soothes Indrid’s breathing down, then tucks it into Indrid’s pocket.

————————————————————————————–

“You okay ‘Drid?” Duck plops down on a cafeteria bench Kepler Middle School, Indrid poking glumly at his fruit salad. 

“We had oral presentations today. I did mine on my moth.” He taps the jar in front of him. A week or so ago it had contained a caterpillar that he and Duck had identified as belonging to a Banded Tiger Moth. Indrid had decided to raise it into adulthood, Duck helping him figure out which weeds to feed it before it went into its cocoon. When it emerges, he and Duck have the perfect spot picked to release it.

“What’s wrong with your moth?”

“Nice glasses, mothman!” A voice yells, two boys high-fiving when Indrid shrinks in on himself. 

“Hey, fuck you, mothman rules!” Duck thanks his lucky stars none of the cafeteria monitors heard him. He recognizes those two; they’re in Indrid’s CORE class with him, meaning the nickname has already spread. Indrid, with his tics and his tendency to finish people’s sentences, his glasses and scraggly appearance, has been pegged as a target for months. It makes Duck’s blood boil to see them turn something Indrid spent time looking after into an insult. 

That night, he grabs a sharpie and one of his grey t-shirts. 

The next day, he turns up with “Mothman Rules” scrawled on his chest. Indrid’s smile is worth the lecture he gets about messing up his clothes. 

———————————————————–

Indrid and Duck sit side by side in the principals office. Their gym clothes in Kepler Middle’s colors, grey and maroon, seem even grimmer right now.

They haven’t done anything wrong, not as far as Indrid is concerned. 

Duck stood in the boys line-up during P.E, that’s all. When he refused to move to the girls line, the teacher told the rest of the boys to line up all over again, elsewhere. They all moved, except Indrid, who insisted that Duck was in the right line and refused to play along with a bid to deny that.

They have been sent to the principal for “causing trouble.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Duck murmurs. 

“I did. You’re my friend, Duck. And Mr. H is an asshole.”

He thinks, but does not say, that it would take far more than a gym teacher and the threat of detention to leave Duck’s side when he’s in trouble.

———————————————————

It’s Indrid’s 16th birthday, and his dads are throwing a very subdued sweet sixteen. He dyed his hair silver, and they’ve ordered an entire table of desserts from a local bakery, and he, Duck, Juno, Dani, and Barclay have stuffed themselves while watching movies and teasing Dani for being ga-ga over her long-distance girlfriend, Aubrey, who she met playing an online tabletop games. 

Once the other three leave, Duck grabs Indrid’s jacket and hands it to him. 

“C’mon, lets go to the creek. Got somethin to show you.”

Indrid follows him, teasing him as they turn down the creekbed, “We’re not going to have a repeat of the beer incident are we?”

Duck laughs, “No. Learned better than to give that hummingbird palate of yours booze.”

They hit the familiar dirt of their favorite spot, and Duck gets on tiptoe and reaches into the trees above them. Strings of lights, red to match Indrid’s new glasses, and white, snap on. Below them is a blanket, and Indrid sits down with a perplexed smile. Then he checks the futures, and understands. 

“Is this entirely sanitary?”

“Enough.” Duck grins, pulling out a lighter and safety pin, “I did it on mine and I still got the ear.”

“Very well.” Indrid crosses his legs, checks the futures it be double sure this won’t end in infection, and braces himself, “left ear please.”

“Right. Okay, one, two-”

“OWowowowow.” 

“Done!”

“Ow.” Indrid winces as Duck cleans the newly-pierced ear, loosens his grip on the agate in his fist.

“Can’t believe you still carry that thing around.”

“I find it soothing. Ooh, how nice.” Indrid picks up the black moth-shaped earring Duck hands him. 

“Figured it’d be better to start with a smaller one. And now that you’re all done, you can officially burn your list.”

Indrid pulls a worn sheet of binder paper from his pocket. When he, and then Duck, turned fifteen, they wrote out lists of things they wanted to do before they hit sixteen. He crosses out get ear pierced, then mutters, “I’m still missing one.”

Duck looks at him quizzically. He turns the paper around and points to first kiss.

“Wait, I thought you and Carlos-”

“Nope. Never got that far before we broke up.”

Duck sits next to him, gets a mischievous grin on his face, “Think I know how to help.”

“How’s tha-”  

It’s barely a kiss, Duck bringing their lips together just long enough for Indrid to feel him sigh happily. Then he pulls back, still grinning. 

Indrid is certain that if he looked down at himself, his veins would be pulsing technicolor, his body lit up like the cheap neon in their tiny downtown. 

“Ta-dah, list complete.” Duck whispers. 

“Thank you.” Indrid whispers back. 

He doesn’t think much of it for the rest of the night, figures it’s just a meeting of Duck’s goofier side with his desire to help a friend. 

It’s only when he’s laying in bed, playing the kiss over and over again like a favorite song, that he realizes he might be in trouble. 

————————————————————-

Indrid knows the likely outcome, but that doesn’t stop him from leaping up excitedly when Duck bangs the front door open.

“‘Drid, I got in! did you, oh, hey Mr. Cold, did you?”

“Yes.” Indrid grins from the bottom of the staircase. 

“Oh hell yeah! Juno got in too! Maybe we can all be roommates.”

As much as Indrid would like that outcome, the arbitrary housing system of UWV Huntington has other ideas. Duck ends up partnered with an affable if often absent psych major, Juno gets a single in the same dorm, just two floors down, and Indrid is stuck with a frat-boy business major.

That doesn’t stop them from making the most of their first year of college. Indrid crashes on Duck’s floor some nights, and the two of them manage to swing having a film class together during spring semester. They each dip their toes into the wild sea that is college dating, with mixed results, trading advice and anecdotes in the dark of Duck’s room.

And none of that, not one single bit, does anything to dampen Indrid’s romantic feelings for his friend. 

It’s not that he doesn’t try, just as he’s been trying every day since his 16th birthday. He loves Duck as a friend, wants to be in his life forever. He can’t afford to love him any other way. It’s too risky. And so he tries, over and over and over, to quash those feelings. Sometimes they ebb, sometimes Indrid happily dates or hooks up with other people. 

But they always come back, like a faithful hound finding it’s way home. 

Because Duck will laugh in that ridiculous way of his, be vulnerable with Indrid in those private moments, make Indrid feel understood in a way no one else can. And he falls in love all over again. 

(And that’s before he even gets to the moments where Duck will strip his shirt off on hot days, or wander into the room in his boxer shorts, and Indrid feels the urge to plead with him for the privilege of feeling him up).

It’s because of all this that, when Duck asks if Indrid wants to move in together their sophomore year, he almost says no. 

But then he and Duck are sharing celebratory take-out in a half-unpacked apartment and he’s happier than he ever thought he could be. 

It’s not perfect by any means. Indrid can be messy, Duck can be terse, money can be tight. But Indrid is so at home with Duck, all that fades into the background. They have friends over, compare notes on dates, have junk food strewn study sessions on the couch, keep each other company during all nighters. 

Then, in May of their Sophomore year, things change. 

“‘Drid? Oh good, you’re still up. Um, I wanted to tell you somethin. Minerva and I are goin out.”

“Oh. That’s a bit unexpected.” Indrid sets his drawing aside.

“You tellin me you don’t use that magic-eight ball brain to spy on my love life?” Duck teases, plopping down onto the bed with him. 

“Never. So…why the switch from work-out buddies to this?”

“Dunno, just seemed like we’d been spendin a lot of time together. She actually tutored me back in high school, remember, so it’s kinda fun to be around someone who’s known me that long. Y'know, someone who watched me grow up.”

“I see.” Indrid kicks his jealousy until it goes limp and sinks back under the surface of his feelings, “well, that’s awesome then. I’m glad you’re excited Duck.”

And he is. It’s not a lie, goodness knows he’s well aware he has no claim to Duck’s affection or time. And Minerva does seem to make him happy, encourages Duck’s good habits like going to the gym (something Indrid has tried once and will never do again. Yoga and walking are fine by him).

But soon he cannot go anywhere with Duck, including his own apartment, without Minerva there. Duck spends all of his time with her, and Indrid learns it’s not just him; while Minerva is gladly included in their group get-togethers, Juno hasn’t seen Duck in weeks. And has barely heard from him. She is also a bit loud and Indrid, who has always had trouble with over-stimulation from noise, finds himself out of the apartment more and more often. 

Indrid can’t blame Duck for spending time with Minerva rather than him; she’s jockular, active, attractive (even if she does call Duck by his first name). Indrid is odd, reclusive, and well, weird looking. 

It all goes to hell at the end of August. 

“‘Drid! The study abroad program offered me a scholarship. I get to go to Brazil. This is so fuckin cool!”

“Wonderful!” Indrid claps his hands, “I know how badly you’ve wanted to go. You have to promise me to send me pictures of brightly colored bugs for art inspiration. Oh, and now we can tell Dani she has somewhere to stay while she and Aubrey look for a shared place.”

