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trudy-shams · 3 years

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What we become - Part 8

Time is a difficult concept to understand.

Sometimes a night or a day may feel too long and at the same time, years pass you by in a blink.

Making your way through the baggage claim, looking for Nat, it felt like it was just yesterday when you were picking her up, seconds away from that dreadful moment when everything shattered. Your heart bled out right at the airport. Like always, your mind wandered to the sweeter memory you had of the airport, the kiss - a pair of lips you could still feel on yours. Sometimes, when you couldn't sleep at night, you revisited that memory, strangely able to detach it from the harsh truth. It felt like yesterday when those soft lips pressed against yours and at the same time, you felt like you were that girl eons ago. Maybe if your past self walked next to you, you wouldn't even recognize her. You had changed so much, you had grown so much.

Time is indeed a difficult concept to understand.

But looking at the girl, who was barreling towards you at full speed, you knew it had been a really long time.

She smashed into you and crushed you in a bear hug and all you could manage was a muffled 'oof'.

"I missed you peanut" Nat's voice held so much emotion you had a hard time keeping your tears at bay.

"Not as much as I missed you" You leaned back after a deep breath and beamed at her.

Nat was wearing a muted grey sweatshirt and sweats with large sunglasses and a really stupid looking that covering most of her face. Nobody was paying any attention to her and you were really glad about that.

"It's my favourite disguise, works like a charm every time" She said as she hauled your bags up and handed it to a man who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared in the crowd again with your bags.

"This is so weird, you have people picking bags for you" you shook your head and spotted Nat's face in a huge billboard as you existed the airport "Seriously, this is why I have missed you more, your face was plastered everywhere!"

You both got into a waiting SUV and spent the entire ride falling back into the easy rhythm you two shared. Nat and you spoke very frequently on the phone but you both were busy. She was one of the most successful models in the country now and you had made great advancements in your career. She filled you in on the lastest news and gossip about your family and friends.

You were lounging by the pool in your suite, when Nat came back after speaking to her manager who had dropped by.

"You remember Sam Wilson?" Nat asked and you nodded, of course you remembered, he was Steve's friend "I have to attend a launch party for one of his product lines today since I am their brand ambassador and all, we need your dress size"

You quirked an eyebrow " Why do you need my size? I am not wasting my precious vacation hours making small talk with complete strangers"

"Well, you have to come because this has been planned for ages and well... I want you to meet someone"

That got your attention "Natasha..do you mean I finally get to meet your super secret boyfriend mr."pea" that I had to pretend doesn't exist?"

"Yes tha... what?" Nat was surprised. No one knew about it, no one even suspected anything. The paparazzi had nothing on her.

"You can't hide stuff from me babe, we are sisters and well...I still remember your personal email and social media password, you really need to change those '' You squealed as Nat ran after you.

"You little shit, come here"

You spent the rest of the afternoon laughing and drinking expensive liquor.

Both of you were dressed to the nines in glamorous dresses, perfect hair and makeup - thanks to Nat's team of professionals, you didn't even have to lift a finger.

When you looked into the mirror after they were done, you couldn't even recognize yourself. Was that really you? This momentarily distracted you from the bigger worry festering in your heart since Nat announced you were going to the launch party. You knew Sam was friends with James and Steve. There was a high probability you would run into them tonight.

You were sure you had it under control, it had been 5 years since that fateful day, You were not that person anymore. Nat was not that person anymore - she appeared to be unbothered but you knew something had her worried. You didn't bring it up but you felt like it was probably the prospect of seeing James again but being in the same city, you didn't know if Nat had run into him before today. You tried to tamp down your nerves and give yourself some internal pep talk.

You were not a young girl working at the bar anymore, you were so much more.

Steve probably didn't even remember you.

Both statements were proven wrong the moment your eyes met a pair of cerulean blues that you had never truly forgotten.

Steve definitely remembered you if his wide eyes and open mouth were anything to go by.

And you were still that girl, who couldn't look away from the prison of his eyes.

You broke out of your trance when a loud voice greeted Nat.

"There is my sweet pea" the masculine accented voice sounded vaguely familiar.

"Here I am Mr. pea"

PETRO!

MAXIMOFF!

What the hell? Peitro Maximoff is Mr. Pea - or Mr. P now that you think of it.

"Well he is" Peitro was sheepishly smiling at you now and you realized you said the last statement out loud. "Although,your sister has plenty of other names for me but those are usually reserved for a more private setting" he added with an exaggerated wink while Nat smacked him on the chest with a roll of her eyes.

You didn't know how to react to THIS? How could she not tell you? This guy was a douche. He always was. He was only with Nat for publicity. You wanted to drag Nat to a room to scream at her for hours.

But at that very moment, a smiling Wanda along with a happy Sam Wilson and a grumpy James Barnes made their appearance.

"There is my beautiful future sister in law" Wanda was smiling a toothy fake grin at Nat. "Not again Wanda" Pietro and Nat said at the same time and laughed. You eyed her fingers there was no ring. You would have murdered her if she got engaged without telling you. Was this your life? Your sister going from one douche to another?

You looked at James's grumpy face.

And suddenly, everything made sense.

Nat could not have found a better man for herself. What better way to rub it into James face then date his own brother in law? This was epic! You never thought Nat could come up with such a scheme.

You were surprised but also kinda proud.

You tried your best to hide your smirk at James's scowl and glanced at Nat. God! She was playing the part so well, even you were surprised by her skills, she was gazing so lovingly at Peitro who now had his hands in the small of her back and talking animatedly with Wanda.

Nat introduced you to everyone and Pietro gushed about how much your sister loved you and mentioned you all the time.

You smiled politely and kept up the small talk.

Just then, you got a whiff of a cologne which spiked your heartbeat and a second later a throat cleared and the deep voice you were longing to hear rang out.

"Hey guys"

Followed by another voice which your nightmares were made of.

"You looked so beautiful up there Nat" Sharon, still attached to Steve's hip.

"It's Natasha actually" Nat spoke airily. She did not like Sharon, you wondered why.

"Oh my sweetpea really likes her name" Petro was whipped. This was going to be so good.

You were never the bitter kind but being around these people,with all the memories,it just..changed you.

You didn't know if it was a natural pull or your instinct but you made the mistake of looking at Steve again.

You willed your heart to quiet down. He was looking at you as if you were a ghost. He barely blinked and you could hear his broken breaths as his eyes captivated you.

Why was he doing this? He was with Sharon still and he was looking at you like.. that.

A nudge on your elbow from Nat gave you the push you needed. You excused yourself and rushed to find the ladies room.

You needed to get your heartbeat and breathing under control. What was wrong with you? This guy straight up lied to you, on your face, for so long, led you on and here you were falling apart just because he looked at you a certain way.

You really needed to talk to someone. Keeping this all in was definitely driving you nuts.

You decide to come clean to Nat. Maybe it will give you the closure you needed, letting it all out.

You patted your cheeks a few times and turned to open the door of the ladies to go back out when you bumped into Nat.

"You ok?" Nat put a hand on your shoulder and ducked her head a little, forcing you to meet her eyes.

Nope! You couldn't tell her anything. This wasn't important. She and you both had better things to discuss.

"Yea, I just needed to use the ladies for a bit" you tried to sound extra cheery but one look from Nat was enough to tell you that it wasn't working.

"You can tell me if something is bothering you you know" you wanted to squirm under Nat's gaze.

"Pfft.. me? Why would anything bother me? I am great. You know what we should have drinks, I think I saw an open bar" You clasped her hand and dragged her behind you. --------------------------- "Ugh..I think I am dead" you opened your eyes with a groan "Did you let a car drive over me Nat?"

"You know, on several occasions last night, I almost wanted to do exactly that but... well Pietro stopped me" Nat pulled you into a sitting position and pressed 2 pills in your palm and a bottle of water "I didn't know you were such a lightweight"

"Well I usually don't drink so much" you ingested the pills and gulped down the water.

"So why last night? Something is bothering you?" Nat was eying you like THAT again.

You squinted at her and shook your head getting up to go to the bathroom. Did she know anything? Why did she keep saying that?

Nat opened her mouth to say something when her phone went off. She smiled looking at the screen and you slinked away to the bathroom quietly.

Nat was slumped on the bed when you came out of the bathroom

"Pietro has invited us for dinner at his place tonight. Are you ok with that?"

You nodded your head "But no alcohol for me. I have had enough for a week"

Nat hummed "It will be just a small circle of us. I would like for you and Pietro to get to know each other better"

"yeah yeah sure since you will be the future Mrs Maximoff '' you said mockingly and laughed at your own joke and tried to get some more sleep.

In your hungover state, you missed to notice the lack of matching laughter and quizzical expression on Nat's face.

#steve x reader #steve reader #captain america x reader #steve rogers angst #au!steve x reader

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lynnkn · 3 years

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Get It In Writing

Here’s my Pynch Secret Santa for @betterwithoutsense. One of the prompts was non-magic au. Hope you enjoy!

@pynchpromptweek

Read it on ao3!

Ronan was always an outdoorsy type. His mind moved faster when the world around him moved slower. He liked New York, but it was never meant to be his home.

He had come up with the idea to move back home, drunk out of his mind on a Tuesday, after weeks of trying and failing to churn out so much as a short story, let alone a novel. He hadn’t had an original idea since he was fifteen. It made perfect sense if he didn’t think about it too much. At fifteen, he’d created some of his most original ideas, he crafted plots so intricate they made his adult self weep with jealousy. Characters had come to him like dreams. Nothing he’d written since Declan swept him and Matthew off to Alexandria had come close to the stuff he’d scribbled in frayed notebooks between lessons.

If he did let himself think about it, he’d wonder if it had less to do with the change in locale and more to do with his parents’ deaths.

He’d called Blue the next morning. She offered him the couch at her mother’s house while he looked for a place. He calls her again just as the plane lands.

“Don’t hate me,” are the first words out of her mouth.

“Oh, I love when you start conversations like that.”

“I’m stuck at work.” There’s a shuffling and a crash from the other end of the line, followed by voices. At least three of them are yelling out for Blue. “We’re understaffed. Three people quit last week and I’m the only manager left.”

He makes plans to call an Uber as soon as they land. He hates to do it, but he’s left without much of a choice. He’d avoided taxis and the like for most of his time in the city, but every time he did it, it felt wrong. His skin prickled and pulled like even it knew he did not belong in the backseat of someone else’s car.

“But I sent my cousin to pick you up at baggage claim,” Blue says.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll see you at the house?”

“Yes, definitely! I’ll see you tonight.”

“And thanks for all this.”

“No problem, Ronan.” She huffs a breathy sigh and the phone crackles as she leans in closer to whisper. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too shithead.”

