#Extraction fan fiction
Text
Lost and Found - Chapter 30
Fandom: Extraction
Pairing: Tyler Rake and Esme Drummond (OFC. You do not have to read the original series to understand this fic)
Warnings: slight profanity
It's a lot of dialogue. Sorry :(
Tagging: @tragiclyhip @themaradwrites @secretaryunpaid @youflickedtooharddamnit @munstysmind @karimac @ninjasawakenedmystar @thebejeweledwatercat @alisbackalleybbq @asirensrage @residentdormouse @fanficanatic-tw @kmc1989 @arrthurpendragon @ocappreciationtag @occommunity
Link to Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43179357/chapters/139296199
My tag list is OPEN. Just let me know if you’d lke to be added :D
****
“I figure in a couple of days we’ll go into town. Get you and Millie all the things you still need.”
His voice is raw and husky; laced with both sleep and contentment as it rumbles deep within his chest. Scarred and misshapen knuckles repeatedly skim the length of her spine; their naked bodies pressed tightly together, caught in a mess of rumpled sheets and tangled limbs. Spent and sated; droplets of perspiration littering their skin and gathering at their temples and the napes of their necks. Their lovemaking had been uncharacteristically slow and tender; a combination of reconnecting and worshipping one another’s bodies and his desire to not cause any more discomfort as she continues her recovery.
“It’s a pretty lengthy list.” Her head rests on his chest; eyes closed as the fingers of one hand lazily trace the tattoo that graces his ribs. “We didn’t exactly come with much. Lots of things were left behind. At Alessio’s.”
“Doesn’t matter how much there is. I don’t care how many lists there are. Whatever you guys need…fuck, whatever you guys WANT…we get. Simple as that.”
“You’re going to create a hell of a predicament for yourself,” she chides and repeatedly brushes the tip of her nose along his collarbone. “People are going to think you hooked up with a gold digger.”
“Yeah, right,” Tyler chuckles, palm briefly lingering at the small of her back, calloused fingertips drifting over the curve of each buttock. “Because there’s just so much gold to dig for.”
“You know what people are like. They talk. It’s what they do.”
“I don’t give a shit. You should know that by now. Besides, you stuck around when I didn’t even have anything to offer you. Just tons of baggage and a shack in the outback. I think it’s safe to say you’re not with me for money.”
“Of course, I’m not with you for money.” She presses a series of kisses along his jaw. “I’m with you for your body.”
“As ancient and crumbling as it is?”
“It’s beautiful.” Lightly scraping the fingernails on one hand down his chest, she speaks between kisses and gentle nibbles on the side of his neck. “So…so…so beautiful.”
“And fat.”
She laughs against his Adam’s apple. “I did not call you fat. I called you thick. And I said it with love and admiration. And insane amounts of animalistic lust.”
His fingertips glide across her shoulders, then down the backs of her arms.“My favourite kind.”
“Mine too.” She rests her head in the nook between neck and shoulder, nose pressed against the long-healed bullet wound in the side of his throat. Her eyes closed as she reaches up to comb a hand through his longer strands of hair; allowing them to slip between her fingers before repeatedly curling and twisting sections around her index and middle fingers.
“Whatever you and Millie need, we’ll get it taken care of. Doesn’t matter how long the list is. Gotta take care of my girls, ya?”
“I like how that sounds. ‘Your girls’. There’s something so sweet about it. So…romantic. In a Tyler sort of way.”
“I can’t believe you’d call me romantic and sweet in the same sentence. What did I ever do to deserve that?”
“Listen, I know you have a reputation to uphold, but you DO have your moments. Where you’re just the softest, loveliest, cutest man on earth. You bring your own brand of romance to the table. And it’s perfect. For me, anyway.”
“Ever thought maybe you’re the one that brings all that out? That I’m not like that with everyone?”
“I already know you’re not. In the same way that I know how lucky I am. I get ALL of you. The REAL you. You’ve never hidden that from me. Not even in Dhaka.”
“I’ve never felt a reason to hide anything. Even back then. Something told me you were good people. That I could trust you. And believe me, I hadn’t felt that way about anyone in a long time. If I ever even did.”
“You trust Nik. And Yaz.”
“That’s different. That’s pretty much all business. Related to the job. I know that they always have my back. That they’ll step up if things go bad.”
“You trust them with me, don’t you? And Millie?”
“Not in the way I trust myself with the two of you.”
“That’s because you know what you’re capable of. You don’t second guess your skills or the things you can do. And you’ve always been protective of me. EXTREMELY protective. OVERLY, at times. Now add Millie to the mix…”
“I know that no one can take care of things the way I can; that the two of you are safest with me. Because I won’t fuck up. I won’t let that happen. Someone even thinks of coming near you and Millie, it’ll be the last thing they do, believe me.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. That everything just stays calm and peaceful. That we can just let Nik and her people handle things in New York while we do our own thing here. I just want to concentrate on us. And Millie. On being a family.”
“We’ll just take it one day at a time. Concentrate on getting past what happened.”
“Do you mean in New York City? Or me taking off and never telling you about Millie?”
“Look at me…” Pushing a hand into her hair, he gently tugs on the dark tresses; encouraging her to lift her head from his chest. “...I forgive you. I know you’re having a hard time accepting that, but I do. Yeah, sometimes I’m still pissed and sometimes it hurts like hell. But I DO forgive you.”
“Just like that? Just so easily?”
“I love you. I never STOPPED loving you. And you had your reasons; for making the decisions that you did. I don’t pretend to completely understand them. Not right now, anyway. But one day I will, I’m sure.”
“I really did do it to protect you. I didn’t want anything happening to you., Tyler. And I never would have forgiven myself; if I permanently lost you because of a mistake I made. It just sucks that in the end, all I did was hurt you.”
“That’s not entirely true though, is it? I mean, I AM alive. Nothing happened to me. And things would have gone really bad if the High Table had shown up while I was there. So you DID do the right thing. If you hadn’t left, we wouldn’t be here right now. And Millie wouldn’t even exist. They wouldn’t have cared. If you were pregnant. It wouldn’t have stopped them from killing you.”
“I don’t even like thinking about that. Her NOT being here. She’s everything I ever wanted. And everything I don’t deserve.”
“There you go selling yourself short again. You deserve so much, Esme. You’re not the monster you think you are. Far from it.”
“Boy, deja vu. I seem to remember saying those EXACT same words. More than once.”
“And I learned, didn’t I? It finally got through to me.”
“You’re a lot better, that’s for sure. You’re not filled with as much self-hatred as you used to be. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You really can teach an old dog new tricks.”
Tyler smirks. “You are such a bitch.”
Esme laughs when he aggressively slaps and pinches her ass, then gives a content sigh when he kisses her; long and languid and deep, naked limbs sliding along one another and against the cool, wrinkled sheets. Her breath soft against his skin when she once more rests her head on the centre of his chest; her fingers drawing continuous circles around his navel while his repeatedly comb through her hair.
*****
He finds himself teetering on the edge of sleep when he feels her move against him; placing a forearm across his torso, her chin resting upon it as she peers up at him.
Pressing a kiss to her nose, his hand slides to the nape of her neck. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“How have things been? With you?”
“You mean in general, or…?”
“In the last two, three years. That’s when you started scaling back on things, right? Trying your hand at a more normal life.”
“Nothing’s been normal about my life. Not for a long time. And especially not since you left.”
“I mean stuff like firefighting. And starting your business. How HAVE things been?”
“Guess I overestimated your spying abilities,” he teases and skims his knuckles across her cheek. “I thought you knew everything there was to know.”
“My spying stopped at your personal life. I knew the basics; the firefighting and how you started your own business. To be honest, I think I was scared to venture past those things.”
Cradling her cheek in his palm, he brushes the pad of his thumb over her lips. “Scared? Of what?”
“Finding out you were with someone. I know that sounds pretty stupid, considering I’m the one who fucked everything up. You had every right to go on with your life; to meet someone and fall in love and everything else that comes after that.”
“I was already in love. With YOU. And that wasn’t going to change.”
“Were you with other people? Other than Delaney.”
“Maybe in the biblical sense.”
“THAT I expected. For you to go back to sowing your wild oats all over the place.”
“Wasn’t all over the place. Just the vast majority of the northern territory. Well, the western part of it, anyway.”
“Oh, lovely. Does this mean I’m going to go to the grocery store and meet up with all kinds of women you’ve bumped uglies with?”
“I never pissed in my own front yard. It would have been too fucking awkward; running into a bunch of one-night stands.”
“I am marrying a whore,” she laughs, and presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth. Briefly capturing his bottom lip between teeth when she pulls away.
“I promise you won’t run into any of my conquests while picking Millie up at school or grabbing something at Maccas.”
“Good. Because the last thing I want is to be sharing stories about your dick and its abilities while I’m in line at the store, waiting to buy shit tickets. “
He arches a quizzical brow. “Shit tickets?”
“Toilet paper.”
“And you say us Aussies have weird slang.”
“You know how long it took me to get used to the words you’d use in conversation? Or even your accent for that matter? It wasn’t that easy; trying to decipher exactly WHAT you were saying half the time. I remember how strong it got; when we were living in The Kimberley. I guess it was from being home so much.”
“Think it was easy getting used to you? You’ve got a pretty wicked accent yourself.”
“I most certainly do not.”
“You do.”
“I’m from Colorado. People from Colorado do NOT have accents.”
Raising his head from his pillow, he presses a kiss to her brow. “Trust me, babe. You do.”
“So other than Delaney…” A fingertip drifts over the scar that runs over the bridge of his nose. “...it was just one-night stands? No relationships?”
“No relationships.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to be in one.”
“Didn’t want to be in one or couldn’t find anyone worthy enough to be in one with?”
“A mix of both, maybe. I didn’t want anyone else, Esme. Not in that way. A serious way. I wanted YOU. And if it meant I waited forever or you never found your back…”
“You would have found someone eventually. Someone that you’d fall madly in love with. Marry, have a family…”
“No. I wouldn’t have. Because that is everything I wanted with YOU. Not anyone else.”
“You don’t think you could have learned to love her? Delaney? That you could have moved on and…”
“How could I move on when I was still in love with you? When I always would be in love with you. And why are we even having this conversation? This is supposed to be the start. Of everything. Of US. And talking about this…”
“I’m just curious. Trying to fill in the gaps, I guess. Because I love you and I want to know what I missed. Even if it makes me uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t miss much, believe me.”
“Do you like it? Firefighting?”
“It’s a job. The pay’s decent. Got a little bit of edge. Keeps me busy, at least.”
“You’ve never been one to sit still for very long. Not that surprising you’d thrive at something that keeps you on your toes all the time.”
“I don’t know how much it keeps me on my toes. Not the busiest area. We don’t get a lot of action. I do get a lot of cats out of trees, though.” He gives a playful wink. “And ladies love a guy in uniform, so…”
“I’ve yet to see you in uniform, but I bet you’re hot as fuck. Especially in your turn-out gear.”
“I didn’t think you’d be into that kind of thing. Seeing as your brother is a firefighter.”
“Believe me, Tae. Nothing about you could ever remind me of my brother.”
His eyes close as her fingertips explore the scar on the left side of his forehead and the second one lower on his cheekbone. It’s a form of intimacy as its purest and most innocent of roots; the soft and tender touch of a lover who adores and worships you. Who knows every inch of your body; every blemish, every imperfection. And it’s a closeness…a level of trust and vulnerability…that he’s never experienced with anyone but her.
“What about the business? I assume that’s doing pretty good.”
“Better than I ever thought it would. Got a lot of regular clients, and more and more are coming aboard all the time.”
“Do you have people that work for you?”
“I have a few full-time guys. That deal with the heavy-duty stuff; concentrate on the real manual labour. And a handful of students who help out on weekends and during school breaks. They do small repairs, landscaping stuff, things like that.”
“Who’s in charge while you’re on your little sabbatical?”
“Koen’s my right-hand man. The guy that I trust with everything. Things are being taken care of. I’m not worried about it.”
“I knew you’d find something you’d be amazing at. You always liked working with your hands; doing your own repairs on your truck, putting up the walls and installing the new windows in that little shack of yours.”
“Of OURS.”
“Millie’s really going to get on you, you know. About that treehouse. And she’s definitely going to want to be your little helper. She loves to create. Build things. She’s got a real talent for things like that.”
“I’ll have to get her own stuff. Some tools and a toolbelt, little hardhat, some steel-toed boots.”
“She’ll love that. And probably drive us completely nuts trying to fix everything around here.”
“I’ll start her out slow. Small projects. Birdhouses, flower boxes, some planters for the garden. I promise I’ll keep her away from the power tools.”
“You’re going to have to really watch out for her. Because that child? YOUR child? Isn’t just headstrong, she is completely fearless. I wonder where she gets THAT from?”
“Her mother.”
“Hardly.”
“Well, it’s not from me, that’s for sure. ‘Cause there’s plenty of things I’m afraid of. And they all seem to involve you.”
Sighing, she presses a series of soft kisses along the scar that mars his left shoulder. “I know it did a real number on you. The accident. Seeing me like that. It’s definitely bothering you way more than you’re letting on.”
“I’m not shy. I admit it fucked me right up. All the things I’ve been through? All the people I’ve gone up against? I’ve never…EVER…been that scared. Seeing you like that? Not knowing if you were alive or dead? And if you were alive, was someone going to show up to finish things off? That was…rough.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m really proud of you. For how you handled things. Not just with getting me out of there and making sure I survived, but everything AFTER that. How you just took control. Stepped up. You were banged up and exhausted and hurting and you did what you wanted to do. For Millie. Just focused on her. Took care of her.”
“Why wouldn’t I have done all that? She’s my baby, too. My little girl.”
“It was all still so fresh. So new. You’d barely had a chance to catch your breath. Coming face to face with me, finding out you were a dad again. You had your entire world turned upside down. You…”
“No. I didn’t. I got my entire world BACK.”
His honesty is raw. Real. Powerful. Succeeding in both taking her breath away and bringing tears to her eyes.
*****
“So is this where I get to ask questions now?” His fingers move in slow, methodical circles on the small of her back. “When it comes to what you’ve been doing the last five years?”
“What more is there to know? Didn’t we cover all the bases?”
“Not quite.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Not anything of interest, anyway.”
“You didn’t work or anything? What did you do with your spare time?”
“I picked up jobs here and there. For Nik. Things I could just do from home. Background checks, basic research and tracking people down. Nothing that would draw a lot of attention. So I could stay under the radar. Or try to, at least.”
“Well, you did a pretty good job hiding from me, that’s for sure.”
“We’ve talked about this. I wasn’t hiding from you. Not intentionally, anyway. It was all so complicated. I had to protect Millie. Both of her parents were still in the life. In some way. And we’d both burned a lot of bridges and made a lot of enemies. I couldn’t take the chance that someone would come after her. I just couldn’t.”