“Exactly. And guess what, it gets even better.”

“How-” he sees the answer coming, tries to keep his face neutral. 

“Minerva’s comin with me!”

“I wasn’t aware wildlife conservation and management was her area of interest.”

“It ain’t, but she’s comin as part of a grad study program. It’s gonna be so fuckin amazin.”

“I’m sure it will be.” The pull between his true feelings and his need to seem supportive renders his answer flat. 

“What’s up?” Duck sits down in the kitchen chair opposite him. 

“Nothing. Or, well, I suppose I’ve just now realized that I’ll be without a good friend for a semester. I’ll miss you.”

“Aw, I’ll miss you too, you big sap. Don’t worry, I’ll write you a bunch, send pictures too when I can.”

Indrid looks at the futures, then down at the table, “No, you won’t.”

“Huh? Why wouldn’t I?” Duck looks hurt.

“In all the timelines, you send me one postcard at maximum. In most of them, you send none. I slip your mind entirely, it seems.” His voice is tight.

“The fuck? How is that pos-”

“Any time not spent in the field, you are too engrossed by her to do anything else.”

Duck’s face hardens, “So that’s what this is really about.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He lies. 

“You’ve been bothered by her since the start! You don’t think I notice that forced smile you get when she’s around, or the fact you leave the house when she comes over?”

“I get overstimulated when there is too much noise, you know that.” Indrid snaps back.   

“You hardly come out with us anymore, and you make it sound like she’s controlin me or some shit.”

“I, I do not. I just don’t enjoy when she barges in randomly.” He rubs his temples with his hands, trying to keep calm. 

“Christ, you really makin me choose between my best friend and the first girlfriend who’s made me feel this way? Why the fuck can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Because it should be me and not her!” Indrid spits out, hands dropping to the table and gaze meeting Duck’s own. 

Duck blinks back at him, “Really? Really? You had a million goddamn chances to confess how you feel and you choose now?”

“I, I didn’t, I tried so hard to ignore it, but, fuck, I didn’t mean to say it now but since I did: I’ve been in love with you for years. And, and I just, after everything, we’ve been so close-”

“What, you think that what, because we’ve been friends since we were kids and you been pinin after me for however the fuck long, I should just date you? Like it’s destiny or some shit? What the fuck man?” He stands and Indrid mirrors him. 

“Do not put words in my mouth. I never wanted to interfere in your life, I never, you can’t possibly know how I feel!”

“Oh yeah? You think I’m really that fuckin oblivious? I suspected you felt some kind of way about me, and I gave you chances to show me I was right!”

“Name one.” Indrid growls, stepping closer.

“Homecomin, my eighteenth birthday, about a dozen times last year where I asked if you had your eye on anyone and you’d change the goddamn subject,” Duck counts out on his fingers, closing the remaining distance, “hell, coulda used those weird powers of yours to see what would happen if you told me.”

“I was too scared to. And if you were so observant, and apparently not opposed to the idea, why didn’t you make a move on me?”

“What do you think me kissin you on your birthday was?”

“A joke! Goodness, Duck, you know I’m not great with social cues. I didn’t think you’d ever care about me that way.”

“You think I’m that fuckin shallow?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He growls. 

“So what was your end-game, huh? Just wait out everyone else, circle me like a fuckin vulture until I’d settle for you? Fuck, Minerva was right, you are creepy.”

Duck may as well have punched him. He sort of wishes he had. 

“Fuck. you. Wayne.” He hisses out, stepping around him and towards his room. 

“Nah, fuck you, Indrid. Fuck you for makin me think you actually cared about me when all you were doin was bidin your goddamn time!”

“That’s not, no, nevermind. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Duck tosses back, “That’s as good as a confession in my book, you creepy, mothman lookin motherfucker,” and Indrid slams the door. 

There’s ten minutes of hurried, angry movement in the rest of the apartment, and then the front door bangs shut. 

He cycles through anger (at himself, at Duck, at these obnoxious powers for not helping him prevent the fight), hurt, and numb acceptance that he has blown his oldest, closest friendship to smithereens. 

When he finally calms down enough to think clearly he realizes that, if nothing else, he doesn’t want that to be the last conversation they have before Duck leaves. 

He faceplants onto his bed, pulls out his phone, and types.

Indrid: I’m sorry for losing my temper, and for not telling you the truth sooner. Even though it would have been helpful if you’d been clearer in the past. Can we talk about this tomorrow, and try again?

The answer is immediate.

Duck: Staying with M until we leave. Don’t text me again unless the apartment is on fire.

He stares at the response, then slides the phone under his pillow, presses his face to the mattress, and lays there numbly until he falls asleep.

——————————————————

“Nope, you are not having a sad hook-up on my watch.” Barclay’s tone freezes Indrid in place, and he slumps back down into the booth at the bar. 

Barclay is only a year ahead of him, but at times he reminds Indrid of a mother hen. A very, very large mother hen. 

“I cannot believe I allowed you to drag me out on Homecoming weekend.”

“Indrid, you’ve been miserable for almost two months, and I’m honestly really worried about you. Plus, this place has super cheap, real good appetizers.”

“Thank you for not saying ‘apps.’’ Indrid sips his soda.

“That word is an abomination. And you’re avoiding the actual topic.”

“I destroyed my best friend’s trust in me, and am wallowing here while he cavorts in the rainforest with his girlfriend. I’ll survive, but there’s no rule that says I have to enjoy it.”

Barclay sighs, “Look, if I give you permission to be miserable while you do it, will you come to trivia night with me, Joe, and Jake? Dani’s usually out fourth, but she’s helping Aubrey get her magic show up and ready to open.”

Indrid blows a strand of hair from his face (the black patches are getting worse, he needs to dye it again), “I can mope as much as I want?”

“You can cry into your beer for all I care, as long as you let me buy it.”

Trivia night turns out to be much better than anticipated, though Joe, Barclay’s boyfriend, is terrifying to behold in a battle of information.

Movie goes better, game night even better still, and soon Indrid is hanging out with the others more days than not. He even helps Aubrey design and draw up some last minute posters for her show. 

It’s the morning after opening night (and the following celebration) that his phone alerts him to a new email. The subject simply says “Bug.”

It’s from Duck. 

All it contains is a photo, clearly taken at night on a phone, of a moth with bright pink wings and red eyespots. 

He types, Neat! Then, after a moment, adds What species?

He doesn’t expect a response. But the next day, another email awaits him.

Dr. Graslie (Entomologist here) thinks it’s Leucanella apollinairei. Here’s someone more familiar

This picture is of a small crustacean. Indrid smiles; it’s a crawdad. 

He replies Careful, maybe it followed you all the way from Kepler. Seen anything else interesting?

This time he waits two days for a response, but it opens with, sorry, internet is real spotty. Big shock, I know. 

This is followed by two paragraphs describing trees. Indrid has never been so happy to hear about root systems. 

Soon Duck is emailing him whenever he can. At first, it’s only about the wildlife, the field work he’s doing, and the terror of trying to practice hygiene in the middle of a rainforest. Slowly, other details appear; the things he’s homesick for, the ways in which he and Minerva are starting to grate at each other (you’d think being in the middle of nowhere’d get you some peace and quiet. Nope). 

Indrid responds with updates from school, pictures of the outings he and the others go on, news about the promo art several places in town have hired him to do after seeing the posters for Aubrey’s act. Says he hopes Minerva and Duck are able to work things out. 

Winter break comes sooner than seems possible, and he assumes the next time he sees Duck will be when they’re home visiting their folks. 

Which is why, when he’s sitting at home reading after his last final, the door opening alarms him (Dani has already moved out). That is, until he glimpses the future.

“Duck?” He calls softly.

His friend appears in the doorway, luggage left behind him in the entryway. 

“Hey, ‘Drid.”

“I, ah, assumed you’d be staying with Minerva until you could officially move out.”

Duck shakes his head, “I ain’t movin anywhere. Unless you want me to.”

“No.” Indrid fidgets with the agate, tucked safely in the pocket of his sweatpants. 

“We, uh, we broke up. Minerva and me. It was, uh, mutual, though she was the one to pull the trigger, so to speak. Just found there were some things we didn’t agree on. Weren’t compatible on neither.”

“I’m sorry.”

Duck snorts what’s almost a laugh.

“I mean it.” He stands, voices earnest and gentle, “I know you were happy with her, and the relationship meant a lot to you.”

“Yeah” Duck sounds tired, “It did. But it turns out another one meant more.”

Indrid stops moving. Also, possibly, breathing. 

“I…well, I sent you that first email instead of apologizin because I was still kinda hurt, but I realized I missed you. I didn’t want you gone from my life. And the longer I was gone, the more times I turned around wanting to tell you somethin and was sad you weren’t there, got excited at the thought of showin you somethin or sending you pictures, I realized I did plenty to fuck things up. And that’s before we get to the fact I was dreamin about you most nights.”