Ronan had met plenty of Blue’s cousins. While the girls come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, they have names like Orla or Chrysanthemum. They wear mismatched clothing and make art out of recycled materials. They’re all indiscriminately weird. He feels confident in his ability to pick a Sargent out of a line-up.

The baggage claim is a confusing swirl of business suits and combat uniforms. He walks past a family carrying a giant banner. But he recognizes none of them. There are no floor-length skirts, no dyed hair. He pulls out his phone to call Blue back when a voice calls out his name. He turns, but he can’t make out who it is. Then he sees him.

He’s leaning against a half-wall, hands tucked into his pockets and a denim jacket tossed over his shoulder. He pushes off with his foot and approaches cautiously. He’s waiting for an answer.

“Yeah,” Ronan coughs out. He’s proud of his own tact and grace for the briefest flash before he opens his mouth again. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Blue said she’d call you.” He shuffles for a moment, grabbing desperately at his phone. “I’m Adam. I’m gonna take you back to the house if that’s cool.”

“It’s fine, man. You’re just not who I expected.”

“Well,” he says, starting a sentence he clearly never plans to finish. “You got bags?”

“Yeah. Wait here. I’ll get them.”

Adam takes the large suitcase and reaches for the duffel, but Ronan shakes his head. Adam shrugs and leads the way to the car. Ronan pulls the bag onto his shoulder and flinches as the bag bangs angrily against his stiff muscles. He moves through the pain, desperately hoping Adam can’t tell he’s struggling.

“So how are you related to Blue again?” he asks, desperate for a distraction.

“Uh, I’m Persephone’s kid.”

He remembers Persephone, long white hair, and a soft-spoken voice. She baked pies and could speak with some level of authority on any topic a person brought up. But she hadn’t had any children that he knew of. And he’s sure he’d remember Adam.

“Oh. Sure.”

“It’s an adoption thing,” he says like he’s not outrageously uncomfortable.

“That’s cool,” Ronan says like he wasn’t wondering. He doesn’t want to push so he lets the conversation float away. He’s a big fan of comfortable silence. The issue is that nothing about this situation is comfortable and he’s drowning in his own goddamn bullshit. He follows Adam to a monstrosity of parts but resists the urge to comment. This clearly isn’t the kind of car a person chooses for themselves. They exchange nervous smiles over the trunk and settle into their seats.

Adam clearly knows where he’s going so Ronan settles back in his seat, watching D.C.fade away. When the world turns green, he lets himself feel at home.

“Blue talks about you a lot,” Adam says.

And that’s the funny thing because he’s talked to Blue a lot in the years since he left, but she’s never mentioned Adam. He searches his memory for any mention or comment on the addition of a new cousin, but there’s nothing. He’d told her about every gruesome, gory detail of his move to Alexandria, of school, and Declan, and Matthew. And then when he’d moved to New York, he’d told her about his building and the shitty people he talked to and he’d laid all this on the line without considering that she was still in Henrietta and her family was changing and he didn’t even know. Why hadn’t she told him? He only lets it sting for a moment. Then he numbs it with a promise to talk to her later.

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s my best friend.”

They don’t talk much more on the drive, but Ronan watches Adam out of the corner of his eye. He’s the kind of guy a teenaged version of himself would’ve fantasized over. His hands grip the wheel and his tongue sticks out the side of his mouth as he focuses on the road. His eyebrows hang heavily over weary eyes. He’s a strange guy, a unique blend of old and young, of new and refurbished. He’s a lot like the car he drives and Ronan wonders if this body is also the kind no one chooses for themselves. But he can't stop staring nonetheless.

The house looks like itself when they pull up and a strange warmth pools through his gut. He breaths in the air as he steps out of the car. It’s lighter here. The air hits the bottom of his lungs and he pulls another breath in just to hold it there. To breathe. If he forgets, he can pretend he’s fourteen and coming over to borrow a cd. Or that he’s ten and coming to watch a movie his parents wouldn’t let him watch. Or that he’s seven and going over to play at a friend’s house for the first time in his life. He could stand out there all day, but he wants to see Maura so he hauls the stupidly heavy duffel over his shoulder and goes inside.

“Ronan? Is that you? Get your ass in here.” Maura’s voice blends with the hum of the laundry machine and children screaming somewhere down the hall and it’s a sound so wrapped in nostalgia, Ronan can’t remember what year it is. He follows the sound to the kitchen where she waits with open arms. He leans down to let her pull him into a hug. Behind him, the screen door slams as Adam comes in behind him, but he doesn’t pull away. “How’ve you been?” she asks, finally pushing him back to take in the sight of him.

“I’m alright.”

“You’re staying with us for a while?”

“Is that a problem?”

“You know it’s not.” She turns back to the counter in front of her. She has a sheet of pepperoni rolls half wrapped and lined up on a strip of parchment paper. She grabs the dough and goes back to work as Ronan leans against the counter, watching her fingers delicately shaping the rolls. “We’re a lot nicer to the boys than we used to be, right Adam?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says brushing past both of them on his way out the back.

“Oh I’m convinced,” Ronan says.

Adam stops and quirks a quiet smile, the kind Ronan wasn’t supposed to see. He turns back to them. “I promised Calla I’d fix the porch rail.”

“It can wait if you want some lunch," Maura says.

“I’d rather finish it up before class.” He looks like an animal caught in a trap, leaning towards the back door and letting his eyes wander out the window. “But I’ll take a pepperoni roll when I’m finished if you’re offering.”

She nods at him and this seems to be a dismissal because he’s out the door before Ronan can blink. As soon as he’s gone, though, Ronan is thinking about him again. About how strange he is and how much stranger he seems in a house like this. He shouldn’t fit in and yet, everything about him makes sense.

Ronan washes his hands and picks up a strip of dough, following Maura’s gentle instructions. She reaches over and fixes each roll he makes, but he doesn’t mind. He lets her fix his mistakes with no more than an overdramatic eye roll. And she doesn’t comment on his lack of manners. Maura never expected him to be polite, so long as he was kind.

Blue doesn’t make it home for another two hours. By that time, Ronan is full of pepperoni rolls and Adam has gone to class. He waits for her on the porch and she runs and jumps into his arms the moment she sees him. He picks her up, sweeping her feet out from under her. He’d hit a growth spurt a month after leaving town and hadn’t stopped until he was ducking in doorways.

She startles, but he’s strong and he’d chop his own arms off before he hurt her.

Blue and Ronan had been the weird kids of their homeschool co-op. She yelled about the patriarchy during history and he knew more about Irish folklore than algebra. She hissed at the other kids and he hit anyone who made fun of her.

“I knew you’d come home eventually,” she says.

“Then you must be psychic cause I didn’t know until last month.” He hugs her and she still smells like the tree in the backyard and pixie sticks. All is right with the world. She doesn’t look all that different either. She grew maybe another inch or two, but all-in-all, she’s still what he remembers. He wonders if she’s disappointed cause he sure as hell isn’t the Ronan she knew.

The passenger side door shuts and a man climbs out. His hair is neatly combed and his shirt is ironed. He sweeps a hand over his tie and waves at the two of them.

Blue waves back. She glances over her shoulder at Ronan, hesitant and curious. She waits for a reaction, but Ronan has nothing to say. He watches, slack-jawed and stupid as the man approaches. He kisses Blue on the cheek and offers Ronan his hand.

“You must be Ronan,” he says. They shake hands, a sweaty affair that Ronan pulls away from as soon as he gets the chance. “I’m Gansey.”

“Can you give us a minute?” Blue says. He grins back at her and then at Ronan, slipping into the house, leaving silence in his wake.

“Anything else you wanna tell me?”

“Well John Boy, things have changed here on Walton’s mountain.” She laughs at her own joke, watching for Ronan to join her. When he doesn’t she sighs. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were miserable, Ronan,” she says. “And don’t say you weren’t I could tell. I just didn’t want to rub it in your face.”

“You still should’ve told me.” It burns, like every other little hurt. These days, Ronan can’t seem to feel anything a normal amount. Every prick is a white-hot scorch. Every ache is a broken bone. One day the floor fell beneath him and the pain gets worse every time he hits another level of concrete and earth.

Blue nods and she turns, just enough to the side so Ronan can’t parse out her face. He can’t read her anymore. And so he falls again.

“And what about Adam?” he asks.

“What about him?”

Ronan’s not even sure himself. But he shows up in the same shitty town he’s always lived in and he comes back to a place that had once been his second home and this guy is here, just waiting and he’s everything Ronan thought he’d wanted back then. His perspective is tilting. He thinks about the guys back in New York: Proko, Skov, Swan, and Jiang. He thinks of Kavinsky and how much sense they made. He thinks Adam seems like the kind of guy who’s going to get him hurt. He thinks of how much he’d love to let someone like Adam hurt him.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

“I didn’t know how to,” she says. “It’s not my story to tell.”

“Then why send him to pick me up?” Ronan leans into her, watching for a flicker of something recognizable. The Blue he’d known never lied to him. She was honest, sometimes brutally so and she never hid anything from him. They’d talked constantly over the years. And while he’d unloaded all of his bullshit on her, she’s remained mysterious in regards to her own life.

“I think you’ll like him,” she says. “He needs someone like you.”

“I’m not trying to fuck your cousin, Blue.”

“I’m not suggesting you fuck him. I just thought you could be friends.” She rubs her hand over her eyes, pulling her features in a sharp downturn. “I was gonna say the same about Gansey.”

He lets the breath out of his cheeks and watches the wind blow through the grass. It's grown long, just the way Blue likes it. He lets the wind move him like the grass, swaying gently until he feels grounded. He’s not mad at Blue. Not really. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“I just want to make sure you have a support system here.”

“I do,” he says.

“Besides me and my mom.” She wipes at her eye again and Ronan graciously ignores the single tear.

He gestures to the door and the family waiting inside. “Well then let’s go.”

Blue smiles and Ronan remembers why he’s here in the first place. Blue is something stronger, more prominent than anything in New York. She makes him stronger, louder. It’s not just about Henrietta or the mountains. It’s in Blue’s smiles and Maura’s eyes and the strangeness of them all. This is where his story is waiting for him. It’s always been here. Ronan is the one who left.

Soon they’re all sat around the table for dinner. The conversation is light and easy. No one pushes Ronan to talk about what he’s been doing in New York and he’s eternally grateful for that. They talk about Blue’s job at Nino’s and Gansey’s parents’ real estate business. He promises to help Ronan check out some of the properties in the area. Adam excuses himself early, claiming he has to get up early for work in the morning.

“What do you do?” Ronan asks, helping Maura clear the table.

“I work at the Greenmantles’ farm up in Singer Falls,” he says. And Ronan feels his heart drop all the way to his ass. “It’s this really old shitty family farm that this guy bought a few years ago. And he has no idea how to run a farm so it’s a disaster.”