“There were other reasons, too. You know there were.”
“Selfish ones. Staying away had nothing to do with you and EVERYTHING to do with me. You know that. We’ve been through it how many times now? It was never about you, Tyler. Not in the way you think it was. At first, it was about protecting you. Then Millie. And finally, it became about myself. Because…to make a long story short… I was a stupid, insecure little girl.”
“You’re not any of those things. It was just a messy situation. All around.” Tangling his fingers in her hair, he pulls her towards him, lips meeting the bridge of her nose. “What else did you do? Other than helping out Nik?”
“Just took care of Millie, mostly. Devoted myself to being a mom. I joined a couple of those mom and baby groups; just to get out of the house and socialize and try and make friends. When she was a few months old, I even signed us up for yoga classes and water aerobics. Millie always loved the water. She was always so comfortable in it. Confident, even.”
“She’s gonna love it here, then. Trips to the beach, being able to swim in the ocean.”
“Except for the fact the thought of an encounter with a shark will be exciting to her. She’ll probably pray for it to happen. I am telling you, that girl is fearless. She’s so much like you, Tyler. More than just the physical. There’s so much of you in her. And it was kinda bittersweet, you know? Seeing you every time I looked at her but knowing I couldn’t actually be with you.”
“I mean, you could have been. But…”
“But I was a stupid little bitch. Like I said. That’s something that will eat at me for the rest of my life, believe me.”
“I don’t want it to. And I’m sorry I bring it up so much. Make you talk about it. Explain yourself. That’s not fair.”
“If anyone has the right to bring it up, it’s you.”
“I don’t want to be that kind of person. I want to be better than that. For you. And Millie.”
“I remember the first time you told me that. How I made you want to be a better man.”
“It’s true. You do.”
“I never considered you a bad man in the first place. A good man who made bad decisions, yes. But bad to your very core? Not even close.”
“You always have been full of shit,” He teases, and curls an arm around her neck, drawing her into a long, deep kiss. His lips against her temple when she settles her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed as his fingertips repeatedly graze up and down her bicep. “Tell me about the guy.”
Her hand slips lazily across his collarbone, down his chest, briefly settling on his stomach before travelling back up again. Finally coming to rest on the side of his neck, nails lightly and repeatedly scratching against the skin. “What guy?”
“The one you dated. In New York. The cop. Or detective. Or whatever the hell he was.”
Esme raises her head from his shoulder, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “How did you know about him?”
“A little birdie told me.”
“A little birdie, huh? What did you bribe her with? Two scoops of mint chocolate chip instead of one? Unlimited Bluey viewing on your cell phone?”
“I promised her a Porsche when she turned sixteen.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past you. You’re going to spoil her rotten.”
“I didn’t have to promise her anything. She just offered the information.”
“Out of nowhere? She just suddenly started talking about my personal life?”
“I MAY have asked her about it.”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“Okay, so I did. I DID ask her. If you’d ever had a boyfriend. I was curious. I wanted to know.”
“Curious, huh?”
“And a bit jealous.”
“Just a bit?”
“A lot.”
“Why are you like this? When it comes to me and other men?”
“Like what? What am I like?”
“Self-conscious. You’ve always been. Even at the very beginning of things. And believe me…” Slipping out of bed, she stretches languorously before padding towards the dresser; a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms and tank top folded neatly on top. “...you do not come across as someone who would be self-conscious.”
“Did I say you could get out of bed? That you could put clothes on? There’s a strict ‘no clothes allowed’ rule in this room. Once that door closes…”
“I know what Millie’s like; if she wakes up in the middle of the night. She’ll come looking for me. And the last thing we need is her seeing both of us in all our naked glory.” Climbing into her pyjamas, she tosses his discarded sweats in his direction. “And don’t do that. Deflect. Answer my question.”
“I’m old.” He grimaces as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, moving slowly as he puts one leg into the pants, followed by the other. Knees cracking when he stands to pull them up. “ My brain is mush. I already forgot what the question was.”
“I asked why you are the way you are. When it comes to me and other men. Why do you always get so bent out of shape about it?”
“I don’t get bent out of shape.”
“You do.” Removing her hair out of the back of her tank top, she moves back to bed; fluffing and moulding her pillows and arranging them to her specification. “And I don’t get it. There’s nothing for you to get prickly about.”
“Like you don’t get prickly about my ex-wife. Or Delaney.”
“Being curious is not the same as being prickly. What is your hang-up? When it comes to me and other people?” She gives a content sigh when she slips back into bed, settling her head on a pillow before rolling onto her side to face him. “It’s not like any of them are still in the picture. And even if they were, they still wouldn’t be a threat to you.”
“I don’t see them as a threat. I know what I bring to the table. It’s not about feeling threatened.”
“What’s it about then?”
“I just don’t like it. You being with other guys.”
“I mean, I was married, remember? I’ve had boyfriends. And girlfriends, for that matter.”
“Since you left?”
“I’m talking about throughout my entire life. And did you honestly think I wouldn’t date? Or at least try to? That I would have just spent the last five years completely alone?”
“You know how you said you were okay with me going on with my life? Meeting someone else? Falling in love, getting married, all that shit?”
Esme nods.
“I’m not that gracious. Not by a long shot. I didn’t want you with anyone else.”
“For the rest of my life?”
“Well...yeah.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She reaches for him. “Come to bed.”
“So was this guy the real deal? Someone you could have moved on with? Gotten your ‘always and forever, happily ever after’ with? Totally forget about me and…”
“Tyler, I was never going to forget about you. I carried your child inside of me. Gave birth to her. She looks just like you. Kinda hard to forget you when I’m looking at your clone every damn day. Add the fact that I was still in love with you and always would be into the mix…”
“Would you have moved on with him? Gotten married, had more kids? All of that?”
“All of that was what I wanted with you. ONLY you. So no, none of that would have ever happened. I didn’t want that life with anyone else. Just you. And if that meant I never got any of that, oh well. Now…” She pats the empty spot beside her. “...come to bed. Please? I’ll answer whatever questions you have., but just come to bed. Because you standing there like that? It’s making me incredibly anxious.”
He relents. Laying on his side with her back pressed against his front and forearm draped across her collarbone. And he presses a kiss to the back of her head before resting his cheek against hers. “What was his name?”
“Don. His name was Don. And he was a detective. Homicide.”
“How the hell did you ever meet him?”
“I worked a small job for Nik. Nothing serious. I had to find my way into the main evidence locker at One Police Plaza and steal some papers related to an old case.”
“What the fuck….?”
“Someone hired Nik because an old money laundering and embezzlement case they were involved in was going to be reopened. And if that happened, it was going to cause a big old shitstorm; he had some big-name contacts and clients of his own that would be exposed. Some really well-known people, too. Politicians, lawyers, judges. And if all that got out…”
“Heads would roll. Most likely literally.”
“Exactly. So Nik and Yaz created an entire persona for me. I had the credentials; photo identification, passport, fake driver’s licence.”
“Who were you supposed to be?”
“An agent with Homeland Security.”
“Jesus Christ. And you don’t consider THAT serious?”
“You know, for such a huge police department with apparently the best security in the country, they were sure easy to fool. It was like taking candy from a baby. I was in and out of there in ten minutes. Not even.”
“I don’t know whether to be impressed or pissed off. That you even put yourself in a situation like that. Especially with Millie in the picture. If you’d gotten caught…”
“But I didn’t. Well, not until about six months later. But that comes further in the story.”
“So the cop…”
“We met in the elevator. I was running to catch it and he held the door open for me.”
Tyler scoffs. “What a gentleman.”
She scowls over her shoulder. “I thought you promised you wouldn’t get prickly.”
“I’m not getting prickly. I just…”
“YOU asked,” she reminds him. “You wanted to know these things, right? You have questions. I’m just answering them. Do you REALLY want to hear this stuff? Or do you just want to be angry about something?”
“I’m not prickly. Or angry. I’m jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of anyone that even looks at you the wrong way.”
“Oh for God’s sake…”
“I was never like this before. I never used to give a shit about this kind of thing. I didn’t care how many people my ex dated or fucked before me. Because I was always so far up my own ass that I knew I was better than anyone that came before me. Sometimes I miss that guy.”
“The guy you were before me.”
“I was a drunk and a drug addict before you. So, no.”
“You weren’t ALWAYS that way. You didn’t always have those issues.”
“But I was a prick in other ways.”
“I liked the guy you were when we met. Yeah, you were messy and you had your issues, but so did I. I wasn’t a picnic, either. We were both fucked up. But it didn’t stop me from falling in love with you. And staying that way.”
“And now?”
“Now I like you even more. I’m glad you’re not totally up your own ass, as you put it. I like that you’re not afraid to talk about the hard things. That you’re able to admit you’re self-conscious or…”
“I never admitted to that.”
“Or you’re feeling spiteful or hateful or jealous. I mean, as weird as it sounds, everyone should want their man to be that way. Just completely honest. Because it doesn’t do anyone a lick of good if they keep that all bottled up.”
“So what you’re saying is that it’s okay to be a prickly asshole.”
“Don’t push your luck, Tyler.”
Grinning, he =presses a kiss to her temple. “So, this guy…”
“What more is there to know? You asked how I met him. I told you. What more do you need?”
“You just chatted in an elevator and hooked up with him, or…?”
“He asked me out for an Irish coffee. I said yes. It was as simple as that.”
“Irish coffee, huh? So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”
“We went out. One date turned into two, two turned into three. Three turned into a relationship.”
“A serious one, or…”
“I mean, we were exclusive. We didn’t date other people. We just…I don’t know…we just did our thing.”
“Did you do HIM?”
“Tyler…”
“I want to know, okay? I NEED to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I do.”
Sighing, she presses a kiss to his forearm, then rolls over to face him. “That’s not an acceptable answer for anyone over seven.”
“Did you? I mean, I think I already know the answer, but…”
“I didn’t sleep with him. And believe me, it wasn’t for lack of opportunity. I won’t lie to you; we did other things and I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them a lot, actually. It was nice; to feel beautiful and wanted and to have someone completely and utterly devoted to you.”
“I would have given you all that. I DID give you all that.”
“And I WANTED it to be you. More than I ever wanted anything in my entire life. But it wasn’t a good time. To just show up on your doorstep. It was all so complicated. Confusing. And I needed to protect Millie. We’ve both burned a lot of bridges, Tyler. Crossed a lot of really bad people. I couldn’t put her at risk. I just couldn’t.”
“But you can now?”
“So much has changed. We’re both walking away. From this life. And I know all of this probably doesn’t make much sense to you. But it makes sense to me.”
“And you couldn’t seal the deal with this guy because…”
“Because it wasn’t fair. To him. To let things get THAT serious. He was a good man and he was great to me and Millie. But I couldn’t give him THAT. That part of me. I just couldn’t. And he didn’t realize it and I never told him about you, but It was always a competition. Between you and him. Everything he did, everything he said. All I would think about is how YOU would handle things. The things YOU would say. And I tried; I really did. But he deserved better than that; a woman who thought of someone else every time he touched or kissed her. That wasn’t fair to him. He wasn’t a bad person. Far from it.”
“I kind of feel bad now. For handling the five years like I did. Me and my wandering dick.”
“Why would you feel bad? Those were my issues. Not yours. You had every right to go on; to deal with things however way you wanted to. You were the one that got hurt.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you hurt yourself more than you hurt me.”
“It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to leave. And I didn’t want all that time to go by; flying under the radar and keeping Millie a secret. But it was so complicated. The lives we were both living. It was never to punish you or hurt you. It was to protect you. And her.”
He nods slowly, considering her words. “So is that why things went bad? Between you and the cop? ‘Cause you wouldn’t pull the trigger?”
“He was very understanding. Very patient. He just assumed I’d come out of a bad situation and I just wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. And I didn’t bother telling him any differently.”
“So what happened? What made him walk?”
“You mean there’s something the little birdie DIDN’T tell you?”
“She did. But I’d rather hear it from you. How’d he find out? About who you REALLY were?”
“I told him.”
“That was risky.”
“Once I realized he was getting more serious and deeper into things than I expected him to, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’d spent six months with him; half a year pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”
“Were you getting more serious about things? About HIM?”
“I mean, I liked him. I was attracted to him. And he was very good to me and Millie. He spoiled the hell out of her and she liked having him around; he took her to baseball and hockey games, they went to the zoo and the movies, he braved the Macy’s toy department more than once.”
“And I want to be happy about all that, but…”
“You weren’t there, Tyler. Through no fault of your own. Millie needed someone. A father figure. She wanted someone like that in her life.”
“She had someone like that. She had a DAD. That would have been there had he known she even existed.”
“And THIS is why I didn’t want to talk about this stuff. No matter what I say or do, it’s only going to upset you. You say you want to know everything, but deep down…”
“I have a right to know all of this stuff. I haven’t hid anything from you. About what I was up to in the last five years. I was totally honest about Delaney. It should go both ways, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want to fight. I get it; you’re hurt and you’re angry and you need to take it out on someone. I get it, Tyler. And I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do. You have every right to be pissed. But do you REALLY want to keep doing this? Bringing it up over and over again? Finding fault in everything I say? You tell me you want to hear these things and then…”
“I’m not trying to fight.” He uses his fingertips to clear hair away from the side of her face and loop it behind her ears, then presses a soft, reassuring kiss to her lips. “And I’m sorry. For acting like a prick sometimes.”
“I never said THAT.”
“Not in so many words.”
“I’m not trying to take away how you feel. You have every right to be pissed off. And hurt. You even have the right to take it out on me. But…”
“I don’t have that right. At all. And I don’t mean to do it. I know it hurts you. And you’re the last person I ever want to hurt, believe me.”
“We need help, Tyler. PROFESSIONAL help. Or we’re GOING to need it. To get past all of this. To deal with how we’re both feeling. You and your anger and your hurt and me and my regret and my guilt. I don’t think we can do it alone. Or that it’s healthy for either of us to even try.”
“You want me to see a shrink.”
“Not a shrink. A counsellor. And not just you. US. Someone who can sit with us and help us unpack all of this and work through it. I think deep down, you realize we need it. That kind of help.”
“If you think that’s the way to go…”
“I think it’s something we need to at least try. And then just go from there.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Including THAT.”
“Now that’s true love,” she teases, and presses a chaste to the corner of his mouth. “And I think it might do Millie some good, too. To talk to someone. She’s been through a lot; seen and heard things no kid should ever have to. I know she’s a tough little thing, but I also know she’s a lot like you; when it comes to shoving things down and pretending they don’t exist. I don’t want her growing up like that. And I know you don’t either.”
“I don’t. I don’t want that at all. Whatever she needs…whatever WE need…we’ll make it happen.”