Duck steps awkwardly forward, until they’re toe to toe, “I missed you, ‘Drid. So fuckin much. And I’m sorry for the things I said durin the fight.”

“As am I. I ought to have thought how my confession would appear to you. I’m sorry I did not.”

“I guess, what I’m tryin to say is I feel like a real dipshit for havin to go halfway across the globe to realize what I really want.”

“And what do you want, Duck?”

Duck cups his cheeks, and then Indrid is tipping forward, into a kiss he’s dreamed of for years. His arms close around Duck’s shoulders, his lips taste chapstick and cold night air. He pulls away to breathe and gets only an instant to do so, Duck chasing his mouth for kiss after kiss, his eagerness sending them tripping onto the bed. 

Indrid lands on top of Duck, hears him whimper when his name leaves Indrid’s lips.

“‘Drid, ‘Drid, please-”

“Yes” He kisses his cheek, “whatever it is, the answer is yes.”

Duck giggles into his neck, “You got no idea how bad I wanna make a goof on that. But, fuck, ‘Drid, I can’t, all I want is you.”

“Likewise.” He purrs, hooking Ducks leg around his own, nuzzling up his neck before attacking his lips with kisses. 

“That, that a rock in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Duck tugs on his lower lip.

“Both. See?” He produces the agate, holds it where Duck can get a look at it.

“Holy shit, is that the one I gave you a million years ago?”

“Indeed. It became a sort of grounding object, because it was pleasant to touch and reminded me of you. Later it morphed into a sort of good luck charm.”

Duck closes Indrid’s fist around the rock and kisses it, grins, “There, now it’s twice as lucky.”

Indrid holds him close, basks in the love radiating from him as he murmurs, “It’s not the luckiest thing in the room, though. That honor, I believe, belongs to you and I.”

#Indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #reader request #college au #duck x indrid

[whispersafterdusk]

Lost in Time - ch 15

"So what part of Lucien are you from?"

Harrison quickly adjusted the pillow behind him (padded and pillow'd booths were still something he was trying to adjust to - how did Django keep these clean and free of stains?) and then settled his hands back around the fragrant mug of tea in front of him.  "We used to live on the border near Duvos but were forced to move."

The girl - Lily - frowned.  "Oh.  Yeah, I...I hear that a lot."

"When you live so close to warmongers it's going to be a common story."

"Did your family stay in Lucien?"

Harrison nodded and took a sip of the tea before answering.  "We did.  We went from a farm to a small home on the opposite side of Lucien -- not enough room for a farm but big enough for my mother's pottery business to continue."

Lily's eyes lit up.  "Pottery?  Did she happen to be the one who made the little teapots with the lids shaped like wild flowers?"

"...yeah, actually," Harrison answered after a pause.  "You've seen them?" ((Continued below cut))

"Ha!  Seen them?  I owned four!" she giggled.  "I loved those things.  I love floral things in general...what with having the name Lily and all. My mother's name is Rose - you could say a love for all things flowery runs in the family."

He laughed with her at that, and again sipped from his tea; it was a black tea blend with a really intense flavor that he'd had to temper with more sugar than he was used to (it was still very delicious though).  "-I just wish the place had a bigger yard.  We owned six dogs when we had to move and there never seemed to be enough space for them to run around once we set up mom's workshop in the back yard."

"Aw..." Lily sighed.  "I always wanted a dog but my mother wouldn't let me have one."

"Ours were farm dogs - they kept predators away from the chickens and goats. We couldn't keep the chickens or goats but the dogs came with us when we moved."

Lily nodded and rocked back and forth for a moment with a dreamy look, then made a little popping noise with her mouth and turned her attention back to him.  "What was farm life like?  Did you have siblings to help out?  How many animals did you have?"

"Eh...it was a lot of work.  I had just turned seven when we moved so I didn't have to do a lot of it but I had an older brother and sister who both complained about having to get up so early to get chores done before school.  I had just gotten old enough to be trusted to feed the chickens each morning..."  He sighed -- he really missed the farm some days.   All that open space to romp around in, the rooster crowing each morning, the smell of freshly plowed dirt.  "How about you?"

"Mom and I lived in a small cottage on the western side of Lucien.  Close to the border with Duvos but not so close that we ever had any trouble.  OUR troubles always came from the Peripheries -- lots of random beasts would wander out of there every spring.  Mom would go drive them off or have to kill them and then we'd sell the meat and hides.  She also had this big flower and herb garden too and she'd sell dried and pressed flowers for scrap-booking and the herbs would go to local chefs."

"Were beasts actually that big of a problem?  I'd sometimes hear my schoolmates talking about big monsters but it always sounded...like just stories, you know?"

Lily lightly slapped her hands flat on the table, leaning toward him with her eyes wide.  "Stories?  Ha, no - you should see some of the things that wander out of that area.  Nothing that mom couldn't ever handle by herself but sometimes they made a really big mess."

Harrison nodded slowly at that, and for a moment his attention was caught by the steam curling up out of his mug; in a flash of imagination he pictured the steam curling out of the nostrils of some big beasty, and shuddered a bit.  "That must have been rough."

"I guess it was."

Lily paused as Sonia brought out the fruit salads they had ordered; someone with a broken ankle had come in to the clinic during Harrison's lunch break and he'd gotten back to eating much later than intended so he wasn't all that hungry but had ordered something anyway because it had seemed like Lily was going to forgo eating since he was.

"-do your parents and siblings still live at your new place? -- well, I guess it's not new now if they have been," Lily giggled.  She stuck a grape into her mouth and Harrison could hear it pop from across the table as she bit down.

"They do.  We've sort of dug in, you could say," he chuckled.  "Set down new roots and now they're in deep." He picked out a grape for himself and almost drooled when he chomped down; these were really, really juicy -- perfectly ripe.  Portia really had some of the best produce around. "-how about your family?"

"Mom's still holding down the fort," Lily mumbled around her mouthful of grape pulp. "I don't think anything could convince her to move...it's kind of annoying, really."

"Why's that?"

"Well..." Lily sighed heavily, swallowed, and then absently twirled her fork around with her fingers.  "...I don't know.  When I was younger she always seemed so bright and cheerful, and loved doing odd jobs that took her out and about to new places.  At some point though she came back totally changed and swapped over to pressing flowers and growing herbs.  Life...got a lot more difficult when she did that, both monetarily and just in general.  It's like a totally different person came home."

"Oh."

Lily shrugged and began picking the rest of the grapes out of the salad; Harrison tried to keep a neutral expression but inwardly he was sort of dying for having managed to make this awkward.

"It's not a big deal," Lily finally went on (after what felt like forever).  "Mom doesn't have the heart to travel anymore so I do instead.  Take back all sorts of trinkets and stories.  She seems to love that part so I keep doing it. It's pretty easy to find odd jobs everywhere so I can see how she managed to do it all the time."

"Yeah, neat," Harrison replied in a rush.  "I mean, uh - that's neat," he added after a moment, hoping he managed to get a more normal tone out this time.

She simply grinned at him and bit a bite of watermelon in half.  Some juice trickled down her chin; she didn't seem to notice.  They ate in silence for a bit; Harrison still felt ready to melt into his seat and disappear but Lily seemed at ease, and the fruit really was good.

Thankfully they managed some more small talk once they'd emptied their bowls -- when and why Harrison decided to become a doctor, more about his mom's pottery business (she asked him to ask his mother if she could hold a lily-patterned tea pot for her, and he promised to write to her about it), Lily's vast knowledge of flowers and their care, some of her traveling stories.  That earlier feeling of awkwardness had faded and was replaced with a light, giddy feeling of having met someone new (and someone who...apparently thought he was cute, which was its own sort of sensation that made his heart race a bit).

It was almost closing time by the time they'd paid and walked outside; there was a chilly breeze whistling down the street and Harrison zipped his coat up to the very top.

"How long will you be in Portia?"

Lily shrugged and tightened her scarf.  "I didn't plan on staying long but I think I'll stick around for awhile."  She flashed him a mischievous grin with that.  "Pretty good reason to."

Again he felt his ears burning.  "A-ah."

"Do you work every day at the clinic?"

"Not EVERY day, no, but most."

She nodded and bounced on the balls of her feel again.  "All right.  I'll come poking around again...maybe tomorrow?"

"I...think I'd like that, yeah." They smiled at one another and the burning in his ears spread across his face. "Where are you staying?"

She pointed across the way to Happy Apartments.  "There, for now.  I WAS camping out near the beach but I'm tired of how cold it's been.  And with my arm having a hole in it I wanted ready access to hot water so I could keep it clean."

She waggled her arm at him and he nodded - clean water, hot or not, was definitely better than unfiltered sea water to keep the wound free of infection.

"-oh, speaking of my arm, I had a...weird question."

"Hmm?"

She pursed her lips and hesitated, then huffed.  "So up in Atara I overheard folks talking about some kind of machine you had down here - something that surgically fixed things?"

Some kind of-- oh.  "You mean the Uplifter?"