“Oh,’ Ronan says. “That’s my house.”

Adam’s eyes widen to twice their regular size. “I…”

“It was always kind of shitty,” he says.

“Yeah.” Adam stands awkwardly behind his chair, perhaps waiting for an appropriate time to bolt. Ronan breaks eye contact, hoping to put him at ease.

But the idea of his home, fallen into disrepair bothers him more than he expected. He remembers the Greenmantles. He doesn’t remember them fondly. He turns to go outside for another breath of fresh air. As he heads for the door, Ronan hears the exchange between Adam and his mother.

“You couldn’t have told me he lived there before I opened my mouth?”

“I could’ve,” she says, placing a palm on the top of his head. She plants a kiss on it and walks to the sink to wash out her mug. Adam, for what it’s worth, smacks his head against the doorframe.

He spends the next night, sitting on the blanket with Blue and Adam and their friends. Gansey’s there, as is his friend Henry. Noah, one of Blue’s coworkers turns up with beer. And they sit in the grass watching the stars. It’s not until they’ve been laying there for a couple of hours, laughing and teasing like they’ve always been this way, that Ronan realizes how much he needs this.

As the others trickle inside for air conditioning or food or sleep, Ronan and Adam are left alone for the first time since the car ride.

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t like me very much,” Adam says.

“It’s not that,” Ronan says, hands folded behind his head. The stars are duller here in Henrietta proper, but it’s the closest to home he’s gotten in years. “I just realized Blue hasn’t been telling me shit. I didn’t know about you. It’s not personal.”

“That’s probably my fault. I told her not to tell people.” He bunches a corner of the blanket in a tight fist, before releasing it and smoothing it back out. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I just…” He stops, just long enough that Ronan doesn’t think he ever plans to finish the sentence. Then he groans like he’s forcing the truth from someplace buried within him. “Things weren’t good at home so when Persephone offered…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“Still,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all good.”

The beer is warm and settling in Ronan’s stomach in that way that makes him a little worried sometimes, so he sets it aside. He closes his eyes and reminds himself why he stops. Because it would be so easy to keep going. But he actually likes talking to Adam, and he thinks he might even want to remember this conversation in the morning.

“Blue said you’re a writer?” he asks.

This is a tightrope. Ronan calls himself a writer. His father had called him a writer. Even Declan, for all his infuriating nagging, calls Ronan a writer. But he has nothing to show for it. Nothing’s proud of. People use to ask him this and he’d pull out notebooks full of stories. Sometimes he’d just recite stories from memory like Niall once had. But now, he has nothing to show for the title. He’d trusted the story was here, buried in the hills of Henrietta, sleeping, waiting.

“I guess I am,” he says.

“What do you write?”

“Fantasy.” It’s one of the oldest truths he has to give.

“Only fantasy?” Adam asks. “Never anything else?”

Ronan shakes his head. He’d never had much use for anything else. He’d grown up with his father's stories, grandiose and ridiculous. He’d never conformed to the rules of the mortal world and Rona’s narrative imagination took the hint and ran with it. He silently begs Adam not to ask about his work anymore. Hopes to God he won’t ask to read anything. And he doesn’t. Instead, he tips his head up toward the sky, eyes tracing patterns of stars overhead.

“Tell me something about you,” Ronan says when the silence lingers too long.

“Like what?” He doesn’t move, chin tipped up the heavens and Ronan studies the curve of his jaw.

“Anything true,” he says.

“I’m deaf in my right ear.”

“Really?”

“No,” he says. He’s got a gentle smirk that charms Ronan more than he’s willing to admit. “It’s my left.”

“Can you hear me okay now?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s quiet.”

The summer passes in hazy waves, washing over him every few weeks as he watches time slip away. He’s done nothing. He’s written nothing. But he tours properties with Gansey and makes art with Blue. He buys a skateboard and lets Noah teach him a few tricks and he let Henry take him to Henrietta’s newest and only gay bar. It’s not the best summer of his life, but it comes pretty damn close.

And then there’s Adam who listens better than anyone he knows. They sit together, nearly every day, either on the porch or in the kitchen. Sometimes they drive miles away from the house in Adam's car, away from Henrietta and they park and they talk.

He tells Adam about the farm and Adam tells him about the trailer. He talks about Declan’s nagging texts about college and Adam talks about using the money from the Greenmantles to pay for classes and textbooks at the local community college.

In September, Adam’s car falls to shit in the driveway and several hours under the hood aren’t enough to fix it so Ronan drives him to work in Maura's car, promising to bring it back immediately so no one got stranded at the house.

He follows the gravel driveway, following the curves and dips just as he had once upon a time. He doesn’t watch Adam, but he can feel himself being watched. “This is where I’m gonna live,” he says, pulling in behind a car too shiny and new to fit in with its surroundings. “I don’t want to buy another place.”

“You mean this is it?” He looks over his shoulder out the window and Ronan watches the line of his shoulder crease. If he could, he’d trace a finger over, push in where the skin dips beneath bone. He turns back before Ronan can pull his gaze away. “This is your perfect house?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“No. I guess I just assumed this place would be…”

“Traumatic?”

“Honestly? Yeah.” Adam's gaze floats back to the open field. Ronan can't tell if the expression is jealousy or pity. Maybe it's both. “You don’t see my buying my childhood home.”

“I loved that house. I loved the farm. I could get cattle.”

“You’re gonna buy cows?”

“No, but I could if I had this place.”

“You could always ask if they’d be willing to sell?”

“You work for the guy. Do you think he’d sell it to me?”

He doesn’t answer, just watches the house, eyes full of hope or envy or something dangerous like that. When he turns back, the light of the sunset hits his face and everything seems right. Ronan can picture them sitting on the porch, sipping tea or bourbon on the front porch. He wants this. He wants him. He wants, wants, wants so much it hurts. He reaches, but the whole world lays on a shelf above him, just out of reach.

His mother used to hide cookies on the top shelf, saving them for after dinner. When he closes his eyes, Ronan can see his father’s arm stretched upward pulling the cookie jar down to Ronan. “Just one,” he’d whisper and they’d never speak of it again. Until the next time.

Adam leans forward, pressing warm lips into his and it’s that hand reaching out to him, pulling things down to him that once seemed so impossible he could cry.

He nearly does when Adam pulls away, slowly with a single breath. It was a period, not a comma. It was a thought, not an answer. They let themselves freeze, both leaning over the center console to breathe against one another’s collarbones. This was impossible.

“Do you wanna come look around?” Adam asks.

“Isn’t that a little risky?”

“Mr. And Mrs. Greenmantle aren’t home,” he says. He leans over to unlock Ronan’s seatbelt and the feel of Adam’s arm brushing against his stomach could convince him of almost anything.

“Okay,” he says.

Adam takes him by the hand and leads him around the house, past the empty cow pastures and the shiny new silo. He introduces him to Mr. Gray and the other farmhands and they regale Ronan with stories about Adam at work that make his cheeks flush bright pink.

They climb up the hill and past the old storage shed, just the two of them.

“That thing’s still around?”

“Yeah. It’s old as shit. I can tell.” Adam kicks up some gravel and a small cloud forms around his ankles. “A lot of the old equipment up there’s never been used. Greenmantle just leaves it lying around and sends me up there twice a week to look for something.”

“Yeah. That roof leaks every spring.”

“I know. I keep bugging him to have someone look at it.” He shrugs, the noncommittal gesture of someone who is used to being ignored. Ronan takes care to grip his shoulder with a weighted strength. And he looks at this guy, so fucking beautiful and so capable, and wonders how anyone could see him in any other light.

“Show me the house,” he says, wrapping his other arm around Adam’s waist.

“We’re gonna get caught.”

“Then we’ll have to be fast,” Ronan says. “Lucky for you, fast is my specialty.”

“Stop,” he says. He pushes away, without a second glance and bolts for the barn as soon as he’s out of Ronan’s grip.

“Hey,” Ronan calls after him. He watches as Adam turns, pulling anxiously at his bangs as they flop into his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I just miss this place.”

He thinks of the smell of cinnamon in the kitchen and the dent Declan’s head made in the hardwood and the green slime stain on the carpet in Matthew’s room. He wants it back even for a moment. He wants it more than anything. Anything except Adam.

But Adam pulls another breath into his lungs and says. “Okay, but we have to be quick.”

He takes Ronan’s hand in his, leading him toward the house, pulling at his finger and the heat trapped between their palms travels all the way up Ronan’s arm. He lets himself be dragged until they reach the porch. He pulls a key from the sconce and opens the front door. The same one Ronan remembered. He could picture his mother, standing in the foyer if he focused.

The craziness of it all strikes him as he stands there. He thought he’d never see this place again, but he’s standing there and he’s so close to what he wants and yet so far. So he pulls Adam in for another kiss, this one messier, hungrier. He buries his hands in the hair on the back of Adam’s neck.

“What are you doing here?”

Ronan turns back to the open door and there is Greenmantle in all his smarmy glory. Ronan previously thought his teenage memories had exaggerated, but he was clearly right all along. This guy simply looks like a bastard.

“Sir,” Adam says. It’s a plea, a desperate Hail Mary from someone Ronan once thought was too proud for such things.

“Get out,” he says. He holds his hand out and Adam slowly drops the keys. He doesn’t look at Greenmantle or Ronan. He watches his feet. Ronan can’t help but watch him. “And don’t come back. You’re done.”

They don’t talk on the way back to the car. There is nothing to say. Adam slams the door as he sits. He makes a sound, so low, so guttural, Ronan would’ve thought it came from one of the animals.

“You took it too far. I lost my job, Ronan!”

“I know that.” He puts his keys in the ignition and lets the engine roar to life under them. He feels better, but Adam clearly doesn’t. “I’m sorry.”

“If I don’t have a job, I can’t keep paying for school.”

“Listen, I know. I’ll help you. It’s not like I’m gonna let your freeze out there.”

“Oh yeah, cause your dream comes before everything else, huh? What about my dream?” He takes a harsh breath and hunches over the dash, refusing to meet Ronan’s eyes. It’s possible there are tears, but Ronan feels too guilty to look more closely.

“What fucking dream, Parrish? Your big dream is to spend the rest of your life slaving away so some dipshit in suit and tie gets to summer in Guam. That’s not a dream. That’s a nightmare.”

“It’s better than this.” He drops his head to his knees, burying his face. He has nothing to worry about. Ronan couldn’t look at his face if wanted to. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Then let help you find something better.”

“This is why you don’t know anything about Blue. You’re too caught up in your own bullshit to realize the rest of us have stuff going on too.”