Smiling, she kisses him; long and soft and sweet. And when she pulls away, his palm still cradles the side of her face; thumb repeatedly brushing against her cheek. “I didn’t love him.”
“I never…”
“You were going to ask. I knew it was coming.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“I was attracted to him. I cared for him. Deeply. But I didn’t love him. And I don’t think I ever would have.”
“He must have loved you. He just let you walk. After he found out the truth.”
“Maybe? I don’t know. He never said he did. Sometimes I felt, you know? And I wasn’t ready for that. I probably never would have been. None of it was fair to him; lying about who I was, allowing him to get so close, letting him think that maybe there was some kind of future…a happy ever after…in the cards. He deserved a lot better than that. A lot better than ME.”
“You’re not a horrible person, Esme. You’re…”
“I hurt people. Even the ones I love the most. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You didn’t do things because you wanted to. You did them because you HAD to. It was just part of the job. If you didn’t lie about who you were, the ending would have been a lot worse than fucking up some guy’s ego.”
“I should have never gotten involved with him. I should have done everything possible to just keep my distance. But I was lonely. I wanted someone in my life. Maybe not to have a serious thing with; I didn’t want to live with someone or get married or grow old and gray with them. He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel wanted. I hadn’t felt that in so long. And if I couldn’t get it from the person I wanted it from, I had to settle. SETTLE. How horrible does that make me sound? Talking about another human being like that?”
“It doesn’t sound horrible. It sounds…”
“Needy? Desperate?”
“No. It just sounds…sad.”
“Sad as in pathetic or…?”
“YOU sound sad. When you talk about it. And you must have been sad when it was happening.”
“I missed you. Every second of every day. And it got worse when Millie came along. I had wanted to be a mom for so long. And I finally had this beautiful little girl. Everything I ever longed for. But I couldn’t share her with you. And that wasn’t fair. To either of us. Or you.”
“See? You did hurt yourself more than you hurt me.”
“You have no idea what I went through. I just tried to shut myself off. I was in love with someone I couldn’t be with. Through no fault of his. He’d done nothing wrong. So I told myself I’d never let that happen again. Get close to someone. That it was better if I just concentrated on being a mom. And that’s what I tried to do. I DID. But…”
“Then you met this guy…”
“All of a sudden, I wasn’t as lonely anymore. There was this man that wanted me. And no, it wasn’t nearly to the depths you did. But it was…something. And I desperately needed it. More than I wanted to admit. All I wanted was to feel something…anything…again. But the more I felt for him, the more I missed you. And that’s when the competition began. He was never going to be YOU. Not even close. No matter how good of a person he was.”
“Did he just walk away or…?”
“He was hurt. Rightfully so. It’s kind of a kick in the nuts when you hear something like that; that the person you’ve spent six months with was nothing but a fake. And he felt stupid; that he didn’t sense that there was something wrong or that there was something I was hiding from him. I told him not to take it personally. It wasn’t any fault or weakness on his part. I was just that good at my job.”
“You must have horseshoes up your ass. ‘Cause for him to just walk away instead of not locking you up…”
“Maybe he felt bad for Millie. Putting me away meant she’d have no one. And I don’t think he’s the type to do that to a little kid.”
“You know what I think? I think he was in love with you. That’s why he was so forgiving.”
“And I think you’re reading too much into things.”
“I can’t say I blame him, though. I know from personal experience how easy it is. And how fast it can happen.”
“Now I think you’re overestimating my appeal.”
“Not in the fucking slightest.”
A smile curves her lips, and she reaches up to sweep hair off his forehead. A hand on his cheek as she leans in to kiss him.
“Thank you.” The fingertips of both hands slide across her shoulders and down either side of her spine, gently squeezing her ass when his lips meet her brow. For telling me. About him.”
“Thank you for not totally losing your shit. I was worried there for a minute.”
“Oh believe me, inside I was throwing tables and punching holes in walls.”
“Because that’s healthy,” she chides, cradling his face in her palms as she presses a kiss to each corner of his mouth, his cheek, chin, and finally his lips. And when she pulls away, she finds herself rendered breathless by the way he regards her; the pure adoration and devotion that softens his face and sparkles in his eyes.
It’s overwhelming at times. To be worshipped and loved in such a manner. Realizing that you’ve become such an enormous and integral part of someone’s existence. Yet it’s a love that many fear will never find them; so beautiful and all-consuming and life-altering.
Running the pad of her thumb over his lips, she sweeps her knuckles along his jaw and then wraps both arms around him. Her body pressed tightly against his as she tucks her face into that favourite spot of hers; that secure, safe place between neck and shoulder.
“It’s always been you, Tyler.” Her breath is warm and sweet against his skin. “It will always be you.”
#Tyler and Esme series#Tyler Rake#Tyler Rake fanfic#Tyler Rake fan fiction#Extraction#Extraction 2#Extraction fan fic#Extraction fan fiction#Tyler Rake x OFC#Esme Drummond#Esme Rake#Chris Hemsworth#Chris Hemsworth Extraction
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Drabble Request - Tyler Rake - Prompt 16 - Preferred Mood: mostly passionate and intimate with just a touch of fluff and male savagery 💗 Thank you so much! 🤗
Hello! Why yes, I think I can manage that for you :)
Smut below the cut, minors DNI!
"Fuck me," he breathes, eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment before opening again, watching his cock vanishing into your throat as he holds your hair back. "God, you give the best head."
Your eyes find his, winking up at him, releasing his cock with a soft pop, your tongue whirling over the head of his erection. "Hmm, I do, don't I?"
He snickers quietly, shaking his head. "There's that modesty I fell in love with." His hand tightens the grip upon your hair, his hips beginning to sway forward, looking down at you with a devilish grin. "Always look so pretty when I fuck that gorgeous mouth, always take it so fuckin' well."
You feel him begin to twitch against your tongue before long, hands grasping his hips and pushing him back, Tyler grunting with partial annoyance as he frowns at you. "I was enjoying that."
"Yeah," you breathe, kissing the vein that runs over his hip. "A little too much. Not ready for you to come yet. You gotta hold me down and fuck me for a while first."
"Nah," he sniffs, moving to the bed, lying down on his back. “I need you to ride me, babe. Right now.”
"Well," you shrug, moving astride him, sinking down on the most perfect cock you've ever seen. "As long as I get this splitting my pussy, I don't mind."
He pulls you down to his level, kissing you softly, nuzzling your nose with his. "Good."
#tyler rake#tyler rake fanfiction#tyler rake smut#tyler rake x female reader#tyler rake x you#extraction#extraction fanfiction#extraction fan fiction#chris hemsworth#chris hemsworth smut#chris hemsworth fanfiction#chris hemsworth x female reader#chris hemsworth x you
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In case anybody was wondering how tumblr is doing right now...
I've just had to explicitly tell this hellsite not to share my content with AI companies.
This is the same hellsite that primarily profits from unique skill and talent, usually manifested in fanart, fanfic, fandom inspired original creations, and whack job nuttery like the vanilla extract cake or Bendy Dick Cumber Bitch.
Only Real Human People make things like that. Or at least make them halfway decently, anyway. A lot of those Human People are queer, disabled, POC, or otherwise disadvantaged in some way.
So, go to your account settings, select "visibility", and make sure the prevent third-party sharing toggle is ON. It should be blue and/or to the right, depending on your system/app appearance settings.
Godspeed o7
#what the actual FRICK#down with ai#i hate ai#all my homies hate ai#hellsite#fanart#fan art#fanfic#fan fiction#fanfiction#fan fic#original creation#oc#original character#original writing#fandom#fandom inspired#vanilla extract#anti ai#benedict cumberbatch#bendy dick cumber bitch#disabled#queer#pjo fandom
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Should I give my mutated Doc mandibles like the Predator?? It tempts me.
Also! I have a version of Rescue MIA: Failure that is a whole lot better and around 15k, should I post it? Has a whole lot more to it and a bit more of Doc’s identity crisis and Lion comfort.
#y’all I’m so sorry#but I actually like the idea#r6e#r6s#r6 doc#r6 lion#r6 extraction#fan fiction#fanfic
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for the word ask!: sigh
‘Send me a word, if it’s in my wip document I’ll answer your ask with the sentence that it appears in.’
Thanks Brianna!!
I write in past tense so I don’t think I have any that say sigh directly so I went with sighed instead. I assume any conjugation is fine for this anyway :)
I also wanted to put a bit more than one sentence but anything more than I’ve written is a spoiler for icttwya so it’s not much lol
—
“Jesus Five.” Allison sucked in a sharp breath. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”
Five sighed. “Didn’t matter.” he mumbled. Fuck, he knew this would happen.
Allison’s eyes narrowed, “Didn’t matter?” she repeated incredulously.
#this was fun#im hoping that if i get anymore i can put a bigger extract#louie says shit#ask game#tua#my fan fiction#five#allison
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Rainbow 6 Master List
Thatcher - TBP
Sledge- TBP
Mute - TBP
Smoke - TBP
Twitch - TBP
Montange - TBP
Rook - TBP
Doc - TBP
Lion - TBP
Blitz - TBP
IQ - TBP
Jäger - TBP
Bandit - TBP
Ash - TBP
Thermite - TBP
Pulse - TBP
Castle - TBP
Gridlock - TBP
Mozzie - TBP
Fuze - TBP
Glaz - TBP
Kapkan - TBP
Tachanka - TBP
Crack Drabbles
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like genuinely this issue has been bugging me for YEARS i like my major character temporary death okay
pls rb for increased sample size!!
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On Alucard and Maria
Are there actually fans advocating for Alucard to be written as Maria’s father figure in the new season of Nocturne? Like that would be a good thing and not infinitely creepier? I don’t think they’ve thought this through.
Alucard is the single most popular character in the franchise. He’s also probably the most shipped character. And yet he has only had one canon love interest in the decades since he’s existed. It’s Maria. And you’re telling me that you think that because he’s 300+ and she’s 17-18 when they started living together in the games, that it would be grooming. However, somehow him inserting himself into her life at age 16 when she’s just lost both her parents wouldn’t come off like grooming!?
Does this man look like he should be picking up random children!? He’s literally terrified of his own cursed blood. Maybe LISTEN TO HIM.
I’m convinced fandoms have forgotten what that word means. Grooming has specific features. It doesn’t just mean “older guy and younger girl.” A relationship with an age gap or an uneven power dynamic can be exploitative or abusive without being a case of grooming. Grooming specifically refers to the process of forming a relationship with a child with the intention of leveraging that relationship and trust to train and prepare (aka brainwash) your victim for the harmful activities the groomer wants to normalize. The relationship Alucard and Maria have in the games is in no way grooming. You know what would be grooming though?
Coming into a 16 year old’s life when she’s vulnerable, traumatized, and recently orphaned only to insinuate yourself as a new father figure. This is so highly inappropriate and a huge red flag. Consider what you’re actually asking for here. These characters do not exist in a a vacuum. They have a long history together as each other’s only canon love interests. You cannot fully extract them from the games, art, interviews, audio dramas, animations, and more where they’re depicted as a couple. There are decades of this precedent and you are asking Netflix to knowingly take the characters with an established romantic dynamic that the audience is already primed to see as romantic and instead portray their meeting as him trying to be her new daddy?
“Oh look! Alucard and his… daughter? Yikes.” This is an official advertisement btw.
THAT is grooming! Think about the optics of this! It would be abysmal! No it would NOT fix the problem of their age gap to make him act like a groomer and get in good with her as a dad. You just cannot completely extract them from the legacy of their relationship in the source materials. It will be incredibly creepy and textbook grooming if you get your way.
Is this really what you want to associate with an “adoptive father Alucard”? Because the art we create doesn’t exist in a vacuum. All the old content—official and fanmade—is still going to exist.
What is so objectionable about the original dynamic anyway? It’s a pretty fun subversion of the tired and problematic vampire trope of “vampire man stalks teen girl and coerces her into being his”. Instead in their original relationship, Maria is the one who pursues Alucard! It’s the young woman who takes initiative and is given the agency to go after what she wants. She courts and woos him. That’s part of the fun!
Yes, Alucard is 300+. He’s also a fictional creature that doesn’t actually exist IRL and stays eternally young. There are no actual people who will ever have his problem of staying 20 forever so it’s rather silly to say he can’t date any humans because of course he will have an age gap with any of them.
The only real problem I have seen people bring up is Maria’s age, but from what I can tell, the show’s already fixed this. Check it out.
In The Games
Rondo of Blood: Maria is 12. She and Alucard do not meet. Richter is a brother-figure and not romantic.
There is then a 5 year time skip.
Symphony of the Night: Maria is 17. She and Alucard meet to save Richter. At the end, Alucard says his goodbyes and intends to return to a life of solitude. Maria goes after him because she has developed feelings for him and doesn’t want him to suffer a life alone.
Maria is given agency to pursue what she wants and prove herself even against Alucard’s resistance and hesitance to let another person into his life.
They spend a year together before we get the audio drama.
Nocturne of Remembrance: Maria continues to try to get close to Alucard. They end up saving each other’s lives and in the end he finally confesses his romantic feelings for her. She is an adult and perfectly able to make her own choices. She chose him. He admits he returns her feelings.
How fandom can look at a story about a young woman subverting the trope and chasing the vampire to get what she wants—basically an anti-Bella Swan—and still find a way to disempower her just so they can pearl clutch? I couldn’t tell you.
So now let’s look at what the show did.
In The Show
Nocturne S1: Maria is 16. She’s been aged up from 12, probably to give her a more active and believable role. But this also means she’s within a normal age to start feeling attraction and expressing her wants. Within her society, she’s even considered of marriageable age. However we are spared the discomfort of our modern values clashing with her contemporaneous ones because Maria in this season isn’t interested in romance. She’s interested in revolution, equality, justice. They’ve portrayed her with so much love and strength. There is no indication they’d betray her by writing her as the child victim of a male suitor. In fact she only meets Alucard in the final few seconds of the season and the two do not even speak a single word to one another.
Now let’s remember the games had a five year time skip. The show only needs two years to get Maria to the adult age of 18, but assuming the follow through with the timeline and go for the full five?
Maria will be 21.
21.
Fan concept for adult Maria. Credit:@esp-art
Are you telling me a 21 year old woman is not old or mature enough to make her own decisions? How is this not a total infantilization of women? Do you think a 21 year old badass vampire hunter needs protection from the ace depressed dhampir boy who just wants to sleep and has in no way tried to pursue her until after she expressed consistent and persistent interest in him?
It is not “grooming” to meet someone when they were younger and then meet them again years later as an adult. That’s a thing that happens! In real life! Adults can still make decisions for themselves! It is only grooming if Alucard behaved in a way that would manipulate teen Maria and put her under his control and authority before she can consent. There is no indication that Alucard in the show is going to do this. And yet the fandom is basically demanding it by saying he should make her “his baby girl”?