"Not sure what it's called but maybe? Someone there was bragging about how it had fixed their split lip without even leaving a scar behind.  Does it...only work on faces?" Harrison nodded and her shoulders slumped.   "Well, poo.  So much for that idea."

"What...idea?  Were you wanting to try and use it on your arm?"

She nodded.  "Yeah.  I'm cleaning it like the doctor told me to and everything but I was hoping it could be...you know, fixed, without me having to deal with it for the next several weeks."

"Ah.  Y-yeah, unfortunately it's only designed to work on the neck and up."

"What's it do, then?"

"Uh..." Harrison shoved his hands into his pockets, thinking -- Xu hadn't formally taught him about the Uplifter just yet but he sort of knew a few things.  "It...repairs injuries, and I know it can alter things about your face.  It can also temporarily cause your hair to grow in a different color too."

Lily's eyes lit up at that.  "Different hair color?!  Really?"  She blew out a breath and looked up toward the sky, smiling.  "I've always wanted green or blue hair... But it only does it temporarily?"

"Yeah.  No idea how long it lasts - I haven't been taught much about it."

All of a sudden her expression froze and she looked to him wide-eyed.  "Hang on - you said it can ALTER your face?"

"Yeah.  Dr. Xu said he's used it to fix cleft lips and a few other facial birth defects on people from Atara and Ethea."

"How?"

"I have no idea," he sighed.  "It's a complex piece of machinery.  I guess if I read the manual I could figure out the science behind it but I doubt I'll be learning about it any time soon...or ever.  I won't have one when I become a doctor and strike out on my own so it might not be worth my time to learn about something I won't have access to later."

Lily's expression relaxed, as did the rest of her, and she rocked back and forth from toes to heels.  "That's a good point.  Kind of wild that something like that exists and used to exist in the Old World too... I bet Old World people had crazy hair colors," she giggled.

He opened his mouth to respond and then immediately closed it; right on the tip of his tongue was Eli's name and situation -- if anyone would be able to talk about hair color trends of the Old World she'd be the one. But...it seemed like it wasn't his place to tell anyone about her.   There was rumor enough floating around without him pointing more people toward her, and he'd seen her therapy sessions; it just...wouldn't be right to put more pressure on her right now.  She was a person, not a novelty.

"Either that or they were really terrible about not injuring their faces," he said finally.

Lily let out a laugh that ended in a snort; she clapped her hands to her mouth and blushed a bit (or maybe it was just the way the lights outside the Round Table lit her face - it was hard to tell).  "Ha- uh, eheh.   Sorry.  That just immediately made me think of an entire civilization of people with too-short doors banging their heads everywhere they went."

Harrison bit his lower lip to cut back on his laugh - that WAS a funny image.   "Maybe the doors were all normal-sized and Old World people were just really tall."

"Or bad at building doors!"

She started laughing again and Harrison let himself laugh along; even if he knew that was just goofy speculation it was still pretty amusing to picture.

Once she'd caught her breath she turned toward the Apartments in the distance.  "Ok.  So I'll see you at some point tomorrow?"

"Sure thing."

"All right!  Good night!"  She waved over her shoulder and headed off toward the apartment building.

Harrison waited and watched until she made it through the doors and inside, then let his feet carry him to Dr. Xu's house.  He had a few books to pick up before he returned to his own rented room at the Happy Apartments building.

Oh.  Maybe he should have mentioned he was staying there too.

Man...he was really bad at this.

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

Two more weeks and no sign of the spy.

At least by then Mali had come back and she'd helped Arlo, Remington, and Sam comb the entire Portian countryside again as well as most of the territory between here and Sandrock.

They'd found a few old campsites but the tracks were too muddled to tell who they belonged to; with Old Bob wandering around and tourists moving through Portia it just wasn't possible to positively confirm who had stayed where -- Eli, Asher, and Mali had worked out a rough "when" for the sites but it wasn't any help at determining the "who" part of it.  And that rope bridge that went underneath the waterfall was gone now too.

They were essentially at a dead end and it had Arlo frustrated; he hated the idea of danger lurking around Portia.  Maybe that spy was sent here to do exactly that - spy.  But what if they were sent to harm or steal something? They'd already taken one gun off the first spy...who knew what this semi-invisible person possibly had on them now that their presence was known?

They'd all spent a lot of time discussing tactics; for now they were going to ask Selene to design a sprinkler system to keep the area nice and muddy and also borrow some of the builder's fine wire and hide trip wires in the tallest grass attached to...well, they hadn't decided on that part yet but it was going to be something that could be easily hidden and also made a ton of noise if something shook it.  Since none of them could come up with anything that could overcome the suit's near-invisibility they would have to focus on what physical variables they could actually affect.

One decision they'd made that Arlo didn't agree with was what Eli called a "Stupid Plan" - capital S, capital P.  The logic, she explained, was that the spy knew that THEY knew the spy was around; they should assume that the spy would be carefully watching them for signs of vigilance and be purposely avoiding their search efforts.  The trick to getting the spy to lower their guard again was for the rest of them to pretend to be stupid: everyone goes "back to normal" and pretends to stop looking for them (with emphasis on pretend - they'd all of course still be as vigilant as they could without tipping their hand).

"If we can just convince this person that we're convinced they're gone," Eli had said, "then I bet they'll get bold and sloppy, just like how they got bold the night we first fought them."

It made a sort of sense in a way but Arlo didn't like the idea; he wasn't comfortable with pretending to let his guard down (mostly because he didn't know how to actually do that).  The Pigs, Sam, and Remington had been willing to give it a shot so he'd been outnumbered, though they'd at least all respected his concerns about it.

The one good thing out of the decision to enact the Stupid Plan was he and Eli were free to go back to their respective abodes and sleep in their own beds.  He didn't realize how much he'd missed his bed until he was back in it - no hard pillow beneath his head, no rough canvas surface of the cot under him, no carpet burns on his elbows from said canvas.  It felt like a shameful luxury to be back in a proper bed and he actually overslept the next morning.  By the time he'd dressed and hurried down to Selene's to meet the others for their newly restarted morning training sessions they were already halfway through the warm up exercises. It did make him feel a bit better to see Eli looked a little...not tired, but not exactly focused.  More like she could fall back asleep if she laid down somewhere.  

Adam was here today in Asher's place; he moved to a spot next to the man and started in with the rest of them as they swapped between exercises and stretches to warm them up for their run and the harder stuff afterward.

"Anything?" he grunted after a bit, glancing toward Adam.

"Nothing," came the answer.

Well...he supposed he wasn't surprised.  

It was nice to be back to training at least; Eli seemed to be going easy (easier) on them today.  They finished their warm ups, did their run, and came back to do the harder things but it felt shorter than he remembered it being.  Still...the combination of sore muscles, sweat, and a heightened heart rate felt good.  When they were done and had cooled off some Remington and Sam headed out to take up their old patrol routes; Adam left to, presumably, head back to the facility camp, leaving him and Eli alone in the yard.

As he watched she did some stretches (ones that were different than those she'd taught them) and then moved over to lean against the fence and stare out into the fields; he glanced out that way too -- there were barren trees, bushes, and a few llamas out there that were picking at the first green shoots coming up.  With the spring melt finally upon them the bushes and trees would be budding soon and there'd be more out there aside from the isolated spots of hardy herbs that, somehow, managed to survive and grow even in freezing temperatures.

"I have to be honest," he said into the silence.  Eli shifted just enough that he knew she was listening but not so much that she was looking at him.  "I have no idea how to act like I'm not aware of my surroundings.  That's probably going to be the hardest part about all of this for me."

"Want to learn?"

He came up to stand beside her at the fence and eyed a couple of llamas as they suddenly burst into a hopping fit, bouncing around one another for a few moments before going back to grazing.  "How exactly do you teach something like that?"

"It's not hard - you just have to learn new ways to pay attention without paying attention."

She looked over to him with a smug smirk; he blew out a sigh but smiled.   "I'm guessing it's something I have to be shown that can't really be explained."

"More or less, yeah."

"I guess the next question is when would you want to start?"

She shrugged.  "Can be anytime we're both free.  It's not something that's easy to teach so you're going to need a lot of time to dedicate to it."

Arlo nodded; his schedule was back to normal now that they were acting out the Stupid Plan.  "We can make it work."

Out in the fields there was suddenly the noise of startled llamas; Arlo shifted his attention from Eli back out to the animals and could see a pair of figures walking in the fields.  He squinted that way and it took him a moment to realize it was Dr. Xu and...someone else.  Probably that student of his.  Xu had what he thought was a basket over one arm and seemed to be gesturing at the little dots of bright green among the brown, soggy grasses.  His student nodded and walked over to bend down over one of the green spots and began to carefully remove bits and pieces and hand them up to Xu -- Arlo knew the doctor went on walks to collect whatever freshly growing plants he could find, even in the dead of winter, so it seemed they were observing one of those.  