He drives Adam back to the house without another word. He doesn’t go inside. He doesn’t want to see anyone else. He wants to drive. He takes the backroads too fast and the curves too sharp. He lets the road lead him to the convenience store just up the road. At least he saves the whiskey until he gets back to the house.

When he wakes in the morning, he doesn’t remember much after he got back. But he’s on the porch, back aching and head throbbing instead of tucked away on the couch, so he’s willing to bet it didn’t go well. Maura is sipping tea at the kitchen table. “Wanna tell me what you were doing out there? With my car?”

He shakes his head. He tests his voice, but it’s rough and gravely. He clears it into his fist before trying again. “Is Adam here?”

“He went to talk to Greenmantle.” She sips her tea again, placing it beside her. She looks up, trying to look him in the eyes, but Ronan stares at the table, the floor, anything but her face. She gives up, crossing the room to fill a glass with water from the sink “Blue and the boys went with him,” she says, handing it to him. "they said they were going to get his job back."

He sips at it cautiously. It lands in his stomach with a splash, so he stops, letting it settle before sipping again. “I need to go see him.”

“Is that a good idea?”

He drains the rest of the glass in one gulp and sets the glass back on the table. “I don’t know,” he says. With a clearer head and a couple of Ibuprofen, he hops in his car and prays for one more miracle.

Mr. Gray is there when the BMW crawls up the drive. He directs Ronan to the old shed, before reminding him to not get caught.

Adam’s got the door to the shed propped open so he sees Ronan coming from a mile away. “Go,” he says once they’re close enough to talk without yelling.

“Parrish, I just wanted to apologize.”

“Don’t pull a muscle.”

“I’m trying to act like a grown-up here. Would you come talk to me?”

“Talking to you got me stuck up here cataloging inventory in the first place. I had to beg for my job back.” He drops an ax beside him with a resounding crack that catches them both off guard. They stare at each other for a moment, caught up in their confusion before Adam turns back to his work. Ronan can’t look away. “Just leave me alone. We can talk tonight.”

The crack returns followed by a crash and Adam’s head dips beneath the stacked crates without time to so much as scream.

“Parrish!”

He rushes forward, forgetting to consider the already fragile flooring. It bends and moans in front of him. He pulls back, leaning over the boxes to get a view of the hole, slowly spreading as bits of wood flake off. “Parrish?” he yells begging his friend or God for an answer.

Both God and Adam seem to have other plans as Greenmantle rounds the corner. “What the hell was that sound? What are you doing here?”

“Parrish, can you hear me?” He waits for an answer. A beat. Nothing. He’s not a patient guy, but he waits for a second longer, prays for so much as a grunt or groan, but nothing. “He fell through.”

“What do you mean he feel through?”

“I’m not a fucking contractor. He fell through the fucking floor. What else do you need to know?”

Mr. Gray is there in an instant. He stays back graciously and doesn’t seem interested outside the basics. “Is he responding?”

“No,” Ronan says. He thanks God that someone else is taking over the situation because he's beginning to feel horribly unqualified. “I think he’s unconscious.”

“Do you have your phone on you?”

“No. I left it in my car.”

Mr. Gray turns to Greenmantle wordlessly. The two exchange looks that seem to cycle through an entire exasperated conversation before Greenmantle spits out “I don’t have service out here.”

“Ronan?” Blue yells, rushing forward. Henry, Noah, and Gansey follow her. He holds out a hand to keep them back. He watches the hole, waiting for it to spread, and feels it bobble beneath him. He’s not safe either and he knows it, but if someone else comes inside, they’re definitely fucked. He looks at her though and the unshed tears in her eyes undo him.

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if he can say anything. He’s trapped leaning over a hole and Parrish is trapped and the whole world is pulling in toward him and he doesn’t have the strength to fight it off. Still, he says “I’m okay. But if I move the rest of this place is gonna cave in on him.”

Gansey runs up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. He tucks her into his chest and they both stare back, discomfort clear in their eyes. They flash him matching encouraging smiles through the fear.

“I’m gonna call 911,” Henry yells, sprinting back across the field from where he came. No one stops to thank him.

“Is this really necessary?” Greenmantle asks.

“It may be a while before anyone makes it out here,” Mr. Gray says. “Ronan, if we can get you out, they’ll be able to get to Adam quicker. Can you sit down where you are?”

Ronan pushes a box of small garden tools off to the side, clearing enough of a path for him to sit down. He lowers himself gently, holding his breath the whole way down. He doesn’t release until his ass hits the floor.

“Good,” Mr. Gray says. He leans forward, peering over the mess to meet his eyes. Ronan sees his own fear and panic reflected in the man’s eyes. “Now roll onto your stomach, okay? You’re gonna crawl.”

He pushed himself over, turning as slow as he could. The floor groaned again beneath him. “This isn’t working. This is all gonna end up on top of him.”

“No. It’s not. You’re going to crawl toward me. You ever play army guy when you were a kid? It’s just like that. Keep your stomach on the ground and crawl.”

Ronan crawls. He can't see the other from the ground, but he can hear them talking around him.

“We can’t get to Adam until we’ve got him safe," Mr. Gray says. His voice is calm, but in the overly-controlled way that indicates a person is not actually calm at all. “If we tear down that back wall, we may be able to dig through to him.”

“We might just end up staking more debris on top of him,” Greenmantle says.

“I don’t know how else to access him.”

“There’s a crawlspace,” Ronan says. He pulls himself past an old ladder, taking care to avoid rusty nails and a suspicious stain. He thinks about his last tetanus shot and decides a booster couldn't hurt.

“What?” Greenmantle leans down to stare at Ronan through a gap. Ronan ignores his furrowed brow and exasperated tone.

“There’s a crawlspace underneath.” He pulls himself another inch and Gansey is there offering a hand. He takes it graciously and Gansey pulls him the last few inches off the foundation and through the doorway. Mr. Gray leans over and tugs on his other hand pulling him up. He’s still coughing from the dust and panic as he throws himself around the corner of the building to the small wooden door.

The deadbolt gives way with little fuss despite the copious amounts of rust around it. “Adam?” he yells into the entrance, but there’s still no response.

“I’m little,” Blue says. “I can fit more easily.”

“You’re not dressed for it. There’s ticks and shit down there.” He hurriedly tucks his jeans into his boots and slides through the door before anyone can stop him.

He can see the damage as soon as his eyes adjust to the dark. And then he’s army crawling again. He pulls himself forward, pushing past bugs and dirt and what he thinks was once a raccoon. He crawls until he reaches and a chunk of wood too big to move. He has no leverage in the slim space around him. He can barely push himself up. His shoulders are squished in too tight to move anything heavy. He kicks himself for not thinking of a better plan. He crawls around the wood, blinking dust from his eyes and searching for any sign of Adam.

He peeks past the beam to see a clear space on the other side. He sees the ax to his left. He’s here. He’s somewhere in this place. He’s so close Ronan could touch him except he’s hidden and not responding. “Adam?” he yells one last time.

There’s a groan, soft and pained, but a groan nonetheless.

“Ronan? Can you hear us?” Mr. Gray yells.

“Yeah,” he calls back. “Kinda busy here.”

“You need to get out of there, Ronan.”

“Let me just get to him.”

“Ronan, now!” Gansey yells.

There’s another crack and a plank falls on top of the stack. But it stops as soon as it starts. The dust settles into his eyes and he can’t see in front of him, but he can hear the gasps and murmurs from above him. “I’m okay.”

“Ronan get out now.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Adam coughs. It’s harsh and pained, but it’s the best sound he’s heard because he can tell where it came from. He pulls the ax toward him. There isn’t room to swing, but he doesn’t want to anyway, not with Adam so close. He smashes it into the block of wood. It doesn’t split, but he’s got enough force to crack and splinter it. With a few more strikes, it breaks away just enough to wiggle. He pulls it back, throws it over his shoulder and there is Adam.

He’s pale, coated in a layer of dust and grime and his temple’s a mess of blood, but he’s the best thing Ronan’s ever seen. He collapses by his side, sweeping a hand over the blood clumping in his bangs. He weighs the danger of spinal injuries against the threat of another collapse. The voices screaming above him win out. He ends up pulling Adam behind him, trying to keep his head and neck as steady as possible.

Mr. Gray waits at the door and Ronan is more than happy to hand Adam over to him. He pulls Adam into his arms and immediately heads for the driveway where an ambulance is pulling up. Ronan falters back a step at the ominous task of pulling himself back out.

When he turns back to the opening, his friends are there. Noah and Gansey reach down, grabbing Ronan by the biceps and hauling him out with minimal assistance from himself. Henry hands him a bottle of water and a towel as soon as he touches the ground again. And Blue says nothing, simply throws herself at him, face into his chest, and hugs tighter than she ever had before. And he lets her.

And when he starts coughing, they help him sip from the water. When he coughs so hard he throws up, they pull him to his feet, dragging him toward the ambulance as well.

In the end, Ronan’s lungs are okay. He’s advised not to inhale large quantities of dust again. He tells the ER nurse where she can go. It’s all quite civil as far as Ronan’s concerned.

Persephone hugs Ronan as soon as she arrives at the hospital. She doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around him in a gesture he understands as a thank you. He doesn’t tell her it was no big deal, but he squeezes her back and hopes the message is clear.

Adam’s broken arm, three broken ribs, and moderate concussion are fairly underwhelming as far as structural collapse injuries go. “What did I tell you?” he says that evening when he’s staying awake for more than 30 seconds at a time. “I’m hard to kill.”

No one finds this quite as funny as Adam, but he’s awake and healthy enough to be laughing.

When Greenmantle arrives at the hospital, not twenty minutes before the end of visiting hours, Ronan is fully prepared to drag the man from the room, but Adam stops him. “Actually I’ve been wanting to talk. Please, Mr. Greenmantle. Come sit.” He takes the only seat in the room, facing across from Adam like a business meeting. Adam drops a folder on the stand over his bed. He pulls the papers out and spreads them out. “Here I have copies of my timesheets, dating back to last June with reminders from me to call a contractor about the shed. And you signed off on all these, didn’t you?” Greenmentle nods, Adam's apple bobbing anxiously. “What do you think a lawyer would think of these, Mr. Greenmantle?”

“Well, I — uh.”

“But I don’t really want to sue you.” He sweeps the page back up into a file and slips them back into the folder. “This isn’t some sort of moral high ground thing either. I should sue you. I just think we can solve this without any lawyers, don’t you?”

“I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.”

“So what do you say, you sell my friend Ronan your farm and we can all go about our lives.”

“Well I’m sure we can talk about prices, but this particular property is quite valuable. I’ll have to get a fair price for it of course.”

Gansey steps forward, clutching his own folder. This one is red and labeled “Greenmantle can suck my Dick III.”