And what of Maria’s feelings in all this? She just lost her mother and was betrayed by her father shortly after discovering he even existed. She has lived her whole life without a father. She is in no desperate need of a new one. And if she does need a family member, she already has one! Richter is 19 and is her trusted adoptive brother. Why wouldn’t she go to him over a total stranger she just met and who is half vampire - literally a predator creature that feeds on humans!?
Yeah, hi, Richter Belmont still exists. He and Maria consider each other family. Why would you want her relying on a strange man she just met as a “father figure” rather than her trusted and loving brother?
Have none of you even considered how Maria would feel if Alucard even tried to fill the paternal role? He’d have to force it on her through manipulation and coercion. No way she would want to view him that way. Especially considering she is 16 and likely to be as attracted to the sparkly 20 year old looking sculpted marble beauty as anyone else!
Don’t mind the beautiful eternally young man who looks made of pure porcelain and light. No teen girl has ever been attracted to this, right? No way it could be exploitative and creepy for him to present himself as her new daddy, giving himself authority and influence over her as his child to mold as he wishes, right? Oh yeah, this is MUCH better than Maria pursuing him of her own volition once she becomes an adult, right guys?
We are truly in the stupidest dark timeline.
Frankly, I don’t care if Netflix has them get together or not. They would work just fine as friends too. I just sure as hell hope they’ll ignore the fans clamoring for a creepy daddy/daughter dynamic. Dressing it up as “concern” won’t hide that for some it’s a fetish, and for others they’re just useful idiots who haven’t thought it through.
I implore you to think it through.
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I am not playing the “you're racist if you say Ed is abusive" game with y’all 😒
This shit is not new or helpful to POC in the fandom. I wrote about it earlier this year (too little, too late), so I've built this post up from that.
I encourage folks to read this analysis and call to action by uselessheretic from back in JANUARY since it addresses key aspects of the harassment campaign that was par of the course for the fandom in 2022. This discourse plays into that harassment.
Listen, for all of its widely-held progressive values, the ofmd fandom is still a hobby space filled with mostly white, first world, LGBTQ+ ppl. Most ofmd fans fashion themselves leftists and generally agree that structural racism exists and is a problem. Overall, there's worse fandoms to be in.
That said, this particular wave of hand-wringing about fans calling Ed abusive is not at all about the ways indigenous people are stereotyped in media.
The most telling giveaway is the timing: fans expressing frustration towards Ed following the sneak peek that shows Fang, Archie, Jim, and Frenchie all but having an intervention for Izzy because they think he is "in an unhealthy relationship with Blackbeard" since Ed "cut two more of his toes...[which] seems pretty toxic to me."
I am not emotionally prepared to deconstruct the dark humor of holding a spontaneous intervention for your asshole white assistant manager who's on his last fucking wit because your brown and beautiful rockstar boss is too high to function and keeps cutting the guy's toes off. You either get the joke or you don't.
For the purpose of this post, all I care to extract from it is what it tells us about who is exercising the most control over the ship. Despite his physical absence, Ed’s ghost is all over this beautifully crafted scene. The tone of their wardrobe is dictated by Ed’s. They are carrying out Ed’s orders. Frenchie and Jim’s exclusive presence as former members of Stede’s crew was decided by Ed. Izzy’s authority as first mate is sanctioned by Ed. And it is Ed’s fitness to lead that Frenchie, Fang, Jim,and Archie are questioning ultimately.
I’m not particularly worried about Ed’s integrity as a charismatic lead being hurt by a storyline that paints him as someone who abuses power--the flow and exchange of power is a running theme for ofmd. Stede and Izzy themselves abuse their power in season 1 for their vanity. What I am worried about is this cute cultural feature of the wider ofmd fandom:
the chronic unwillingness to grapple with interpersonal power dynamics amongst peers, not only in the show, but in the fandom itself.
So here we are again, ofmd fandom, working ourselves up into a moral outrage so that you, in your leftist white glory, can publicly police yourself because apparently you only know how to experience People of Color in fiction through these two lenses:
white guilt (am I racist for thinking this? are people around me racist for thinking this?) and
the white imagination (stories about characters of color are valuable because they inform my politics)
This push against reading Ed as abusive is not about calling out the problematics of depicting an indigenous man as mentally ill, violent, lonely, and rageful, it is about trying to sound self-righteous to mask anxiety about accidentally doing a racism on the indigenous, brown lead.
This is even more obvious now with the season 2 premiere days away and audiences being primed to question whether the severity of Izzy's punishment was appropriate.
Now, here's the hard-to-swallow pill the ofmd fandom's been avoiding cuz we don't wanna point out the inevitable problems of representation within canon:
We are being served a storyline where a complex protagonist (who happens to be a brown, queer, indigenous man in a position of power) harms people who are close to him and we are meant to recognize this as a problem that he must come to terms with. I don't like it either, but I'd rather have this than no Ed story at all.
Other people have written far more intelligently about this than I could, but it bears repeating: what's happening here is fans projecting their own insecurities about racism and power onto a white character ("izzy exotifies ed!" "he wants to control ed!" "izzy is an incompetent pirate actually!") while at the same time applying a shiny veneer of respectability and perfect rationality to a nonwhite character ("ed had every right to hurt izzy!" "maiming is fair game as retribution for racism, it's in-world rules!" "ed can't be abusive because he's been abused!") in order to mask white leftist fandom's discomfort about a morally ambiguous brown protagonist.
Anyway, take a breath.
Ed is a character whose impact in "the real world" does indeed go beyond how he makes us feel. Taika Waititi's Edward Teach represents a watershed moment in indigenous representation—not only for his position as protagonist, not even for his queerness, but because of his depth, charisma, complexity, and connection to a community that cares about him. These things have been rarely afforded to the very few indigenous leads in the global film canon--no matter how his story is handled in season 2 and 3, Ed's impact has already been cemented.
Okay I'm done, here's some actionable advice to wash this all down with.
If your goal is to foster a welcoming environment for fans of color and elevate engagement with characters of color, then immediately remove shaming people's headcanons from your toolbox and read this article. Take stock of who is in your fandom social circle and take stock of what you do in order to at least see more fanworks featuring characters of color.
If your goal is to promote or participate in productive race-conscious conversations with other fans, get real about your relationship with power, your positionality in life (and in fandom) and the channels through which you want to have these conversations. Some questions to start with: Can you describe your relationship with your race? What is your experience talking about race in mixed-race spaces? What avenues do you use to participate in fandom? How do you participate? Where do you have influence? How do you manage unwanted feelings that spark from disagreements about racism?
If your goal is to interact in fandom with integrity, get explicit about your values. Engage in dialogue, treat others with the respect you want. Be curious and ask questions. Avoid becoming someone's useful idiot and learn to think critically.
Finally, if your goal is to enjoy your blorbos without having to think about the problematics of representation for QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color), then save us all the grief and just join a different fandom.
Good luck!
#phew anyway#ofmd meta#cuz i actually had to explain the sneak peak scene oh my god#the izcourse#ofmd fandom#ofmd#our flag means death#fandom discourse#ofmd fandom discourse#fandom racism#long post#edward teach#ed teach meta#ofmd season 2#ofmd spoilers#ofmd fandom meta#thank u everyone who marinated on some of these thoughts with me in the circle <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3#and thank you everyone who proofread and gave feedback on this <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3#anyway ofmd fandom oh my god#please educate yourself#I hate to be like this but if you want to say meaningful shit about racism in this show#u need to do some actual fucking research and exercise your interpersonal skills lol#EDIT: fixed a couple links thanks anon!#la meta de mi meta
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Lost and Found- Chapter 29
Fandom: Extraction
Pairing: Tyler Rake and Esme Drummond (OFC. You do not have to read the original series to understand this fic)
Warnings: slight profanity
Tagging: @tragiclyhip @munstysmind @themaradwrites @thebejeweledwatercat @youflickedtooharddamnit @asirensrage @residentdormouse @secretaryunpaid @alisbackalleybbq @kmc1989 @karimac @ninjasawakenedmystar @ocappreciationtag @arrthurpendragon @occommunity @theesirenteller @fanficanatic-tw
Link to Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43179357/chapters/138016519
My tag list is OPEN. Just let me know if you'd lke to be added :D
****
It’s exactly how she remembers it. A quaint, three-bedroom home perfect for a young, growing family; antique blue board and batten with a vibrant, mustard yellow front door and a deep, wide porch that wraps around one side of the structure and connects with the deck in back. A fenced-in rear yard ideal for pets and children; enough open land for gardens and play structures and even a pool. Mere blocks from the small downtown core and open-air market; located close to schools and parks and only a ten-minute drive to the beach. The latter had been the ultimate selling point; as close to the ocean as they could get within their price range. Things had been different then; both financially struggling after never receiving full payment from Mahajan, but still having to worry about a stack of hospital bills and various debts.
There’d been no reason to live above their means; content with something small that they could personalize and make all of their own. Add onto if a bigger family was in the cards; firmly settling on having at least one baby, but not fully sold on anything more than that. Being a father again scared him; the guilt and the regret surrounding the death of his son and the decision he’d made in the final weeks still weighed heavily on his mind and soul. And she’d known not to push the subject no matter how much she desired something more; needing to give him the space to not only wrestle with and defeat his demons but build up his confidence when it came to raising another child.
Wick had picked them up at the airport. Twelve days following their desperate escape from New York, and ten since he’d flown to Broome to keep his eyes open and an ear to the ground. After assisting Alcott in identifying -and quickly eliminating- any possible threat, he’s confident that things are secure and no dangers lie in wait; free to return to the States and his commitment to helping Nik destroy any remaining threat on the front line. He looks healthier and more well-rested than Esme can previously remember; casually dressed in a pair of olive green cargo shorts and a simple white t-shirt. His eyes are more vibrant, the bridge of his nose and his cheeks sunkissed. And it's a welcome departure from the usual; the sullenness replaced by a genuine smile and unmistakable glow.
She glances at Millie; fastened in her car seat in the back of the SUV, safe and secure between her mom and dad. Father and daughter both asleep and in the same positions; heads tilted back and to the right, their arms folded across their chests, mouths slightly open as they quietly snore. Their cheeks flushed; sweat glistening at their temples and napes of their necks, wayward strands stuck to their brows. The last two weeks finally catching up to them; the hours spent travelling, the stress, fear, and worry that had weighed heavily upon them, the shared shock and surprise of finding out about one another’s identities and roles in the other’s life. And the dangerous and unpredictable flight from New York City and the two weeks spent at Nik’s while longing for home.
As Wick kills the engine, she tends to Millie, gently cradling her face in her palms and peppering her brow and cheeks with feathery kisses. Repeatedly brushing the tip of her nose against Millie’s until the four-year-old gives a sleepy giggle and a breathy, ‘Momma’; eyes flickering open as she plants a noisy kiss on Esme’s lips.
“Time to get up, little bug. We’re finally here.”
“Home?”
Esme nods.
“Our forever home?”
“Our forever home. Well, unless we one day need a bigger one. Come on…” Unbuckling the car seat’s harness, she lifts Millie onto her lap. “You’re getting big, lovey. Soon I won’t be able to pick you up at all.”
“I’m big like daddy!”
“You definitely are. I always knew you would be; even when you were in my belly and I used to get sneak peeks of you at the doctor. You were long and lanky even then. Now…” She clears sweaty hair away from Millie’s cheeks and out of her eyes.. “...wake daddy up. Tell him we’re here.”
She scrambles off her mother’s lap and onto Tyler’s; her stomach pressed against his chest, a knee beside either hip. And taking his face in both hands, gently shakes his head from side to side. “Daddy! It’s time to get up! We’re here now! No more sleep!” Upon receiving no response, she aggressively taps her palms against his cheeks, then scowls at her mother. “I think he’s dead.”
“He’s not dead. You can see that he’s breathing. Sometimes, he’s a really heavy sleeper. Or maybe he’s ignoring you.”
“You might ignore you, but not me. Never me.”
“Excuse you?”
“Daddy!” Millie bellows into his ear, then tugs at his beard, followed by his ears. “You have to get up! No more sleep! It’s time to wake up and…” She shrieks when his fingers lightly dig into her sides and he begins gently tickling her, dissolving into giggles when he tips her sideways across his lap and repeatedly brushes his beard against her cheeks. And she’s breathless and hiccuping when he once more settles her upright on his thighs, her tiny hands cradling his cheeks in their palms. “It’s time to get up!”
“Says who?”
“Me! And momma!”
You guys aren’t the boss of me.”
“Yeah, right!”
“Why do I need to get up? Can’t a guy get his beauty sleep?””
“You can go back to sleep later! We’re finally here, daddy! We’re home! It’s time to wakey-wakey, shakey-shakey!”
“What if I don’t want to wakey-wakey, shaky-shakey?”
“Too bad! When momma says it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up! Remember, she’s the boss, applesauce!”
“Sure she is.” Placing a kiss on Millie’s temple, he settles her sideways on his lap; palm smoothing over her messy hair as she presses her face against the window and studies her surroundings. “What do you think of it so far?”
“I love it! I love the colour! Especially the front door! I LOVE yellow. It’s a great use of colour, dad. You know what they say? That EVERY house deserves a pop of colour.”
Tyler arches a quizzical brow at Esme. “Whose they?”
She gives a sheepish grin. “People on television. We watch a lot of Home and Garden Network.”
“Especially in the winter,” Millie adds. “When it’s too cold to go outside. Or there’s a snowstorm and we’re stuck in the house.”
“So you think it’s an alright place? That you’ll be happy here?”
“Of course, I’m going to be happy! It’s home. It’s where mommy and daddy are. It can’t get any better than that. But…”
“Uh oh…”
“You know what it needs? More colour. It needs flowers. To up the curb appeal.”
“Are you going to be a real estate agent when you grow up?”
“Nope.”
“Interior decorator?”
“Hell no! I’m going to be the person who builds the house. With my own hands!”
“That’s my girl.”
Esme winces in discomfort as she reaches across her body to unbuckle her seat belt. “Funny thing is, that’s what your daddy does. That’s one of his REAL jobs. He even owns his own business. He might not build houses from the ground up, but he helps make people's places bigger and better.”
“But I thought your job was kicking ass.”
“It is. Just not all the time. Only when Auntie Nik really needs my help.”
“So you have two lives. Two ‘yous’.”
“Yeah. I guess you could put it that way. The ‘me’ that was in New York City? Taking care of business? That’s the me that I don’t have to be very often anymore. The ‘all the time’ me? I help people in a different way. I make their houses bigger and nicer, I put up fences and decks, I build garages and sheds and even furniture sometimes.”