Movement from the south caught his eye then and he saw someone approaching the two in the fields; whoever it was was bundled up in a heavy coat and had a scarf on -- it looked to be a woman, but not anyone Arlo recognized. She waved at the two in the field and the student waved back (what had been his name?  It started with an H...Arlo had only met him once and now he couldn't remember the man's name).  Whoever the woman was didn't stick around long: she greeted them, very briefly talked to them, then continued on back toward Portia.

"Any idea who that is?"

Eli shook her head.  "Nope.  I've seen her walking around town but I've not talked to her myself.  Guess I can ask Dr. Xu at my next therapy session."

Arlo nodded, then looked over to her.  "...I don't want to make you uncomfortable with personal questions, but..."

A faint smile crossed her face; this time she did turn her head to look at him.  "How's it going?  It's...going.  Some days are better than others but overall it's getting easier.  Time heals all wounds as they say."

"I'm glad to hear it."  He turned to put his back against the fence and leaned.  "There's a holiday coming up - Day of the Bright Sun.  I bet a lot of people would like to see you there."

"What's the holiday for?"

"Have you heard of or read about Peach yet?"

She nodded.  "That's the guy who invented some machine that got rid of the clouds in the sky, right?"

"Right.  It's a holiday to celebrate the sun returning.  We spend the week leading up to it wrapping gifts and delivering them to city hall, and on the day of the holiday the gifts are dropped all over town from an airship that flies over Portia."

Eli raised an eyebrow at that.   "Not sure which is harder to believe - air-dropped presents or the fact an airship still exists."

"It-" Arlo paused, thinking on how to word it.  "-it's probably not the type of airship you might be thinking of."

"I'd hope not.  Airships were bigger than Portia is."

"Really?" he asked; she nodded, and he shook his head.  "Hard to picture...  But ah, no.  This airship isn't all that big.  Not much bigger than Mali's plane, to be honest."

"Is this a sort of buy in thing to participate then?"

"Buy in?"

"Do I have to give gifts to be able to receive any?"

"Not..." Again he paused.  "Not really?  I don't think there's any actual rule about it.  Why?"

"I'm not the greatest at choosing gifts - especially not for people I hardly know.  And I don't want to receive something if I didn't give someone a gift."

"Oh, don't worry about that.  Everyone gives something - usually several things - even if it's just small trinkets or even raw materials of some kind, and the gifts don't have anyone's names except for the giver on them.  Just last year a pair of gifts I received were a bouquet of flowers and a roll of cotton fabric -- it's sort of a crap shoot for what you might get."

Eli nodded slowly, wrinkling her nose. "Well, if I'm not buying for specific people that makes it a lot easier in that regard.  A lot less awkward too, since I'm not physically giving them out myself."

"Nope.  Just catch presents falling from the sky."

"Sounds...interesting, then.  I'd at least show up for the novelty."

He smiled at her.  "And companionship, I'd hope."

She returned the smile.  "Yeah, yeah, that too."  With a small grunt she straightened and dusted her hands off.  "I'll add gift shopping onto my To Do list.  Let me know when you next have some free time and we can start in on teaching you a few new tricks."

"I'm free now if you are."

He watched as she turned to head toward the opposite side of the yard where the gate to the road was; after a breath or two he followed her -- what else was he supposed to do?

"Now's good, I guess.  Without turning around, how many llamas were out on the field?"

"Uh."  Arlo slowed to a stop; the urge to turn around or at least peek was strong but she'd specifically told him NOT to do that.  "...five?"

"Seven.  How many bushes were out there?"

"Si...six?"

"Four."

He blew out a sigh and started to follow along behind her again.  "I'm guessing my first lesson is to assess everything I see?"

"The idea is to sort of...absorb it without actively counting or noting things.  Things like numbers, patterns, colors, people, details of places, sounds and what directions things are coming from or moving in. Take it all in, in a glance or two, and be able to recall it quickly."

"Right..."  Ahead of him Eli headed out of the gate and then waited, holding it open for him.  "Well.  I'm up for the challenge."

She just smiled and led the way down the road.

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

Something about the sound of the airship overhead was distinctly...uncomfortable.

Not enough that it wasn't something she could tolerate but enough that she could feel anxiety and a bit of fear just beneath the surface; with it came an urge to duck into cover, or to otherwise get out of sight. Eli couldn't recall ever hearing something like it but clearly her subconscious did, and inside her head a small alarm system was starting to blare.

She'd been standing with the crowd of townsfolk only moments ago but the arrival of the airship had sent them all into a stumbling jog together as a group, laughing and lightly jostling one another; no one stopped unless they'd actually managed to snag a present and then those persons hung back to let the group run ahead and get a head start on the rest of the falling presents.

Eli wasn't anywhere near enough to catch any, and at the moment she didn't particularly care.

 I'm FINE.  I'm fine.  There's no danger here.

She kept it going as a little mantra in her head and forced herself to focus on the spectacle of an entire town catching things raining out of the sky.  Sam had said the airship swept across the city and then out to the fields; it should be out of sight and range soon.

Sucking in a breath she scanned her surroundings; a ginger-haired woman with a parasol and Gust were still here, as was Gale.  They were walking at a slow pace, talking and laughing amongst themselves, and hadn't seemed to notice she'd lingered.

She should...probably move.  To avoid drawing attention to herself.  This wasn't something she wanted to try and explain to anyone - especially not on a holiday.  Let them have their festivities and fun...no reason to bring the mood down.

Of course that meant following the source of the sound.

 Come on.  I can handle this.  It won't be much longer.

It took another breath or two to urge herself into a slow walk, heading off after the crowd.  Here and there in the street were bows and ribbons - she assumed they'd fallen off the gifts since she was still trying to wrap her head around how the presents could survive falling from such a height.  Did shock foam persist through the ages?  Maybe she could get a look at a box later.

The crowd was at the far side of the plaza ahead - the one with the big tree in the middle.  Eli glanced up and traced the path of a package that was wrapped in bright orange paper with white ribbon; it suddenly hit her that those looked an awful lot like New Year's Dawn presents.  A holiday that didn't exist anymore...one she'd never experience again.  No presents, no family dinners, no games, no costume parties...

Simultaneously she felt a heavy weight settle in her gut coupled with the sensation of her stomach twisting into a knot, followed by a familiar hot prickle behind her eyes.  Abruptly she stopped and spun on her heel, fully intending to retreat as quickly as possible back to her room.  In a split instant she realized Asher had been walking up behind her - it was clear he'd been trying to catch up to her and her sudden reversal of direction had caught him by surprise while also nearly bowling him over.

"Whoa-" Asher stumbled a bit as he tried to put some space between them.

"Sorry.  What's up?" she asked quickly.  She side-stepped him and looked up the street -- no one was in sight now.  Good.  She could still make an escape.

"Uh." His eyes were on her as she moved.  "-is something wrong?"

In the moment Eli knew she could just lie and say everything was fine; the problem was if he could already see it on her face then it'd be pointless to try and hide it now.  With a deep breath she rubbed at the bridge of her nose.  "Yes.  Sort of. I just need to get some distance between me and here."

With that she started walking; it was a little difficult to hear him over the sound of the airship but after a pause Asher's footsteps hurried after her.

"At the risk of sounding insensitive, what's the exact problem?"

"Dunno," she replied.  "Just something about that sound is...not good."

He sped up until he matched her speed and then walked at her side.   "Gotcha.  Um.  Let's -- have you seen the hot spring retreat?  We can catch the Dee-Dee up there and it ought to be far enough away you won't hear the airship."

"I hope you're not expecting me to actually utilize the springs."

"No, I wasn't thinking that.  That's just the first location that's within quick and easy reach that I could think of that would also be fairly quiet."

"I could just go home."

"Do you want to be shut in a room at the moment?"

Eli sighed and squeezed her eyes shut; what she wanted, right now, was to be normal and at the festival, holiday, whatever-it-was in the plaza.   Which...after that airship left, maybe she could go back. Maybe. Her obvious lack of caught gifts might invite questions she'd rather discuss with Dr. Xu first though, so maybe not.

Luckily as they came within sight of the Dee-Dee stop the Dee-Dee was only ten yards down the road; Asher waved at it and the driver stopped and waited for them to jog down to the stop instead of continuing on.  The hum of the Dee-Dee motor seemed a little more familiar, if a bit rougher than she was accustomed to, and it helped a bit to drown out the airship's rumble.   It was a short drive up to the retreat and, as Asher had said, it was way quieter -- she could barely detect the airship from here, and once they were standing on the dock that surrounded the little inset pool meant for the hot spring patrons to sit in there was the lapping of water and a bubbling noise as well.

Now that the "danger," according to her brain, was gone she could feel a bit of tension draining away and leaving what felt like a gaping, empty ache behind her right eye.  Asher found and unfolded a pair of fabric deck chairs and set them up facing the west, away from Portia and any chance of spotting the airship.  Eli dropped into one and ground the heels of her palms into her eyes.

"So."  She had to clear her throat and try again.  "-so, was there something you needed?"