“Actually we have some numbers here for you, sir.” He shuffles through the papers contained and pulled one from the bottom of the pile. He folds it over and presents it to Greenmantle with a flourish, that is unusually snarky for Gansey. Ronan finds himself charmed by it.

“This is considerably less than I paid, Mr. Gansey.”

Adam clears his throat. “Yes, but let’s pretend I did take you to court. If you look here, this is an estimation of what you’d be paying based on some employer negligence data I found. So all in all, I think you’ll find that to be a very fair price given what you could end up paying.”

“I see…”

“And of course, this way your wife never has to find out about any of this. She didn’t want you spending too much on the property if my memory serves me well.” It’s bold talk from someone who slurred and mumbled his way through the alphabet just a few hours ago, but he’s bouncing back fast. “Sleep on it. Come talk to me again tomorrow.”

Greenmantle shuffles out of the room, clutching the paperwork to his chest. Ronan likes his odds.

The nurse knocks softly on the door. “Visiting hours are ending soon,” she says. “One of you can stay with him overnight if you want, but everyone else needs to head out.” Persephone scoots closer to the bed, wrapping her fingers lightly around Adam’s wrist and Ronan wouldn’t dream of trying to fight her over this.

Ronan pats Adam twice on the leg, a friendly gesture and nothing more, but fingers grip at the hem of his jacket.

“Can I talk to Ronan alone for a minute?” he asks Persephone, who nods quietly and shuffles out with the rest of the crowd. And when it’s quiet and everyone else has become a memory, Ronan pushes himself up onto the side of the bed, leaving little room for Adam to wiggle himself up into a seated position.

“Stop,” he says. “Don’t hurt yourself. Jesus, Parrish. They’re gonna kick me out for good if I knee you in the ribcage.”

“I’m real sorry, Ronan.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t apologize just cause I saved you. I would’ve done it anyway.”

He leans back, petulant as a child. “I’m not. But I went too far and I am sorry.” He grips the blanket like that night under the stars before releasing it again. "What I said about Blue..."

“You weren’t wrong. But I'm gonna do better Parrish. I want to be better.” He watches the way Adam's brow creases and for the first time in a long time, he understands why people keep going when shit sucks. If he’d known that face, scrunched and focused as he chewed on the edge of his swollen lip, was waiting on the other side, he never would’ve considered any other option. This was what people live for, this feeling here. This is what people write poems and songs and fucking dystopian YA trilogies about. There's an entire story in the shit-eating grin. And he found it. The goddamn holy grail. “I just want to see you happy.”

“And that dream thing? You were right," he says. "It turns out I’ve been paddling upstream for nineteen years without ever knowing where the creek drops off.”

“Then you draw your own map and you figure out how to make the water do what you tell it.”

“And what are your big plans, Lynch?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m buying a farm.”

#the raven cycle #trc #pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #alcohol tw #abuse tw

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mysteriousdreaming · 5 years

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Symmetra had always had mixed feelings about flying. Something about being tens of thousands of feet off the ground in a large metal bird both intrigued and terrified her. Usually however when she flew for work with Viskar, the perks of first class helped soothe her anxieties. The private lounges, priority boarding, free drinks and spacious seats always helped to calm her nerves long enough for her to reach her destination.

Unfortunately Overwatch’s budget did not allow for such luxuries.

Winston had booked them last minute economy seats on a budget airline and the seats themselves were so cramped she almost felt as though she was sitting on the lap of the Junker next to her. Not that he was much more comfortable, his long legs were almost pressed up under his chin and he was fidgeting constantly throughout the flight. For once though she couldn't blame him. Thank god the flight to France had been a fairly short one and not a long haul journey. She was also thankful the Junker had been forced to clean up before the trip, the claustrophobic environment was bad enough without adding the Australians usual...musk.

But despite the uncomfortable conditions they had got to the airport safely, slogged through security and baggage claim, and Symmetra was now sat in a taxi patiently waiting for Jamison to finish helping the driver load up their belongings. A minute or two later he joined her, telling the omic the address of their hotel before slouching back in his seat.

“Don’t trust being driven by a bot one bit.” He grumbled, earning himself a glare from the architect. He was looking very different to his normal self, almost unrecognizable (which she supposed was sort of the point of the whole mission). As well as the rarity of being clean and the welcome addition of some cologne, he was wearing a loose fitting shirt and a pair of black jeans along with a pair of sunglasses. After much protest before they left his usual scrap prosthetics had also been temporarily replaced with basic prosthetics Mercy had found in storage.

Her own appearance didn’t experience as much of a dramatic change. Casual clothes and a pair of shades was more than enough to make her look ‘normal’. Unlike Junkrat she was even able to keep her own prosthetic, thankfully giving them the ability to defend themselves with hard light if needed.

She had to admit the ‘illusion’ worked, they looked just like a normal couple on romantic weekend to the city of love.

The drive to the hotel was quick if not slightly awkward. Despite the drivers and her own best efforts any attempts at pleasant conversation were quickly shot down or ignored by the somewhat moody Junker. She was relieved when taxi finally pulled over at their destination and looked over to Jamison who seemed just as eager as her to escape.

“Love, can you grab our stuff? I’ll go check us in.”

Love. Obviously it was just a professional charade, one they had been partaking in for a few hours now, but she couldn't help but feel a little red all the same at how naturally he said it. She’d never thought of him as an actor, but Junkrat was putting on an almost too convincing performance for her liking. Still, she needed to keep herself together. Two days, one night, and they would never have to act like this again. She just hoped no one from Vishkar saw her in the meantime.

She grabbed the two bags, giving the driver a rather generous tip and a heartfelt apology. The omnic however didn't seem too bothered by Junkrats attitude and gave her a warm, but sad, smile "Your boyfriend isn't the first passenger to be hostile to me, and he won't be the last." He shrugged "I'm honestly more thankful he didn't throw anything at me or try and do a runner."

"Does that happen a lot here?" She questioned, quickly correcting her abruptness "Sorry, I hope you don't mind me asking."

"All the time I'm afraid mademoiselle. It's been getting worse recently too. World's a scary place right now, ominc or otherwise."

Well, she couldn't disagree with that. Even if Talon weren't stirring things up for their own gain, tensions were still high. South Korea, Russia, the Outback, people were still hurting from the omnic crisis all these years later and without groups like the old Overwatch to help…

She didn't want to think how close order was to breaking…

With one final thanks to the taxi driver she grabbed the bags and made her way into the lobby.

The hotel they were staying in was far more luxurious than the plane they took to get there. It turned out that Winston had an old contact in Paris who had a close connection to the owner of one of the most classy five star hotels in the city. They had managed to pull some strings and got the pair a premium room free of charge, which Symmetra was immensely grateful for. The last thing she wanted was to also be sharing a small hostel room with the lanky arsonist.

The lobby itself was large and tastefully modern. There were several seating areas made up of plush sofas and coffee tables, long green hanging plants fell like waterfalls from the first floor balconies and a large chandelier was attached to the ceiling, filling the room with a warm orange glow. The lobby was also filled with quite a crowd of guests, talking, checking into rooms or just generally relaxing.

Waiting for her in one of the seating areas was a very pissed off Rat, sitting on a sofa and bouncing his leg viciously. What was wrong with him now? Regardless she sat down next to him, putting the bags at their feet.

As she sat down Junkrat nonchalantly put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a close embrace and whispering in her ear "Metra, Ah swear to god, when we get back to Gibraltar I'm gonna turn that monkey into a fucking rug."

Ignoring his use of that annoying nickname she pulled away from him a little in surprise, both at his words and at the physical contact, although she assumed the latter was due to the busy nature of the lobby "What? Why?"

He simply grumbled in reply, bouncing his leg a few more times before standing up and grabbing the bags "Ya’ll know in a minute. Come on, I've got the key and the room number."

His reply infuriated her. Why did he have to be such an over dramatic child? And why was she just expected to follow him? If it was something important to the mission that could compromise it she should be told, not strung along. If it wasn't for the crowds and their cover she'd put her foot down and call him out right there and then. But she had to bite her tongue...for now at least.

Instead she reluctantly followed him out of the lobby and up the flights of stairs to their room where Junkrat unlocked the door and made an exaggerated gesture for her to go inside. At first she couldn't see the issue. The room was large and spacious, exactly what Winston's contact had promised and more than enough for a weekend stay. There was a large TV mounted on the wall in front of a glass coffee table and a sofa with a fridge she assumed was fully stoked. At the far side of the room there was an open door leading to a big en-suite bathroom. Then she saw the bed.

The one bed.

Jamison must have noticed her expression from where he was leaning against the door frame as he let out a loud laugh. “Looks like we’re going to be getting quite cosy Metra” he smirked, although there was still a hint of anger in his voice.

She took a deep breath, bristling at the use of that nickname once again. It wasn’t that bad, was it? It was a ridiculously large bed after all, at least super king size or bigger, and it was only for one night. That would be fine right? As long as they stuck to their own sides…

Their own sides of the same bed. Her and the almost attractive Junker. In one bed

To her horror even the thought was making her face feel flushed. Pretending to be partners with a college for the sake of a mission was one thing, but sharing a bed with them? It was unprofessional. Yes that was it. That was why she was flustered, embarrassment and nothing more. “Is there not another room we can-”

“Nope!” he interrupted her before she could finish with another manic laugh. “This is one of the most popular hotels in Paris, we were lucky to get a room last minute at all.” However he seemed to (thankfully) mistake her expression for one of discomfort, and his own face softened a little “...Metra if you feel uncomfortable I can just sleep on the floor. I wouldn't mind.”

She quickly pulled herself together, taking another deep breath and smoothing out her dress before flashing Junkrat a smile “No, that wouldn't be fair on you. Besides, I'm sure we’ll manage, its big enough it’s practically two beds anyway, so no need to make a fuss.”

The lanky arsonist didn't seem too convinced himself but nodded along anyway, running a hand through his hair absentmindedly. “Yeah...guess it is only one night…”

“Exactly. And we're professionals and teammates. No need to act like teenagers. We should be getting ready to head back out” She motioned for him to place the bags on the bed and began looking through her things for her toiletries. She could worry about the nights arrangements later, for now they had a job to do.

Junkrat was starting to see why this was the only mission ol’ Angel face would let the ape send him on. At first the little scouting mission he’d been tasked with alongside Symmetra wasn't half bad, they’d landed in Paris in the early morning and, after a minor hiccup with their hotel room, had left to begin scouting out the spots Winston had listed for them.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying being undercover. After all, for two days he wasn’t Jamison Fawkes, Junker, missing half his limbs and currently on the verge of dying. He was Victor Norman, a normal guy with a girlfriend, probably a normal job and a normal family he could visit on the weekends.