“Can you build a treehouse? I always wanted a treehouse.”
“Millie, I can build you whatever you want. Or at least I can try.”
“You know what his other job is? He’s a fireman.”
Her eyes widen. “Shut the front door!”
“It is. That’s the job I do the most. I won’t be going back for a while though; I’ve got a lot of time off to spend with you and your mom. That’s all that’s important right now. That you guys are safe and taken care of. And that the three of us get to be together. Get used to being a family.”
“Being a firefighter is crazy dangerous! And scary!”
“It can be.”
“Momma’s right! You ARE super brave!”
“I like to think I am. Sometimes, anyways.”
“She told me you’re the bravest person she’s ever known. And the strongest.”
Reaching behind Millie, he gently and lovingly tugs on Esme’s hair. “Yeah, well your mum is biassed.”
“Her mum tells the truth.”
“You’re our hero, Daddy. You’re brave and you’re strong and you keep us safe from the bad guys. We don’t have to worry about them when you’re around. ‘Cause you’ll do anything to stop them from even coming near us, never mind hurting us.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you or your mumma. You’re my girls. All that matters to me is the two of you.”
“And Lucy.”
“DEFINITELY Lucy. She’s one of my girls, too. Actually, she’s the ORIGINAL girl; I had her before I even met your mumma.”
“Mumma says she’s a really good doggo. A super smart one. I can’t wait to meet her. I hope she’ll like the toys and treats I picked out for her. And I hope she LOVES me.”
“I know she will. And she’s going like having a little sister; someone to play with and chase around and sneak her food under the table. She’ll be like a puppy again, just you watch.”
“I just hope she loves me. ‘Cause I already know I love her. So if she doesn’t feel the same about me, I’m going to be crazy sad. I’m going to…”
Her voice trails off as begins bouncing up and down on his lap; banging her palm against the window when Alcott steps out onto the front porch; flashing that dazzling and waving enthusiastically at her. And she squeals “Uncle Duey!” before Tyler pops open the door; not waiting for it to fully open before she’s slipping out of the vehicle and scurrying up the front walk.
Alcott is on the middle step when she launches herself towards him; his deep, rich chuckle and her piercing, musical giggle floating on the air as he effortlessly catches her and tosses her above his head. Once, twice. Before tucking her into his chest and showering her temples, forehead and cheek with kisses.
Esme pauses with her hand on the door handle. “I know it’s hard for you; seeing how close she is to everyone. The fact they got to be part of her life long before you did. And I’m sorry that it hurts you so much. I’m sorry for so MANY things.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry. We’ve moved past that. I don’t need constant apologies.”
“But…”
“I don’t need them,” he forcibly repeats, then lays a hand on the back of her head and pulls her into him; lips meeting her brow. “And it’s not as bad now. It doesn’t hurt as much. I’m starting to look at it differently. How I’m actually very lucky. You and Millie had these people around; watching out for you, loving on you and keeping you safe. Until I finally got the chance to do it.”
“I just wish I’d given you that chance sooner. I’m sorry I…”
“No more of that word, okay? There’s no need for it.” He’s mindful of the still tender line of stitches embedded in her scalp as he pushes his finger through her hair; hand cupping the back of her head when he kisses her. pushes his fingers through her hair, mindful of the still tender line of stitches embedded in her scalp. “Not anymore.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
“So good to me? After everything I’ve done. After hurting you like I did…”
“I love you.” The answer is short and sweet. Honest. “I always have. I always will.”
Her lower lip and chin tremble as she struggles to hold back her emotions.
“None of that, okay? No crying. There’s no reason to cry. There’s been enough of that. And I don’t want this; you holding onto all of this…stuff. I forgive you. Now it’s time for you to forgive yourself. Or at least work on it.”
“How the tables have turned, huh? I remember saying almost those same words to you. About Austin. About how he forgave you. For what you did. And that it was your turn. To forgive yourself.”
“And I got there. Eventually. You will too. You’re not alone in this. You’ve got me. Millie. We’ll help you through it. Now…” Turning and reaching for the door handle, he’s stopped when she snags him by the back of his t-shirt and pulls him towards her. A hand on his cheek as she kisses him; long and soft and slow. A grin tugging at the corners of his mouth when he pulls away. “What was that for?”
“I need a reason to kiss you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Have you ever considered that I enjoy kissing you?”
“Have you ever considered you have crappy taste in men?”
“My taste in men is impeccable, thank you very much. Or at least it became impeccable when I met you.”
Smirking, he presses a kiss on her brow. “Sweet talker. Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Yeah, you’re always up for a good, old-fashioned, ego-stroking.”
“And a good stroking of something else,” he teases, giving her a playful wink and then opening the car door and stepping out. Offering Alcott a nod in greeting before heading to the opposite side of the vehicle and assisting Esme; a protective hand on the small of her back as he leads her up the front walk. “You gonna be alright the rest of the way? While I give Wick a hand with all the stuff?”
“I’ll be fine,” she assures him, standing on her tips with a hand upon his chest as he leans down to kiss her.
“I worry.”
“I know you do. And in a strange little way, it makes you a million times sexier. Which is hard to grasp considering you’re already the sexiest man alive.”
“You and your shit taste in guys.”
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, my taste has become impeccable.” Smoothing her palms down the front of his t-shirt, her hand settling on his hips; eyes closing as she rests her forehead upon his chest. “I love you, you know.”
Smiling, he cups the back of her head in his palm and leans down to kiss her temple. “I know.”
****
Alcott greets her with a smile as he holds a squealing and giggling Millie upside down by her ankles. “Well there’s a sight for sore eyes.”
“Emphasis on the word ‘sore’.”
“You’re going to be feeling it for a while. To be honest, I’m surprised you’re doing as well as you are. That you’re even up and at ‘em.”
“It was now or never, I guess. Nik was getting tired of me; I was only a couple of days away from being evicted.”
“Look at mommy’s toe nails!” Millie calls out, as her fingertips swipe at her mother’s feet. “I did those! Watermelon pink! Mine match!”
“You’re going to make her throw up,” Esme warns. “Or pee her pants. She had a huge drink in the car before falling asleep.”
“I might do both!” The four-year-old announces. “I had a cherry and vanilla Coke slurpee! Daddy and I shared it, but I drank the most! Now I got the burps!”
“Guess your mum will be cleaning a hell of a mess off the steps, won’t she.”
“More like her father would have to clean it up. So let’s spare him the horror, okay? Blood and guts he can handle. THAT? He’ll likely toss his cookies too.”
(Millie hiccups as Alcott returns her to an upright position and settles her on his hip. “Daddy doesn’t like barf. I almost hurled on the plane and he nearly had a panic attack.”
Standing on her tiptoes, Esme straightens and tightens her daughter’s pigtails. “We don’t need to give away all of his secrets. Why don’t you run over and help daddy and Uncle John with some stuff? Grab your backpack and Lucy’s toys and treats. I’ll take you to meet her in a few minutes.”
“You just want to talk to Uncle Duey in private. I know your tricks, mom.”
“Well, there’s some things we need to discuss that little ears don’t need to hear.”
“What kind of things?”
“Adult things. That you…young miss…don’t need to be part of.”
“Are you going to hang out for a bit, Uncle Duey? Are you going to stay for supper? We haven’t eaten yet and I’m getting really hungry and I really want you to stay. Will you?”
“If your mum and dad don’t mind having an extra mouth to feed.”
“Are you going to sleep over? Visit for a bit? ‘Cause that would be really cool! Maybe we could even make a tent in my new room!”
“Tell you what, I’ll stay for a few days. So we can hang out. BUT, I’m going to stay at a hotel; so you and your folks can have privacy. You’re a family now; you need to concentrate on THAT.”
“I finally have a daddy. And not just ANY daddy, but my REAL daddy! The daddy that helped make me. Who put me in mom’s tum! How cool is that?! That I’d get my actual daddy in the end?!
Alcott presses a noisy kiss on Millie’s cheek before setting her on the ground, a hand resting on the top of her head. “You know, I think you’re a very lucky little girl. That you have the dad AND mum that you do. Because no one…in this world…could love you more than they do. You’re going to have a long and happy life, my little Amelia. With BOTH of them.”
“Daddy said that when something is meant to be, it always finds a way. He said that’s why mummy needed his help; because they were meant to be together. Do you think that’s true?”
“I think when two people love each other…REALLY love each other…they’ll find their way back to one another. Doesn’t matter how long it takes or how many obstacles are in the way, if they’re meant to be together, they will be. That’s what happened with your mum and dad. Although I do question her standards and her taste in men. Because if you ask me…”
“You know, you can be super duper cute, Uncle Duey. And really romantic.”
“You know, I have my moments. But let’s keep that between us. Our little secret. I have a reputation to keep.”
“Of being a big-time ass kicker!”
“Exactly.” Offering a closed fist, Millie bumps it with her own. “Now, you go.” Laying a hand on the top of her head, he gently steers her towards the stairs. “Listen to your mumma. Go and grab your things. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“A very nice one.”
“What is it?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise. And you can’t have it until you do what you're told; go and lend a hand and grab your stuff. Then you can meet Lucy and…”
“And then I get my surprise!”
“Exactly!”
“This is the best day ever!” Giving his leg a tight squeeze, she hurries for the stairs and then jumps from the landing; landing effortlessly on her feet and rushing off towards the car. Calling out for her dad and her uncle John; giggling when she’s teased and Wick playfully pulls on one of her pigtails; her high-pitched, exuberant voice floating on the breeze as she busies herself with helping pull bags from the trunk.
Grinning, Alcott shakes his head. “She’s…”
“A handful? Believe me, I know.”
“She seems to be adjusting alright. To this new life of hers. Seems excited to be here, that’s for sure.”
“The last forty-eight hours, she’s done nothing but go on and on about Australia. About how she can’t wait to live here. About taking beach trips and going fishing; learning how to ride a bike, going to school and making friends. It’s ALL she’s talked about.”
“She’s been through a lot. It hasn’t been the easiest of three weeks, that’s for sure. Bad enough on all of us, never mind a wee one. How have things been? Since she found out? About her dad?”
“Everything’s been great. Better than I thought it would be; I thought it would take her a lot longer to adjust to the whole thing and to forgive me for keeping him a secret. But it’s like he’s been part of her life forever. Like she’s never known anything different. She adores him. Wants to be around him constantly.”
“The best part of that is that she loved him before she even knew that he WAS her dad. How’s he been? With her?”
“Amazing. He really had to step it up after New York City; I sort of just threw him to the wolves. But he did it; despite all the pain he was in and constantly worrying about me and trying to take care of me. He just did what he had to do. Spent nearly every waking moment with her.”
“As much as what happened sucks for you, it was probably what was best for them. It gave them that time; to be completely alone and invested with one another. Gave them a chance to learn about one another. Without anyone else interfering.”
“As much as my body wishes it could get on board with that, it’s just not having it. How have things been here?”
“Quiet. For the most part.”
“For the most part, huh? I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Just a couple of people snooping. Coming around where they had no reason to be. Wick and I took care of them.”
“Took care of them as in…”
“As in they won’t bother you…or anyone else…ever again.”
Sighing heavily, Esme crosses her arms over her chest, hands rubbing at her biceps.
“Hey…” Hooking a finger under her chin, Alcott tilts her face up towards him. “...everything is fine. You’re safe here. Wick and I took care of things on our end, now all Nik has to do is handle things on hers. It’ll be over soon. For good.”
“God, I hope so.”
She glances over her shoulder as Millie and Tyler make their way towards the house. The latter gently suggesting that their offspring make multiple trips to and from the car, while Millie insists -despite the knapsack on her shoulders, gift bag over her wrist, and the top of a pile of small boxes cradled in her arms reaching her eyebrows- that she’s stronger than she looks and can see ‘just fine’.
“You know….” Esme turns back to Alcott, body leaning into his when he drapes an arm across her shoulders. “...I’ve waited five years for this. To be with him again. I have missed him; every second of every day. I spent four wondering what it would be like; to have him in her life and see them together and hear her call him ‘daddy’. Now it’s happening; it’s all RIGHT HERE. And I am so overwhelmed. With everything I’m feeling.”
“In a good way, I hope.”
“In a very good way. This is all I ever wanted. HE’S all I ever wanted. Everything we talked about…everything we planned together…it’s all finally happening. In this place. That we bought together. And that I never spent a single night inside. It’s a lot, you know? To unpack. And I’m so scared that something…someone…is going to take this all away from me.”
“That’s why you…BOTH OF YOU…need to get out of this life. And stay out of it. Once this is all over, you need to walk away for good. Or something bad WILL happen.”
“I’m ready for that. More than ready. I finally have everything I want. WHO I want. I want to be a wife and a mother. I want to share my bed with the same man every night for the rest of my life. Kiss the same man good morning EVERY morning. I want to make cookies for school bake sales and cheer Millie on while she plays soccer and watch her learn to surf. I want to have another baby. Or two. Or three. I am so ready. For ALL of that.”
“But?”
“I’m worried that he won’t be able to walk away. Or stay away. Not for good. I’m worried he’s always going to be tied to that life somehow. That it will somehow find a way back into our lives. Take him away from us.”
“Have you mentioned all this? Talked to him about it?”
“I haven’t exactly had the chance. I spent a week in and out of consciousness, and another five days trying to build up enough strength just to do shit like feed myself and get myself to the bathroom. There was never a good time to bring up something like THAT.”
“You need to. Just get it all out in the open. Let him know what you’re worried about, what you’re afraid of, all of that. Because it won’t do any good keeping that in. You need to say it. And he needs to hear it.”
“You know what my fear is? My worst nightmare? That he’ll take a job and go somewhere thousands of miles away and something horrible will happen to him. That I’ll lose him. Permanently. And he’ll be stuck there; I won’t have any way of getting him out there and bringing him home.”
“Esme…”
“I couldn’t deal with that. I just couldn’t. I’d never survive it.”
*****
Esme slowly approaches the couch; a sprawled-out Lucy regarding her with wide eyes and her head tilted to the side. While Millie trails a few steps behind, she crouches down in front of the sofa and offers a soft, calm smile.
“Hey girl…hey Lucy…” She holds out the back of her hand to sniff, the dog’s nose wet against her skin. And as recollection of a long lost and missed scent begins to creep in, Lucy’s tail begins to thumb energetically against the cushions. “...do you remember me? It’s been a long time, huh? I missed you. So much.”
The thumping of the tail continues, now accompanied by a butt wiggle and a soft yet happy whimper as Lucy wriggles closer. “Yeah…you remember. We were besties. We did so much together. I’m so sorry…” Ruffling the fur at the nape of Lucy’s neck, Esme then strokes the dog’s ears and scratches under her chin “...that I just up and left like that. I never meant to abandon you.” She leans in to press a kiss to Lucy’s nose. “Thank you, sweet girl. For keeping him company. And keeping an eye on him. Until I could get back to doing it.”