Asher lowered himself into the other chair but didn't lean back.  "Not in particular.  Mali wanted to talk to Arlo and I was asked to play messenger but since he's busy with the holiday she wasn't expecting him to go rushing out."

"Don't let me keep you from an errand.  I'll be fine."

He waved a hand dismissively.  "They can wait.  Unless you're wanting me to leave."  With that he looked over to her.

She blew out a long sigh.  "I don't know what I want.  Well, I do.  But none of what I want is possible.  I want to go home.  I want to hug my husband and parents again.  I want to see my squad.  Some days I wake up and I'm perfectly fine with the thought that all that's gone and there's nothing I can do about it...other days, you just have to press on and act like you're fine."

Asher bowed his head slightly, resting his chin on his fists with his elbows braced against the hard wood of the arms of the deck chair.  "I wish there was something I could do, or say, to help with it all.  Sometimes being human seems like a waste, doesn't it?  Brains we don't have control over stirring us up and making someone think or feel things they probably wouldn't choose to otherwise."

Eli managed a very faint smile.  "I definitely can think of better emotions to be stuck with, yes."  She let out another heavy sigh and rubbed at her temples - the ache was spreading across the front of her head, through the forehead area and behind both eyes now. "I think I have a slight edge in that part of ranger training was focusing on instinct and logic and forgoing most emotional reactions.   We were...always ready for it to go to hell.  You had to be ready to switch off the emotional part of your brain and get shit done at any moment.  I think my 300 year long nap damaged that switch, or maybe this is just too much to switch off whenever I want to."

Asher nodded at her but didn't say anything; they both went quiet and Eli focused her attention on the details and soft noises around her: the wind, the bubbling of the spring, the small waves caused by the bubbles hitting the pilings that supported the dock.  A few times she heard faint birdsong.  There was a small building on the dock that she assumed held whatever was needed for the hot springs business; it was partially blocking the wind coming off the fields so the steam off the springs was actually making it a bit too warm for her liking.  She thought of taking her jacket off but didn't want her shirt to get damp.

Without any other option Eli just sat and steamed inside her coat until every last hint of sound of the airship was gone; after giving it a few minutes more she stood up and turned to look toward Portia -- at least from here it seemed like the airship was actually gone.  

There was the creaking of a deck chair to her right and out of the corner of an eye Eli could just make out Asher standing up.

"Are you ready to head back?"

"I think so.  It seems pretty quiet."

He studied her a moment.  "Are you wanting to go back to the celebration, or just head home?"

"We'll see how I feel when I'm at the gate again."

They put the deck chairs away and headed back toward the Dee-Dee stop to wait for the next one to drive by.

"...as embarrassing and awkward as this was...  Thanks."

Asher flashed her a gap-toothed grin.  "You're welcome.  Have to earn my keep somehow."

She snorted and shook her head.  "Typically 'friend' is not a salaried position."

"Good job security, at least."

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

Everyone around him was buzzing with excitement and chattering over the gifts they'd gotten this year; Arlo had gotten a neat looking woven wristband in purples and greens (no name on it so no idea who had given it) along with a new bronze blade from Django, and (purely by accident, since his third gift had technically been caught up in the tree without anyone noticing until it fell out and hit him as he was walking by) a nice woolen blanket from Sophie.

The box that the blanket had come in was a tad too bulky to comfortably carry around so he had it sitting on the bench beside him as he stood off to the side of the Research Center; everyone was beginning to break off in small groups to go take photos together, and he knew that once Sam and Remington had done whatever personal ones they wanted to take that they'd be looking for him so they could all take their yearly Civil Corps picture together.

Skimming the crowd Arlo couldn't help but feel a bit sad that he didn't see Eli anywhere; he had the urge to go walking around to see if he'd just overlooked her somehow but knew it'd be easier for Remington and Sam to find him if he stayed put.

He knew that logically it was going to take time for Eli to feel fully welcome, and like she fully fit in...still, he couldn't help but feel like he was at fault in some way. Should he have personally invited her along, instead of leaving it open?  But then would it seem like he was being overbearing or guilting her into something she didn't want to do?  There were times he held back out of worry that he was about to be too pushy but perhaps that instead was making him look too distant?

"Arloooooo-"

At the shout he looked up sharply only to see a mob of children heading his way - the triplets, Jack, and Toby at their head.  

"No need to yell.  What do you need?"

Toby walked up and let the boxes he was carrying drop to the ground in a heap.  "Have you seen Eli?  We can't find her anywhere."

Hm.  So that confirmed that she just wasn't here rather than he'd somehow missed her.  "I haven't, sorry."

Toby huffed out a sigh.  "Guess we'll keep looking.  Mayor Gale let us grab some extra presents for her since no one had seen her and we wanna give them to her."

Arlo looked the kids over; the boxes at Toby's feet had been opened, as were the three boxes Jack was toting.  Each of the triplets had two opened boxes each but they also all carried one extra, unopened gift.  "That's very nice of you kids to do that."

"Guess we can check if she's at home," Jack said.  Toby nodded and scooped up his opened gifts.

"Try not to bombard her," Arlo called after them as they started to head off up the street.

"What was that all about?"

Arlo turned to see Sam standing there.  "They're looking for Eli.  Don't suppose you've seen her today?"

"Not since the very start," Sam answered.  "She was with everyone when the airship started its pass.  You don't think something happened to call her away, do you?"

He frowned; that hadn't crossed his mind, actually.  "...I hope not.  We should go check - have you seen Remington?"

"Selene cornered him for a few pictures but he should be free here in a few."

With a nod Arlo turned around and looked over the blanket box; there was a recycle bin at the bench near the base of the tree.  He first took the bronze sword out of its box and fastened its clip to one of the straps on his jacket, then slipped the sword into place until he heard it click securely.  Next he took the blanket out of the box and tossed it over his shoulder; it didn't take long to walk over to the recycle bin and deposit the boxes, and by then Remington had spotted them and they all met up at the barbershop.

"Do we have trouble?" Remington asked once he'd reached them.

"Possibly," Sam replied.  "Seems Eli disappeared right as the airship started its flight over town - we're worried something might have called her away so we're headed out to the facility to go looking for her."

Arlo nodded (even though they hadn't discussed the 'facility' part - it made sense to head in that direction so he wasn't going to try and correct her).  "If you're done here let's head out."

Remington gave a curt nod and the three of them turned to head up the street; once they'd crested the hill and arrived in Peach Plaza they, to their surprise, spied Eli -- she was standing with Asher and the five kids were huddled around them near Peach's statue.

"-well that's good news," Sam said after a pause.  "If she AND Asher are both here then there's probably nothing wrong."

"At the facility," Arlo added.  He looked between the two of them.  "There might be something else wrong, if you catch my meaning."

Remington frowned.  "Hmm.  Yeah...could be.  I bet this reminds her of a holiday back in her own time.  Bad memories."

Sam matched his frown.  "Didn't think about that.  ...well, let's go see."

Arlo walked with them up toward the group around Eli; Asher caught his eye and flashed them an 'OK' signal discretely, which Arlo acknowledged with quick jerk of his head.

"-AND," Toby was saying, as they got within earshot.  "Look!  I kept my grades up just like I said I would!"

The three unopened gifts were sitting in a small stack at Eli's feet; Arlo watched as Eli turned her attention to a square of paper Toby was waving around.  Finally she managed to grab it out of his hands and hold it still so she could read it and after a moment she nodded and handed it back.

"All right, fair enough - you did like you promised your mother you'd do.  So now, once your mother says it's ok to start, I'll start teaching you.  But only when your mother says so," Eli said, emphasizing the last part.

"Man, this is going to be great!" Toby squealed.  He stuffed the report card back into his jacket pocket and spun around, taking off in a sprint only to collide with Remington.   "-oof, sorry!"

Remington helped get him steady on his feet and then wisely stood aside as the boy took off running again.  "It's fine just-" and then, rather than finishing his sentence, just shrugged with an amused look as Toby was already mostly out of sight.

The other kids giggled and said their goodbyes and headed off to follow Toby (though at a much slower speed), leaving the five adults to look to one another.

"We were worried when we didn't see you," Remington finally said.  

Eli smiled faintly; Arlo thought she looked tired.

"I'm fine.  Just had to step away to get some air," she replied.  Her attention flicked down to the gifts at her feet, and then Arlo was almost certain she looked at the wristband he was wearing; the smile got a little deeper and he had an inkling as to who had given the gift without putting their name on it.  "Was nice of them to think of me like that."

"They wanted to make sure you got something," Arlo said.  "You were missed today."

Something flickered across her face but the smile came right back.  "Ha, c'mon - you're going to make me blush."

As she talked there was something written on Asher's face but Arlo couldn't read it well - it was something like thinly disguised concern, he thought.  It seemed to him like Eli hadn't just stepped away for air...but what had happened?

Asher noticed Arlo studying him and the odd look went away, replaced with a smile of his own.  "Well! Now that that's taken care of, what say we all head down to what's left of the festivities?"