The name ‘Victor’ had been Metras idea. The night before she had come to find him tinkering away in the workshop and had stood in the doorway, her arms folded over the front of a light blue nightie. “Shouldn't you be heading to bed soon? We’re scheduled to leave at 4am”

He’d shrugged, waving her away with a hand “Ah’ll sleep in a minute. Just gotta tweak this first. '' His attention was focused on a modification to his Riptire. The things were far too big to make and tinker with while in his room and had fallen annoyingly behind when it came to upgrades and improvements compared to the rest of his gear.

“Have you packed? Got the temporary prosthetics from Angela? Thought of an alias?”

He absentmindedly nodded along until she got to the last thing “An alias?”

Symmetra rested her palm on her forehead and sighed, giving him a disappointed look that made him squirm a little “Yes. A name to go by for the mission.” she paused “We’re meant to be undercover, surely you realised you couldn’t go by Junkrat? Or even Jamison-”

“Yeah yeah I knew that.” He winced, not wanting her to say his full name out loud. “Just ma brain didn’t fill in the bit between not using that name and me needing a new one…” The Junker finished faffing with the tire for now and span his chair around to face her. “You got one thought out?”

“Of course” She smiled “Saffron Sharma. I quite liked the ring of it. The forename is that of an old acquaintance at the academy, and ‘Sharma’ means joyfulness”

He liked it too, it was elegant and formal. Although he much preferred ‘Satya Vaswani’. The way it flowed, the way it rolled off the tongue. A cracking name for a beautiful lass.

Once again the strange fuzzy feeling in his belly returned and it took everything inch of his will not to turn bright red when he realized he’d been sat staring at her for several seconds. “It’s not bad.” He finally forced out with an awkward cough. “I’m fresh out of ideas for me self though.” For fucks sake, pull yourself together Rat. If you can’t deal with this you won't survive the next few days…

Life was a lot easier before he fixed that fucking clock…

Symmetra moved to sit in her own chair for a moment thinking, crossing one leg over the other and staring at the floor. The architect stayed like this for a few moments before smiling and looking back at him “How about Victor?”

The suggestion took him back a little at first. It wasn't something he would have chosen himself, but it wasn't bad, he actually quite liked it. “Why Victor?”

“Its a Latin name. Quite a popular in Christian countries.” She paused, going a little red with embarrassment “Well, that and it’s the name of a mad scientist in a literary classic, one of my favorites… Actually a retelling of the original has become quite popular in recent years.”

The Junker leaned back in his chair, resting his arm on the work top and wiggling an eyebrow at her teasingly “Fancy me a bit of a mad scientist then Metra?”

“Its Symmetra please. And I guess I do, well more mad inventor, but it's close.” She smiled “Is it suitable? If not I can try and think of another.”

It was more than suitable, and the fake passports and other documents had been printed ready for them in the morning.

He was brought back to the present by a light shake from the architect sat next to him. “Junkrat you need to focus, stop daydreaming” She whispered annoyed, her voice low enough that no one would hear her using his ‘real’ name. “I know you're finding this boring but please just pay attention”

The junker slouched in his chair grumbling to himself, picking up the boba tea he’d brought and taking a long, angry drink. He looked around him at the tourists sat outside the same little cafe. As with the last two locations, no one looked suspicious or was doing anything anywhere close to talon-y looking things. Hell the worst ‘crime’ they'd even seen was when some stupid Parisian 14 year old's had wolf whistled at Metra.

A chilling glare had soon sent them scarpering

Again, at first he hadn’t minded the slow pace scouty shit. Sitting in the sun in somewhere as appealing as Paris wasn't the worst way to spend a weekend after all. But the longer the day went on the more and more bored he got. Halfway through the second location he began fidgeting, and by the time they got to their third and final destination Symmetra seemed to be growing tired of his antics.

He had better things to be doing for fucks sake! He wasn't a scout, he was a fighter! An Inventor! He should be tinkering in the workshop on his riptires, working on new designs and schematics or even just blowing shit up. He was even starting to doubt if there had been any talon sightings, or if it was just all one big plan by his trio of baby sitters to get him out of the house. It was all a waste of time, and he didn’t know how much of that he was working with anymore…

Jesus mate. Where the fuck had that thought come from?

Then again...It wasn’t exactly wrong was it? Hadn't Mercy had said so herself just over a month ago? If this poison she was pumping him full of didn't work he had about year, 12 months, 52 weeks, 365-

The Junker shook his head, trying to rid himself of the morbid thoughts. No. He was fine. Angela Ziegler was a top crack doctor, one of the best in the world. If anyone could fix what the Outback had done to him it was her, and in a years time he’d look back on this and laugh that he was ever even worried.

Once again Symmetra brought him out of his daydreaming, although this time it was with a soft touch on his arm and a concerned expression, her dark eyes studying his face carefully. “Are you ok?”

He froze up for a moment at how softly she asked the question before quickly throwing on a smile and bolting upright “Course I'm alright! Just off in me own little world ah guess!” He laughed quickly. “Just thinking up some new bomb ideas is all.”

She seemed satisfied enough with his response, picking up her own tea cup and drinking from it while taking a break from scanning the area to look at her watch. “We’re almost done here, don't worry.”

As she moved sparkle from her wrist caught his attention and, without really thinking, he gently grabbed her arm to get a closer look. She had a bracelet he never noticed before and sitting in the middle was a tiny Rat charm. “Hey, when did you get this? It’s pretty.”

To his surprise she didn't try to pull away from him, although she did still tense up a little at his sudden touch “I made it myself, quite a while ago now actually. Apart from the charm of course, that was brought during a day out with Lena.” she took another sip from the cup and eyed him almost suspiciously “With your love of shiny things I'm surprised it took you so long to notice.”

“Guess I’ve just been spending more time in me room not the workshop..” And when he had been there he was never really in the right mind to notice, with him either being sick from his treatment or far too engrossed in his work.

Not wanting his mind to drift back to...that.. He tried to change the subject “Ah didn’t know you were a fan of Rats.”

She gently pulled her arm away from his grasp “I'm not. It’s actually a mouse. Something about it called to me, so I bought it.” The architect put the now empty tea cup back on the saucer with a smile “I tend not to make impulse purchases, but for this little guy I had to make an exception.”

The lanky arsonist gave her a cheeky grin “Well, I’m gonna say its a rat anyway. Like a little me as a good luck charm.”

“I don’t feel your much of a bringer of luck. Maybe a bringer of chaos”

Junkrat put his hand to his chest in mock offence, drawing in an exaggerated gasp “How dare ya! I feel I’ve been a pretty good luck token so far. Stopped you from getting blown to giblets didn't I?...even if it was my grenade…”

He got an eye roll for that, but he could see the shadows of another smile pulling at her cheeks all the same. “Come on, we best get going” She stood up, neatly tucking her chair under the table before turning and begin to walk away. “The restaurant at the hotel is meant to be quite marvelous and it would be a shame for us not to get a table. The earlier we get there the quieter it will be.”

Us? The words made him freeze for a moment, and he had to perform an awkward running hobble to catch up to her “Hang on, you wanna grab dinner together?”

She stopped walking to allow him to catch up and looked back at him confused. “Why is there something wrong with that?”

The Junker shook his head, going to pick at his prosthetic arm out of habit but not finding any paint to pull on. “Nah, Just thought you were more the ‘eat alone’ type that’s all”

“While I do prefer my own company on most occasions, dinner with a coworker can always be pleasant as well. Particularly one who may not have experienced much fine dinning” She blushed slightly out of what he assumed was embarrassment “Well, at least I assume you have not…”

He laughed rubbing the back of his neck “Nah, not many 5 star eateries in Junkertown. Most of the fancy suit places on our crime spree wouldn't let me and hog in either, always said something about a dress code.”

Symmetra stifled her own giggle with a hand and Junkrat quickly felt the fuzzy feeling once again. That laugh, it was just music to his ears and he wanted to stand here cracking jokes just to hear it again and again. And here she was, actually wanting to spend time with him as well, even if it was only as professional friends.

“Well then I guess it’s time to change that isn’t it?”

#junkmetra #symmrat #symmetra #Junkrat #Overwatch #ow #overwatch fanfic #ow fanfic #hurt #angst #fluff #comfort #tw cancer #tw death

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luckyspike · 5 years

Text

Adventures in America, Ch. 3 - in which Adam meets his traveling companions and Crowley and Aziraphale meet their rental car

This story is so dumb and I love it. For prior installments, check out chapter 1, and chapter 2. Or just peruse my fanfiction tag (which has a lot of other stuff in it, too!).

Touchdown. BA flight 191, after an uneventful flight, touched down in Austin International Airport at 4:17pm. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to, uh, Austin,” the pilot announced over the intercom. Adam, who had nodded off for the latter half of the flight, was looking out of the window eagerly, hands on his knees and feet bouncing. All the excitement, the nerves, the sheer joy that this was really happening that he’d had when he boarded, and then lost when he’d gotten bored, came roaring back tenfold as the brown scenery slid by outside. “Local time is 4:18pm, and outside temperature is about 84 degrees, which is about 29 centigrade. We’ll be arriving at gate -” Adam zoned out. Outside of the airplane, ground crew directed the jet to the gate in question, but it didn’t matter, not to Adam. He wouldn’t be meeting anybody at the gate, anyway.

He turned his phone back on, and sent a quick text to his parents, and then another to the group text that included the Them and Anathema. He paused, debating whether or not to also text Crowley or Aziraphale, but he paused. Hopefully the international plan he’d paid for was as good as it seemed, and his dad wouldn’t give him an earful about international rates when he got home, but, well, maybe just in case … certainly they’d hear through the grapevine, anyway. He stuffed the phone into his bag instead, and pulled out the slip of paper he’d written the instructions for meeting up with the storm chasing team instead. Meet at the baggage claim. Right, easy enough. He had to pick up his duffel bag anyway.

Disembarking the plane took, in Adam’s opinion, ages. They let all the posh people in first class off first, and then business class, and finally economy. He held his backpack straps tightly, shuffling down the aisle in the line, and tried to look calm and cool, not like a kid on Christmas morning, in spite of the excitement bubbling inside of him. He’d be looking for a woman, Rachael, who was tall and tanned and dark-haired. They’d video-chatted extensively in the lead-up to the excursion, and he was fairly certain he would recognize her on sight. Still, she’d said she’d be holding a sign, too, so best to look out for that -

He paused, halfway through first class. Sniffed. Something smelled of … sulfur. Sulfur? And a rainstorm. It reminded him of Aziraphale and Crowley’s place, and the memory jarred him enough that he looked around for the duo, blue eyes scanning the rows of first-class seats. He didn’t see them, of course, or any signs of them, although he wasn’t sure what that might have entailed. Still … Nah. He shook his head, and kept shuffling. They’d told him to have a good time. They wouldn’t have managed to keep anything secret like this, not those two. For godfath - no, guardian ang - well, not really … guardian supernatural entities, they weren’t particularly subtle and as a unit, Adam thought fondly, only slightly brighter than they were individually. Which wasn’t saying much*.