Swiping at loose tears with the back of her hand, she reaches for Millie.“I have someone I want you to meet. Someone I love very much. I had a baby while I was gone. And this is her…” Drawing her daughter to her side, she lays a hand on the top of the little one’s head and presses a kiss to her temple. “...isn’t she beautiful?”
“Hi Lucy…” Millie offers her hand for a sniff. “...I’m Millie. Well, my name is really Amelia, but I like Millie better. Everyone calls me that. I’m going to live here now; with you and my momma and my daddy. That makes us sisters. ‘Cause we have the same mom and dad. Just they adopted you and I was in momma’s tummy.” She giggles when Lucy licks her hand, then slides forward and swipes at her chin with her tongue. “I think she likes me!”
“Why don’t you show her what you got for her? I’m sure she’d love to see.”
“I got you some goodies.” Millie holds aloft a neon pink gift bag, filled with white tissue paper. “Some toys and some treaties. See…” Dumping the contents out onto the couch, she arranges them neatly in their respective groups; food in one pile, play objects in the other). “...I got you all different kinds of stuff. Squeaky balls, rope toys, ones you can chew on, a cool tug of war one that we can play with together! I’ll let you pick which one you want to play with first.”
“I think she’s more interested in learning about you right now.”
“Can I give her some treats? Do you think that’s okay? That daddy won’t mind?”
“He won’t mind at all, believe me. Here…” Selecting one of the bag of treats -duck flavoured- she tears it open; dumping a handful of the small ‘cookies’ into Millie’s palm. “...these are her favourites. Hold your hand out and let her take a sniff. She’ll decide if she wants them or not.”
“She won’t eat my hand, will she?”
“Lucy’s the last dog on earth that would do something like that. She might kiss you to death or you might pass out from her stinky doggy breath, but she’s a lover, not a fighter. The goodest good girl. Aren’t you, Luce?” She smoothes a hand over each of Lucy’s ears and the scruff of her neck, kneading lightly at the fur as Millie offers the treats in her palm. The dog briefly sniffing before hurriedly -and exuberantly- gobbling them up. Causing the four-year-old to dissolve into giggles when the nibbling at her palm turns into enthusiastic lapping at her chin and cheeks. “I knew she’d like you. What’s not to like?”
“We’re going to be besties!” Millie declares, and tosses both arms around Lucy’s wriggling body. “Aren’t we Lucy?!
Tyler’s hand falls on Esme’s shoulder as he joins them. “How’s things down here?”
“Good,” she smiles up at him. “Very good. I think it’s safe to say that Lucy and Millie like each other.”
“We don’t just like each other!” Millie declares, as she lies on her back on the couch; Lucy between her splayed legs, the dog’s stomach pressed against hers. Lucy panting and her tongue lolling out of her mouth as her new friend enthusiastically scratches at the ‘sweet spots’ behind her ears. “We LOVE each other!”
“That’s ‘cause Lucy has great taste. Don’tcha girl.” Tyler reaches down to knead the back of the dog’s neck. “Now I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re going to have to share me now. We’ve got extra people in the house. Extra b…”
Esme scowls up at him.
“Ladies. I was going to say LADIES.”
“The hell you were.”
“You know I’m just joking. Trying to get a rise out of ya. Although after the past ten days, I wouldn’t mind if YOU were trying to get a rise out of ME.”
She gives a derisive snort and a roll of the eyes. “You are too much.”
His fingers curl around her bicep when she starts to stand; helping her to her feet before his palm moving to the small of her back as she leans into him. Her body leaning into his as his lips meet the top of her head.
“You guys finished? Get everything inside?”
“Just put everything upstairs for now. We can tackle it later. Or tomorrow. Or whenever. There’s no rush.”
“So…” Alcott takes the stairs two at a time. Enthusiastically clapping and rubbing his hands together as he addresses Millie from the bottom landing. “...who’s ready for their surprise!”
“I am! I’ve been ready since you told me! But…” She nuzzles the top of Lucy’s head with her nose. “...can Lucy come and see it too?”
“The more the merrier. This is definitely a family thing.”
Sliding out from under the dog’s body, Millie jumps to her feet; patting the side of her leg and calling for the dog to follow as Alcott leads the way out of the living room and down the hall. Pausing at the door that belongs to the small three-piece bath just off the kitchen.
“Right in here,” he says, and nods towards the door. “It’s waiting for ya.”
“In here?”
“In there. Go on.”
She reaches for the handle, then pauses. “What is it? What’s in there?”
“It’s a bathroom.”
“But what’s IN the bathroom?”
“Your surprise.”
“But what IS my surprise?”
“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? Go on. Go see what’s in there.”
Esme’s brows arch quizzically as she glances between Tyler and Alcott. “What are you two up?”
The latter grins. “Just a little something. That we thought would cheer her up, especially after the last couple of weeks she’s had. And we thought it’d help make this new life of hers even better.”
“And just what would make it better? What…?”
“Bea!” Millie’s scream is ear-piercing; bouncing off the ceiling and walls and echoing through the lower level of the house. “Oh…my Bea!” She drops onto her butt in the middle of the floor and scoops the cat into her arms, cuddling her tight to her chest as she sobs into the glistening black fur. A concerned Lucy hurriedly padding into the room; settling herself in a sobbing Millie’s lap as she licks at the tears that stream down the little one’s face. “...I missed you!”
“How?” Esme struggles to hold back her own tears. “How did you…?”
“I had someone bring her to me. Someone I could trust. To get her safely. And here she is. I couldn’t keep a little girl and her best friend apart, could I? It’d already been long enough.”
“This was all you wasn’t it?” Esme glances up at Tyler. “You made this happen.”
“It was my idea. But I had help. Getting it done.”
“I thought you weren’t a cat guy.”
“I’m not.” Smiling, he wraps around her and gatherers into his side. Leaning down to press his lips against her temple. “But I have a feeling this one will grow on me.”
****
It’s before eleven when Esme steps out onto the front porch with Wick, the wood smooth and cool under her bare feet; the light in the front room and a small battery-powered lantern on a small nearby table providing the only illumination. Alcott departed an hour before; needing to get back to his hotel to handle some ‘important business’ before retiring for the night, but not before promising Millie he’d be back to see her in the latter part of the morning. With exhaustion and calm quickly settling in, Tyler tends to tucking Millie into -at her insistence- the confines of her brand new, four-poster bed. A simple piece of furniture that signifies the start of the second bedroom’s transformation; pink and grey camo bedding, the rest of the space a blank canvas for her -with some guidance and help- to turn into her own little sanctuary.
As Wick lingers on the bottom landing, Esme remains at the top of the steps; gathering the sides of the oversized hoodie she sports and wrapping them around her petite frame. “You gonna stick around for a bit? Couple of days at least? Millie would love to spend some time with you. Now that we’re away from all that craziness. And who knows when she’ll see you again.”
“I already said my goodbyes. Or should I say my ‘see you laters’. She knows it won’t be long. Until we see each other.”
“Still, a couple of days would have been nice. Just to sit back and relax. Chat.”
“As much as I wish I could just take it easy, I really need to get back. To New York City. I told Nik I’d help tie up all the loose ends. And I need to meet Charon. We have some…business…to tend to.”
“Business as in Winston.”
He smiles coyly. “The less you know, the better.”
“Do you think the High Table will do anything? That they’ll handle him anyway? For what he did to Tyler? To Millie?”
“They’d be hypocrites if they didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“He broke their most important rule. The biggest one. They’ll forgive some things. Some missteps. But THAT?”
“He deserves to pay for what he did. He could have killed both of them. Taken everything away from me. Everything I had just gotten back. That I spent five years missing and longing for. Winston tried to take that from me. HIM from me. And for what? Some weird, sick ass obsession?”
“He had it in his mind that you were his to have. And to lose. Winston isn’t used to losing.”
“I was never his. I was never going to be. And I certainly never let him think it was a possibility.”
“I think he felt as if he could guilt into it. Being with him. Hold everything he’s done for you over your head. Manipulate you. Until you not only gave in, but gave him what he wanted. EVERYTHING he wanted.”
“Never would have happened. I’d already lived through one asshole gaslighting me for years. I wasn’t falling for it again. And if he had managed to take Tyler and Millie from me, I would have killed myself before it happened. Before EVER being with him.”
“How about we concentrate on the fact he DIDN’T manage to do it. That Millie and Tyler are safe.”
“I think about it every day, believe me. But I also think about how he can’t get away with this. As if it isn’t bad enough that he was so ready, willing, and able to kill Tyler, he was more than okay with taking Millie out in the process. A little girl girl. MY little girl. My baby. And I’m sorry, but he can’t get away with it. He just can’t.”
“And he won’t. I promise you. Winston will be taken care of. You don’t need to know how or at whose hand, but he will be. You just need to trust me.”
“I do. I DO trust you. You know I do. I trust you with my life. With Millie’s life.”
“Your part in all of this is over now. This life? The job? It’s time, Esme. For you to let it go. To just walk away. Not many people in this world get that chance. So you need to take it when you can. Because if you keep even on toe in this pound, you are going to get sucked back in. And this life will swallow you whole. You know it will.”
“It’s hard to walk away when there’s still unfinished business. When it’s so personal.”
“That business will be taken care of. You need to let other people handle it now. What you need to do is go inside and start over again. Start a new life. The one you always wanted. You’ve been given a second chance with Tyler. To be with him. Have a life with him. Make a family together. Do you know how many people wish they could get that? Who's lost someone and will never get them back? Who would love to be in your shoes right now?”
“I know it’s hard for you. To see it. Everything just playing out right in front of you. You can’t get Helen back. And believe me, if there was a way I could change that, I would.”
“I know you would. But you can’t. You can’t do that for me. But what you CAN do? You can make a life for yourself. A REAL life. You can make that man your husband and you can make more babies together and your little girl can have both her mother AND her father. You never wanted all of this. To be in this world. You were never planning on sticking with it for the long haul. Dying some god awful, bloody death like the rest of us.”
“You’re right,” she admits, leaning against the bannister with her arms crossed over her chest. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t plan on doing this forever. And I tried to get out. I DID get out. And then that adjudicator showed up and turned my entire world upside down. Ruined EVERYTHING. I didn’t want to get sucked back in. I was done. I had met someone. I was going to get married. I bought a house. We were planning on always and forever. But it didn’t work out that way, did it.”
“No. It didn’t. You had to wait longer for it. But at least it’s happening. At least you’re getting it.”
Sighing, she reaches up to tuck wayward strands of hair behind her ears.
Climbing the stairs, Wick takes her by the shoulders and turns her towards him. “You can’t bring Helen back. I wish you could. But you know what you can do? For me? You can get the fuck out of this life. And STAY out of it.”
“I’m trying. But knowing that Winston is still out there after what he did…”
“Winston will be handled. Whether it’s by me or Nik or someone else. It’s not your fight anymore. It’s time to let someone else do the heavy carrying. You’ve done enough.”
“It’s my family. That he tried to hurt. It’s my little girl and the love of my life and…”
“And both of them need you. Not the you that’s connected to the job. The you that’s connected to them. You have to let that Esme go. It’s time. You need to be the Esme that they want you to be. That they NEED you to be. They don’t need ‘job Esme’. They need wife Esme. Mom Esme. And you can’t tell me you don’t need that, too.”
“Of course I need it. I WANT it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“It’s done. Your old life. Whatever battles are left, it’s up to other people to finish. And it’s up to you to trust them to do it.”
“That’s a little easier said than done.”
“You’ve trusted me before. Many times. Trust me now.”
“I’ll try. And me saying that is no slight on you. It’s just that this is close to home. So personal. To just hand it over, you know?”
“I know it is. But you have to do it. If not for yourself, for Tyler and Millie.” (lightly squeezes her shoulders and pulls her closer to him, lips meeting and lingering on her brow) “You’re going to be alright, kiddo. You’re safe. And we’re all going to keep it that way.”
“You’ll let me know how things go? In New York?”
“Once things are taken care of, I’ll call you. Like I said, the less you know, the better.”
“And call me when you get there? So I know you arrived safe and sound?”
Wick grins “Yes, mom.”
“Well, I AM a mom. Which technically makes me your ‘mom friend’, so…”
“Speaking of being a mom, you should go and do just that. Tuck your little one in. Give her a hug and a kiss. And a squeeze. From me.”
Smiling, she reaches up to sweep long strands of hair off his forehead and away from his eyes.
“Take care of each other. LOVE each other. And be happy. If anyone deserves that, it’s you.”
Swallowing around a lump of emotion, she stands on her tiptoes and wraps her arms around his neck) “Thank you. For everything. Millie’s alive because of you. If you hadn’t helped that night…”
“I owed you one. Had you not helped me, this whole mess never would have happened. Starting with that adjudicator.”
“One had nothing to do with the other. The adjudicator, Alessio and his family. It’s not connected.”
“One led to the other. Had you not helped me that night…gone against the High Table…the adjudicator would have never had a reason to track you down.”
“How about we just call it even? Because I can tell this isn’t an argument I’m going to get the high ground on.”
“You can’t win them all, kiddo. But you’ve won plenty, that’s for sure.”
“You will be back, right? Some day?”
“Some day.”
“Because you know you’re welcome here. That our door is always open. So don’t be a stranger, alright?”
“Alright.” He gives her a final squeeze, then a kiss on the cheek. “You be good, Esme Drummond.”
“I will,” she promises, and then pulls away, using her fingertips to clear away the tears that manage to escape. Once more leaning against the bannister with her arms crossed over her chest, she watches him descend the steps and limp down the walk, heading for his car.“Hey!” She calls to him after he opens the door, causing him to pause before sliding behind the wheel. “I’ll see you soon, John Wick!”
He grins over the roof of the car. “Not unless I see you first.”
*****
She finds him in the master bedroom, standing at the side of the bed in nothing more than a pair of sweats that sit low on his hips. A duffle bag, one of Esme’s suitcases, and Millie’s wheeled Transformer case open in front of him; rummaging through them and throwing any dirty laundry into a pile near the closet. Clean clothing stacked on the bedside chair)
“Millie asleep?”
“Out like a light. Both Bea and Lucy are in there with her. All three are snoring.”
Sidling up beside him, she reaches into Millie’s suitcase. Closely inspecting a t-shirt to determine if it's clean or dirty. “She gets it from you, you know.”
“Her amazing good looks?”
“Her snoring.”
“So you’re saying she’s ugly? Which she also gets from me?”
“You damn well know that isn’t what I’m saying. She gets both her amazing good looks and her snoring from you. There. Are you happy?”
“I don’t snore.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
“I’m not taking criticism from someone who talks in their sleep. Who I can have full conversations with.”