"It's just pictures left, and then the town photo," Sam said.  "If we hurry we might be able to get one or two in before the big one."

Eli's brow furrowed.  "Another town photo?  Is that just...something that's done at every holiday?"

"Mostly," Remington chuckled.  "We do like our photographs here in Portia."

After a pause Eli nodded at that.  "I guess some things don't change -- ah, er.  I mean, people's desire to document things don't.  There's no conceiveable way that ANY city in my time could have ever gathered together for one big group photo where you could still even tell it WAS people."

She bent to pick up the gifts; Arlo stepped over to her and offered a hand.  "Want to open those before you head down?"

"Oh.  Guess I should, yeah."  

Arlo took two of the gifts off her hands and stood there while she balanced the third one on top of them.  The first box opened revealed a finely carved crystal inside a delicate wire filigree that was strung on a leather tie -- something Arlo immediately recognized because HE'D been the one that had bought that one from a traveling craftsman months ago and given over to city hall as one of his gifts.

When she flipped the tag over to read it Arlo saw her expression soften a bit, and the smile grew.  "Ha - interesting twist of fate, that."

"Y-yeah, I guess," he laughed quietly.  "Is the wristband something you...?"

"Saw me looking at it, huh?" she said as she tied the crystal necklace on.   "I couldn't figure out what to buy so I made a couple things.  Funny we got one another's gifts."

"Better than getting one of your own?" Sam offered.  She looked amused but also admiring of the necklace.   "Where'd you even get that?"

"I'll tell you later," Arlo answered.  He swapped one of Eli's unopened gifts with the empty box and stood there holding her last one while she opened the considerably larger box.

Inside was a pot (plastic, but painted with a gorgeous geometric pattern) with a healthy looking asteria plant in it with a tag from Alice attached to it; Arlo again swapped out her last gift with the empty box and then, as she was opening it, began to carefully break the boxes down so they could go into the recycle bin.  Inside the last box was a copy of Journey to the East, from Django.

Eli turned the book over in her hands.  "Huh...I remember a book by this name existing back in my day.  I wonder if this is the same story."

"Only one way to find out," Remington said with a grin.  He gently clapped a hand to Eli's shoulder and looked down the street.  "Why don't we all go get one photo squeezed in?"

"Sure."  Eli tucked the took under an armpit and carried the potted asteria in the same arm.

Arlo quickly collapsed the book the book had been in and deposited them in the recycle bin as they passed by; they had their picture taken together just outside of Portia's gates then hurried back inside to get on the riser for the town photo.

"How about dinner?" Asher asked once the picture was taken.  "We can all squeeze into a booth, probably."

"Didn't you have a message for Arlo?" Eli asked dryly.

Asher shrugged.  "I'm getting to it.  Mali stressed that it wasn't any rush."

Arlo looked over at him.  "What?"

"Mali wants to talk to you, when you've got time.  She specifically said it's not anything immediately important because she didn't want to interrupt your holiday.  So, let's go get dinner, then you and I-" he said, pausing to waggle thumb between himself and Arlo, "-can take them some dinner and see what Mali wanted."

"Assuming we can get into the Round Table," Sam said with a smirk and a nod of her head toward the crowd of people walking toward the restaurant.

Asher shrugged again and grabbed the elbows of Remington and Eli.  "Then let's get moving so we don't get shut out."  He began to pull them along with him, and Sam and Arlo followed.

They did manage to get a table, with Remington and Sam on one side and Eli sandwiched between Asher and Arlo on the other.  Arlo found it...a bit suspect, that it always seemed like Asher found a spot next to Eli; it wasn't his business but it stood out to him in a way he thought he should remember.

It looked like Eli's first lesson on noticing things had already sunk in.

#Lost in Time #lit #Lost in Time - ch 15 #Arlo #Sam #Remington #Mali #My Time at Portia

[saltybaltic]

Natasha Romanoff X Reader - FAST RIDE

Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow X FemReader Fanfic

Synopsis: Your task on this particular mission? Get you and your partner out of danger as quickly as possible.

Warnings: Language

Words: 624

Written for @afewmarvelousthoughts 1K writing challenge using the prompt ‘But did you die?!’

Slamming your foot down onto the pedal you used one hand to shift the gear stick as the other span the wheel quickly to the right. There was a sharp intake of breath from your partner as you squeezed the car into a small gap between oncoming vehicles before manoeuvring back onto the right side of the road.

She glanced in the side mirror by her window, “We’re not shaking them.”

Looking up at your rear view mirror, you could see the three armoured cars that had been hot on your tail for the last five minutes. Your line of sight drifted back to the road in front, not failing to notice the tight bend you were rapidly approaching.

“Hold that thought.” You murmured, pressing harder on the accelerator as you cut in front of another car.

Her eyes flitted impatiently from you, the mirrors and the road, not sure what exactly it was you were planning to do to lose your tail. As you passed a large lorry on your right, Natasha shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat as you checked your mirror quickly before giving the steering wheel a sharp turn. The car was barely small enough to fit between the lorry and the kerb, the tyres screeching threateningly as you pulled up the hand brake and steadied the steering wheel.

Despite everything, you couldn’t help but snort out a laugh at the small squeak that left Natasha as you straightened out the car and hit the accelerator again hard, “Pussy.”

“You’re a lunatic.” shot back Natasha, reaching up to grip the handle above the passenger window as you jerked the steering wheel again to cut in front of another car.

“I’m keeping us alive aren’t I?” you muttered, shooting a glance in the rear view mirror before looking across at the other woman, “Make yourself useful, spread your legs.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed as she shot you an incredulous look, “Excuse me?”

Slipping the knife out of your thigh holster, you pointed it at the red head and spoke again, “Spread. Your. Legs.”

She gave you a scowl at your demanding tone but complied with your request none the less, separating her thighs so you were able to see the black leather of the seat beneath her. Even though she had been half expecting it, Natasha still flinched as you stabbed the knife into the seat, and ripped it open before dropping the blade into the footwell.

With one eye on the road, you just about managed to swerve the car out of the way of a large truck and Natasha looked up from the knife mark in her chair with a frown, “Will you watch the road?!”

You rolled your eyes with a tut, reaching into the hole in the seat and feeling around for a few seconds to find what you were looking for. The task wasn’t made easy given that you couldn’t actually see what you were doing, but eventually your fingers brushed the top of the gun you had stashed there. Pulling it out with a triumphant grin, you thrust the gun into Natasha’s hands and shot her a quick look and a quirk of your brow, “Get those assholes off my tail.”

“Now that would be my pleasure.” muttered the red head, cocking the gun as she rolled down the passenger side window.

Smirking playfully, you watched out the corner of your eye as Natasha started to lean out the window to get a better shot, “Careful mind princess, you wouldn’t want to mess up your hair.”

“I have a gun and I will shoot you for being a smart ass.” warned Natasha, squinting slightly and poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth as she pointed the gun at one of the vehicles following you and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.

Looking up at your mirror, you couldn’t help but slam your fist down onto the steering wheel and release a cheer as the bullet hit the front tyre and the car flipped with a loud crash, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

You had almost been too distracted by your small victory to pay attention to the road in front of you but the sound of a car horn brought you back to reality. Natasha was forced to grab the edge of the window to keep her balance as you swerved out of the way of several cars, through a red light and straight across a busy intersection.

“Do you think you could not do something crazy for one god damn second?!” snapped Natasha, firing another shot at one of the remaining cars.

Glancing in the mirror again, you managed to catch the sight of one of the enemy vehicles slamming into an oncoming van and spinning out of control. Another excited ‘woop’ slipped from your lips before you could stop it, looking to the woman beside you with a victorious grin, “You were saying?”

Natasha leaned back into the car so that she was close enough to grip your chin in her hand, tilting your head back towards the windscreen with a stern look, “Eyes on the road or I swear I’ll-“

“Okay, okay, okay.” you grumbled, batting her hand away dismissively, “Just a bit embarrassing for you that you’re the one with the weapon and yet we’ve still managed to take out one each.”

With a bored roll of her eyes, it took Natasha less than five seconds to steal a look at the side mirror and reach out of the window to shoot several bullets at the car behind you before settling back into the seat and folding her arms across her chest. You didn’t need to look in the mirror to know she had hit her target, the smug smirk on her face said enough. Instead you simply gave her a shake of your head as you tried to hide your own grin, “No one likes a show off.”

“Oh I think you like it a little bit.” mused Natasha playfully, snapping the safety catch back into place on the gun and dropping it into the hole in her chair.

The atmosphere had relaxed a little and you allowed yourself to be drawn in by her teasing tone ever so slightly, “Is that so? What gave me away?”

Natasha hummed thoughtfully as she leaned in towards you, bending her arm at the elbow and resting it on the side of your seat, “Maybe the fact you nearly killed us both by keeping your eyes on me instead of the road.”

“You know I’ve gotta watch your back.” you replied, pulling the car off the busy street and down a darkened side road, “Wouldn’t want you getting yourself into some kind of trouble.”