The air on the jetway was dry, and hot, and reminiscent of Madrid, the few times Adam had been there to visit his sister. He took a deep breath, grateful to finally be off the plane and back on terra firma, and hustled toward baggage claim and customs. He found his duffel, and made it through customs - it wasn’t any trouble, just a line which Adam managed to tolerate by looking around and taking in the sights of the airport which had, through creative architecture, attempted to resemble a modern art installation but instead mostly looked like a government building with a bit of window dressing.

“Enjoy your vacation,” the woman at the customs desk drawled, with an accent Adam had previously only heard in movies. His heart skipped a beat, and he beamed.

“I will do, thank you so much.”

And that was it. He was in! He didn’t skip through the exit from customs, although it was a near thing, and quickly started looking around at the assembled crowd, scanning the faces there for anyone that looked familiar or, failing that, a sign that said ‘Adam Young’. He found it, eventually, held by Rachael, just as she’d looked on video chat, herself looking among the faces of arriving travelers for Adam. She caught sight of him as he started toward her, boots still squeaking on the linoleum, and waved him over, her face breaking into a friendly grin. “Adam!” She seized his hand as soon as he offered it, and shook with bone-crushing strength and no small amount of enthusiasm. “Hey, welcome to Texas! So good to finally meet you!” She had an accent too, Adam realized, sort of southern but not like the woman at customs, just a hint of that. He’d have to find out where she was from.

“Great to be here,” he enthused, and he meant every word of it. “I’m so excited, this is really an amazing opportunity.”

“Glad to hear it!” she laughed. “Hopefully we can find you some storms, huh?” She looked over his bag, eyebrows raised. “You got everything? Need anything else here? The rest of the crew is waiting outside - the other student researcher got here this morning, so we just been hanging out around the city while we waited.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m totally ready.”

She nodded, satisfied, and headed for the door, Adam tagging along at her shoulder. “Great. The truck’s parked in the will-call lot, let me just call Noel and he can pull around. Let’s wait inside, though -” she held out a hand to stop Adam before he stepped through the sliding doors. “Kinda warm out there. Definitely warmer than England, huh?” She grinned, and then Adam heard a tinny voice on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, hey, I got Adam, can you bring the truck around? Thanks.” She hung up, and stuffed her phone into her jeans pocket before she propped her hands on her hips. “So I’ll introduce you all when they get here, but basically it’s gonna be four of us. You know me, I’m the climatologist and I guess the main guide, but Noel helps a lot. He’s our meteorologist, driver, and photographer too, but since it’s just the two of us we both kinda wear all kinda hats.” She pointed to Adam. “You’re one of our student researchers, and we have another guy with us for this session. Hope you don’t mind if we put you to work.”

Adam laughed. “It’s what I signed up for!”

“More fun that way, anyway.” She sighed, happy, as she watched a variety of vehicles drive by outside, picking up travelers as they did. “Better than those storm tours that just drive around lookin’ and not much else. We gotta get closer to get the data. Anyway, other guy that’s with us goes by Lucky, I’ll let him introduce himself, but he’s studying climatology at, uh … somewhere in Iowa, I think. I think you guys are the same age.” She waved a hand. “Whatever, I’ll let you guys hash it out, we’re gonna have plenty of time in the car.”

“Sounds good.” Adam nodded, and adjusted his bag on his shoulder.

“Anyway,” she went on, “plan tonight is to take you guys out to dinner, kind of get to know each other and everything, go over the plan for chasing, yadda yadda, and then we’re gonna hit the road early tomorrow to get north.” Her eyes widened, and she gestured for Adam to follow her outside. “There’s Noel. Anyway, yeah, we’re heading north -” she strolled off the curb and into the lane of traffic without much concern for oncoming cars. Adam, well-accustomed to this after years of interactions with Crowley, followed her without concern. “- ‘cause there’s a big system forming around the Oklahoma panhandle, and we might see some action day one.” She wagged her eyebrows at him. “Start off with a bang, right?”

“That’d be wicked.”

She chuckled. “Wicked, huh? I like that. Here’s the boss!” she called, as they pulled up alongside a red pick-up truck. Adam’s eyes widened. Americans, he thought, really knew how to do pick-up trucks. He’d seen pick-up trucks in England, of course, but this monster dwarfed most of them. The extended cab and the bed cover just served to make it look bigger. And it wasn’t the only one of that size parked at the curb - he could count four just in the immediate vicinity.

Well, he had heard things about Texas.

“Hey!” a man called over the roaring engine, and Adam looked up to see the driver standing on the sideboard, clutching the luggage rack with one hand and waving with the other. “I’m Noel! You can throw your bag in the back, Rach’ll show you where to put it with all the equipment.” He grinned. “Gotta get movin’ before we get a ticket.”

Rachael rolled her eyes. “We won’t get a ticket,” she said to Adam, in a tone that probably would have been a whisper had she not had to shout over the commotion of the pick-ups lane. “Here,” she showed him to the back of the truck, dropping the gate and revealing a bed packed full of bags, boxes, and expensive-looking meteorology equipment, “you can put your bag here, next to the camera bags.” He did, and she threw the gate back into place, brushing her hands off and turning her beaming smile to him once again. “You ready to hit it?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, still smiling. He wasn’t sure he’d stopped since he’d gotten off the plane. “Let’s do it.”

She punched him in the shoulder. Adam laughed, and then thought of Pepper. She punched him like that, back home. Man, would she have loved this. She’d have loved Rachael, too. “Love the enthusiasm, kid. Load up!” She climbed into the front passenger seat of the truck, and Adam hauled open the rear passenger door, climbing onto the footboard and sliding into the seat. Across from him, a suntanned boy - yeah, about his age - with a scruffy beard and dark hair pulled into a bun smiled at him with a wave. Adam waved, but then was distracted when Noel stuck his hand into the back to shake Adam’s.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Young.”

“You can call me Adam, really,” he assured Noel. “Thanks for having me.”

“Hey, if you’re willing to work and don’t run off at the first sign of golf-ball sized hail, it’ll be a pleasure,” Noel replied with a laugh. “Alright, let’s get you guys a taste of Texas. Everyone good with barbecue?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, in unison with the other guy in the back seat. Noel nodded, and the truck roared forward, out of the airport.

“So you’re from England?” the other guy said, turning his attention to Adam and offering his hand to shake. Adam took note, as he shook the guy’s hand, that there was … a hint of a London accent? Just a little? No, couldn’t be. “I grew up around London, ‘til I was about twelve,” he went on. Oh. Yes, then.

“Really? Funny old world,” Adam replied. “Name’s Adam Young. I’m from Tadfield - it’s a little town out in Oxfordshire.”

“Huh. Never got out that way, at least not that I remember.” He looked puzzled. “Although there was an air base there my Dad might’ve been working out of at some point … huh. Anyway.” The guy sat back in his seat and shrugged. “My name’s Warlock Dowling, but please do not call me Warlock.” He rolled his eyes. “I think my mom was hopped up on pain meds when she named me. Everyone calls me Lucky.”

Adam nodded. “Cool, okay. You’re studying climatology?”

“Climate science, yeah,” Lucky answered, eagerly. “You are too, right?”

“Meteorology, yeah.”

“It’s so cool, isn’t it?” He looked out of the window, gesturing to the cityscape passing by as they rolled down the highway. “The whole Earth! Man, when I started learning about weather and geology and stuff in seventh grade, once I came back to the States …” He waved a hand. “Forget it. I used to make weather maps for fun. Drove my parents crazy.”

Adam laughed, genuinely, and nodded. “It’s awesome. I was eleven,” he said, with absolute certainty, because he wouldn’t forget that year for anything, “an’ this lady - she’s a friend, now, but she was new to town then - gave me these magazines that were talking about climate change and severe weather and the rainforests and stuff, an’, I dunno, just had an interest ever since. Studied a lot on my own, outside of school, when we moved on to like, biology and stuff.”

“Oh, yeah.” Lucky nodded. “So you’ve never been to the States before?”

Adam shook his head. “No. I mean, I’m as excited for that as I am for the weather, honestly.”

“Good!” Noel interjected from the front seat. “You’re gonna get a hell of a tour of the midwest, see all kinds of stuff. We’ll go over it at dinner, I think we got a map too, so you can kind of get an idea of where we’ll be. And, you know, if the weather don’t pan out like we hope it will - hopefully it will pan out, but you never know - by the end of the season we should be up by Yellowstone, so we can always show you around up there.” He smiled at the backseat passengers approvingly in the rearview. “I’m from Wyoming myself, so I can give you the local tour.”

Lucky’s eyes widened. “ Seriously? That’d be awesome. I’ve never been, always wanted to go.” He looked to Adam. “You know about Yellowstone? It’s supposed to be amazing.”

“I’ve read about it.” Adam nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, it’d be cool to see it.”

“Well, we’ll have to see what the weather is doing. You never know how things are gonna go in this business.”

Rachael grinned at them over her shoulder. “That’s what makes it exciting.”

“An’ sometimes real boring,” Noel added.

“Sometimes,” she agreed, with a wink to the students. “But we’re not gonna think about that. You guys are here to study some storms, we’ll get you storms.”

The conversation continued on, through the drive to the barbecue place, and then all through dinner. They went over the route - starting south, around the Oklahoma/Texas border, and then moving north as needed with the storms, likely ending up toward the Canadian border at the end of the season. They talked equipment - cameras and recording equipment, laptops, hot-spots, as well as some remote monitoring equipment that Rachael hoped to drop if there was a great deal of lightning, which was her particular interest. Adam and Lucky listened intently, contributed as needed, and ate so much barbecue throughout the entire thing that Adam felt fairly nauseous by the end of the meal. Judging by Lucky’s expression when they stood from the table, he felt similarly.

“It was just so good,” Adam lamented once back in the truck, his hands over his stomach.

Noel nodded solemnly in the front seat, hanging a right into a motel parking lot. “A common mistake. Sleep it off tonight, we got an early start in the morning.” He parked the truck well away from the door - none of the parking spots, Adam imagined, would have been big enough - and looked into the backseat. “Five AM work for you boys?”

Adam ignored Lucky’s quiet ‘oof’ and nodded, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. “I’ll be ready.”

“Fantastic.”

Several hours earlier …

“I feel like I’m covered in grime,” Aziraphale griped, as they meandered their way through baggage claim and toward the rental car desks. “Is that normal for air travel?”