“I haven’t done that in a long time.”
“You just did it last night.”
“What was I talking about?”
“I don’t know some guy. Tall, handsome, built like a brick house, had a huge dick. Apparently gave you the best orgasms you’ve ever had in your entire life.”
“Mmm.” She throws a sweater of Millie’s onto the dirty pile. “Must have been some random hook up in college.”
Tyler scowls.
“Baby, IF I was saying all that, it was obviously you I was talking about. Haven’t we had this conversation before? While I’ve been awake? About how you’re the first guy to achieve the previously impossible? It’s nice not having to rely on myself to get to the finish line.”
“You have dated some real losers, you know that?”
“Not that the list is lengthy by any stretch of the imagination, but yes, yes I have. And I married the biggest one of them all.”
“Maybe your second husband will be a step up.”
“I have a feeling he will be,” she chides and playfully smacks him in the stomach with a dirty sweater. “With some room left over for a little improvement.”
“A little? That’s an understatement.”
“I don’t know. I think he’s pretty perfect already. As is.”
Smiling, he leans down to drop a gentle kiss on the top of their head. “And you have the nerve to call me biassed.”
They work quietly and companionably side by side, and when Millie’s suitcase is finally empty, she moves it from the bed and sets it on the floor. Then takes a seat on the edge of the mattress; watching Tyler, as he continues to work.
“Wick get away alright?”
Esme nods. “Do you think he’s going to be okay? When he gets back to New York?”
“I don’t know. He’s gonna have a lot of big guns after him. Bigger and heavier than the ones that are going to be after me, that’s for sure. But, he’s been in that world a long time. Gone up against a lot of horrible people. And he’s still around to tell about it.”
“I’m worried. About him and Charon. When it comes to the whole dealing with Winston thing.”
“One thing they have on their side is that the High Table is after his ass, too. He broke their number one golden rule, yeah? Drew blood on Continental grounds. If they came after you for a lot less, I like to think they’d fuck him right up.”
“But he sits on the High Table. How willing are they going to be to punish one of their own?”
“You know more about them than I do. I was never caught up on that side of things. Not that I didn’t have a chance to be. It was offered to me. Working under them. More than once.”
“Not many people say ‘no’ to the High Table and get away with it. You’re one of the lucky ones.”
“Didn’t really save me, though. did it? They still found a way to ruin my fucking life.”
“Why didn’t you want to work under them? You could have taken jobs anywhere in the world. You didn’t have to focus on North America. You didn’t even need to step foot inside it at all. Why…?”
“Wasn’t my thing. All the rules, the politics, the bullshit. Less drama working for Nik. Only have one person telling me what to do and when to do it. Not a whole shit load.”
“You are kind of a lone wolf. You do prefer working alone.”
“I don’t know…” He over her, palms flat against the mattress for balance. “... I seem to remember a time I didn’t mind sharing the workload with a hot little brunette.”
“Just the one, huh? No others?”
“Just the one.” His lips briefly brush against hers. “The rest were blondes and redheads..”
Scowling, she places her hands on his chest and attempts to push him away.. “Oh fuck you, Tyler!”
Chuckling, he presses a kiss to her cheek and the side of her neck before returning to the task in front of him. She watches his hands as he works; strong enough to break bones and take a life, but capable of breathtaking tenderness. Long fingers and misshapen knuckles; various scars and imperfections that mar his skin. And his forearms; one of the features she’d immediately noticed when they first met. And she’s about to offer a cheeky comment when she notices the expression on his face; the darkened eyes and the furrowed brow.
“Part of you wishes you were there, doesn’t it.”
“Where?”
“New York City. Taking care of Winston yourself. Or at least helping.”
“I won’t lie, revenge is at the top of my list of wants.”
“Mine too. He can’t get away with it; trying to kill you, putting Millie in danger. It doesn’t seem fair that he could just walk away from it at all.”
“He won’t. There’s enough people out there making sure that won’t happen.”
“You’re not going to be one of them, are you? I’m not going to wake up in the morning and find out you took off in the middle of the night? Went back to the states to handle things yourself?”
“You’re not honestly asking me that are you? You can’t be serious.”
“I know how powerful revenge can be. And I know the lines that Winston crossed. Putting Millie in danger, the things he said about me in that basement, the…”
“I’m exactly where I need to be. Where I WANT to be. All that matters to me is keeping you and Millie safe. And if someone DOES decide to try something stupid and I’m not here…”
“You don’t think that’ll happen, do you? That Alessio will send someone? Or that Winston will track us down? You don’t…”
“I think you’re safe with me. You BOTH are.”
“I don’t doubt that. I know what you’re capable of. And I know you’d stop at nothing to protect us. But…”
“You and Millie are safe here. And I’m going to keep it that way. Do I know for sure they’ll send people? No. Would I put it past them? Also no. But I’m not worried. They can send all the people they want. They can send a goddamn army. I will destroy each and every one of them.”
She blinks at the brutal honesty and the anger in his voice; watching as he gathers up the empty suitcases and stashes them in the far corner of the room. Once more joining her, he drops heavily onto his back in the middle of the bed; a forearm over his eyes, his free hand reaching out to slip under both the hoodie and the tank she wears underneath. Calloused fingertips repeatedly skimming across the small of her back, travelling slowly from hip to hip.
Esme stretches out alongside him. On her side with a leg draped over one of his; her mouth placing a series of kisses along the line of his jaw and at the corner of his mouth before resting her head on his chest. Her eyes closed as her fingertips trace the various scars and tattoos that inhabit the right side of his torso. Unsure of how much time passes as they lay there; breathing in each other’s familiar scents, enjoying the warmth that radiates from one another’s bodies, relaxed by the sounds of their soft, rhythmic breathing.
He stirs against her; removing the forearm over his eyes and his palm moving to cup the back of her head. Thumb and fingers pushing through her hair to gently knead her skin, his lips meeting her brow.
“I thought we could just stay in the guest room. For now anyway.”
Esme frowns. “What’s wrong with in here?.”
“Delaney was in here. Right before I left for New York City.”
Reaching up, her hand briefly rests on the top of his head before her fingers push through the longer strands of hair.. “For what it’s worth, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Yeah, well it bothers me.”
Opening her eyes, she raises her head and places her chin on his chest, smiling up at him.
“In a couple of days we can head into town. Buy new stuff. Just start right from scratch. Make the room ours. No one else. Just you and me.”
“You know, oddly enough, I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Come on, give me some credit. I’ve had better moments than THAT.”
“I know it doesn’t seem like much to you, but for THAT to bother you? To not want to share what goes on in here with someone else? Just keep it between us? That’s pretty intense, babe. No one would expect that from a guy like you.”
“A guy like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, the strong, silent type that’s capable of killing a man a thousand ways with his bare hands.”
“For your information, my hands can do a lot more than that.”
“Oh believe me…” She nuzzles the long-healed bullet wound on his neck with her nose, then runs the tip of her tongue along the lines of his tattoo. “...I know what those hands are capable of.”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Maybe. Is it working?”
“You should know by now that you don’t have to put that much effort into it. If any.”
She giggles against his cheek, her hands shoving their way into his hair when he kisses her; the long, languid, and delicious movements of closed mouth upon closed mouth. A rough, calloused palm begins a slow exploration of her clothed body; travelling over dips and curves, lightly squeezing, softly cupping. And he both hears and feels her sigh into his mouth when he intensifies the moment; pulling away briefly to glide the tip of his tongue over her top lip before aggressively pushing its way way inside of her mouth. Eyes closing and a shiver passing through her when his mouth abandons hers in favour of finding her neck; gently suckling and nibbling at the skin as his free hand pulls open her hoodie and exposes his collarbone.
Her entire body arches off the bed when teeth, lips, and tongue slowly make their way from one shoulder to the other; violently shuddering when the scruff of his beard brushes against the skin just above the neckline of her tank top. Keeping one hand buried in his hair, the other explores the bulging and rippling muscles in his neck and shoulders; tracing scars and tattoos by memories until he moves further down the bed and she loses all contact. Body tension in anticipation when a lone finger slides up the hem of her shirt; the calloused tip gliding across her stomach and drawing a perfect circle around her navel. Toes curling and goosebumps invading her flesh when he aggressively pushes the fabric of her shirt up to the hollow of her throat; his mouth placing a trail of warm, moist kisses from the top of her belly button to the valley between her breasts. And he groans in annoyance and disappointment when she suddenly yanks at his hair, forcing him to look up at her.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Right now? Can’t it wait? I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”
“Right now,” she confirms, and he gives a sigh and rolls onto his side, hand pulling down her tank top, then settling on her stomach.
“We gotta do this fully clothed. Or I won’t hear a damn word you’re saying.”
“You’re half naked,” she points out. “How’s that fair?”
“I’m not as distracting as you are.” Pressing a chaste kiss to her lips, he uses a fingertip to clear strands of hair away from the sides of her face. “You okay? Is this something I need to worry about?”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean…” She chews on her bottom lip. “No. You don’t need to worry. And yes, I’m alright.”
“What do you want to tell me?”
Rolling onto her stomach, Esme places her chin on his chest. “You have to promise you won’t laugh at me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s kind of weird. Silly. Well, at least to me, it is.”
“I would never laugh at you. Or make fun of you. Unless it was about your height.”
Giving a small chuckle, she uses the pad of her thumb to trace the scars on his left shoulder. One a military injury he’d suffered years before he’d met her, the other left from the surgery he’d endured after the nightmare in Dhaka. “It IS kind of embarrassing.”
“How short you are?”
“No.” She playfully tugs at the hair on the underside of his chin. “What I’m going to tell you.”
“I thought we got over that a long time ago; being worried about telling each other things. I’m the last person you should feel embarrassed around. I mean, you’ve seen me with a tube up my dick so I could take a piss. You used to help me to the bathroom when I was in the hospital. It doesn’t get much more embarrassing than that.”
“You might change your mind after you hear this.”
“It can’t be that bad.” Combing his fingers through her hair, his hand briefly settles on the nape of her neck, gently squeezing before sliding under the hem of her shirt and resting in the space between her shoulders. Fingertips tracing slow, repetitive circles over bare, smooth skin. Just tell me.”
Sighing, she scrapes a nail along his beard. “I’m nervous.”
“About what?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. And it makes no sense. I have no reason to be. But I feel shy and awkward; like we’re some couple just fresh into a relationship. We spent a year together. We shared a life. A bed. We were planning to get married. We wanted to have babies. We bought a house.”
“Five years was a long time. To spend apart.”
“But it came so easily to us. When we were back together. We still had that vibe, you know? We still fit together. Like we were never even apart. At least that’s how it felt to me. There was no hesitation. Not anxiety. We just went back to the way we were. Or close to it, anyway. That’s how it was for me. It wasn’t for you?”
“It was. Which is kind of scary in its own way. It should have been awkward. Considering how things ended.”
“But it wasn’t. And DID things end? For either of us? I may have walked away and a lot of time may have passed, but was it ever REALLY over?”
“No,” he admits. “It wasn’t.”
“Look how easy it came back to us. In New York City. Yeah, there was a lot of hurt and anger and I dropped a whole load of shit into your lap, but..”
“There was nothing shit about it. You showing back, finding out about Millie…”
“...things were still there. Between us. We still loved each other. And it was like we went back to how we were. We were always comfortable with each other; we always talked about anything and everything and nothing ever felt complicated or strange. Not even those first days in Dhaka. Am I making any sense at all?”
Tyler nods.
“So why am I nervous now? Why do I feel like this awkward little schoolgirl who’s getting ready for her first hook-up? It’s silly, right? For me to feel this way?”
“I don’t know. I feel a little nervous, too.”
“Really?”
“It was different in New York City. A lot was going on; between us and with the job and Winston and his bullshit. We didn’t really have time to sit down and think about things. We barely had time to catch our breath, some days.”
“I don’t want you to think it’s a bad thing. How I’m feeling. Because it’s not. There could never be anything bad with us. It’s just overwhelming. Being here…in this place…with you.”
“Do you want to maybe get something else?” Looping hair behind her ears, he skims his knuckles over her cheek. The cuts and bruises nearly fully healed. “Put this place up for sale and…?”
“No. That’s the last thing I want. It’s not about you or this place. Not in a negative way, anyway. It’s just so surreal. That we’re actually here. I spent five years wanting this; missing you and wishing things could be different. And now they are. Somehow we found our way back here. To each other.”
“You’re not the only one that spent five years wanting that.”
“You feel it too, don’t you? How overwhelming it is? In this chaotic, beautiful way? I KNOW you feel it. Because I KNOW you. I know your heart, Tyler. I know how deeply you feel things. How POWERFULLY you feel them. So I know I’m not alone in this.”
“It is a little…” He chooses his words wisely. “...scary.”
“I don’t want to screw this up. I did that once. I don’t want it to happen again.”
“It won’t.” Fingertips glide up her back and over the nape of her neck, hand cupping the back of her head and pulling her towards him; lips meeting hers in a long, soft kiss. His eyes riveted on hers as he brushes the knuckles off his free hand over the swell of her cheek; following the line of her jaw before cupping her chin in his palm, his thumb grazing over her lips.
“I can’t lose you. Not when I just got you back. I can’t lose THIS. We’re finally getting what we wanted. What we planned. We get to raise Millie together. Make an amazing life. Have more babies. Grow old and gray together. And if something takes you out of the equation…”
“I’m not going anywhere. Nothing’s going to happen to me. This is it. Once the mess in New York has been cleaned up and things are finished for good, we don’t have to worry about that life ever again.”
“Promise? Promise me you won’t go back to that.”
“I won’t go back,” he vows and pulls her into another kiss. Longer and deeper, tinged with urgency and desperation. Hunger.
Instead of pursuing it, he wraps her in his arms and rolls onto his back. Lips meeting her forehead before she tucks her face into that safe, warm place between his neck and shoulder.
“You’re home now, Esme.” His hand once more slips up the back of her sweater and tank top, fingertips ghosting along the length of her spine. “Where you belong. Where you’ve ALWAYS belonged.”
#Tyler and Esme series#Tyler Rake#Tyler Rake fanfic#Tyler Rake fan fiction#Extraction#Extraction 2#Extraction fanfic#Extraction fan fiction#Chris Hemsworth#Tyler Rake x OFC#Esme Drummond#Esme Rake
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I love it when you open up requests!!! Can I please have number 3 with Tyler Rake please and thankyou!!😍🥰🤩😘
Of course, you can! :D
Smut below the cut, minors DNI!
Tyler Rake as a lover. The words thorough, energetic, and dirty as hell always come to mind when you think of your guy. He leaves little room for anything else.