Leaning even closer towards you, Natasha set her lips beside your ear and lowered her voice so it was practically a growl, “Maybe I like trouble.”

You drove just a few hundred yards down the deserted street until the car reached an old house that looked like it had seen better days. Neither of you could care less about the living conditions, simply grateful that it was somewhere safe. You brought the car to a stop and cut the engine before you turned your head to look at her with a grin, “I think I’m beginning to learn that you definitely do like getting in trouble.”

Natasha closed the gap enough that the tip of her nose grazed yours, “If the mood calls for it.”

Her invasion of your personal space and the sensation of her breath tickling your lips was making it difficult to think straight but somehow you managed to make your voice come out even, “We should get inside, it might not be safe.”

She smirked at your attempt to change the subject, clearly enjoying having the upper hand, “Well you didn’t seem to care about my safety very much when you were nearly running us off the road.”

“I got us here didn’t I?”

“Barely. You drive like a maniac.”

You scoffed, “But did you die?!”

“No thanks to you.”

“Who was the only one who had a weapon? Who was the one driving? Who found the safe house? Who was the one wh-“

You rant was abruptly cut short as Natasha’s fingers gripped the back of your neck and she tugged you close enough to press her lips roughly against your own in a searing albeit brief kiss. Pulling back just an inch, she quirked a brow at you with a small smirk, “Shut up and get me inside before I drag you into the back seat and do this right here.”

Tilting your head back towards Natasha, you gave her another quick kiss before reaching for the door handle, “Come on then, I just thought of some more trouble we can get into.”

#yourmarvelousthoughtswc #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #black widow #black widow x reader #natasha romanov #natalia romanova #natalia romanoff #x reader #mcu fanfiction #marvel #natasha romanoff x you #black widow x you #reader insert

[secret-engima]

Wait; Nox-Ask, because goddammit E, you got me in love with this; If you haven't already covered this, how did Dave meet N&D?(Nox & Ardyn) And if it doesn't spoil anything or whatever for the rest of the one shots: could we get a snippet/HCs for how they met. /OR/ how A got D to come with him to find(?) N??? Also Cid is terrifying. I live for this shit oh my god, see what yoUVE DONE E

oliverslewty said: Oh f u c k. I knOW HOW THEY MET; I DIDN'T MEAN THAT—UGH. I meant from like—Dave's POV?? For these human disasters.

Me: I gotcha *laughs*. And I STILL REGRET NOTHING. JOIN ME IN MY MADNESS. (also I do have your TF asks and I want to do them but *slams buttons angrily on mental dashboard* TF MUSES NO WORKY RN-). Anyway-

-Dave is having a normal day. Up at dawn, on the road as soon as there was enough light to make it (mostly) safe. He had Hunts to complete and Tipsters to check on and Hunters to keep in line. A busy day, but a normal, ordinary one.

-Until suddenly it isn’t.

-Until suddenly there’s a- an animal in the road, leaping onto the hood of his truck in a blur of silver-blue fur and some kind of red electricity attack that makes Dave instinctively slam on the breaks, both out of fear of hitting the animal and out of fear of his truck being damaged by whatever defensive attack that was. Cursing past the heartbeat in his throat, Dave lets himself breathe for a minute before climbing out of the truck to look for the animal and check on any damage his vehicle might had sustained.

-There’s nothing. No animal, no trace of fur or blood to indicate one and ever been there, no damage to his truck despite the fact he was SURE the animal had been releasing some kind of defensive attack at his truck as it leaped.

-Had he ... had he imagined it? It certainly hadn’t looked like any animal he’d seen in this area before, and he’d travelled this area since he was just a boy.

-Dave leans his hands on the hood for a moment, trying to get his heart rate to settle and wondering what was in his coffee this morning.

-A flicker of movement, another glimpse of silver-blue fur that makes him turn to stare out into the wilderness beyond the road and-

-There were people out there. Dave stiffens, stares in surprise because- those were two people, staggering along a few yards away from the road, leaning on each other and very plainly limping. Even from here he can tell that they are disoriented, probably hurt.

-Mystery animal forgotten for the moment, Dave marches out to the limping figures.

-One of them is a boy, he realizes as he gets close enough to call a greeting and watches both figures startle and almost fall over in the process. The other is a man, not that old, but old enough to be the boy’s father perhaps. The closer he gets, the more Dave’s stomach drops, because these two look like they’ve just been through a nightmare. Their clothes are torn and ratty, their cheeks are too-hollow to be healthy, like they haven’t eaten in very long time. The boy (Astrals he can’t be more than 13 at that size) is dressed in what ... might have been a very nice tux at one point, but the suit was clearly sized for an adult, hanging off his frame in a way that still failed to disguise the deep slashes in it that ... Dave hopes were not actually from swords like they looked to be (and even though it was black fabric, Dave knew the stiffness and stains that came from blood, far too much blood).

-”Y’all need help.” Dave says firmly. The two blink at him, wobbling on their feet, identical blue eyes wide and pupils dilated like they were either woozy from blood loss or half-way drugged (or maybe both, there are a lot of messed up people in the world, and if these two were nobles or rich folk, then they’re having just escaped a kidnapping was not out of the question).

-Dave reaches out to steady them, the older one flinches and snarls, something dangerous physically rippling in the air, wild-eyed as any animal caught in a trap. Dave stops, takes a half-step back and holds up his hands in placation, “Easy...”

-The boy squints at him, lists against the adult with a shiver, like he was cold despite the temperature, ”D...Dave...?”

-Dave blinks, sets aside the conundrum of how the boy knows his name for later, gently coaxes the two over to his truck, helps them in and makes peace with the fact that his plans for the day are completely overturned as he turns the truck around and drives back to the nearest town with a clinic.

-The two are barely coherent for the trip, skittish and huddling so close together they’re practically sharing the same seat. He manages to get maybe ten words out of the elder and four out of the boy by the time they arrive in town (more of an outpost really), and none of those are their names. They end up going to the hotel instead of the clinic, because the moment they spotted it, both boy and man start shivering and bristling in a way that Dave can swear he feels down to his bones, and there is a look in the man’s eyes that promises a bloody fight the moment a doctor comes near them.

-They get more than a few concerned looks as Dave helps them wobble up the stairs. They look around the room like they aren’t sure it’s real, and when Dave gently asks if they want to shower while he calls room service, the boy starts shivering like he’s going to fall apart and cries very softly.

-Dave lets them have their privacy in the bathroom, but keeps an ear out for if one or both falls over or calls for help.

-They are ... more coherent when they emerge, but no less dazed and skittish. They stare at the food Dave ordered like its foreign, and Dave inwardly congratulates himself on ordering soft things and soups when they finally start to nibble, expressions as dazedly wondering as the Hunter trio he once helped rescue after they had been trapped in a daemon-infested mine for two weeks. No longer certain of reality or safety until food was in their bellies and the lights were bright and steadily on.

-Dave gently asks for their names and what happened to them, the boy huddles under the man’s arm and whispers, “Uncle?”

-The man, who is apparently the boy’s uncle, shakily introduces himself as Ardyn. He calls the boy something that might be Noct or might be Nox, and Dave assumes it’s Nox because that seems the more likely of the two to be a name. Neither offer last names. Neither explain why they were stumbling out in the wilderness in bloody, ragged clothes (and far oversized in the case of the boy). The uncle hesitantly mentions daemons, and being caught out at night, but that doesn’t explain their half-starved forms, or why the boy is wearing his uncle’s ruined suit (if that is his uncle’s, his uncle seems to go for a ... very different clothing style).

-Dave knows he should be more worried. Should has more questions. But looking at the two of them, pale and skittish and so very, very confused, like soldiers come back from a warfront who don’t believe the peace and calm around them is real ... he can’t. He can’t push them.

-So he helps them instead. He pays for the room for the week, gently answers their questions and doesn’t comment on the strangeness of them (what is the date, who is the current king, is there a Niflheim presence nearby). He sticks around for several days, watching them worriedly, helping them calm down from whatever experience led them out into the wilderness that day. He buys the boy new clothes, still too big, but all he could find in the small general store that had no reason to stock anything but Hunter garb (why stock it when Lestallum was only an hour or two away and had plenty of children’s and civilian fashions?).

-Eventually he has to return to his job, and Ardyn, far more settled if still absentminded, promises that they will be alright, thanks him almost shyly for the help while Nox quietly presses a battered bracelet into Dave’s hands “for protection and thanks”.

-Dave thinks he spots the little silver-blue animal lurking in the shadows near the two as he drives away. He wonders what kind of people Ardyn and Nox were to warrant their own little guardian spirit.

-He wonders what happened to them that was so bad the little guardian spirit watching from the shadows could not protect them from it.

-He prays for their sakes that trouble never comes back. Which proves fruitless later, because it doesn’t take more than a month or two to realize that Ardyn and Nox go out looking for trouble more than trouble finding them.

#SE asks #oliverslewty asks #Nox verse #Secret Engima Rambles #dave auburnbrie