“Can’t be, you only just spent ten hours in an aluminum tube with the re-circulated air of a bunch of other people.”

“Touche.” He cracked his neck and frowned. “I need a shower.”

“You know,” Crowley said slyly, handing his shoulder-bag (black, obviously) off to Aziraphale, “had you let me ensure the Bentley would be waiting for us outside we could already be on our way to a nice, lovely hotel room with a hot shower and not waiting in line at a rental car desk.”

Aziraphale huffed. “It’s not a long line.” He caught the look Crowley gave him, and turned his nose up a little. “I’m going to wait by the door. There will be a shuttle, apparently.”

“Marvelous.”

The angel watched from a distance too far to hear while the demon negotiated with the man at the desk. There were some subtle gestures, a raised eyebrow from Crowley, some significant stammering from the man, and eventually, he handed over an envelope. Crowley smiled and swaggered away from the desk, toward Aziraphale, who watched him suspiciously.

“What was that about?”

“Got us an upgrade.” Crowley took his own bag back*** and led the way to the shuttle, waiting outside in the heat. Aziraphale’s suspicious glare turned to a grimace when they stepped into the pick-up area, fighting back the urge to loosen his bowtie against the humidity and oppressive heat. They were back in the air conditioning of the shuttle soon enough and sat down, side-by-side, Aziraphale with his suitcase between his knees and Crowley with his bag in his lap.

“What kind of upgrade?” Aziraphale asked pointedly, as the van doors closed - improbably, there were no other passengers to pick up, although Aziraphale suspected there was some infernal interference that led to that state of affairs - and the shuttle rumbled away from the curb. “If we walk into that rental car lot and there’s a vintage Bentley -”

Crowley groaned. “No, angel. If I’d brought the Bentley over I wouldn’t be bothering with this bloody shuttle. I got us a bigger car, is all.” He glanced at the envelope. “Had us in some little economy thing, probably only had a four-cylinder engine and a governor.”

“Don’t all rental cars have a governor?”

“I’d imagine this one’s will be broken.” Crowley gave the angel a cool look, a dare to say anything. Aziraphale didn’t take the bait. “Any case, I told him we needed four-wheel-drive.”

“Do we?” Aziraphale looked surprised.

Crowley shrugged. “Watched a show on telly before we left. They go all over, dirt roads sometimes, figured it’d be smart to have. Plus, it was the only thing with the bigger engine.”

“Does the Bentley have a big engine?”

Crowley shrugged. “Acts like it does.”

“Crowley …” Aziraphale lowered his voice, in case the shuttle driver were listening in, although the young man looked cheerful and blissfully unaware of their conversation. “Please don’t do anything infernal to the rental car.”

“Me?” Crowley looked wounded. “Wouldn’t dream of it. There’s already one semi-sentient demonic car in the world, and it’s currently in a garage terrorizing a wages clerk. That’s more than enough for one planet.”

Aziraphale sat back in his seat, prim, hands folded in his lap. “I agree. Good. Glad we’re in agreement.”

They finished the shuttle ride in silence, Aziraphale looking out of the window to the passing landscape, which was mostly buildings so close to the airport, and Crowley apparently dozing, although it was hard to tell with the sunglasses. Which seemed, Aziraphale thought, as he looked out of the window, to be a fairly wise addition in this kind of weather. He may need to get himself a pair, should the opportunity arise. Not that he needed them, but, well, it wouldn’t hurt to look the part.

The shuttle lurched to a halt, and they stepped off, Crowley handing the driver a roll of green dollar bills without a word as he went by. “Thank you so much,” Aziraphale added, on his way by, smiling to the stunned driver. “Excellent driving, very pleasant and observant of the speed limit. Have a lovely day.”

“Thanks.” The driver watched them go. What weird people, he thought, his eyes sliding from their receding backs to the roll of money in his hand. Can’t complain, though. He tucked the bills into his pocket, and pulled away, back on his regular route to the airport. He would have a nice day, he thought. Things were already looking brighter.

Aziraphale didn’t ask, ‘is this it?’ as they approached a car. It wouldn’t be. It was green, and small, and he wasn’t sure what kind of upgrade Crowley had managed but he was fairly sure that was not a large enough car. He didn’t ask ‘is this it?’ at the next car, either, but in this case it was because the car was so obviously it.

It was huge, and black, and it looked menacing just sitting in the parking lot. Crowley clicked a button on the key fob - that was novel, Aziraphale thought - and the lights flashed while a chirp sounded. The demon hoisted open the back hatch - Aziraphale blinked at the sheer size of the inside of the thing - and tossed his bag in, followed by the angel’s.

“It’s bigger than the Bentley,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. Crowley grunted, and started toward the right side of the vehicle before, if his annoyed expression were anything to go by, remembering that this was America, and changing direction. Aziraphale closed the back hatch and headed for the passenger side, frowning at the height of the step onto the footboard. No car had any business, he thought vaguely, being this large.

Inside the car already, with the keys in the ignition and the engine running, Crowley was sitting back in the seat, arms crossed, glaring at the stereo. He glanced over when he saw Aziraphale, and for a minute, his expression softened. “Ah, angel, you might want to … uh, wait outside a minute.”

“I thought you said no funny business with the car,” Aziraphale said flatly.

“Nothing funny.” Crowley looked back to the stereo, his expression hardening again. “Just need to reach an … understanding.”

Aziraphale sighed, and unfastened his bowtie, tossing it to Crowley who caught it with practiced ease. “Alright.” He stepped back down, and started unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt. “But don’t take too long - it’s hot out here.”

“Only be a minute, angel.” The door shut. Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Hullo,” he said to the car, drawing the word out. “4-runner, eh?”

To this point in its 45,000 miles, the Toyota 4-Runner had never had a single thought. Of course it hadn’t - it was a machine, an inanimate tool of transportation. It had happily transported families, salesmen, concert-goers and, on one occasion, secret agents without a hint of self-awareness or even a tinge of consciousness. This was why the car was surprised to find, suddenly, that this was no longer the case.

The radio station flickered uncertainly.

“I have a feeling,” the driver went on, while the car considered that it had never recognized a driver before, “that I’m going to be spending entirely more time with you than I’d like to. So just to be clear: I don’t like you, I probably will never like you, and there is very little you can do to that will not, ultimately, disappoint me.” The electronics flickered again. Anxiety, thought the car. What was anxiety? Why did it know that was what it was feeling? “Really, this can only end one of two ways for you: you don’t disappoint me too much, and I return you at the end of this bonkers road trip to your safe rental agency, where they’ll clean you up and you can go on being a nice rental car, or you disappoint me too much and -” he leaned closer to the radio, and the hiss cut through the static of the electronics and silenced the squeal of interference between high-tech electronics and supernatural forces “- I’ll leave you in a ditch in flamesss, sssee if I don’t. Underssstood?”

The engine shuddered. The driver - Crowley, the car thought, although it wasn’t sure how it knew that name, or why it was even thinking about it in the first place - sat back and breathed out. “Right. Alright, angel!” The passenger door opened again and a passenger - the car would have gasped, if it could, although it did manage an extra-strong blast of air conditioning - climbed back in, radiating love and light and safety. Without understanding how, or why, the car switched its stereo immediately to a country-music radio station that was currently playing Somebody Help Me by Kenny Rogers. Crowley glared at the stereo and murmured, “Not a good start.”

“Did you, you know, do whatever you needed to do?” the angel asked, gesturing vaguely to the dashboard.

Crowley put the car into reverse as he said, cryptically, “We’ll see. Hotel first, then dinner?”

“Yes, fine. Do you know where Adam is?” He considered it. “Only I wouldn’t like to lose him so early on in the game. Again.”

“We can recon after dinner,” Crowley said, pulling into traffic and immediately running another car off the road. Aziraphale winced. “He told me the name of the team he’s going with, I found a picture of their truck online. We’ll drive around and look for it.”

“Unless he’s already left the city.” Aziraphale wrung his hands, nervous. “You don’t think they would have?”

“Nah. Got a text from Anathema that Adam said they’re not leaving until the morning, and they’ll be going north.” He ran a red light, prompting blaring horns from either side of the intersection and a whine from the engine of the 4-Runner. “Don’t have much beyond that, but we can find him.”

“Austin is a large city.”

“Not as big as London.” He shrugged. “We have all night, we’ll find him. Get some wine into you and you’ll be fine.”

“Perhaps.” Aziraphale looked out of the window as they drove down a highway, cars whizzing by on the right as Crowley passed them at - well, the speedometer didn’t bear looking at. He swallowed. “It’s been some time since I did a reconnaissance job.”

“Bodyguarding, more like,” Crowley said, conversationally, yanking the steering wheel to the right and flying down the exit ramp to the hotel. “Been a minute for me, myself. But It’s like … oh, you know.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, irritated. “Like - like something you learn to do and never really forget.”

“Swordfighting?” Aziraphale suggested.

“Maybe.”

Aziraphale had made the reservations under his name, and checked them in with the pleasant woman at the front desk. Overall, it was a very nice conversation - she was telling him about places to eat in town, especially where to get good sushi - and he was just getting ready to bid her a good day and take his leave when, from behind him, Crowley shouted, “Riding a bike!”

The woman blinked. “There are, uh, bike trails along the greenbelt -” but Aziraphale was waving a hand. “Oh?”

“He remembered something from earlier,” he explained with an apologetic smile, as he picked up his suitcase. “He does this sometimes. You get used to it.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Okay. Well, have a nice trip! Enjoy America!”

“Thank you. I’m sure we will,” Aziraphale replied, following Crowley toward the elevators. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, the clerk looked down to her computer - such a nice man, a little strange - and smiled a little when she heard him mutter to his companion, “You really need to work on that, dear.”

* Adam did know, actually, that Aziraphale and Crowley were each quite intelligent. They helped him with homework, after all. But book smarts, he reasoned, and actual common sense were vastly different, and while they might be brilliant in their own right intellectually, as a duo they at times struggled with concepts like pre-planning, not telling everyone their secret plans, and interacting with normal humans like they themselves were normal humans**.

** Adam knew they weren’t, but a little effort sometimes wouldn’t go amiss. There was, of course, the incident with The School Play. Crowley had been forgiven, eventually, but it took approximately one (1) metric tonne of candy in gifts, a generous donation to the school’s art department, and a weekend at Alton Towers for the entirety of the Them, all expenses paid.

*** Aziraphale had wondered what he’d packed in there, since Crowley invariably always miracled his clothes on and off, but he suspected it was hair products.

Now with Chapter 4!

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #aziraphale #crowley #adam young #warlock dowling #i wish i didn't enjoy fanfiction so much #the one where they go to america

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