Pulling out of the dripping mess of your sex, he gives you the kind of look that could make water catch fire, slapping your thigh, his grin widening. “Bend over, sweetheart. Let me spank that pretty little arse while I fuck you rough.”
You grin, scrambling off the bed and moving to the chest of drawers, leaning across the smooth surface of the wood, Tyler's knee hitting your inner thighs, pushing your legs further apart before he sinks back into you with a gravelled grunt, his hand pounding off your butt cheek in a hard slap.
"Happy to be home, big man?" you purr, as he about rails you into the drawers.
"Always, darlin'."
#tyler rake#tyler rake fanfiction#tyler rake x female reader#tyler rake x you#tyler rake smut#extraction fan fiction#chris hemsworth fanfiction#chris hemsworth smut#chris hemsworth x female reader#chris hemsworth x you#ddd drabble requests
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A minor detail effectively drops the bomb. The image of the Goddess portrayed by Jessie during Loveless VR play fits closely to the image of Jenova, Calamity from the skies, as revealed in the holographic sequence during the Temple of Ancients quest.
That touch raises a number of troubling questions. The use of imagery that invites comparisons with the Loveless play appears deliberate. This encompasses both the Goddess and the "children of men," as the Cetra refer to humanity. As such, the appearance of children of men is presented identical to the epic figures of Three Friends from the play.
Is Jenova the "Goddess" whose true nature was merely forgotten or misunderstood by those who came after the Cetra, specifically humans?
The Cetra "narrator" makes an intriguing statement, raising the suspicion that something else is going on. It emphasizes the conflicts between humanity and the Cetra, questioning their nature and finally implying that the animosity between the two races may have been sown by their celestial adversary, Jenova.
In a later portion of the Temple quest, the Cetra refer to their nemesis as "a deceiver," who assumed the identities of others and incited strife and chaos among the Cetra. The statement once again underscores the creature's ability not only to shapeshift and cast illusions, but to sift through minds/memories and extract information it can use against their target.
Eventually Cetra people overcame their enemy. At this point of narration, the vision of a tentacle-wielding Lovecraftian horror changes into the aforementioned image of a Goddess. The "narrator" stresses that the enemy was unable to reunite with the Planet and thus fell into a slumber, debunking previously-held fan ideas that Jenova was brain-dead. Or unintelligent, for that matter.
To connecting the dots. It's not a stretch to say that the so-called Goddess was, potentially, Jenova's means of manipulating children of men (thus the Three Friends imagery) in order to promote division and strife among humans, or between mankind and the Cetra. What sticks out to me is the timing of the transformation: the holographic image of Goddess appears at a point of narration when Jenova is on the verge of defeat or defeated, when the entity is allegedly imprisoned in rock strata and goes into hibernation. Almost as if the “Goddess” is its last ditch resort at manipulating those it could yet deceive, i.e. non-Cetra. This brings up the final and most disturbing question.
Just what was the Gift of the Goddess?
Was it but a literary element to the play, a fiction through and through, or was it…a bait? A carefully placed promise of a legendary boon to entice someone susceptible to temptation to come and find the “Goddess” and her Gift... and maybe break Jenova free from wherever the Cetra sealed it, as Ultimania suggests entity's ability to exert influence over those who come into contact with it.
And then there's this:
My friend, your desire
Is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess
Legend shall speak
Of sacrifice at world's end
(Loveless, Act IV)
A “bringer of life” — just who or, perhaps, what is being brought to life? One could consider it an embellishment inherent to a poem. One could theorize it to be the fabled gift itself. Or one could say that whoever comes to the "Goddess" in search of a boon quite literary “brings it back to life” by awakening.
On a closing note, perhaps it adds a new spin to the old story. Was Genesis' fixation with finding the Gift of the Goddess solely motivated by desperation, or was there more to it?
#ffvii#ff7 rebirth#ff7 remake#ff7#final fantasy 7#final fantasy vii rebirth#jenova#ffvii rebirth#ffvii@luv fandoms
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to you, my lover.
in which, shinonome akito surprises his favourite writer.
contents. shinonome akito x gn!reader, just fluff really, <- might've ruined it with an attempt of crack, unproofread and messy bc i can't think properly anymore
a/n. this was supposed to be my birthday fic, i didn't finish it in time and was considering deleting but nah not today
You're tired. Really tired.
It's not a complaint, being permitted to stay out late to celebrate your birthday, now returning on a long yet peaceful and empty train ride. With the occasional rattling, it was silent, with the exception of your tired breathing and the rustle of your clothes every time you shuffled around a bit.
And your boyfriend.
Arms crossed and back leaned against his seat, his eyes remain shut, resting a bit after such a long day. Fatigue pays a visit to you as well, a yawn claws out of your throat, earning an immediate reaction from Akito.
Arm snaking behind your head, he pulls you in by the shoulder, making sure you rest comfortably against his. You snuggle against him, the scent of his cologne makes you crave more of him and his touch. The jacket that was once resting on his lap is thrown over you, and carefully he adjusts it, without moving his shoulder.
"Tired?"
You nod, resting your eyes a bit.
"If you're able to stay awake, I want to give you my gift."
"Excuse me?" As if you weren't ever exhausted in the first place you sit up, staring at him with confusion. "Akito, you bought me pretty much every book on my 'to be read'. Not to mention the promise rings too." Your glance at the silver wrapping around your finger, amber and saffron imbedded into it. "I told you so many times I didn't need anything, let alone something that would've costed so much."
Akito shrugs casually. "There's no such thing as 'too much' when it comes to you."
"And there's a thing called being financially irresponsible..."
"I'm managing my money carefully, I swear." He pledges with breathless laughter. "I assure you it wasn't expensive, I promise. I'm going to give you the world when I go professional, anyways." He fishes for something out of his bag, something small and wrapped with colourful paper.
"This feels like a book." You comment instantly, it's easy to identify when you've received so many for your birthday.
Akito shrugs again in response. "Check it, then."
You oblige to his words, unwrapping the package in a manner that didn't make a mess on the train. Your guess was correct, it is a book. Only this time with an unrecognisable title and author— it didn't have either. It was white, with nothing else.
"Who's the author?"
Another shrug, and you decide not to bother asking anymore questions. You turn to the first page.
Table of contents. This time you recognise the titles.
Because they belong to none other than you.
"You printed it out all of this?" You've re-read your writing constantly, whether it be proof-reading or trying to figure out how to elevate your prose. But when it's in your hands in the form of a book instead of the words you type up on your laptop, it feels surreal, maybe even a bit wrong. It's everything you've sent and shown him, whether it be fan fiction, attempts at poetry, extracts of screenplays, or snippets from future novels you plan on publishing.
"'Course I did. You love books, I love you and your writing." Akito says it all the time, always being the first person to read your works, sending a plethora of text messages about his thoughts on them.
You inspect the contents of the book, and as he said it's all your work. But, pale highlighter adorns the pages, black ink decorating in between lines, hearts and even more words committed to paper.
The imagery here is gorgeous here. I love these words especially ->
Although I can't and don't, I feel like I can relate to this character, the way you express their internal thoughts and actions makes me feel like I've become them
Why is he so adorable?? The dialogue is so sweetly comforting.
I think this one's my favourite. It was super cute. Short and simple but enough to make me smile all day.
You turn to another story, this one with a darker premise.
SHE DESERVES BETTER !!
This hurts so much ╥﹏╥ Internal monologue is a 11/10 (as always)
Uh oh...
PLEASE HAVE MERCY
SCREW YOU SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A HAPPY ENDING
This one's my new favourite. Thanks for making me cry
(my tear stains) Small arrows point towards (formerly) wet patches on the page, the evidence left there shocks you.
"You actually cried? And annotated your tears?" Not once, but multiple times, on each work that connoted anything sad.
"Love, your writing, just like you, makes me feel a lot. It's not often I cry, you know." He leans in to kiss you on the cheek. "Hope my annotations did it some justice."
Each comment makes you smile irresistibly, whether it was a serious paragraph breaking down and analysing specific moments or 'someone cooked here.' being scrawled. No details were missed by him, ones that you assumed were too subtle and therefore unnecessary because no one in your comments noticed them.
"You noticed all of this? None of my friends or readers did."
"Of course I did. I've read everything over and over again and love you too much to miss any of those details."
"And every note at the end is synonymous for 'new favourite'." It's not a complaint, it's quite adorable really, watching him struggle to make up his mind. "You even compiled your favourite quotes at the end? You think my stuff is quoteworthy?"
"How could I not? Heck, I don't think an anthology is enough. I need it tattooed somewhere on me." A gasp severs his words. "I know exactly what I'm going to do on my eighteenth birthday."
"Don't. Think about it." But the prospect of him loving your prose enough to permanently etch it into your skin makes you smile. "But seriously. This is beautiful, thank you." You're not sure why it feels so different, despite Akito always texting you these sorts of comments. Perhaps it was it's physical manifestation that had evoked so much emotion.
"I remember, when I first opened up to you."
And so do you. It was certainly awkward, with a plentiful amount of tears and uncertainty. But in the end you found yourself comprehending Akito and his character more, which was worth any sort of unpleasantries.
"You ended up analysing every song I covered or wrote. And you still do. I kept those notebooks with me, and read them whenever I felt worried. It's you. You're the reason why I can listen to recordings of myself without wanting to hide. Took me a while, but without you I wouldn't've achieved it."
You peer up at him, as he gazes at the train's roof, reminiscing those memories. You had contemplated for so long, wondering whether that act would've truly done anything, whilst worrying about embarrassing yourself. Now, being able to admire the peaceful expression he wore, you can easily say you have no regrets.
"I wanted to do the same for you. I didn't like how you weren't able to see the perfection your writing held." Akito's hand reaches for yours. "I know what it's like. To hate your own art because of what other people say and growing fearful of another's opinion, or how subjectivity doesn't seem to be in your favor. It's suffocating, that's why you mean the whole world to me for freeing me of that insecurity." He bites his lip, a method he relies on to quell any strong emotion.
He's spot on. The words of others are equally as capable of hurting as they are uplifting. It's common advice to not heed any mind to others, but when it comes to writing it always felt necessary to you. No matter how well you wrote to satisfy yourself, it didn't mean anything if no one else liked it; it meant no sales, meaning no money, which only meant that writing was an invalid career for the future unless it pleased others.
Even if it weren't a professional pursuit, it doesn't feel like something one can establish its value, at least, not without the validation of others.
"You were the lens I needed to see the beauty in myself. And I want to be the one you need."
You smile, planting a kiss on his lips. "Think you already are."
Akito sighs with a grin, "Then, I can die happy now."
A playful, gentle, slap hits his shoulder. "Quit being so overdramatic."
"What? Would've been a waste if the best author in the entirety of human history didn't get to see how amazing them and their writing were."
"Now you're just hyperbolising everything."
He pokes you in the cheek. "I see you smiling."
"Because of how ridiculous you are." You thank the train for being empty tonight, otherwise you wouldn't have the freedom of quarreling. "You're an idiot. Sometimes."
"And I still think having one of your quotes tattooed onto me would be a good idea."
Akito's persistent, even when it came to things that appeared to be mere jokes. "That's so random—? No you're not getting any of my writing tattooed onto you."
"Fine, but left pec or right pec?"
"Oh my god." Though you scold him, the rest dissolves into breathless laughter, as he pulls you in for a hug.
He scatters kisses all over your face, as you savour the warmth of his body. "Happy birthday, love."
taglist (send ask to be added) : @yuzurins, @pokkomi, @chigirizzz
© kitorin : do not repost, plagiarize, change, or translate
#bye my writing game has been so off recently ngl#(at least on tumblr :>)#shinonome akito#pjsekai#shinonome akito x reader#pjsk#prsk#pjsk x reader#akito shinonome#proseka#vbs#prosekai x reader#fluff#colorful stage#akito shinonome x reader
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Attention, LockNation!! A team in LockNation is making a digital holiday card for CF(complete fiction) and the Strouds. We'd like for everyone who wants to be able to sign it and we're going to accompany it with this note. Please give your thoughts on if you'd like anything to be added/removed/changed since it's gonna be from the entire fandom and we'd like for as many people to weigh in as possible so it's representative of us all!
If you'd like your signature (real or fandom user) to be included, please dm me one signed on a blank piece of paper (or digitally) by 17 December and we'll include it in the card!
Also, if you could, please reblog it so that we can have as many signatures as possible! (Also this is a secret 🤫)
***
Dear Complete Fiction, Jonathan and Georgina Stroud,
A very merry, happy, healthy and prosperous holiday season from our fandom to you all!
You have all brought LockNation immense joy this year; first with the beautiful show you have given us from which we are still extracting new details and meaning; then, by regularly interacting with us and our fan efforts, giving us fun tidbits about the making of the show, encouraging our chaotic antics and speaking to us during ClusterCon; and finally, of course, with the hard work you've doubtlessly been putting in the background that we are not privy to but so appreciative of anyway!
We hope this holiday season can be a well deserved restful break for you all before the New Year and that you can enjoy the year end to the fullest! May your favorite donuts be plentiful, your toast perfectly buttery and tea in your favorite mug warm!
Warmest Wishes, Happy Holidays, and here's to a Just Reckless Enough 2024 !
LockNation
#lockwood and co#lockwood & co#l&co#locknation#jonathan stroud#save lockwood and co#lockwood and co netflix#lockwood netflix#christmas#anthony lockwood#lucy carlyle#george cubbins#quill kipps#george karim#holly munro#flo bones#montagu barnes#locklyle
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Where my Flann O’Brien fans at, I have no idea what’s happening here:
Described as an eminent "physicist, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist", [the fictional character] de Selby is known for his paradoxically non-scientific beliefs and personality. De Selby serves as an unseen character in The Third Policeman, where he is discussed at length in references and footnotes which tenuously link his unorthodox theories and areas of research to the plot. (In one footnote, he attempts to dilute water; in another, he posits that night is caused by the accumulation of "black air".)
In The Dalkey Archive, de Selby develops a substance ("D.M.P.") capable of extracting all oxygen from an airtight enclosure, thus disrupting the sequentiality of time, incidentally making it possible to produce fine mature whiskey in a week. De Selby vows to use the substance to destroy the world in the name of God.
As discussed in Irish Philosophy, de Selby believed human existence was “a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief” and “a journey is a hallucination” which he demonstrated by travelling from Bath to Folkestone by means of picture postcards of the supposed route, barometric instruments, clocks and a device to regulate gaslight to simulate sunlight at various “times” of day.
a savant who theorizes, among other things, that the earth is actually shaped like a sausage
Big if true. The song also relates to the Inferno's Vestibule of Hell in some way. Don’t ask me, I dropped out of grad school.
#he threw a pumpkin into my enclosure#the pumpkin has a funky bass line#enrichment#hozier#five songs in and the man has not missed once though#music#music discussion
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